twenty years at hull house

ing reconstruction days that followed, had never accepted a hrihe, he

wished to bear testimony that he personally had known hut this one

man who had never been offered a bribe because had men were instinctively afraid of him.

I feel now the hot chagrin with which I recalled this statement dun

ing those early efforts of Illinois in which HulLHouse joined, to secure

the passage of the first factory legislation. I was told by the representatives of an informal association of manufacturers that if the residents of

HulLHouse would drop this nonsense about a sweatshop bill, of which

they knew nothing, certain business men would agree to give fifty

thousand dollars within two years to be used for any of the philanthropic activities of the Settlement. As the fact broke upon me that I was being offered a bribe, the shame was enormously increased by the

memory of this statement. What had befallen the daughter of my father that such a thing could happen to her/ The salutary reflection

that it could not have occurred unless a weakness in myself had permitted it, withheld me at least from an heroic display of indignation

before the two men making the offer, and I explained as gently as I could that we had no ambition to make HulLHouse "the largest institution on the West Side," but that we were much concerned that our

neighbors should he protected from untoward conditions of work, and —so much heroics, youth must permit itself—if to accomplish this

the destruction of HulLHouse was necessary, that we would cheerfully

sing a Te Deum on its ruins. The good friend who had invited me to

lunch at the Union League Club to meet two of his friends who

wanted to talk over the sweatshop bill here kindly intervened, and we

all hastened to cover over the awkward situation by that scurrying

away from ugly morality which seems to be an obligation of social intercourse.

Of the many old friends of my father who kindly came to look up his

daughter in the first days of HulLHouse, I recall none with more pleasure than Lyman Trumbull, whom we used to point out to the members of the Young Citizens' Club as the man who had for days held in

his keeping the Proclamation of Emancipation until his friend President Lincoln was ready to issue it. I remember the talk he gave at

HulLHouse on one of our early celebrations of Lincoln's Birthday, his

assertion that Lincoln was no cheap popular hero, that the "common

people" would have to make an effort if they would understand his