Lillian D. Wald

“ I had spent two years in a New York training-school for nurses; strenuous years for an undisciplined, untrained girl, but a wonderful human experience. After graduation, I supplemented the theoretical instruction, which was casual and inconsequential in the hospital classes twenty-five years ago, by a period of study at a medical college. It was while at the college that a great opportunity came to me.
I had little more than an inspiration to be of use in some way or somehow, and going to the hospital seemed the readiest means of realizing my desire. ”

“ I felt a glow of happiness one Sunday morning when I stood on the steps of our house and watched six different groups of boys set off for the country, with ball and bat and sandwiches, each group led by a young man who had himself been a member of our early parties and had been first introduced to trees and open spaces, and the more active forms of healthful play by his settlement friends. ”

“ It is also true that the struggle with my failings, with the habits engrafted by a worldly education, have cost me more or less dearly. The misery of those near to me tore my heart to the extreme. In a word, life has passed in the same way as a bark thrown upon the mercy of a sea often stormy. But as the ideal was always there, present in my heart and in my mind, it guided me in my course, it absorbed me to such a degree that I did not feel in all their integrity the influences of passing events. ”

“ If spiritual force implies the power to lift the individual out of the contemplation of his own interests into something great and of ultimate value to the men and women of this and the generations to come, and if, so lifted, sacrifices are freely offered on the altar of the cause, it may truly be said that the Russian Revolution is a spiritual force on the East Side of New York.
People who all through the day are immersed in mundane affairs, the earning of money to provide food and shelter, are transfigured at its appeal. ”

“ Out they pour, the little hyphenated Americans, more conscious of their patriotism than perhaps any other large group of children that could be found in our land; unaware that to some of us they carry on their shoulders our hopes of a finer, more democratic America, when the worthy things they bring to us shall be recognized, and the good in their old-world traditions and culture shall be mingled with the best that lies within our new-world ideals. ”

“ Great is our loss when a shallow Americanism is accepted by the newly arrived immigrant, more particularly by the children, and their national traditions and heroes are ruthlessly pushed aside. The young people have usually to be urged by someone outside their own group to recognize the importance and value of customs, and even of ethical teaching, when given in a foreign language, or by old-world people with whom the new American does not wish to be associated in the minds of his acquaintances. ”

“ It is often a solace to find eternal youth expressing itself in harmless gayety of attire, which it is possible to construe as evidence of a sense of self-respect and self-importance. It is, at any rate, a more encouraging indication than a sight I remember in the poor quarter of London. I watched the girls at lunch time pour into a famous tea-house from the nearby factories, many of them with buttonless shoes, [193] the tops flapping as they walked; skirts separated from untidy blouses, unkempt hair,—a sight that could nowhere be found among working girls in America. ”

“ For these, as well as for the helpless and ignorant who seek aid and counsel, the settlement performs a function.
The visitors who come from all parts of the world and exchange views and experiences prove how absurd are frontiers between honest-thinking men and women of different nationalities or different classes. Human interest and passion for human progress break down barriers centuries old. They form a tie that binds closer than any conventional relationship. ”

“ The continuance of a policy of suppression of freedom infiltrates the social order everywhere, destroys the germination of new forms of social life, and he who has not sympathy with the throbbing of the human heart, and who does not revolt against injustice anywhere in the world, who does not see in the gigantic struggle in Russia a world movement for freedom and progress that is our struggle too, will not comprehend the significance of the sympathy of the many Americans who are friends of Russian freedom. ”

“ Some day, when the beautiful building of the Federal Children’s Bureau is pointed out in Washington, I have it in my heart to believe that the genius who decorates in paint or plastic art will convey the new conception of the child,—free of motion, uplooking, the ward of the nation. ”

“ There has been an extraordinary development of the visiting-nurse service throughout the country since we began our rounds, and the practical arguments for sustaining such work would seem irresistible. It requires imagination, however, to visualize the steady, competent, continuous routine so quietly performed, unseen by the public, and its financial support is the more precarious because there can be no public reminder of its existence by impressive buildings and monuments of marble. ”

“ In the early glow of our enthusiasm, when we were first brought in contact with the immigrant, we dreamed of making his coming of age—his admission to citizenship—something of a rite. Many who come here to escape persecution or the hardships suffered under a militaristic government idealize America. They bring an enthusiasm for our institutions that would make it natural to regard admission to the rights and responsibilities of citizenship with seriousness. ”

“ We felt that the nursing of the sick in their homes should be undertaken seriously and adequately; that instruction should be incidental and not the primary consideration; that the etiquette, so far as doctor and patient were concerned, should be analogous to the established system of private nursing; that the nurse should be as ready to respond to calls from the people themselves as to calls from physicians; that she should accept calls from all physicians, and with no more red-tape or formality than if she were to remain with one patient continuously. ”

“ Given sincerity, and that vague but essential quality called personality, in the leaders, we do not care very much what the programme of a club may be. I have never known a club leader possessing these qualifications who did not get out of the experience as much as it was possible to give, if not more. An interest in basic social problems develops naturally out of the club relationship. Housing conditions, immigration, unemployment, minimum wage, political control, labor unions, are no longer remote and academic. ”

“ It is not uncommon in a neighborhood such as ours to see the mother lean out of the fourth- or fifth-story window and throw down the bread-and-butter luncheon to the little child waiting on the sidewalk below—sometimes to save him the exertion of climbing the stairs, sometimes because of insufficient time. The children whose mothers work all day and who are locked out during their absence are expected to shift for themselves, and may as often be given too much as too little money to appease their hunger. ”

“ All our experience points to the conclusion that it is impossible to control manufacture in the tenements. Restrictive legislation (such as the law forbidding the employment of children under fourteen) is practically impossible of enforcement, for it is a delusion to suppose that any human agency can find out what manufactures are going on in tenement-house homes. The inspectors become known in the various neighborhoods; and at their approach the word is passed along, and garments on which women are working may be hidden, or the work taken from children’s hands. ”

“ Little wonder that women who had never known the bitterness of poverty or oppression found satisfaction in picketing side by side with the working girls who were paying the great cost of the strike. Many, among them settlement residents, readily went bail or paid fines for the girls who were arrested.
Cruel and dramatic exploitation of workers is in the main a thing of the past, but the more subtle injuries of modern industry, due to overstrain, speeding-up, and a minimum of leisure, have only recently attracted attention. ”

“ When her husband died it seemed the most natural thing in the world to help her to realize her own wishes and to approve her good judgment in desiring to keep the family together. The orphan asylum would doubtless have taken the children from her, leaving her childless as well as widowed, and with no counterbalancing advantage for the children to lighten her double woe. A large-minded lover of children, who gave his money to orphans as well as to orphanages, readily agreed to give the mother a monthly allowance until the eldest son could legally go to work. ”

“ Because so much needs to be said upon it, if anything is said at all, I am loath to touch upon the one great obstacle to the effective use of all the intelligence and the resources available for the well-being of these children, the most baffling impediment to their and the community’s protection, namely, the supreme authority of parenthood, be it never so inefficient, avaricious, or even immoral. ”

“ In our neighborhood the physical changes of the last twenty years have been great. Since that first disturbing walk with the little girl to the rear tenement on Ludlow Street asphalt has replaced unclean, rough pavements; beautiful school buildings (some the finest in the world) have been erected; streets have been altered, and rows of houses demolished to make room for new bridges and small parks. Subway [309] tubes take the working population to scattered parts of the greater city; piers have been built for recreation purposes, and a chain of small free libraries of beautiful design. ”

“ The modern public-spirited rabbi offers his pulpit for the presentation of current social problems. Zionism with its appeal for a spiritual nationalism, socialism with its call to economic salvation, the extension of democracy through the enfranchisement of women, the plea for service to humanity through social work, stir the younger generation and give expression to a religious spirit. ”

“ The duty to serve the divine cause of humanity in its entirety, that of my people in particular, was the law of my life,—the supreme law, whose voice stilled my passions, my desires, in short, my weaknesses.... ”

“ When the stranger looks upon the loft buildings in other parts of the city, gigantic beehives with the swarms of workers going in and out, he seldom comprehends that great wealth has been created for the community by these humble workers. ”

“ I record this bit of testimony with some hesitation, as it does not seem right to make it matter for marvel or congratulation. One does not expect a mother to be surprised or gratified that her daughters are virtuous; and it would be a grave injustice to the girls of character and lofty ideals who through the years have been connected with the settlement if we assumed the credit for their fine qualities. ”

“ Our plan, we reasoned, was analogous to the custom of “private” hospitals, which give free treatment or charge according to the resources of the ward patients. Both private hospitals and visiting nursing are thereby lifted out of “charity” as comprehended by the people.
We felt that for economic reasons valuable and expensive hospital space should be saved for those for whom the hospital treatment is necessary; and an obvious social consideration was that many people, particularly women, cannot leave their homes without imperiling, or sometimes destroying, the home itself. ”

“ But as in ordinary families there are diversities of character, of strength, and of weakness, so in a large community family, if I may so define the relationship of the settlement membership, these diversities are more strongly marked; and it is a gratification that we are often able to give to young girls—frail, ignorant, unequipped for the struggle into which they are so early plunged—some of the protection that under other circumstances would be provided by their families and social environment. ”

“ To the age-old appeal that the child’s dependence makes upon the affections [133] has been added a conviction of the necessity for a guarded and trained childhood, that better men and women may be developed. It is a modern note in patriotism and civic responsibility, which impels those who are brought in contact with the children of the poor to protect them from premature burdens, to prolong their childhood and the period of growth. Biologists bring suggestive and illuminating analogies, but when one has lived many years in a neighborhood such as ours the children themselves tell the story. ”

“ I have studied a great deal in order to understand even ever so little of the origin of the human soul, in order to understand more or less its complexity of to-day. There lies my only strength, so to speak, and I continue my study, knowing how complex my object of study is, and what an innumerable quantity of different combinations, of types, of low types, have been formed during the long history of the laboratory where is prepared the supreme fusion called the human soul. ”

“ A sick woman in a squalid rear tenement, so wretched and so pitiful that, in all the years since, I have not seen anything more appealing, determined me, within half an hour, to live on the East Side. ”

“ Asphalt, when swept and cleaned, makes an admirable dancing floor, and to this street dance come all the neighbors and their friends. The children play games to the music in their roped-off section, the young people dance, and all are merry. ”

“ In imagination I followed this cultured, impressive-looking man on his long journey with a hope that was almost a prayer that the reunited husband and wife would find recompense in their comradeship for all that had been given up and that the woman’s fine spirit would make up for whatever she might have lost through deprivation of stimulating contact with her own circle in the world. ”