Document K6jQ4qDGzmLo0pgq0RGLgp3xN

FILE NAME: General Electric (GE) DATE: 0000 DOC#: GE028 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Alice Hamilton Book Excerpt r ... , >- *a-i"ViiV'i -SiTSi \ -7^--:-^:'-v'Tj''.......=-- ' .........- ............. ......... - -- --. . . . .................................... . . . . ..... '- r^;- -x.t^te-'ig-'-- s. ts-^Sff- -V*tM>F 1 *<-`5' **^z %/*** n r fi?*4r h % - i t !? - c -- * - ***W * -T *t ierl ^% ;!.'5i.-cn>fejMaw^>*'ivv.,wi'it- K ,, ,, -U 3- - *3*? IH- 4f v % l, : j 3 ss : -**; 2 v.^rX5->^^r^S^^^ - s .ri-'-''-Cn2tX>^ iy -ti.'a ^ '^ -ia.v.Tc Itf,S*^cf-^^KSVf*i4rs * V4"** ft v-a%nr \ X |^-3^w-:#;^ fe < ^ -L .C -.^ ;.^ . 7<B9 ~J JT "r. > $&?**& ** *v* Altee Hamdton a l / w ^ / o m " . t h l y e a f tf& J ^ s9*U T iS* graduatedjrorn m e d t c a ^ h a o l ^ S ^ ^ ^ ^ S Z "% c ^ -" ^ ,*>-1. rfV ,-w \- *- *K^ _*-B^^A*^/ 5w--*Jsi*!. jS.v *fc.jr 5. i ,< V ,, ,, i C V i ^ i j . V 'F ^ ; ^ >S% ifcyw W "*>^ '-V1 -* "V >*rjw^^t-*. t-'-J**" m m S ^ k Vi i l i **J` *" <- v \ -- *^8* WSrtfcr ^f'IV<?` j.'*^*' -1, itsifm, f^ii f sir' 1iTfij1*^Ai1^^?!^W*? ^k -e *? x r*^si iire^*5? 'VvS^^'SSSfp^'f *1 " dS >'T''i!tFr>i<";fi;.V:.tnmiflftt4,>!'-- j **&&#<* -*W -y * ^ C?/3fiw* < ty # t ^ a * * - -* * -v jhi r---w -" f K ^^d--.1-^'^ ir j: ' fe'fy-* P- K- I t r, & j ;.-- AI HAM A Life Barbara A Commons H arvard I. Cambridge and Lon Hull House's major figures, she became Alice Hamilton's closest friend.7 One o f Jane Addams' greatest strengths was the capacity to enlist the talents and loyalties o f such women. It was not just that she drew them to her. Convinced that a settlement must be a place for enthu siasms, she permitted residents to find the sources o f their ow n crea tivity. Impartially she nurtured specialists in factory inspection, child labor, juvenile delinquency, and birth control. At once visionary and pragmatic, she refused to be bound by traditions, even those she had created. She was remarkably unposscssive and allowed, even urged, her residents to leave when she thought they could do more good-- or find greater happiness-- elsewhere. Yet she did not spare herself if she thought she could be helpful.8 Always Miss Addams or J.A., even to longtime associates, she inspired intense loyalty in the most individualistic. Neither authori tarian nor sentimental, hers was a charismatic leadership compounded o f moral authority, intellectual integrity, and an indefinable quality that made others want to live up to her expectations. Her sadness, mirrored in her eyes, haunted those who knew her well or met her for the first time. After hearing her speak in the spring o f 1897, Alice Hamilton described Jane Addams as "having looked upon the misery '3 and sin o f the world and having accepted them as an inevitable burden which she mast bear with no hope o f ever reforming them ." Addams' spiritual loneliness set her apart from her colleagues, but they found her neither solemn nor unapproachable. She was without illusion or personal pride, and she had none o f the love o f martyrdom o f some farsighted people.9 By 1897 Hull House had become a genuine neighborhood center, a channel for social action in city and state, and a model for reformers throughout the nation. Already the most famous American settlement, it accommodated some twenty-five residents, three-fourths o f them women, and received several thousand visitors each week. It harbored a kindergarten and nursery, a cooperative boarding house for working women, a gymnasium, theater, music school, and art gallery; it also offered adult education classes ranging from Greek art and Dante to English composition and mechanical drawing. Open to speakers o f the most radical stripe, the settlement early earned a reputation for radicalism and for godlessness as well. Some enterprises, like the dances and the Coffee H ouse (which offered cheap and nutritious food as well as sociability) were thought to provide more salutary entertain ment than public dance halls and saloons, institutions that most rcs- 114 idents found alarming. O playground, proved so use Alice Hamilton's encou: were the most important o at Hull House "satisfied e excitement o f new experie and for the sense o f being c m y enthusiastic loyalty." I appraisal ignores the diffici at Hull House in reconcile finding her own, authentic 25 T o A gnes H am iltor Dearest Agnes, This is only a beginning lucky it will succeed. It is j I can't remember. Last nig and rested while she talke have her but I had plannee you to write to me again. 1 back with me. Last week had expected, and this we< you. And I am not at all and show you things as I . much better. As soon as coming. You simply must Mrs. Kelley I am growing very uncomfortable, howe and asking me i f I thought added "I hope not, for I : urged Miss Addams very s why, she said "O h well, them in Fort Wayne that 1 had better have you in Hul miserable. For o f course I ; wrote me, you and Kathcr and what things not to buy, then I am less like you than ever, for I don't even know whether I believe in not buying sweaters' clothes. So I sat there and felt like a miserable hypocrite and wished you were here to do the things they will expect me to do. Mrs. Kelley I find approachable and I can enjoy talking to her very much, but Miss Addams still rattles me, indeed more so all the time, and I am at my very worst with her. I really am quite school-girly in my relations with her; it is a remnant o f youth which surprises me. I know when she comes into the room. I have pangs o f idiotic jealousy toward the residents whom she is intimate with. She is-- well she is quite perfect and I don't in the least mind raving over her to you, because by January fifth you will be just as bad as I, every bit. This is a typical evening here. Here in the back parlour I am sitting at the table and opposite to me is Miss Johnson, who is the street cleaning commissioner.' She is having a most killing time interviewing an old Irishman who wants a job from the city. He has brought his wife with him and she is scolding him for saying he is sixty. She says he is only forty-five, although she insists he fought at Balaclava. Miss Johnson wants to know when his birthday comes, and his wife says "Say the fourth o fJuly, it sounds w ell." N ow they are having a fuss about his naturalization papers. H e says he never had any, his wife says they were lost in the snow out in Utah when Brigham Young was dedicating the temple. At the other end o f the table sits Miss Brockway, the sweet little girl w ho is engaged to Miss Addams' nephew.b Mrs. Kelley is lying o ff on the sofa. In the front parlour are Mr. Deknatel and Mrs. Valerio.0 Mrs. Valerio speaks Italian and she and the man with the queer name-- he is our mournful widower-- are taking the names o f the people who are registering for classes. Miss Addams is on the sofa w ith a very nice North End man, a friend o f Miss Anderson's. They are looking over plans for an addition to the coffee-house. Miss Watson, Mr. Swope, Mr. Ball, Mr. Hooker, Miss Pitkin, Miss Gyles and all the others are managing classes and clubs in various rooms.d In a few minutes a certain Dr. Blount is coming.' It is a she-doctor and a socialist. I met her some time ago and she it is whom Miss Addams destines to help me in some scheme for the amelioration o f the condition o f the Italian "neighbors." Then at nine o 'clock w e are to have a residents' meeting, to divide up the duty o f tending the door and showing people over the house. Dr. Blount has just gone. We went up to Miss Addams' room and discussed a scheme which I haven't time to expound to-night. The 116 chief part o f it is that I need Meantime I am to take a ch Do please help me with th Mr. Cox' which she said sb in N ew York, but 1 am sun them by writing to the Art Norah insisted that all were opinion. Last night I interv It is not to be started unless nice-looking shop girls, a t fat Jew, who looks like an < Well, here it is five minut sheet and haven't said one w think it played a very smal something about it. It gives me a big tugging ocean to-night. Write again heathen among many elect a. Amanda Johnson, a graduate inspector of the nineteenth ward fo ment was the culmination ofJane . b. Wilfreda Brockway, a native garten; at Jane Addams' instigatioi was John Linn, a former resident secretary. c. Frederick H. Deknatel, presit charge of the Boys' Clubs at Hull his wife. He remained a loyal supp trustee. Amelie Robinson Valerio as an inspector for the Chicago De d. Lulu Watson had charge of graduate of MIT, lived at Hull Hoi for the Western Electric Company. ] and also worked with the Boys' Cl George Ellsworth Hooker, who 1 resident who specialized in civic af missions, he was for a time an edi Wallace) taught evening classes an graduate of Rockford College who the gymnasium; she was also on th particularly, but I shall mind meeting and speaking to Judge Landis, more than to any one person I can think o f this minute. Once I had to dine with an old villain o f a doctor whom I knew to be cruel, neglectful, lying and utterly callous to anything but the interests o f the company he was working for. That is the only time I can remember feeling a pharisaical desire to draw my skirts away from contamina tion, but I shall feel with Judge Landis that I do not want even to look him in the eye and I shall hate to touch him. I have known some o f his victims too well. Elisabeth Gilman is looking after the O 'Harc crusaders in Baltimore and trying to rope Clara in to help her.1 Clara and Margaret had a lovely and much-needed holiday down in Virginia and were motored all the way back by Frances Howard so they did not have the fatigue o f driving themselves. Margaret wrote that she spent all the first days sleeping or lying out in a sunny part o f the beach. She looked so very badly after the school fuss that I was really shocked and I shall be much relieved when June is here and school closing. Mr. Simpson writes that the freshet was way beyond the usual line and washed away the steps o f Norah's studio and all Peg's roses. She will have to choose a higher place for them. But worse than the flood was a wind which blew dow n m y beloved crab apple tree, the one up under the elm against the terrace, a lovely thing which threw itself back against the hillside and was the center o f the view from my attic window. I cannot bear to think it is gone. This is the end o f a long day at the typewriter and m y shoulder is aching and I must stop. With loads o f love and with rememberings to Mrs. Bradford and the Lewis'. Yours ever Alice a. Elisabeth Gilman, a Baltimore reformer and socialist, was a cofoundcr of the Maryland Civil Liberties Committee. I n N ovember 1922 Gerard Swope, w ho had recently become presi dent o f the General Electric Company, raised with Harvard's new School o f Public Health (to which die industrial hygiene program had been transferred) the possibility o f conducting a survey o f health con ditions at G. E. Cecil K. Drinker, professor o f physiology, and Roger 262 a- pei I. Lee, professor o f hygiene a school, took charge o f the neg Swope into a large-scale stud} The Administrative Board o f Lee as the person w h o should plans independently with Han to make a preliminary investig that this survey would not tak plated by the school. Later thai whether the work could be dc he only knew him self o f Dr. very highest regard." The foil the conversation and promise negotiations than he had in tl included Hamilton, Lee, Cecil 1 a chemical engineer who spec visited the G.E. plant in Schei week later Hamilton received ; investigation.26 6 8 T o Clara Landsberg Dear Clara: The meek do inherit the eai This letter from Gerard Swop back at once, for it is an impo to you and not to Margaret, ! worthy. It came yesterday an surprise he said at once "That' that I had supposed it was a m have the inquiry put into its ha: upset when it appeared that I was true, but that I had playc "and I don't mind saying that N ow it's plain that Mr. Swope : business with what you do during your free time, it is for you to decide that yourself." Which shows a change o f attitude as great as that o f Dr. Lee w ho used not to know o f m y existence and now defers and flatters and is most honeyed. Dr. Drinker told me that things were to he quite different from now on, that Dr. Lee had put me on the executive committee and I would always be consulted. I said "Well, great is the power and glory o f the General Electric Company" and he got red and stammered and then laughed and said "Well. Maybe. After all that's the way Roger Lee is." I have just come back from showing these letters to Dr. Lee. As soon as I came in his secretary was sent to hasten tea and toast an English muffin expressly for me, the things not being quite ready yet for a committee meeting which was to follow. Then he read the letters, laughed genially and said that that was what he had understood all along. 1 said that I did not at all understand it, that I could see no use o f two investigations and that if Mr. Swope accepted our report o f Schenectady and consented to the scheme o f having us do all the other plants, it would surely be foolish for me to carry on a separate in vestigation. I said, however, that the only answer I had made to Mr. Swope was that I should be glad to see him when he comes and that I was showing him, Dr. Lee, the letters as a protection to m yself so that there could be no misunderstanding. At that he almost grovelled in his anxiety to reassure me that such a thing was impossible--Joe Aub having told me that Roger Lee thought I had deliberately doublecrossed them. So here I am, with all kinds o f kudos, with the whole thing back in my hands again, and with never a suspicion o f fight or unpleasantness. If I had so planned it, instead o f blindly blundering along it could not have come out better. I have gone over it so often in m y mind and been tempted to do something to vindicate m y rights, even to write Gerard and tell him please to see that I was given a proper share in the thing, but n ow I am so thankful that I decided not to do one single thing which could appear underhanded to them and over-touchy to Gerard. Dr. Drinker told me this morning when he came up to beg me to try to get the bigger plan across, that if I went in on it during my free time I must o f course ask a proper salary. I had made up m y mind to do that but I was glad to have the suggestion come from him. It really was nice to have a letter to show which had this intimate, personal tone. At all the meetings Dr. Lee and Dr. Drinker would go on about their interviews with Gerard, o f the manner o f man he 264 seemed to be, o f what one said never a word, being c intimacy. But to a man lik nobility. Whichever way it comes over and it is a relief, for i Her letter in answer to mil deal about the many years interest and evidently has < rest is bitter and assumes t whom feelings do not coun interested in all you write news we ever get. I cannot find m y letter fi same as yours. Miss Addam visiting some o f the people and kept the letter open to and quite free from asthm; they sailed from Marseille: course if 1 had gone I shoi in an even more unsatisfa status is entirely changed. Schenectady showed them with and both Drinkers co three could go to the plant So it would have been a m I am glad January is end stop and I can catch up v month. Along in the middl and Bryn Mawr, all amou bother. Bryn M awr must "When Sw o pe m et with a ruary 8, he requested that I sachusetts, but mentioned r at dinner he asked Alice I possible, saying that "he w  program as Dr. Lee had put up to him, till he knew more about actual conditions." Swope insisted that Hamilton receive $25 per day plus expenses. She thought it was too much, but bowed to the "temptation 3*#. t to earn large gobs o f m oney." (The income helped compensate for the severing o f her connection with the Department o f Labor un der the Harding administration.) Swope never pursued the matter with the Harvard group, and Hamilton later reported that "he does not seem to have taken them seriously at all." Working as a consultant - for G.E. for ten years, she found the company's health program ad mirable, but considered the work tame. Going from mercury mines in California to G.E. factories, she observed, was " like going from a strikers' mass meeting to the meeting o f an infant class in Sunday School."27 Alice Hamilton was an active member o f the advisory council o f the Workers' Health Bureau (WHB), a N ew York City--based or M ganization that from 1921 to 1928 sought to increase union interest in and responsibility for workers' health. Headed by Grace Burnham and Harriet Silverman, the WHB surveyed health conditions among workers, distributed literature about industrial diseases, and estab lished a workers' health clinic. Its affiliated union locals contributed a per capita membership fee, but these funds were never sufficient to support the ambitious program to which the directors aspired. Though she considered the WHB "violently prejudiced on the side o f labor, so that it cannot see straight," Hamilton tried on several occasions to raise funds for the organization from the American Fund for Public Service, popularly known as the Garland Fund. Managed by a group o f prominent radicals and liberals, among them Roger Baldwin, Eliz abeth Gurley Flynn, and Norman Thomas, the Garland Fund had as its top priorities the support o f organized labor and farmers and the protection o f the rights o f minorities. Although the board did not act favorably on the request for funds in Hamilton's letter to Lewis Gannett o f February 26, 1923, it did assist the W HB over the years, mainly with emergency funds to help cover the organization's deficits.28 266 69 T o L ew is Gannett Dear Mr. Gannett: Last week I went to N ew authority on industrial poisi aminations made by the W U nion.3 We met at their o: assembled in the 62nd Stre< found. I think it was the m dressed. There were somet Hayhurst said to me, it w; something that sanitarians ht arousing the interest o f the \ lems. I want to urge very strong ers' Health Bureau with gen can get on its ow n feet. If i suppose you might think yo it, Mrs. Burnham and Miss greatest usefulness and have they showed me the installa that they had spent $7000 or for $4000. The meeting the o are in making contacts with experience in this sort o f w> any class can be so vitally in sacrifice an appreciable sum < meeting was greatly helped c trade could be linked up wit The gist o f the whole matti to be distributed to unpopul agree. What I want to impi Health Bureau has a task at unions in this country were might ask them to stand on against disease, but as you k rights and they need their rr