for a settlement is primarily a stimulus and only secodarily an
institution.
Institutional featur es should be under taken by a
settlement only when it is impossible for the settlement to get
any body else to undertake them."
The ess ence of settlement work is freedom to meet a new
oppertunity and this elasticity is difficult to combine with a high-
ly developed institution.
This does not mean that institutional
work has not its place and value in settlement activities, but it
do es mean that the institution ought never to get the chance
to strangle the fresh opportunities which are constantly springing
up from the social life of a neighborhood such as ours.
The set-
tlement is founded on a belief that the springs of beauty of char-
acter and of the best secial development are to be found in the
lives of our working people, and that, firm in that belief, it is
cur duty and privilege to work with them, so
te change the outer
conditions of their lives that those inner springs will have a
chance to develop.
That is what the civic side of the work
The population of our neighborhoed is heterogeneous; largel
means,
Irish-Anerican, but increasingly Italian. .T ere are Jewish shop-
keepers on the main thoroughfares, and there is quite an admixture
of Germans and French,"
See also reports and other publications.
