The Story of Wellesley [62]
the devotional life of the college has met with a swift response from the students. During 1913-1914, in Lent, the chapel was open every afternoon for meditation and prayer, and cards with selected prayers for each day were furnished to all who cared to use them. Unquestionably, Wellesley possesses no student organization more living and more life-giving than its Christian Association.
Four years after the foundation of the Christian Association, Wellesley had opened her heart and her mind to the College Settlement idea. The movement, as is well known, originated in the late '80's in America. At the same time that Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr were starting Hull House in Chicago, a group of Smith College alumnae, chief among whom were Vida D. Scudder, Clara French, Helen Rand (Thayer), and Jean Fine (Spahr), was pressing for the establishment of a house in the East. And the idea was understood and fostered by Wellesley about as soon as by Smith, for it was interpreted at Wellesley by Professor Scudder, who became a member of the college faculty, as instructor in English Literature, in the autumn of 1887. In 1889, the Courant printed an article on College Settlements, and students of the later '80's and early '90's will never forget the ardor and excitement of those days when Wellesley was bearing her part in starting what was to be one of the important movements for social service in the nineteenth century. All her early traditions and activities made the college swift to understand and welcome this new idea.
From the beginning, the social impulse has been inherent in Wellesley, and settlement work was native to her. Professor Whiting tells us that there used to be a shoe factory in Wellesley Village, about where the Eliot now stands; that the students became interested in the girl operatives, most of whom lived in South Natick, and that they started a factory girls' club which met every Saturday evening for years, and was led by college girls. In Charles River Village, also at that time a factory town, Mr. Durant held evangelistic services during one winter, and "teacher specials" used to help him, and to teach in the Sunday School.
In 1890-1891, probably because of the settlement impulse, work among the maids in the college was set going by the Christian Association. A maids' parlor was furnished under the old gymnasium, and classes for the maids were started.
In 1891, the Wellesley Chapter of the College Settlements Association was organized. It was Professor Katharine Lee Bates (Wellesley '80) who first suggested the plan for an intercollegiate organization, with chapters in the different colleges for women; and her friend Adaline Emerson (Thompson), a Wellesley graduate of the class of '80, was the first president of the association. Wellesley women have ever since taken a prominent part in the direction of the association's policy and in the active life of the settlement houses in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Wellesley has given presidents, secretaries, and many electors to the association itself, and head-workers and a continuous stream of efficient and devoted residents, not only to the four College Settlements, but to Social Settlement houses all over the country. The College Chapter keeps a special interest in the work of the Boston Settlement, Denison House; students give entertainments occasionally for the settlement neighbors, and help in many ways at Christmas time; but practical social service from undergraduates is not the ideal nor the desire of the College Settlements Association. It aims rather at the quickening of sympathy and intelligence on social questions, and the moral and financial support which the College Chapter can give its representatives out in the world. Such by-products of the settlement interest as the Social Study Circle, an informal group of undergraduates and teachers which met for several years to study social questions, are worth much more to the movement than the immature efforts of undergraduates in directing settlement clubs and classes.
Four years after the foundation of the Christian Association, Wellesley had opened her heart and her mind to the College Settlement idea. The movement, as is well known, originated in the late '80's in America. At the same time that Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr were starting Hull House in Chicago, a group of Smith College alumnae, chief among whom were Vida D. Scudder, Clara French, Helen Rand (Thayer), and Jean Fine (Spahr), was pressing for the establishment of a house in the East. And the idea was understood and fostered by Wellesley about as soon as by Smith, for it was interpreted at Wellesley by Professor Scudder, who became a member of the college faculty, as instructor in English Literature, in the autumn of 1887. In 1889, the Courant printed an article on College Settlements, and students of the later '80's and early '90's will never forget the ardor and excitement of those days when Wellesley was bearing her part in starting what was to be one of the important movements for social service in the nineteenth century. All her early traditions and activities made the college swift to understand and welcome this new idea.
From the beginning, the social impulse has been inherent in Wellesley, and settlement work was native to her. Professor Whiting tells us that there used to be a shoe factory in Wellesley Village, about where the Eliot now stands; that the students became interested in the girl operatives, most of whom lived in South Natick, and that they started a factory girls' club which met every Saturday evening for years, and was led by college girls. In Charles River Village, also at that time a factory town, Mr. Durant held evangelistic services during one winter, and "teacher specials" used to help him, and to teach in the Sunday School.
In 1890-1891, probably because of the settlement impulse, work among the maids in the college was set going by the Christian Association. A maids' parlor was furnished under the old gymnasium, and classes for the maids were started.
In 1891, the Wellesley Chapter of the College Settlements Association was organized. It was Professor Katharine Lee Bates (Wellesley '80) who first suggested the plan for an intercollegiate organization, with chapters in the different colleges for women; and her friend Adaline Emerson (Thompson), a Wellesley graduate of the class of '80, was the first president of the association. Wellesley women have ever since taken a prominent part in the direction of the association's policy and in the active life of the settlement houses in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Wellesley has given presidents, secretaries, and many electors to the association itself, and head-workers and a continuous stream of efficient and devoted residents, not only to the four College Settlements, but to Social Settlement houses all over the country. The College Chapter keeps a special interest in the work of the Boston Settlement, Denison House; students give entertainments occasionally for the settlement neighbors, and help in many ways at Christmas time; but practical social service from undergraduates is not the ideal nor the desire of the College Settlements Association. It aims rather at the quickening of sympathy and intelligence on social questions, and the moral and financial support which the College Chapter can give its representatives out in the world. Such by-products of the settlement interest as the Social Study Circle, an informal group of undergraduates and teachers which met for several years to study social questions, are worth much more to the movement than the immature efforts of undergraduates in directing settlement clubs and classes.