The President of the Academy, in introducing the presiding officer of the afternoon, said:
Members of the Academy, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is fortunate for us, both as members of the Academy and as citizens of Philadelphia, that when a subject of great importance is to be discussed by our organization, we are always able to call upon some citizen of Philadelphia whose interest in the subject, whose work, whose activity along these special lines enable him to preside over our deliberations with the authority that the subject calls for. I have very great pleasure in presenting to you this afternoon as presiding officer the Honorable William W. Porter, Justice of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, in whose hands I now place the meeting.
Judge Porter, in introducing the Honorable Robert W. De Forest, said:
We Philadelphians are apt to pride ourselves on the descriptive title which others have given to our city and which we have adopted, namely, that it is a city of homes. This is true of it to-day. It has ever been true. But none of us can shut his eyes to the facts that the population of the poor and the vicious has become congested in certain sections of the city, and that tenement houses, unknown to us for many years, are intruding in considerable numbers. To us Philadelphians, however, the topic for discussion would have greater significance had it been made the “Homing Problem” instead of the “Housing Problem.” The workingman’s struggle has ever been, in Philadelphia, not for a “house” in the sense of a room in a tenement, but for a home where within the four walls he may know privacy and proprietorship. We have been wont to say that a man’s home is his castle and that he would die in a struggle for its protection. This may yet be said of the home owner who is a house owner. But there is no instance on record, known to me, where there has been any serious loss of life in the defence of a room in a boarding-house or tenement.
It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the first participant in the discussion of the topic before us, Hon. Robert W. De Forest, Tenement House Commissioner of Greater New York, a gentleman who comes from a city which has had to meet the problem of housing the poor in its most difficult form, a gentleman who, notwithstanding his large professional obligations and duties and the time required by them, has been able to give much thought and useful labor to the attempted solving of what is, up to the present time, only a partially solved problem.
Mr. De Forest then presented his paper, which is printed on pages 81–95 of this volume.
In introducing Miss Addams, Mr. Porter said:
There was a time when true charity, as we understand it, was unknown. The knowledge and practice of it came only with Christian civilization. The impulse to do for others was first and strongest felt by women. The early administration of charity by them was, however, largely of the heart, rather than of the understanding. The time is here when women, with hearts just as warm in the work, have tempered their enthusiasm with cool, deep, serious, conscientious thought. These women are furnishing to us the best type of the best citizenship in the department of altruistic work.
It is with pleasure that I introduce to you a woman who exemplifies what I have asserted; a woman who has been at the head of a charitable work which has accomplished wonders; a woman who has thought, wrought and written well. It is with very great pleasure that I present to you one who will speak on the “Housing Problem in the City of Chicago,” Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House.