Reprinted from Socrau Forces Vol. V, No. 2, December, 1926 eee Yh ae THE COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD This department is conducted by Tue NaTIONAL Community CENTER ASSOCIATION, and is edited by Leroy E. Bowman, 503 Kent Hall, Columbia University, New York City. A COMMUNITY IN FLUX THe Cyicaco Guetto Rr-SuRVEYED MAURICE H. KROUT = ERE configurations in space or re M chance aggregates of contiguous A individuals do not of themselves make acommunity. The community has not only a spatial but also a temporal aspect. From the point of view of tem- poral distribution the community means more than ‘‘living’’; it means ‘living together.”’ The psycho-social or truly human environment, measured temporally, includes on the one hand intercom- munication and interaction, and on the other the resulting practices and traditions of human beings. It is these that make “living together’ possible. Distribution in space does undeniably represent the existence of individuals; but their inter- action as group members may be undetr- stood only if seen as a historical process moving through time. Since this is an inquiry into the transi- tional aspects of an urban area, the aim here is to view the community chiefly as a psycho-social process. Structure must be viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to the end sought, namely the process. Social anatomy makes social physiology or social pathology more understandable. I. PHYSICO-GEOGRAPHIC ASPECTS The community under discussion oc- cupies the Near-West Side of Chicago. 273 It extends somewhat over two miles west of the Chicago river and has an area of about fifteen square miles. In a recent survey of the social and recreational needs of the Jewish popula- tion of the city the boundaries of the Near- West Side were fixed at State Street on the east, Western Avenue on the west, Twenty-Second Street on the south, and Madison Street on the north (Jewish Welfare Board, 1923). These boundaries are not based on barriers to free movement which segregate communities and are not historically defensible. The Near-West Side, as a geographic unit at least, appears to be delimited by railroad belts on each of its four sides. Thus Clinton Street has been its eastern boundary, Rockwell Street the western boundary, Fifteenth Place the southern boundary, and Kinzie Street the northern boundary. Although the Near-West Side as de- fined above has been the home of many language groups, yet it has attracted especial attention chiefly because it has included the Ghetto neighborhood of Chicago. The limits of this section have varied at different times; but at present the eastern border is found at Union Street, the southern border at Fourteenth Street, the western border at Robey Street, and the northern border may be drawn as a broken line conformable in a general way pow Pa ie J 2 , : Pi cele i 274 to Taylor Street but deviating from it northward, at many points as far as Polk Street. These boundaries have appeared on the spot-map of the Jewish Social Service Bureau of Chicago. According to the records of this agency these lines represent the distribution of service and relief cases in the locality during a period of two years (1921-23). Considering the density of population in the Ghetto (given later) and the uniformly low eco- nomic status of its residents as evidenced by the housing facilities (described later), the boundaries adapted from the map of the bureau may be assumed to divide the Ghetto of today from the other colonies of the Near-West Side. The actual Jewish population of the Ghetto, or of the city as a whole, is a matter of conjecture, although estimates are not wanting. In the survey of 1923 the Jewish population of Chicago was estimated to be 285,000 and that of the Ghetto to approximate 72,000. More accurate however is probably the estimate furnished the Daily News Almanac by Mr. Louis M. Cahn, Executive Director of the Jewish Charities, in 1924, giving 225,000 as the figure most closely ap- proximating the number of Jews in the entire city and 60,000 as the figure repre- senting the Jews of the Near-West Side. The population maps of the official United States Census of 1910 gives the density of the population on the Near- West_Sidewas varying from 15,677 per square block in the densest section to 2,612 on the extreme west and 1,671 on the extremhe east; the average being 10,023 per square block. A more recent inquiry made by the local Council of Social Agencies estimated the density of popula- tion (February, 1921) to be 50,000 to 25,000 per square mile westward along Twelfth Street (Roosevelt Road), begin- ning at Halsted Street; and from 5,000 to SOCIAL FORCES 25,000 eastward from Halsted to Clinton Street. The congestion on the Neat-West Side as brought out in the survey of the Jewish Welfare Board is indicated by the fact that everyone of the typical frame dwel- lings has an average of 2.5 families each, whereas the average for the entire city, according to the United States Census of 1920, is only 1.8 families to a dwelling. The existence of the inevitable com- panions of congestion, low rents and high land values, is proved by the studies and maps of the Illinois Bell Telephone Com- pany and the Chicago Zoning Commis- sion. With high land values, in a transi- tional area, go moldering structures and with cheap rents go cheerless living quarters. This condition has had two practical results. Because it enabled the immigrant to “‘start’’ at all by “‘starting’’ at the proverbial “‘bottom’’, the Near- West Side became a convenient area of first settlement. Because of its wide- spread squallor and discomforts, it became a standing menace to the health and security not only of its own residents but also of the members of the larger com- munity. II. PHYSICO SOCIAL PROCESSES Speaking of this as ‘‘probably the poor- est and most crowded section of Chicago’’ Hull House residents, thirty years ago (1895), described the Near-West Side as an area containing three typical kinds of dwellings: the pioneer one-story cottage, the brick tenement three or four stories high, and the ‘‘deadly rear tenement’’, often the “‘workshop of the sweater.’’ Interspersed among these were also a few desirable buildings. The district at this time boasted of its Metropolitan Hall, ‘the operatic center of the Ghetto,’’ then located at Jefferson and Maxwell Streets, the West Side Auditorium at Racine COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD Avenue and Taylor Street, and a handful of “‘the better homes’’ on DeKoven, Bunker, and Forquer Streets.! Since “‘the worse homes’’ were con- siderably in the majority nevertheless, the Hull House residents raised the cry for ‘Sanitation and Comfort.’’ This was a cry in the wilderness, for it rang out again just as insistently in 1911, when Miss Alzada Comstock published her studies on the housing facilities of Chicago. Speaking of the Neat-West Side, she said: For those who can not afford to move away from such districts as these the situation is far more difficult; even the fundamental matter of health must be disregarded in the problem of making both ends meet; tenants have neither the money nor the in- fluence to bring about necessary changes and im- provements; they must take those old, dingy, fre- quently broken-down houses and endure the con- sequences with small hope of being able to better their condition.” The proprietors of Ghetto dwellings have long refrained from improving their properties, expecting that ultimately a railroad or industry would ‘“‘make an offer.’’ The steady decrease in the num- ber of houses and the increased demand for them in this vicinity have not only forti-. fied the landlords in their position of in- difference as regards repairs but have stimulated them to advance the rents. The certainty of renting their ramshackle cottages and tenements, the fact that existing rentals even if advanced still remain by far the lowest in the city, and the unfortunate possibility of meeting higher rent with greater crowding (the increase being in the last analysis met by the addition of a boarder or two) has 1 Hull House Maps and Papers, by Hull House Residents; p. 5. aA Pie Constock. Chicago,”’ 2437244. “Housing Conditions in American Journal of Sociology, xviii, 275 created a vicious circle running somewhat thus: crowded quarters—higher rental; higher rental—further crowding; further crowding—still higher rental; still higher rental—still more crowding; etc. When the residents of Hull House and Miss Comstock described the housing situation on the Near-West Side the possi- bility of a vicious circle was obviated by the fact that vacant lots, which could re- lieve congestion, were still to be found.’ Residents could, if they had sufficient means, repair to the open lots and build cottages of their own or else occupy such tenement houses as income-seeking land- lords saw fit to erect on these lots. But at present wherever one casts his eye there are neglected frame shanties or flat- buildings of crumbled brick, without light or bath or adequate drainage. The deterioration of this part of the city as. a residential area is intimately con- nected with its rapid industrialization. The process has been fully as certain as it has been insidious. Thirty years ago the residents of Hull House saw its be- gining, and such expressions as ““The sturdy growth of brick blocks for indus- trial purposes’’ are met often in their study. But there are a few important points of difference between the conditions that prevailed in 1895 and those which ‘prevail today. Thirty years ago the existence of factories evinced surprise in spite of the congestion and filth (which indeed. were hardly connected with the industrialization of the region), for the Near-West Side was still essentially a residential district. Now, however, the process is so well-defined that it is the presence of a recalcitrant dwelling, rather than the presence of a factory or store, that evinces the surprise of the onlooker. Further, in the end of the last century the 3 Hull House Residents, op. cit., p. 5; vide, also, A, P, Comstock, op. cit., P- 2.46 ff. 276 process of substitution was proceeding in a tather sporadic manner, factories and shops often springing up where they were least expected. The process now is far more systematic. The inroads made by commerce and industry generally begin at the periphery and proceed toward the center, thus gradually diminishing the residential core of the Near-West Side. These transformations are not of purely local significance, for they find their counterpart in similar transformations, long since completed, in the older down- town section of Chicago with which the Near-West Side is continuous. The tend- ency of a pioneer section to turn into an “uninhabited wilderness’’ in the very heart of the city and slowly to absorb adjoining territory has been well known to city-plan commissions and students of city growth. In Chicago, the section just east of the Near-West Side was the first to be settled. It was there, on the sand dunes of Lake Michigan, that Fort Dearborn was built and defended against the onslaughts of the Pottawattomies. From an undifferentiated, largely resi- dential and retail-business area, to which the small brick houses on Michigan boule- vatd and its many hotels still testify, the loop became converted into a commercial and light-manufacturing area. The same change seems to be facing the Near-West Side. For years this section of the city shared with the Near-South and the Lower-North Sides the duty of providing an outlet for the overflow of population from the city nucleus. But at last the Near-West Side has become the long- expected physical adjunct of the loop, accommodating more and more wholesale houses, warehouses, and manufacturing establishments.4- The strategic location ‘The Zoning Commission of Chicago, realizing the inevitableness of the change, has already assigned the Near-West Side for this purpose. SOCIAL FORCES of the Ghetto with reference to the central buying section of the city seems thus to have determined the nature of the locality, and so far as physico-geographic factors go, to have influenced the fate of its residents. III. PSYCHO-SOCIAL PROCESSES The Near-West Side has been called the most cosmopolitan part of Chicago. The colorful character of the area has been due to the changes in its population. Every group, whether as small as a family or as large as a nation, has its own institutions and patterns of conduct, which tend to segregate it fromother groups. To say this is not to imply that the common elements in the cultures of segregated groups do not play a vital rdle in inter- group relations. But it is to point out that, historically, because of the existence of certain combinations of subjective at- titudes and objective factors merged into a social situation, groups found them- selves leading a relatively detached exist- ence. Such isolation has been typically true of nations. But on the Near-West Side of Chicago, where “‘extraterritoriality rights’ Wd neither be demanded nor granted, the district has been exposed to the invastions of different language groups, which have crisscrossed the area and, in stubborn competition with one another, succeeded in usurping now one, now another part of it. Ultimately how- ever the unity of the victorious group was in every case disrupted and the group was forced to seek new regions for peaceful conquest. At the time the Near-West Side was still a wild-prairie region encircling the city proper or the present “‘loop section,’ some unmarried American farmers from the outlying agricultural regions of IIli- nois and a few neighboring states came to settle in this part of Chicago. Between the fifties and the seventies these pioneers COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD were rather timidly joined by a few Ger- man-Scandinavian, French, and Irish fami- lies. These removed in various directions as soon as it became evident that the Bohemians were intent on populating the area as a language group. The Irish settled on the northeast, around Forquer and Polk Streets. The German-Scan- dinavian element forsook this section com- pletely for a young colony which then sprang up on the Far-North Side. The poorer classes of the French settled on the north-west, around Vernon Park, and further west. The tide of Bohemian migration began soon after the failure of the Pan-Slavic Congress of 1848 and the suppression of Bohemia by Austria, but it swelled to considerable proportions after the Austro- Italian wars of the sixties. Before the great fire of 1871 there was already an appreciable number of Bohemians in Chicago, and in 1883, when Marcy Center was founded on the Near-West Side, they gave this region a definite Bohemian tinge. At the time Marcy opened its doors the Czechs occupied the entire distance from Canal Street to Blue Island Avenue and extended rather thinly further west. They numbered about 70,000 in Chicago, and fully two-thirds of their number were situated on the Near-West Side.’ This liberty-loving country folk had come here because the West Side was largely ‘‘vir- gin soil,’’ with scarcely a dwelling for blocks. When however other migrants, principally those of the Jewish group, be- gan actively to settle, the Czechs found this section too crowded, and following their love for freedom and the open coun- try, they betook themselves to the south and the southwest.® 5 Vide Zeman’s article in Hull House Maps and Papers. 6 To this day Bohemians are found largely in the south-western suburbs of Chicago, such as Cicero sod The Jewish group dates its settlement to the forties of the last century, when religious persecutions in Germany became especially intense.’ The attempt at founding an agricultural colony in Illi- nois failed, and the Jews settled in the heart of the loop section where commerce could be best pursued. Their activities were facilitated by the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the Galena and Chicago Railroad to Joliet, completed in 1849. After recovering from the Cholera epidemic which swept Chicago in the late forties, the Jewish colonists were again thrown into turmoil by the Chicago fire which confined itself almost entirely to the area east of the river.® Following the fire, the Jewish group de- terminedly crossed the river and began to stream into the Near-West and the Near South Sides. At first locating in the north-east portion of the West Side, around Lake and Washington Streets, they soon began coming southward sup- planting, as they did so, the Czecho- Slovak and Irish groups. In the eighties and nineties the German Jews were joined by their Russian-Polish coreligionists driven by the Russian excesses of the time. °® But no sooner had the Jews reached the south-western and western parts of the district than Italians from the northeast gradually began descending upon them with the intention of “‘seizing their and Brookfield, although there is still a considerable colony south of Sixteenth Street along Halsted and west of it.” 7Felsenthal and Eliassof, Héstory of Kehillath Anshe Maarib; also, Herman Eliassof, The Jews of Illinois, Reform Advocate, May 4, 1901; p. 288 ff. 8 Andreas, History of Chicago, vol. iii. 9 Since 1905 an increasing number of Lithuanians, Russians, and Poles have joined the Jewish settlers in the Ghetto either on the basis of an old familigrity dating back to Europe or because of the practical necessity on the part of the slowly-assimilating Slav to resort to the aid of the more readily assimila- ble Jew in adjusting to the American environment. 278 territory.’’ At this time the German Jews had practically vacated the area and moved to what the Russian-Polish group somewhat derisively termed ‘‘Deutsch- land’ and what is now known as the Lawndale district.!° Originally the Italians sought a new land because of impoverished finances and a desite to make themselves more com- fortable and to be of more service to their fatherland. Says Mastro-Valerio in speaking of his countrymen: They leave the mother-country with the firm intention of going back to it as soon as their scarsellas shall sound with plenty of quibus.¥ His hope pinned to a triumphant return to his native land, the Italian never sold his properties in Italy but instead leased them, in order that upon coming back he might regain possession of them. Because of this attitude, the thrifty Italian immi- gtant sought to occupy a part of the city which would reduce his personal expenses to a minimum and leave as large a saving margin as possible. If later the influence of children and the environment generally made the Italian change his plans as regards returning to Italy, he continued nevertheless to reside in this area of first settlement. ‘Thus is explained the attrac- tion of the Italian settler to the Near- West Side and the acute competition for every inch of ground in which he has engaged. Taken by and large, the result has been overwhelmingly in favor of the Italian population, for between 1910 and 1918 about half of the Jewish popula- tion of the Ghetto migrated to other parts of the city.” At present the remnants of the Jewish *° Other Jewish sections later sprang up in every part of Chicago. " Hull House Maps and Papers, p. 131. * Allison, “Population Movements in Chicago,"’ Journal of Social Forces, ii, 529 ff. SOCIAL FORCES population in the Ghetto are girding their loins in preparation for movement. The stimulus for this final migration was sup- plied by the advent of a new and prolific group—the Negroes. Illustrative of the rapidity with which colonization of this area by the colored settlers has been taking place are the data secured by Marcy Cen- ter in a recent study of its immediate neighborhood. The investigation brought out the fact that there were eighty-nine Negro families, representing over five hundred people, in but one block bounded by Frank Street, Blue Island Avenue, Miller Street, and Maxwell Street. In 1895 Hull House residents reported that “only two colored people are found west of the river,’’!3 but at present the influx of Negroes is assuming such proportions that social centers, in an effort to meet the new situation, have been forced very largely to revise their programs of activities. Yet the movement of the colored people from the South Side of the city has barely begun. Since the World War the popula- tion greatly increased in the traditional “black belt’’ of the city’s South Side. This increase is causally connected with the general migration from the cotton fields to the large industrial centers, due on the one hand to the financial depression and social intolerance prevalent in the South, and on the other to the solicita- tions of enterprising northern manufac- turers.'4 The Near-West Side was chosen by the negroes for settlement presumably because the low rents of this section and the far-famed Maxwell Street “‘bargain matket’’ present an opportunity for rec- onciling meager “‘competitional earnings’’ with low living expenses; and also be- cause the West Side offers unusually con- 13 Hull House Maps and Papers, p. 17. MR. H. Leavell et al, Negro Migration in 1916-17; U. S. Department of Labor, p. 19-27; also, A. P, Comstock, op. cit., p. 242. ' COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD venient transportation, via the Halsted Street artery, to the larger and older South Side colony. These and other factors may account for the arrival of the colored population, but the exodus of the remnants of the Jewish group is undoubtedly conditioned by this most recent change of population. The intensity and extent of the Negro influx have not been equalled even in this “‘land of constant change.”’ IV. SOCIAL PROBLEMS ~ Many things combine to make one large community problem. But some of these are more expressive and perhaps more fundamental than are others. Of late years there has been an increasing tendency to rely upon juvenile delinquency as a gauge of social health or illth. If this approach is justifiable, the data recently yielded by the Juvenile Court of Cook County and the Municipal Boys’ Court of Chicago” throw considerable light on the social situation in the Jewish section of the Near-West Side. The records of these courts revealed a proportionately smaller percentage of deliquency among the Jews of Chicago as a whole than among any of the language groups inthe city. These statistics could be interpreted to mean that the Jewish group, has preserved a considerable amount of control over its young. But among the Jews of the Near- West Side, the same sources indicated, there has been a proportionately greater percentage of delinquency than among the Jews of any other part of Chicago. Reasoning similarly, we may regard this as showing a rapid dissolution of social ties in the Ghetto and the consequent failure of the local Jewish group to en- force its standards. 15 These statistics were obtained in 1922 by the staff of the Boys’ Department of the Jewish Social Service Bureau in connection with the survey of the Jewish Welfare Board. 2.79 The disparity between a proportionately smaller population and a proportionately larger rate of crime is due in the last analysis to the disfunction of the family institution. The traditional Jewish fam- ily is organizedona patriarchal basis. But although the stern authority of the father is supreme in the family, the mother’s influence, which is of a subtler kind, is at times more effective. Both the father and the mother take their cues from reli- gious tenets, and religious observances form the center around which the social life of the family clusters. Faithful devotion to a deity and repression of personal wishes and appetites make possi- ble strong control in the family. Yet the sanctions and taboos which are the mechanisms of this control retain their effectiveness only so long as they do not conflict with the standards of behavior to which the young become exposed else- where. With the acceptance of other standards by the young, religion passes into discard and the family collapses. The standards of conduct accepted by individual members of the Jewish family in the Chicago Ghetto before the family as a unit could adjust itself to them were, on the one hand, those of the ethnic groups swarming about the Near-West Side, and on the other, those of the larger American community. The process of group dis- placement is a socially expensive process. The social practices of new ethnic groups wedge themselves into weakly integrated communities and hasten their dissolution. Case studies recently made in Chicago and in other cities!® have shown that the culture conflicts in the families of co- existing groups are at the bottom of 16 For Chicago studies, see Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, vol. v, and Louis Wirth, Culture Conflicts in Immigrant Families CU. of C. Thesis, Chicago, 1925); for outside studies, see Park and Miller, Old World Heritages Transplanted, and Berkovici, Around the World in New York. 280 the major social problems in immigrant settlements. When religion fails and the personal influence of the parents wanes, the com- munity ordinarily tests its strength at conserving the integrity of the home. In the Ghetto, however, the breakdown of the community itself coincided with the breakdown of the family. For a long time the Ghetto prided itself on having its Own recreational and educational in- stitutions which served to nourish and foster the European values of the group and at the same time to preserve the prestige of the parents. But these natural outgrowths of community life are no more to,be found. When the community was still ‘‘alive’’ and these institutions active, a breach in the family circle was in some measure controlled by outside pres- sures. But after congestion and its result, poor housing, deprived the young of play space in their homes; and after industrial- ization, following on the heels of conges- tion, drove the children to seek pleasures outside the former cultural agencies, the question with which the young were confronted was—Whither now? Could the larger urban community, with its political organization, arrest or at least retard the dissolution of the Ghetto? The index of constructive influences emanating from the larger community is found in the extent of naturalization in a given immigrant area. A small percent- age of naturalization indicates of course a correspondingly small influence on the part of the American environment. But when an immigrant neighborhood shows a large percentage of naturalization the probability is that its families have very largely cast off the old community influ- ences and taken on new standards. The degree of naturalization thus implies the degree of complete disorganization, so far as the old culture is concerned, and a SOCIAL FORCES corresponding degree of reorganization on a new basis. Naturalization then meas- utes at once political assimilation and those social permutations within the family which shorten “‘moral distances’’ between the immigrant parent and his native-born child and, as a consequence, permit of adequate organization and control. The statistical evidence gathered by the Jewish Welfare Board indicates that only 43 per cent of the residents of the Ghetto were foreign-born in 1923, and that of these about half had been naturalized, thus leaving 21.5 per cent who wete not citi- zens. These statistics point to a large number of native-born children, which is in keeping with the high birth rate in immigrant families, and a small number of foreign-born parents, indicating a relatively small number of Jewish families. This seems to be in consonance with the established high rate of juvenile delin- quency prevailing in the Ghetto. It must be remembered that it is the children of immigrants, and not the immigrants themselves, that generally turn deliquent. Hence, the statistics quoted verify the existing situation by showing an abun- dance of first generation Americans on the one hand, and a relatively unchanged politico-social status of half of the older immigrants. Of course the fact that the other half of the total number of parents have become naturalized should prove the existence of some potentially stable family units. In these families the young, initi- ated in extraneous contact to different standards of living, succeed in reor- ganizing their habits in codperation with their parents.'? Perhaps the families to 17 The writer has case studies indicating that these children bring about the removal of immigrant families to areas of second settlement. This however is only one means of securing satisfaction for their wishes in the family environment. COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD which these “‘wholesome children’’ be- long remain strong, in spite of the im- potence of the neighborhood group, just because the parents have assimilated politically..® The children who turn delinquent are at any rate those who, aiming at higher standards, can not or for some reason do not command the means of achieving those standards in and through the family circle. These children ate found largely in the homes of the 50 per cent of unnaturalized parents in this neighborhood. With the automatic old controls suspended and other cultural con- trols lacking, the children who are un- adjusted in their home environment become the fertile source of problem cases with which the social agencies and governmental institutions are called upon to deal. V. SOCIAL CONTROL How are these problems dealt with? Social agencies have come into existence in response to the need for some medium of control which would obviate formal governmental effort at adjustment by force. Government as we have it owes its Origin to the necessity of harmonizing contrary group forces in environments gtown complex. But conflicts of the nature observed in transitional com- munities do not find their solution in governmental control—first, because this 18 Tn a study of ‘‘Wholesome Boys in the Chicago Ghetto’’ made in 1923 the writer found that in the competition between family standards and standards obtaining elsewhere the first win out when parents and children happen to be in the same “‘universe of discourse.’’ Coincidentally it developed that the existence of such a ‘‘universe of discourse’’ correlated significantly with the naturalization of the parents. Thus it was found that 75 per cent of the parents of these “‘wholesome boys’’ had become full-fledged citizens; that the citizenship of 5 per cent for some reason or other could not be determined; and that only 20 per cent were known to be non-citizens. 281 control must needs be superficial and there- fore disregard the basic forces underlying community difficulties; second, because it is impersonal and therefore tends to widen differences instead of bridging them; and third, because it is as a rule em- ployed when situations reach the critical point in their development and not at some intermediate stage of the process. The sort of control which social agencies represent is based on the realization that after family and neighborhood cease Operating something else, not quite as drastic as formal government, is needed to bring about an adjustment. Perhaps the mode of control substituted is not as personal as was the control lost, but it is certainly less impersonal than the alter- native control by statute and police. The social agency is not a substitute for government by law. But if it is the purpose of government to secure harmony and maintain order, the social agency often succeeds in accomplishing both ends where the interference of government would be premature. From the point of view of good govern- ment a deteriorated Ghetto district is a public cancer; and this view is shared by social agencies. Still the social center and the family service society do not stand for the severance of social ties in an immigrant community as a means to this end. The Hull House, the Jewish Peo- ple’s Institute, the Booth House, and the Marcy Center!® have become convinced that homogeneous ethnic groups are in- dispensible as transitional units, that the “stranded immigrant’’ himself and his children are served best by being helped to pass from the community of their Euro- pean fellows to the American city- and nation-community. If the social agencies 19 There are, in addition to these principal centers, eleven other social and recreational agencies on the Near-West Side. 282 have therefore “‘introduced America’ to the immigrant without casting asper- sions on the immigrant’s old-country ways and beliefs, they have done so on the theory that changes in the immigrant community, unless gradual, augur ill alike for the immigrants and the members of the larger community. Has the social agency succeeded??? Un- fortunately the value of social effort di- rected through social agencies can not be measured except in its negative aspects. Perhaps the hope of social control lies in the diagnosis of social failures but there may be equal value in properly established social successes. In the community under 20In a recent article Mr. Allison, formerly of Booth House, points out that despite the efforts of various agencies, “‘every type of problem they are designed to wrestle with persists.’’ Vide. Journal of Social Forces, op. cit. SOCIAL FORCES discussion no social agency has either blocked the onward sweep of industry or lowered land values; yet directly and indirectly social agencies have stimulated movement to relieve congestion resulting from these conditions, and where they could not make immigrants more ambi- tious for higher levels they at least made them less tenacious to lower standards of living. The agencies have admittedly not succeeded in staying population pressures, yet they have attempted to forewarn and adjust conflicts in co-existing groups. Lastly, social agencies have not relivened defunct institutions or re-kindled indi- viduals with a new enthusiasm for standards they had yielded up; yet they have aimed to supply immigrants young and old with substitute standards and to carry to the ‘‘forlorn souls’’ among them the vital message of a new creed.