*
n—III The Finest Writers
Edward Worthy 1 S?nd Their Stories
c I » , First to the Illus
Ldward Lawson f_»_. r .
trated Feature
Dorothy West || Section |
w B ZAd,eAui^*R®p"«”,tfTw CU'*t* ILLUSTRATED FEATURE SECTION—October 15, 1932 BLUE RIBBON r,"V°NFK\\,F^'N"r!r^NR* WKFK «<*
^ V ^ A--- ■ - - _____
By MARY WHITE OVINGTON
CHAPTER II
Settlement Work
In my youth, and it is partly true today, no place
was more remote than that section of the city in which
persons of a different caste lived. I was born and rear
ed on Brooklyn Heights. When Frederick B. Pratt of
Pratt Institute (where after leaving college I spent a year
in a secretarial position)- asked me to look at a model
tenement his family had built in northern Brooklyn to
see if it offered possibilities for settlement work, he sent
me to an Qnknown land.
The Astral, as it was called, was one of the first
model tenements erected in Greater New York. It was
in Greenpoint, the northernmost ward of Brooklyn. To
get there I took a car that I had seen all my life but nev
er entered, went for a couple of miles through familiar
streets, and then explored the unknown.
Sugar refineries gave out their sickish smell, facto
ries loomed large, and at length Greenpoint was reach
ed, ugly but within view of the river. I climbed four
flights of tenement stairs and knocked at the door of an
apartment where a girl from Minneapolis had been liv
ing while working in the Pratt library.
In an hour she told me of conditions in my own city
of which I was utterly ignorant. I felt humiliated and
decided to take up the settlement job.* Since then I have
played the role of the Minneapolis girl in southern towns,
talking with my southern white friends and telling them
of the well-to-do Negro. They are never humiliated.
They always know all they want to know.
There was a fervcr for settlement:
work in the nineties, for learning]
working-class conditions by living*
among the workers ana sharing to
a small extent in their lives. Toyn
bee Hi.ll, London, Hull House,
Greenwich House ,the Henry Street
Settlement, these were a few fa
miliar names. My little plant grew
from five rooms to forty, occupying1
a section in the model tenement,
but it never achieved fame. Pratt
Institute largely furnished the
teachers, making it a practice sta
tion for students in domestic science.
The Institute and the Pratt family
generously raised the money.
I had no serious financial care;
and was happy in a growing family
of residents and in the many con
tacts such work gave. I knew Jane
Addams and have never forgotten
her first piece of advice t -> me: “If
you wd-jt to be sui rounded by sec
ond rate : bility you will dominate
your settlement. Tf you want the
best ability you must allow great
liberty of action among your resi
dents.”
Jane Addams’s name today is
among the most famou: •. the
world. But perhaps few people
realize the incalculable good she
has done in helping others to en
large and glo'ify iheir own work.
Many people can build ieir for
time by using others. Few can en
courage ab'.ity without dominating
it.
We worked hard at the Green-j
point settlement and we tried to
unde, -tand working-class conditions.
The desire for sucl knowledge was
in the air.
New York had then the Social Re
form Club, an organization compris
ing a membership of intellectuals
and workers. I entered it and was]
soon put upon its board. I was lucky
to begin my work at a time when
hope was in the air, not when, as
today, the atnosphe*”’ reeks with
the philosophy of economic and psy
chological collapse.
We believed in political reform
and elected Seth Low mayc-. We
had a tenement house department
that abolished the building of dark,
almost windowless tenements. We
talked socialism and single tax and
when we read William Morris, or
sang his hymn of the worker- at
the Intercollegiate SociaH, t Society,
1/c believed t: :t by sacrifice and
hard work his dream might come
true.
With this background I worked in
the Gree. r?irt Settlement for sev
en years.
How much I helped he neighbor
hood I do not know, not a great
deal, but I learned much myself.
Numbers of factory girls came to
our classes and when I heard_,the
whistle blQ at seven in the morn
ing, as I lay in bed, it was not an
indefinite person but Mary or
Amanda or Celia, who was going to
do rough work for ten and a half
hours.
A few children were then in the
mills, and T saw one with mangled
hand who nad no excuse for what
she had done except that she was
so much a child she wanted to play
with machinery. I saw the struggle
for jobs, the boycott and the tragedy
of the unemployed. And I saw hap
py children.
For the children, with .vhim we
did much of our o on the whole
\. re happy. They lov'd the street
and its excitement. Usu-lly they
had enough to eat and a place to
sleep. They came from families of
industrious people, c iefly Irish and
German Americans, vent to pub
ic school, learned a little and were
up to mischief in their le! a e hours.
The boys stole lead pipes, climbed
everywhere, walking along the out
side coping of our seven story tene
ment, brought the cooking teacher
to me in tears because they had
begun by eating up all the raw ma
terial for the lesson except the salt,
in short were very genuine Ameri
can toughs, bad but lovable. When
they got heir working papers and
began to earn something they set
tled down to lespectable life. Some
have clona ell. One went to Con
gress. Perhaps 1 should add. one
went to jail.
The girls were not so restless, and
soon learned to wheel baby carriages
or hold a toddler by the arm.
It seemed to me the otf suffered
most. So little could be done for
them! A grandmother needs an
armchair and a pleasant window.
Our grandmothers huddled in cor
ners. the horor of the poorhouse
hanging over them. The mothers,
too, were often sad and tired. Some
the men drank, and there was
nothing attractive -’>out their
drunkenn .i, but many were hard
working a: l I used to wonder what
i they could get out of life, their
[homes were so crowded and noisy.
Neither the movie nor the radio had
been invented.
That I should later work for the
Negro never entered my mind, but
I doubt if I could have had a better
preparation than the settlement
gave. Tor in those seven years I
learned that ma..y problems attrib
uted to race are really labor prob
lems.
Employers of labor, whether men
or women, employing white or black,
h„ve a g d deal the same psy
chology, talk tn much the same way.
The domestic service problem takes
on local color, but the —istresses
always think the sar..e thing—that
a good servant neglects her own
people for her mistress.
I did, however, have two direct
contacts with Negro life while at
Greenpoint, and one c" them, more
than any other single thing, led me
to take up colored work.
The first was the -.ttitude of the
boys in our clubs toward the colored
population. I encountered it when
I took a club to Prospect Park. Our
route lay through t. small Negro
section, Gwinnett Street, a block or
two of old frame housr- occupied
by the poorer class. (Once, one of
the most beautiful airls I have ever
seen in my life got on the car at
Gwinnett Street. She was tall and
slender and dressed i i golden brown
corduroy that made her 1- own skin
glow with lovely color.)
The families were sitting on their
stoops, and as we passed them, as
Didn’t Shine
That Night
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
“William H. Baldwin, at speakers’
table, leaning forward, looking at
Washington and saying, ‘I worship
that man.’ ”
“Maggie”
...iRS.*BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
"They were disappointed when the
wife proved to be No. 3, not No. 2
about whom they were reading.”
Ail Old Booker T. in a New Pose
From the cover of “Selected Speeches of Booker T. Washington,” a
copyright photo by C. M. Battey.
though at a signal, all the boys
jumped on their seats and at the
tops of their voices shouted: “Nig
ger, nigger, nigger!” Then, r the
car turned into a white neighbor
hood, they sat down. The game
was over.
They never played it again with
me, but I carried my will by threat
rather than persuasion. They saw
no harm in what they did.
As time went on, I realized there
was no personal animor 'ty in their
act. It was a custom. When a
colored janitor, oddly enough named
Ceorge, came to take charge of our
model tenement, he became the
r.popular man among the boys
on the block. There was always a
group about him, listening to his
stories. He was an individual to
them.
The Booker Washingtons
My second direct Negro contact
was through the Social Reform Club.
“Up from Slavery” was appearing
in the Outlook and our club wanted
to honor the author of it and his
wife. (They were disappointed
when the wife proved to be number
three, not number two about whom
they were reading.) I was made
chairman of the committee to ar
range for the dinner.
“Do not have all" the talk about
conditions in the ^'uth. Have con
ditions in the North discussed.”
These were my inst:. tions and
I followed them. To my amaze
ment I learned that there was a
Negro problem in my y. I ha<*
honestly never thought of it. I ac
cepted tfte Negro as I accepted any
Continued on Page Four
COMING
SOON
“PRETTY BOY”
HE LOOKED AT LEGS!
Another
Adele Hamlin
Story
There were only four things
Alvin Proscott loved; his gar
den, his dog, himself, his
clothes, and collecting beauti
ful women—not the women
but the collecting.
Into his life and flower gar
den walked Midge “Half Pint,' *
with her flat nose and freck
les tnd. believe it or skippy,
it looks like a plain girl has
him by the nose for the first
time.
