| Soap and Settlements: "Making a Cleaner Society" * | |
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| FEATURED SOURCES | EXPLORE FURTHER |
 "Washing Lesson," c. 1900, Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association, San Francisco. From the Social Settlements category of the Social Museum Collection. |
This photograph Zoomable version Catalog record Some student observations More photographs Washing Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Assn. All Social Settlements Social Museum Collection All photographs From The Social Museum (1911) Interior view Description ^ TOP |
These photographs (one above and two below) show, among other things, the teaching of housekeeping skills and hygiene standards, a focus of widespread concern during the Progressive Era and in the settlement house movement. Click the links in the right-hand column for more examples.
 "Housekeeping Class," c. 1900, Kingsley House, Pittsburgh. From the Social Settlements category of the Social Museum Collection. |
This photograph Zoomable version Catalog record Some student observations More photographs Housekeeping Kingsley House All Social Settlements Social Museum Collection All photographs From The Social Museum (1911) Interior view Description ^ TOP |
 "Cooking Class," c. 1900, Calhoun Colored School and Social Settlement, Calhoun, Alabama. From the Social Settlements category of the Social Museum Collection. |
This photograph Zoomable version Catalog record Some student observations More photographs Cooking Calhoun Colored School All Social Settlements Social Museum Collection All photographs From The Social Museum (1911) Interior view Description ^ TOP |
The passage below is part of a longer description of the settlement worker's experience and environment. "If the people whom she has elected to help were cultivated, refined, and highly moral, there would be no need for her presence among them. She will find immorality, dirt, disease, unthrift, and all the faults that produce poverty and misery." Instruction in domestic science was expected to address the physical conditions settlement workers encountered; because physical and moral hygiene were inseparable in people's minds, it was also favored as a remedy for less tangible problems. Click on the excerpt to page through the book, or click the links in the right-hand column for more related texts and photographs.
   From How Women May Earn a Living by Helen Churchill Candee. |
This text Read more Catalog record Some student observations Photographs "A Residents Room" "Polish Family" "Typical Italian Courtyard" "Tenements Like These..." Texts: Settlements The Burden of the City (1904) The House on Henry Street (1915)  20 Years at Hull-House (1912) Settlement Work (1912) Still more on settlements Texts: More domestic lessons Housekeeping Notes (1911) "Welfare Work" (1923) "Home Industry is Culture" (1914) All Home economics People Jane Addams Florence Kelley ^ TOP |
Some middle school students who recently examined these materials thought the illustration below expressed for both the advertiser and the broader society, including settlement leaders, the expectation that soap would make young people polite, dainty, whiter, and more American, as well as clean. The links in the right-hand column lead to more advertisements for soap and more evidence of its cultural significance.
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Selected Bibliography for Soap and Settlements: "Making a Cleaner Society" * Bushman, Richard L. and Claudia L. Bushman. "The Early History of Cleanliness in America." The Journal of American History 74.4 (March 1988): 1213-1238. Through 1900. In the last six pages, the Bushmans discuss the interaction of cultural and economic forces in the industrial production of soap and in soap manufacturers' advertising. Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth. Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890-1945. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Lasch-Quinn discusses Calhoun Colored School and Social Settlement on pp. 83-100. Mohun, Arwen P. Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880-1940. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Chapter 1, "Technical and Cultural Origins"; pp. 29-39, "Making a Cleaner Society." Rury, John L. "Vocationalism for Home and Work: Women's Education in the United States, 1880-1930." History of Education Quarterly 24.1 (Spring 1984): 21-44. Rury discusses the home economics movement on pp. 22-29. Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. In Chapter 12, "The Rise of the New Woman, 1860-1920": "Social Housekeepers," pp. 298-302; "Educated Homemakers," pp. 292-298. Chapter 11, "The Founding of Hull-House," pp. 253-268. Other editions of Woloch's book were published in 1984 and 2000, and it is widely available in libraries. Valverde, Mariana. The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Inc., 1991. "The economic and cultural developments that form the background to the reform movement analysed here were not unique to Canada: similar developments in the northeastern United States and in urban Britain have been described by many historians" (16). Valverde links the practical uses and symbolic significance of soap in interesting and unusual ways. ^ TOP Related Learning Standards for Soap and Settlements: "Making a Cleaner Society" * Standards: National Center for History in the Schools Standards: California Standards: Massachusetts National Center for History in the Schools National Standards for History Standards in Historical Thinking (Grades 5-12)
United States History Standards (Grades 5-12)
California History-Social Science Academic Content Standards Analysis Skills: Research, Evidence, and Point of View (Grades 6-8)
8.12 Students analyze the transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions in the United States in response to the Industrial Revolution.
Analysis Skills: Research, Evidence, and Point of View (Grades 9-12)
11.2 Students analyze the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework Concepts and Skills (Grades 8-12): History and Geography
The Age of Reform: Progressivism and the New Deal, 1900-1940
* "Making a Cleaner Society" is a section heading in Mohun, Arwen P. Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880-1940. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. The section, part of chapter 1, "Technical and Cultural Origins," begins on page 29. ^ TOP social settlements, settlement movement, settlement house, settlement houses, social housekeepers, primary sources for teaching history and social studies, primary sources for history and social studies teachers, primary documents for teaching history and social studies, primary documents for history and social studies teachers |