Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914 / Edition 1

by Allen Davis

Overview

Allen Davis looks at the influence of settlement-house workers on the reform movement of the progressive era in Chicago, New York, and Boston. These workers were idealists in the way they approached the future, but they were also realists who knew how to organize and use the American political system to initiate change. They lobbied for a wide range of legislation and conducted statistical surveys that documented the need for reform. After World War I, settlement workers were replaced gradually by social workers who viewed their job as a profession, not a calling, and who did not always share the crusading zeal of their forerunners. Nevertheless, the settlement workers who were active from the 1880s to the 1920s left an important legacy: they steered public opinion and official attitudes toward the recognition that poverty was more likely caused by the social environment than by individual weakness,

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813510736
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1985
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction to the 1984 Edition
1 The Settlement Idea
2 The Settlements Impulse
3 The Settlement, the Public School, and Progressive Education
4 Playgrounds, Housing, and City Planning
5 Immigrants and Negroes
6 The Settlements and the Labor Movement
7 Working Women and Children
8 The Settlement Worker Versus the Ward Boss
9 The Settlement Movement and Municipal Reform
10 The Progressive Crusade
11 Epilogue
A Note on Sources
Bibliographical Addenda 1984
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Spearheads is still the only comprehensive survey and analysis of the social settlement movement."

Alice Kessler-Harris

"Spearheads provides a concise history of the settlement house movement, one which is highly readable and comprehensive." 

Mary Jo Buhle

"Davis's book is an excellent amount of the links between the settlement movement and the larger political area. There is nothing else like it."

Kathryn Kish Sklar

"Davis's book is an excellent amount of the links between the settlement movement and the larger political area. There is nothing else like it."--Kathryn Kish Sklar

"Spearheads is still the only comprehensive survey and analysis of the social settlement movement."--Alice Kessler-Harris

"Spearheads provides a concise history of the settlement house movement, one which is highly readable and comprehensive." --Mary Jo Buhle

From the Publisher