GEORGE HERBERT MEAD ON TERRORISM, IMMIGRANTS, AND SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS: A 1908 LETTER TO THE CHICAGO RECORD HERALD

• Published in: The journal of the gilded age and progressive era 2015-04, Vol.14 (2), p.160-172
• Main Authors: Rigney, Ernest G., Lundy, Timothy C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: PRIMARY SOURCE REFLECTION
• ISSN: 1537-7814; 1943-3557
• DOI: 10.1017/S1537781414000772

George Herbert Mead's advocacy of innovative social reform was not a distinct endeavor unrelated to his pragmatist social philosophy. In fact, the convergence of social philosophy and social reform is discernable in Mead's analysis of social settlements: an analysis that led him to conclude that settlements were indispensable social organizations for promoting cooperative living and civic progress within America's emerging industrial municipalities. For Mead, the settlement was the only social organization capable of understanding the immigrant's world and explaining that world to the nonimmigrant. In 1908, Mead wrote a letter to the Chicago Record Herald endorsing the work of social settlements. He composed the letter during an era when the violent actions of some political extremists (i.e., anarchists) seemed to encourage many native-born citizens to regard all immigrants as nascent terrorists and to treat organizations created to assist immigrants, such as settlements, with distrust and hostility. Most unfortunately, the Chicago Record Herald refused to publish Mead's letter. This article describes the historical circumstances that prompted Mead to write a letter in defense of settlements; it then reprints the original letter in its entirety, with annotations; and, it concludes by briefly noting the letter's significance in relation to Mead's other writings about social settlements.