Urban Reformers

The men and women who criticized the political bosses and machines—and the corruption and vice they fostered—usually came from the ranks of the upper middle class and the wealthy. Their solutions to the urban crisis typically centered around toppling the political machine and replacing it with a civil service that would allow government to function on the basis of merit rather than influence peddling and cronyism. Both locally and nationally, they pushed for civil service reform. In 1883 Congress responded to this demand by passing the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which required federal jobs to be awarded on the basis of merit, as determined by competitive examinations, rather than through political connections. As for the immigrants who supported machine politics, these reformers preferred to deal with them from afar and expected that through proper education they might change their lifestyles and adopt American ways.

Another group of Americans from upper- and middle-class backgrounds put aside whatever prejudices they might have held about working-class immigrants and dealt directly with newcomers to try to solve various social problems. These reformers—mostly young people, and many of them women and college graduates—took up residence in settlement houses located in urban slums. Settlement houses offered a variety of services to community residents, including day care for children; cooking, sewing, and secretarial classes; neighborhood playgrounds; counseling sessions; and meeting rooms for labor unions. Settlement house organizers, pioneers of the social work profession, understood that immigrants gravitated to the political machine or congregated in the local tavern not because they were inherently immoral but because these institutions helped mitigate their suffering and, in some cases, offered concrete paths to advancement. Although settlement house workers wanted to Americanize immigrants, they also understood immigrants’ need to hold on to remnants of their original culture.

By 1900 approximately one hundred settlement houses had been established in major American cities. Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in Chicago, contended that “the dependence of classes on each other is reciprocal” and insisted that “the things which make men alike are finer and better than the things that keep them apart.” Other settlement houses reflecting a similar philosophy included the South End House in Boston, directed by Robert A. Woods, and the Henry Street Settlement in New York City, founded by Lillian Wald. Addams and Wald, as well as other social workers, preferred a hands-on approach. They actively mobilized neighborhood residents to engage in politics and to vote for candidates who understood their problems and would campaign for improved garbage collection, housing inspection, better schools, and other community improvements.

Religiously inspired reform provided similar support for slum dwellers. In contrast to clergy such as Russell Conwell, who emphasized cash more than Christ, some Protestant ministers began to argue that immigrants’ problems resulted not from chronic racial or ethnic failings but from their difficult environment. One of the best-known figures among this group was Washington Gladden, a minister who had lived in Springfield and Columbus, Ohio. Originally a defender of laissez-faire, by the mid-1880s Gladden had come to believe that unregulated private enterprise was “inequitable.” He compared financial speculators to vampires “sucking the life-blood of our commerce.” In books and from the pulpit, Gladden preached Christianity as a “social gospel,” which included support for civil service reform, antimonopoly regulation, income tax legislation, factory inspection laws, and workers’ right to strike.

Despite the efforts of social gospel advocates and the charitable organizations that arose to help relieve human misery, such as the Salvation Army, private attempts to combat the various urban ills, however well-meaning, proved insufficient. The problems were structural, not personal, and one group or even several operating together did not have the resources or power to make urban institutions more efficient, equitable, and humane. As Jane Addams noted, “Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited.” If reformers were to succeed in tackling the most significant social problems and make lasting changes in American society and politics, they would have to enlist state and federal governments.

Review & Relate

What role did political machines play in late-nineteenth-century cities?

Who led the opposition to machine control of city politics, and what solutions and alternatives did they offer?