but to close a side door opening on Polk Street, and were much pleased
in the morning to find that we possessed a tine illustration of the honesty and kindliness of our new neighbors.
Our first guest was an interesting young woman who lived in a
neighboring tenement, whose widowed mother aided her in the support of the family by scrubbing a downtown theater every night. The
mother, of English birth, was well bred and carefully educated, but was
in the midst of that bitter struggle which awaits so many strangers in
American cities who find that their social position tends to be measured solely by the standards of living they are able to maintain. Our
guest has long since married the struggling young lawyer to whom she
was then engaged, and he is now leading his profession in an eastern
city. She recalls that month's experience always with a sense of amusement over the tact that the succession of visitors who came to see the
new Settlement invariably questioned her most minutely concerning
"these people" without once suspecting that they were talking to one
who had been identified with the neighborhood from childhood. I at
least was able to draw a lesson from the incident, and I never addressed
a Chicago audience on the subject of the Settlement and its vicinity
without inviting a neighbor to go with me, that I might curb any hasty
generalization by the consciousness that I had an auditor who knew
the conditions more intimately than I could hope to do.
Halsted Street has grown so familiar during twenty years of residence, that it is difficult to recall its gradual changes, —the withdrawal
of the more prosperous Irish and Germans, and the slow substitution of
Russian Jews, Italians, and Greeks. A description of the street such as
I gave in those early addresses still stands in my mind as sympathetic
and correct.
Halsted Street is thirty-two miles long, and one of the great
thoroughfares of Chicago; Polk Street crosses it midway between
the stockyards to the south and the ship-building yards on the
north branch of the Chicago River. For the six miles between
these two industries the street is lined with shops of butchers and
grocers, with dingy and gorgeous saloons, and pretentious establishments for the sale of ready-made clothing. Polk Street, running west from Halsted Street, grows rapidly more prosperous;
running a mile east to State Street, it grows steadily worse, and
crosses a network of vice on the corners of Clark Street and Fifth