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fact that they are all human voices lifted hy a high motive. This is

a weak illustration of what a Settlement attempts to do. It aims,

in a measure, to develop whatever of social life its neighborhood

may afford, to focus and give form to that life, to bring to bear

upon it the results of cultivation and training; but it receives in

exchange for the music of isolated voices the volume and strength

of the chorus. It is quite impossible for me to say in what proportion or degree the subjective necessity which led to the opening

of Hull-House combined the three trends: first, the desire to interpret democracy in social terms; secondly, the impulse heating

at the very source of our lives, urging us to aid in the race

progress; and, thirdly, the Christian movement toward humanitarianism. It is difficult to analyze a living thing; the analysis is at

best imperfect. Many more motives may blend with the three

trends; possibly the desire for a new form of social success due to

the nicety of imagination, which refuses worldly pleasures unmixed with the joys of self-sacrifice; possibly a love of approbation, so vast that it is not content with the treble clapping of

delicate hands, hut wishes also to hear the bass notes from toughened palms, may mingle with these.

The Settlement, then, is an experimental effort to aid in the

solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city. It insists

that these problems are not confined to any one portion of a city.

It is an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other; hut it

assumes that this overaccumulation and destitution is most sorely

felt in the things that pertain to social and educational advantages. From its very nature it can stand for no political or social

propaganda. It must, in a sense, give the warm welcome of an inn

to all such propaganda, if perchance one of them be found an

angel. The one thing to be dreaded in the Settlement is that it

lose its flexibility, its power of quick adaptation, its readiness to

change its methods as its environment may demand. It must be

open to conviction and must have a deep and abiding sense of

tolerance. It must he hospitable and ready for experiment. It

should demand from its residents a scientific patience in the accumulation of facts and the steady holding of their sympathies as

one of the best instruments for that accumulation. It must he

grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of

the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the