Erik Schneiderhan
ASA Presentation Draft
January, 2008
16
January of 1896, lists Gernon as “Visitor” for the Bureau of Charities. And by the end of 1896, Hull-
House was home to a “study class for Friendly Visitors,” which met every afternoon at 2 o’clock. By
the end of 1896, the friendly visit was an established part of Hull-House practice.
How could this have happened? How could Hull-House become home to these practices, so
different from its own avant-garde logic and so distasteful to its founder and leader? Well, for one
thing, the increasing focus on charity organization at Hull-House coincides with financial difficulties at
Hull-House. Residents talked at one meeting in early 1895 about the “murky fingers of debt” and
Addams seemed to be devoting an increasing amount of time fundraising, thereby linking Hull-House
and its residents more closely to Chicago elites and their needs. To be crass, Hull-House needed
money, and so it needed to dance to money’s tune. The Depression may have also forced Hull-House
to try to confront its own scalability and sustainability as an organization that was struggling to keep up
with those who needed help. Charity organization offered a clear, efficient plan that could be
formalized and implemented.
But there is another answer that is not part of the existing Addams narrative: Hull-House
adopted economistic, charity organization methods because Jane Addams herself was one of the
standard-bearers of the rise of charity organization methods in Chicago during the 1890s. Addams was
an active member of the “Committee on Charity Organization” (COCO), which formed in 1891 and
had as its agenda the revival of a charity organization society in Chicago. It appealed to the Relief &
Aid Society to either co-operate in forming a new charity organization society or become a charity
organization itself. The Relief & Aid Society rejected this proposal and over the following three months
engaged in a bitter back-and-forth, both in letters and in the press, with the members of the
Committee. Nothing came of the exchange and the issue lay dormant until the following winter, when
the Depression re-energized discussion in Chicago regarding the need for a charity organization.
Convention