Twenty Years at Hull House

The English Settlement Movement, in particular Toynbee Hall, fascinated Addams. However, she did not want American Settlements to be “mere echoes and imitations of the English movement” (43). There were different conditions in the United States that required modifications of the English Settlement concept although both reform efforts responded to the effects of industrialization and poverty, espoused reciprocal relations between different segments of society, and were humanitarian in spirit.

Americans were habituated to self-government and volunteerism in a democracy. Consequently, Addams felt that some of what seemed pathbreaking for the English Settlement, such as “a group of Oxford students” who “went out to mend a disused road, inspired thereto by Ruskin’s teaching for the bettering of the common life” was not innovative for an American used to having all the country roads “mended each spring by self-respecting citizens […] carrying out the simple method devised by a democratic government” (43). The rigid class stratification among the English also made some of their Settlement conclusions seem artificial to Addams, “a western American who had been born in a rural community where the early pioneer life had made social distinctions impossible” (42).