Among the young men of the social clubs a large proportion of the Jewish ones at least obtain the advantages of a higher education.
The parents make every sacrifice to help them through the high school after which the young men attend universities and professional schools, largely through their own efforts. From time to time they come back to us with their honors thick upon them; I remember one who returned with the prize in oratory from a contest between several western State universities, proudly testifying that he had obtained his confidence in our Henry Clay Club; another came back with a degree from Harvard University saying that he had made up his mind to go there the summer I read Royce's "Aspects of Modern Philosophy" with a group of young men who had challenged my scathing remark that Herbert Spencer was not the only man who had ventured a solution of the riddles of the universe. Occasionally one of these learned young folk does not like to be reminded he once lived in our vicinity, but that happens rarely, and for the most part they are loyal to us in much the same spirit as they are to their own families and traditions. Sometimes they go further and tell us that the standards of tastes and code of manners which Hull-House has enabled them to form, have made a very great difference in their perceptions and estimates of the larger world as well as in their own reception there. Five out of one club of twenty-five young men who had held together for eleven years, entered the University of Chicago but although the rest of the Club called them the "intellectuals," the old friendships still held.
In addition to these rising young people given to debate and dramatics, and to the members of the public school alumni associations which meet in our rooms, there are hundreds of others who for years have come to Hull-House frankly in search of that pleasure and recreation which all young things crave and which those who have spent long hours in a factory or shop demand as a right. For these young people all sorts of pleasure clubs have been cherished, and large dancing classes have been organized.
One supreme gayety has come to be an annual event of such importance that it is talked of from year to year. For six weeks before St. Patrick's day, a small group of residents put their best powers of invention and construction into preparation for a cotillion which is like a pageant in its gayety and vigor. The parents sit in the gallery, and the mothers appreciate more than anyone else perhaps, the value of this ball to which an invitation is so highly prized; although their standards of manners may differ widely from the conventional, they know full well when the companionship of the young people is safe and unsullied.
As an illustration of this difference in standard, I may instance an early Hull-House picnic arranged by a club of young people, who found at the last moment that the club director could not go and accepted the offer of the mother of one of the club members to take charge of them. When they trooped back in the evening, tired and happy, they displayed a photograph of the group wherein each man's arm was carefully placed about a girl; no feminine waist lacked an arm save that of the proud chaperon, who sat in the middle smiling upon all. Seeing that the photograph somewhat surprised us, the chaperon stoutly explained, "This may look queer to you, but there wasn't one thing about that picnic that wasn't nice," and her statement was a perfectly truthful one.
Although more conventional customs are carefully enforced at our many parties and festivities, and while the dancing classes are as highly prized for the opportunity they afford for enforcing standards as for their ostensible aim, the residents at Hull-House, in their efforts to provide opportunities for clean recreation, receive the most valued help from the experienced wisdom of the older women of the neighborhood. Bowen Hall is constantly used for dancing parties with soft drinks established in its foyer. The parties given by the Hull-House clubs are by invitation and the young people themselves carefully maintain their standard of entrance so that the most cautious mother may feel safe when her daughter goes to one of our parties. No club festivity is permitted without the presence of a director; no young man under the influence of liquor is allowed; certain types of dancing often innocently started are strictly prohibited; and above all, early closing is insisted upon. This standardizing of pleasure has always seemed an obligation to the residents of Hull-House, but we are, I hope, saved from that priggishness which young people so heartily resent, by the Mardi Gras dance and other festivities which the residents themselves arrange and successfully carry out.
In spite of our belief that the standards of a ball may be almost as valuable to those without as to those within, the residents are constantly concerned for those many young people in the neighborhood who are too hedonistic to submit to the discipline of a dancing class or even to the claim of a pleasure club, but who go about in freebooter fashion to find pleasure wherever it may be cheaply on sale.
