American
Immigration
Settlement houses were important reform institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Chicago's Hull House was the best-known settlement in the United States. Most were large buildings in crowded immigrant neighborhoods of industrial cities, where settlement workers provided services for neighbors and sought to remedy poverty.
The major purpose of settlement houses was to help to assimilate and ease the transition of immigrants into the labor force by teaching them middle-class American values. In Chicago, for instance, Hull-House helped to educate immigrants by providing classes in history, art, and literature. Hull-House also provided social services to reduce the effects of poverty, including a daycare center, homeless shelter, public kitchen, and public baths. Settlement houses like Hull-House were a nexus for political activism, with reformers like Jane Addams becoming involved in advocating social legislation to combat poverty in local, state, and national politics.
One of the revolutionary characteristics of the settlement house movement was that many of the most important leadership roles were filled by women, in an era when women were still excluded from leadership roles in business and government. Approximately half of the major US settlement houses were led and staffed predominantly by women. Among the most influential leaders were Jane Addams, Mary Simkhovitch, Helena Dudley, Lillian Wald, Mary McDowell, Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, and Edith Abbott. Settlement Houses helped advance our society in a more humane and equal way that affected us to this day. If it weren't for immigrants then there would be no settlement houses for women to make an impact on. Immigrants were the basis for historic women figures and advancement in equality.