Social work has a long history of attempting to enhance the social functioning of people by focusing on
                  social conditions or on the individual (Boehm, 1959). At the turn of the 20th century, the American
                  settlement house movement and the charitable organization society (COS) movement came together to
                  form the profession of social work. In the forefront was Jane Addams, who helped create the social
                  reforms that developed during the Progressive Era of 1890 to 1915. As Addams discovered, social
                  movements force the issues of poverty and injustice into society's consciousness.

                  Today, poverty and injustice are just as problematic. There is much that social workers can do to take
                  leadership roles in the social reforms of the 1990s. One possibility is to understand better the settlement
                  house and social reform movements. The settlement house movement drew heavily on the cultural
                  values of "personal service" by housing settlement workers in the poor neighborhoods in which they
                  provided services. At the same time, by promoting social and economic research and tying investigation
                  to reform and knowledge to action, social workers helped construct a new paradigm of social welfare
                  based on specially trained professionals with the skills and knowledge to offer effective social services
                  in a newly industrializing society. This article examines Addams's work in both areas to provide a role
                  model for social workers today who are facing the immense issues of poverty and injustice.

                  Background

                  Addams captured the dreams, ideals, imagination, and sometimes hatred of many people in the United
                  States. As a social reformer and organizer, Addams is almost unparalleled. She was a founder of
                  Hull-House, one of the first American settlement houses; an organizer and mediator of labor unions; a
                  peacemaker; and a visionary who helped create the welfare state. She was an early feminist
                  (Chambers, 1986) who understood the importance of women's relationships and connectedness in the
                  life cycle. Addams promoted cultural differences rather than the fashionable "melting pot" idea.

                  Addams wrote 10 books and more than 200 articles; gave hundreds of speeches, including 18 papers
                  at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (NCCC) from 1897 to 1933; and was elected
                  NCCC's first female president in 1910. During her lifetime, Addams was awarded honorary degrees
                  from 13 universities, including the first honorary degree awarded to a woman by Yale University.
                  Addams is the only social worker who was ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

                  Aspects of Addams's personal life influenced the development of her work. These influences can be
                  traced from her earliest beginnings.

                  Childhood and Adolescence

                  Laura Jane Addams, the youngest of five children, was born in 1860 in northern, rural Illinois. Her
                  parents, who had a strong Quaker influence, had moved to Illinois from Pennsylvania. When Addams
                  was two years old, her mother died in childbirth, and an older sister became her mother figure. Her
                  father remarried in 1868 to a woman who had two sons.

                  John Addams was a respected state senator who called Abraham Lincoln a friend. He was a successful
                  businessman who invested in railroads and banking and encouraged Addams to follow her interests and
                  challenge her intellect under his watchful eye (Levine, 1971). (Trattner, 1989, noted that more than 40
                  percent of women residents of settlement houses had fathers who were active in politics.)

                  Addams wanted to attend Smith College, but her father's theory of education was to attend a school
                  near home "to be followed by travel abroad in lieu of the wider advantages which an eastern college is
                  supposed to afford" (Addams, 1910, p. 46). Throughout her four years at Rockford Seminary,
                  Addams was an outstanding student with a keen interest in writing. Her intellectual development was
                  challenged and nurtured. Although the college tended to push young women in the direction of
                  missionary work, Addams graduated as valedictorian with a clear purpose in mind: to study medicine
                  and work among poor people (Lane, 1963).

                  When her father died suddenly in 1881 just before she enrolled at the Women's Medical College in
                  Philadelphia, Addams entered an extended period of grief and depression (Deegan, 1986). She
                  finished one semester of medical school but became disabled from severe back pain and decided not to
                  pursue a medical career. Instead Addams traveled extensively through Europe twice during the next six
                  years, experiencing more self-doubt and depression as she struggled with the lack of meaning in the
                  comfortable life of a privileged woman (Lane, 1963).

                  Young Adulthood

                  Frustrated by the dearth of meaningful roles available to educated women of the day, Addams was
                  shaped by the powerful positive regard of her father and also the early death of her mother. She grew
                  in confidence to believe in herself, and she always remained responsive to her family (Levine, 1971).
                  Addams's share of her father's estate came to about $50,000, which at that time was enough to allow
                  her to live comfortably for the rest of her life. Her internal struggles with the external conflicts of the
                  socioeconomic issues of her time, however, did not allow her to simply enjoy her life (Levine, 1971).

                  Addams struggled with her ambivalence toward self, sexuality, and society. Her stepbrother George
                  wanted to marry her; instead, she threw herself into living and learning among the poor. In 1890 at age
                  30, Addams met Mary Rozet Smith, a leading benefactor of Hull-House. As Addams's
                  nephew-biographer wrote, Smith became her lifelong friend and companion (Linn, 1935). They
                  traveled together in Russia (meeting Leo Tolstoy in 1896) and the Middle East and bought a summer
                  cottage together in Maine. Whenever Addams became sick or overworked, she turned to Smith for
                  nurturing. Their relationship was difficult for Addams as head of Hull-House, yet for three decades the
                  two women created a rare and loving relationship. Congregate living in many settlement houses
                  provided a surrogate extended family for many women, one knit by affection and shared values and
                  experiences. The extent of such arrangements are unknown, but they were common in settlement house
                  environments, where very special friendships were formed that comforted and sustained each partner
                  (Chambers, 1986).

                  Addams did not find the path to her life's work simply or easily. Two incidents in Europe motivated her
                  to social action. During a visit in 1883, Addams was taken to see one of the "tourist attractions" of
                  London: a Saturday night auction of almost spoiled food that would not keep until Monday. The
                  garbage was eagerly bid for by "hordes" of the "submerged tenth" in London's East End. Struck by the
                  vision of hands reaching for garbage, she became sickened and outraged by this haunting image
                  (Addams, 1910). After watching a bullfight during a visit to Spain in 1888, Addams (1910) wrote,
                  "How could she watch the killing of five bulls and many more horses without the disgust she thought she
                  ought to have felt? She wondered if she was so caught up in literature and art, that real people could
                  not reach her" (p. 73).

                  In response to these two incidents, Addams began to conceptualize her plan of implementing in
                  Chicago something similar to Toynbee Hall, a settlement house established in 1884 in London. Addams
                  discussed living and working among the poor population with her college friend Ellen Gates Starr. To
                  Addams's surprise, Starr was immediately interested in participating. They rented a large mansion built
                  by Charles Hull in 1856 on the West Side of Chicago - a house that became surrounded by poverty.
                  By 1889, when Addams and Starr opened Hull-House, Chicago had become a city of garbage, graft,
                  and gangsters (Tims, 1961).

                  Hull-House

                  The purpose of Hull-House as stated in its charter was "to provide a center for a higher civic and social
                  life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve
                  the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago" (Addams, 1910, p. 89). The opening of Hull-House
                  was the beginning of the U.S. settlement house movement - one of the greatest modern social
                  movements in the United States and in some ways the beginning of modern social work (Commager,
                  1961). Between 1890 and 1910, about 400 settlement houses came into operation in the United States
                  (Trattner, 1989).

                  There were no schools of social work when the doors of Hull-House opened; Addams devised her
                  own "social work" methods. She had the ability to work inductively from the immediate to the general,
                  from practical problems to the philosophical, and from the local to the national and the international.
                  Addams started with the problem at hand and became an advocate, organizer, or lobbyist to help
                  change systems. Whereas the agents of organized charities felt that poverty could be obliterated by
                  moral virtue alone, settlement house residents worked toward social change.

                  Addams and many of her associates wanted dramatic alterations in American society; they believed
                  these changes could be accomplished by providing a forum where people of all classes, races, and
                  genders could speak together (Deegan, 1986). Thus, Hull-House became a center for research,
                  empirical analysis, study, and debate, as well as a pragmatic center for living in and establishing good
                  relations with the neighborhood. Residents of Hull-House conducted investigations on housing,
                  midwifery, fatigue, tuberculosis, typhoid, garbage collection, cocaine, and truancy.

                  Hull-House expanded to include many buildings. Eventually 70 people experienced collective living and
                  more than 2,000 people crossed its doorway daily. It became a community center for all of Chicago;
                  there was an art museum, a theater, a boys club, a music school, a coffee house, meeting rooms for
                  discussion clubs, a gymnasium, an employment bureau, a lunchroom, a library, apartments for working
                  women and their children, a kindergarten, and much more. Scholars from the universities, leaders from
                  Chicago society, and international leaders came to observe and learn (Addams, 1930).

                  Addams did not think of Hull-House as a charity; she viewed it as a living, dynamic educational
                  process. In fact, the process worked both ways; Addams was the pupil, and her neighbors were her
                  teachers. From this experience she generalized that education ought to be perceived as a mutual
                  relationship between teacher and pupil under the conditions of life itself and not the transmission of
                  knowledge, intact and untested by experience. These ideas paralleled and supported the educational
                  theories of Addams's friend John Dewey. Dewey's experimental school at the University of Chicago
                  exchanged ideas and personnel with Hull-House (Lasch, 1965).

                  People who lived in and visited Hull-House during Addams's tenure included some of the most capable
                  women and men in social work and other fields, including Florence Kelly, Julia Lathrop, Grace Abbott,
                  Edith Abbott, Alice Hamilton, Sophonisba Breckinridge, Mary McDowell, Louise de Koven Bowen,
                  John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and Graham Taylor. Other visitors such as W.E.B. DuBois and
                  Canadian Prime Minister William MacKenzie King, as well as many people from other countries, gave
                  speeches and listened to radical discussions (Addams, 1910). One unique feature of Hull-House was
                  the nurturing, fertile arena for women to engage in intellectually stimulating discussions and debates with
                  men.

                  Addams's Early Involvement in Social Reform

                  In the newly developing field of social work (the term came into use about 1910; Leiby, 1985), some
                  theorists wanted to turn away from social reform and advocacy. Addams (1902) emphasized the
                  profession's social obligations by writing that social ethics are not attained by traveling alone, "but by
                  mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the
                  size of one another's burdens" (p. 8). Social reform, women's participation in Progressivism, and
                  grassroots community education were her humanistic causes. It is arguable whether there were two
                  distinct tracks - the COS movement and the settlement house movement - that rarely crossed.
                  However, it is clear that the developing social work profession followed the lead of the COS in the
                  1920s. Even into the 1950s the debate continued about whether moving away from its social action
                  and social reform heritage was the price of achieving public acceptance of the social work profession
                  (Greenwood, 1957).

                  Addams's "social work" (she did not use the term to describe her own work) included work with
                  children, elderly people, immigrants, racial and ethnic groups, and women, as well as work in the labor
                  movement, public health, and welfare: "It seemed understood that we were ready to perform the
                  humblest neighborhood services. We were asked to wash the newborn babies, to prepare the dead for
                  burial, to nurse the sick, and to mind the children" (Addams, 1910, p. 88).

                  Children

                  The most obvious needs of neighborhood children around Hull-House were for stimulation, adequate
                  nutrition, and sanitary living conditions. A kindergarten was established at Hull-House that was staffed
                  for 16 years. Julia Lathrop, a lifelong friend who lived at Hull-House, worked with Addams to heighten
                  public awareness of the problems of childhood poverty. In 1909 President Theodore Roosevelt invited
                  Addams to a conference in Washington, DC, to consider the best type of care to be given dependent
                  children: "It brought the entire subject before the country as a whole and gave to social work a dignity
                  and a place in the national life which it had never known before" (Addams, 1930, p. 18). In 1912
                  Lathrop became the first director of the U.S. Children's Bureau, appointed by President William
                  Howard Taft. She addressed maternal and infant problems as well as the social, economic, and health
                  problems of all children.

                  Child labor was another major problem encountered at Hull-House. During the first Christmas at
                  Hull-House, Addams noticed that free candy was not enjoyed by the young girls at the club meetings.
                  On investigation, she found that for six weeks the girls had worked 14 hours a day in a candy factory,
                  where they had stuffed themselves with candy. That same winter three boys from a Hull-House club
                  were injured at a neighboring factory for lack of a guard. After one boy died as a result of his injuries,
                  Addams and her associates, amazed that the owner took no steps to hire a guard to prevent further
                  injuries, took action. At the suggestion of Addams and Florence Kelly, the head of the Illinois Bureau
                  of Labor appointed a commission to investigate the "sweating system" in Chicago (Addams, 1910).
                  Kelly headed the investigation and reported back to the legislature. The recommendations eventually
                  became the first factory law of Illinois, "regulating the sanitary conditions of the sweatshop and fixing
                  fourteen as the age at which a child might be employed" (Addams, 1910, p. 150).

                  Addams believed the practice of trying young boys who committed crimes in adult courts was not just.
                  At the instigation of Hull-House, Chicago established a juvenile court in 1899, the first in the nation.
                  The first probation officer was a Hull-House resident who was paid privately by a committee led by
                  Hull-House residents and trustees. Addams's views on juvenile courts gained fairly rapid acceptance.
                  By 1920 all but three states had juvenile courts. Unfortunately, by the mid-20th century, juvenile courts
                  had drifted far from their original purpose. The concept of juvenile court as a nurturing parent declined,
                  and the concept of the court as an agent of punishment grew (Levine, 1971).

                  Elderly People

                  Addams took an active interest in the problems of elderly people. She served on a commission
                  appointed by the mayor of Chicago to investigate living conditions in the county's poorhouse. At
                  Hull-House, Addams and others worked to secure financial support for deserted women and insurance
                  for widows, helping to found the Bureau of Organized Charities. The first bureau head was a resident
                  of Hull-House.

                  Addams also was an astute observer of the aging process in older women. Rather than seeing despair
                  as the final stage of life, she saw women surviving their bleak lives of exploitation and loneliness by
                  seeking the company of other women and enjoying their memories. Addams (1916) lectured and wrote
                  about her observations.

                  Women

                  Addams and the women of Hull-House worked tirelessly on women's issues and causes from suffrage
                  (on which Addams wrote and spoke often) to prostitution. Women's clubs at Hull-House were ready
                  to investigate any civic situation that called for vigorous action: "Because cooperation among women
                  was new and the companionship exhilarating, they were continually borne onward with that flood of
                  freedom" (Addams, 1930, p. 99). Clubs were formed for different cultures and languages, including
                  Spanish, Greek, and Italian. The "colored" women's club, which met at night because the members
                  were wage earners during the day, was determined to find out why their own housing conditions were
                  so wretched (Addams, 1930). Addams and associates used clubs in a manner similar to group work to
                  empower individual members to act on their own behalf with the support of the group.

                  Immigrants

                  Hull-House was located in an ethnically diverse area, with a mostly Italian neighborhood on one side
                  and many Bohemian, Russian, Polish, Jewish, and Greek residents in the surrounding neighborhoods.
                  Observing the breakdown between generations, Addams had an overwhelming desire to help children
                  of immigrants understand their parents. To build pride and respect for ethnic heritage, she implemented
                  the Hull-House Labor Museum, which presented the labor of immigrant parents in their native countries
                  and connected it to the jobs held by the young adults in Chicago (Addams, 1910).

                  Because there were many abuses of immigrants in Chicago, a League for the Protection of Immigrants
                  was formed. The superintendent of the League from 1908 to 1917 was Grace Abbott, a resident of
                  Hull-House. Further, Addams wrote a great deal about the social ethics of immigration quota laws.
                  Industrialization tended to segregate social classes as well as immigrants; within the same class it
                  segregated generations. Addams wrote in both The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909) and
                  Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) about studies on the break-up of the sense of community. Later
                  she wrote,

                  Possibly another result of our contemptuous attitude toward immigrants who differ from us is our
                  exaggerated acceptance of standardization. Everyone wants to be like his neighbors, which is doubtless
                  an amiable quality, but leading to one of the chief dangers of democracy - the tyranny of the herd mind.
                  (Addams, 1930, p. 330)

                  Addams witnessed enemies becoming friends around Hull-House as Italian Catholics, forced by
                  circumstances, made friends with Austrian Jews: "Internationalism engendered in the immigrant quarters
                  of American cities might be recognized as an effective instrument in the cause of peace" (Addams,
                  1930, p. 217).

                  Race Relations

                  Unlike most people at that time, Addams and the other residents of Hull-House were aware of the
                  unique problems black Americans faced as a result of racial discrimination. Addams put forth the
                  concept of respecting differences among races and nationalities in a speech in Boston in 1904
                  (Addams, 1930) and was a pioneer in the fight against racial discrimination:

                  We have allowed ourselves to become indifferent to the gravest situation in our American life. . . . The
                  abolitionists grappled with an evil entrenched since the beginning of recorded history, and it seems at
                  moments that we are not even preserving what was so heartily won [by the Civil War]. (Addams,
                  1930, p. 301)

                  In 1913 Addams's friend Louise de Koven Bowen, who became head of Hull-House after Addams's
                  death, published the well-researched document The Colored People of Chicago, which showed the
                  wholesale discrimination against black people in business, labor unions, the criminal justice system,
                  education, housing, and recreational facilities. Another investigation by the Women's Bureau of the U.S.
                  Department of Labor found that black women's earnings were far below the earnings of most white
                  women.

                  Labor

                  Addams had strong feelings about the toll of 12-to 16-hour work days on working mothers and their
                  children: "With all the efforts by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to
                  permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world!" (Addams,
                  1910, p. 131). However, it was much harder to pass labor laws regulating the working hours of adults
                  than it was for children. In the 1890s there was only one labor union in Chicago that was organized for
                  women workers. Thus, the women's shirtmakers and women's cloakmakers unions were both
                  organized at Hull-House. The Dorcas Federal Labor Union was founded by a resident of Hull-House
                  (Addams, 1910). Addams recognized and spoke about the fact that the growth of labor unions was a
                  general social movement concerning all members of society and was not just a class struggle.

                  Labor strikes led to major problems in the late 1800s. The Pullman railroad strike turned violent in
                  Chicago in 1894. As the head of Hull-House, Addams was appointed one of the arbitrators. In an
                  attempt to analyze the social, economic, and political context of the strike, Addams (1910) wrote of
                  "the inevitable revolt of human nature against the plans Mr. Pullman had made for his employees, the
                  miscarriage of which appeared to him such black ingratitude" (p. 160). However, because of her
                  involvement in labor issues, Addams lost some support. She responded,

                  That a settlement is drawn into the labor issues of its city can seem remote to its purpose only to those
                  who fail to realize that so far as the present industrial system thwarts our ethical demands, not only for
                  social righteousness but for social order, a settlement is committed to an effort to understand and, as far
                  as possible, to alleviate it. That in this effort it should be drawn into fellowship with the local efforts of
                  trade unions is most obvious. (Addams, 1910, p. 166)

                  Public Health

                  On the issue of public health, Addams (1910) recorded,

                  In our first two summers we had maintained three baths in the basement of our own house for the use
                  of the neighborhood, and they afforded some experience and argument for the erection of the first
                  public bathhouse in Chicago, which was built on a neighboring street and opened under the city Board
                  of Health. (p. 202)

                  In addition, because the area surrounding Hull-House was infested with insects and rodents because of
                  the presence of huge wooden garbage boxes fastened to the street, Addams and two male residents
                  submitted a bid to the city to pick up garbage in their ward. Her bid was thrown out on a technicality,
                  but the mayor took note of her effort and appointed Addams garbage collector of the 19th ward in
                  Chicago in June 1895 (Addams, 1910).

                  In 1902 there was an outbreak of typhoid fever in the ward around Hull-House. Although the ward
                  contained 1/36 of the population of the city, it registered 1/6 of the total number of deaths. Two
                  Hull-House residents investigated the methods of plumbing in the houses adjacent to conspicuous
                  groups of fever cases. After finding the cause of the problem, efforts were then made to teach local
                  residents new sanitary methods.

                  Welfare

                  Addams was a strong proponent of public funds to care for social ills. "One of the first lessons we
                  learned at Hull-House was that private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers
                  of the city's disinherited" (Addams, 1910, p. 219). At Hull-House she spent a great deal of time
                  fundraising from the private sector, and she quickly realized that there were some groups of poor
                  people with whom no private charitable organization wished to be involved. Julia Lathtrop was
                  appointed in 1893 by the governor to the Illinois State Board of Charities, another example of Addams
                  and Lathrop's attempts to organize state and local systems to aid the poor population.

                  The lack of municipal regulation coupled with the depression of 1893 provided the shock that changed
                  some Americans' attitudes toward poverty. When sickness, accident, or old age disrupted earnings or
                  created sudden expenses, many families were forced to go into debt or seek charitable help. Millions of
                  people were trapped in poverty that neither they nor most of their children could escape. Addams was
                  not alone in making these points; however, she was perhaps the best known of the settlement workers,
                  journalists, and publicists who insisted that poor people were poor because of a misconstructed social
                  environment and not because of a defect in themselves (Ehrenreich, 1985; Levine, 1971).

                  Addams's advocacy of this position, along with others, helped convince Americans that the welfare
                  ideology and, ultimately, the welfare state were right and practical (Levine, 1971). When Addams died
                  in May 1935, New Deal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had completed more than half of his first
                  term in office. Not only had Congress passed the emergency legislation of the first 100 days, but the
                  Wagner and the Social Security acts were well on their way to enactment. The ideology of the welfare
                  state, although not so named during Addams's lifetime, made possible an economic safety net for
                  millions of Americans.

                  Pacifism

                  By 1912 Addams was already a nationally known political figure when she seconded the nomination of
                  Theodore Roosevelt for President of the Progressive Party (even though she could not vote). She
                  declared herself a pacifist and opposed U.S. entry into World War I. Addams's pacifism was related to
                  a feminist perception of the dialectic between the military (male) and the nurturing (female) values of
                  society (Chambers, 1986). By 1919 she was listed on Archibald Stevenson's "traitor list" presented to
                  the Overman Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee (McCree, 1985) for her stance against
                  war. Addams's pacifism was far more robust than that of most of her contemporaries, and it survived
                  the test of war and the innuendo that followed. Addams helped found the first women's international
                  peace group, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (which is still in existence),
                  and she served as the organization's first president from 1915 to 1929. She believed fervently in the
                  establishment of the League of Nations, working with President Woodrow Wilson for its
                  implementation (Addams, 1922). Addams traveled extensively in a worldwide effort to promote peace
                  for which she eventually shared, with Nicholas Murray Butler, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931
                  (McCree, 1985).

                  Defining Social Work

                  At the turn of the century, the settlements and the organized charities had cooperated and even merged
                  into "social work" (symbolized in 1905 when Graham Taylor's settlement house journal, The
                  Commons, merged with the New York Charity Society's Charities to form Charities and The
                  Commons; Taylor, 1936). When Addams was elected president of the NCCC in 1910, she was the
                  first woman and settlement house director to be accorded that honor. Her speech that year proposed
                  that the goal beyond relief and prevention should be raising life to its highest. She spoke of one group
                  who had traditionally been moved to action by "pity" for poor people (the charitables) and the other
                  group, fired by hatred of injustice (the settlements). Her conviction was that these two movements
                  could share a broader perspective, and she described the merging of the concepts of public and private
                  social work. Settlement house residents and others did not deny that personal frailties contributed to
                  want and insecurity, but they considered a poor environment or other adverse social or economic
                  factors as the basic causes of poverty (Trattner, 1989).

                  With the demise of the Progressive Era, in which many settlement residents had invested fully, the
                  settlements began a slow decline. Throughout the 1920s, the fear of change and the tendency to play it
                  safe were most conspicuous in politics, but they were found in other fields as well: "There is little doubt
                  that social work exhibited many symptoms of this panic and with a kind of protective instinct, carefully
                  avoided any identification with the phraseology of social reform" (Addams, 1930, p. 155).

                  World War I also had an adverse effect on the settlement house movement. Some settlement house
                  residents became preoccupied with efforts to keep America out of the struggle and then to halt the
                  fighting. Public suspicion and distrust grew; the settlements suffered especially during the Red Scare of
                  1919-20. Commager (1961) suggested that Addams's earlier activities on behalf of labor laws and
                  slum clearance and the rights of poor and despised populations had earned her the suspicion and
                  hostility of some conservative politicians; her later activities on behalf of the welfare state and the cause
                  of peace won her the hatred of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution,
                  who stigmatized her as a factor in a movement to destroy civilization and Christianity. In time, of
                  course, Addams weathered all attacks.

                  During the Jazz Age preceding the Great Depression, the general public became indifferent to the plight
                  of poor people or denied their existence (Trattner, 1989). One influence that affected social reform was
                  the growth of psychiatric social work. Some social workers began to work toward individual
                  adjustment rather than social reform. Chambers (1963) described the movement away from reform
                  toward adjustment, along with growing specialization in social work, increasing bureaucratization of its
                  functions, and its desire for professional stature, as contributors to the decline of enthusiasm for social
                  reform.

                  Another influence was the growth of casework. Following the publication of Mary Richmond's Social
                  Diagnosis in 1917, the process of working out professional and scientific standards for case-work
                  practice, where "amateurish" philanthropic programs had once prevailed, grew rapidly. Richmond saw
                  the division between social reform and social work as false (Chambers, 1963). In Richmond's thinking
                  individual treatment would always be needed, but social reform was also legitimate and necessary.
                  Richmond's own experience as an orphan growing up poor contributed to her belief in the need for
                  individual casework, and she was influenced by the medical model of scientific diagnosis. Her concept
                  of casework became not only fashionable, but also synonymous with social work in the 1920s, even
                  though the emphasis on casework obscured institutional or social context (Germain, 1970). Social
                  reformers like Addams, whose midwestern, upper-socioeconomic environment contributed to her
                  optimistic zeal for social reform and her generalist work without a well-defined method, were seen as
                  "old fashioned" and thus were regarded as a threat by many of their "professional" colleagues, who
                  spoke of "clients" rather than of "neighbors in need" (Carson, 1990). It is one of the ironies of social
                  work history that Hull-House became a training center for some of the first generation of professional
                  social workers: Julia Lathrop, Grace Abbott, Florence Kelly, Sophonisba Breckinridge, and Edith
                  Abbott (Franklin, 1986).

                  With the decline of the settlement house movement, few social workers continued to live and
                  communicate with poor people. Social workers lost touch with neighborhood leaders, politicians, union
                  organizers, and others who lived in inner cities in the 1920s and 1930s. To Addams's and others'
                  credit, Hull-House continued to operate into the 1960s (MacRae, 1962). Despite the confused and
                  contradictory forces in social work after World War I until her death in 1935, Addams the social
                  reformer remained true to herself. When her path of social reform diverged from mainstream social
                  work, she carried on at Hull-House working for justice and peace.

                  Conclusion

                  Jane Addams remains an inspiration and role model for social workers today as they struggle to find
                  new solutions to old problems. The current deindustrialization of the United States and loss of jobs,
                  inadequate housing, poor health care, the violence of addiction, and discrimination are similar to the
                  problems faced by people in industrializing society 100 years ago.

                  What can be learned from Addams and the settlement house movement that might be applicable to
                  today's problems? Children still need help. The scope of the U.S. Children's Bureau and the Child
                  Guidance Movement has been markedly diminished. What does it mean that the strongest advocacy
                  voice for children is called the Children's Defense Fund? Perhaps public schools could be used to
                  provide evening and weekend family-strengthening activities for children and parents in a 21st-century
                  version of the settlement house movement. Also, perhaps juvenile courts need to act as a nurturing
                  parent again instead of an agent of punishment.

                  Americans need to re-examine their "contemptuous attitudes toward immigrants who differ from us,"
                  attitudes once held against Italian, Irish, Russian, Greek, and Jewish immigrants and now directed
                  toward Asian and Hispanic peoples. Further, social reformers are still needed to speak against the
                  voices proclaiming that the value of human life in inner cities is not equal to the value of human life in the
                  suburbs. And like Addams, social workers need to continue to acknowledge that cultural differences
                  are valuable and healthy.

                  The U.S. public health system must be improved for the poor population. Addams fought typhoid fever
                  and tuberculosis; today social workers are fighting against acquired immune deficiency syndrome and
                  teenage pregnancy. Welfare reform requires more public awareness of poverty and the hopelessness,
                  powerlessness, disconnectedness, and despair that destroy people. The depressions of 1893 and the
                  1930s saw increased public support for the millions of people trapped in poverty. What has happened
                  to human compassion today? Addams knew that the poor will always be with us and that private
                  philanthropy will never be enough. Public funds can be used in compassionate, nonpunitive ways that
                  promote accountability and responsibility and not dependency.

                  While living in the slums of pre-World War I Chicago, Addams created a music school, a library, an art
                  gallery, a museum, and a theater at Hull-House as part of the collective struggle against poverty. The
                  1960s social reform movements, although focused on the Vietnam War, injustice, and solidarity with
                  oppressed people, also incorporated play and leisure, sexuality, music and color, a sense of adventure,
                  and a joy in collective struggle. As Ehrenreich (1985) pointed out, these too are part of the historic
                  vision and theory of social work and social policy, for without them a good society will not emerge. The
                  settlement house movement incorporated these aspects into work with poor people. The challenge to
                  social work in the 1990s is how to incorporate these important aspects of social functioning to effect
                  change.

                  References

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                  Addams, J. (1909). The spirit of youth and the city streets. New York: Macmillan.

                  Addams, J. (1910). Twenty years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan.

                  Addams, J. (1916). The long road of woman's memory. New York: Macmillan.

                  Addams, J. (1922). Peace and bread in time of war. New York: Macmillan.

                  Addams, J. (1930). The second twenty years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan.

                  Boehm, W. (1959). Objective of the social work curriculum of the future. New York: H. Wolff.

                  Carson, M. (1990). Settlement folk: Social thought and the American settlement movement,
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                  Chambers, C. (1963). Seedtime of reform: American social service and social action: 1918-1933. Ann
                  Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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                  Commager, H. (1961). Foreword. In J. Addams, Twenty years at Hull-House (pp. vii-xvi). New
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                  of Chicago Press.

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                  Greenwood, E. (1957). Attributes of a profession. Social Work, 2(6), 45-55.

                  Lane, L. C. (1963). Jane Addams as social worker, the early years at Hull-House. Unpublished
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                  MacCrae, R. (1962). The future of Hull-House. Social Service Review, 36, 123-142.

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                  Trattner, W. (1989). From poor law to welfare state. New York: Free Press.

                  Karen Shafer Lundblad, MSW, ACSW, is a doctoral student, Graduate School of Social Work,
                  University of Pennsylvania. The author thanks Martha Dore, Michael Lundblad, Joan Dorris, and Jerri
                  Bourjolly for their comments on earlier drafts of the article.

                  COPYRIGHT 1995 National Association of Social Workers Inc.

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