University of Chicago Settlement

Initially, two graduate students (William Johnson and Max West) were in residence "to provide a center for educational, religious and philanthropic work."

There, McDowell and 26 other residents conducted civic work, in which they were assisted by students, alumni, and members of the school faculties.

[1] A meeting was held by the Christian Union on one of the Sunday evenings in December, 1893, for the purpose of raising funds, at which addresses were made by Professor James Laurence Laughlin and Jane Addams.

McDowell's name appeared regularly in the list of the Staff of Administration and Instruction and in 1903, she was made a special instructor in sociology.

[3] Soon after the beginning of the work, a Settlement Board was organized, property was secured, and a building finally erected.

[4] The neighborhood was in the southwest corner of that square mile, which included the Union Stock Yards and the packing houses, where each day 100,000 animals were slaughtered for the world's market.

There were still many streets unpaved, many ditches with green scum, while the city garbage dump continued to exist there.

The old Irish, Scotch and English neighbors were supplanted by the Bohemian, Pole, Slovac, Lithuanian, Gallician, Croatian, and Slovenian.

The only place near the Stock Yards which offered a comfortable seat at a table during the lunch hour was the saloon, which was crowded at the noon half-hour.

It was also the political as well as the social center, and the saloon keeper, with the ward politician, was often the only interpreter of American institutions.

These included housing, streets and refuse, play spaces, public schools, labor, economic conditions, moral, and health.

Other activities included classes in gymnastics, manual training, natural science, metal work, cooking, sewing, music (piano, chorus, orchestra), dancing.

Chicago does not ask us to die for her welfare; she asks us to live for her good, so to live and so to act that her government may be pure, her officers honest, and every home within her boundaries be a place fit to grow the best kind of men and women to rule over her.”—Young Citizen's Creed, by Mary E.