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PITTSBURGH, PA.
July 2, 1925.
Dear Kennedy:
I have your letter of June 29th. I see no reason at all for changing the letterhead. I suggest that you continue just the same as if you had thousands of the present letterhead already printed.
Since you have raised this question, however, and said that you will probably talk it over with Miss Addams and Dr. Elliott I feel that I should express myself fully, and to this end I shall quote from your letter because I am sending a copy of this letter to both Miss Addams and Dr. Elliott.
I quote from your letter as follows, "I am just about out of letter paper and this brings up the question of what to do about Mr. Woods' name. Should we leave it in place? There is still a year's work before the next conference with a great many things to be done. You will have to undertake the duties of president and it would seem to me that a letterhead should be revised accordingly. On the other hand, I know that both you and I are frightfully cut up over dropping Mr. Woods' name, even though departed, from the letterhead of the Federation. Do you think that we should write to John Elliott and others of the executive committee? I shall see Miss Addams on Thursday, and I will speak to her about it."
In my opinion it would be better to let matters rest as they are because a larger problem is behind the question of presidency of the National Federation and that is the policy of the National Federation, and the proper person to carry the policy out.
As I view the settlement movement today two tendencies are in evidence. I believe that you are a firm believer in the development of the settlement as an experimental, educational institution with a special emphasis on arts and craft. This tendency will receive tremendous impetus from the many cities in which there is centralized finance. The urge here of course will be for definite standardized activities, because funds will be more easily disbursed upon this principle.
Now the second tendency, which so far as I can judge is of much minor importance today in the settlement movements is for the settlement to reoccupy its old field as a liberalizing influence in all phases of life. [page 2]
With respect to this second consideration let me quote from Frank R. Kent in the "Independent" of Boston, "Two significant attitudes stand out as vitally interesting (in life today); First, the completeness with which all liberal thought has vanished."
I have been deeply interested in this attack on liberalism in the world today. We find it in religion, in government, in industry, and in fact in all phases of life. I am a profound believer in the function of the settlement as a liberalizing influence; the influence that tends to make men feel and think and act together, even under the most diverse conflicting circumstances. The settlement has always done this; as Dr. Graham Taylor has said, "the settlement people have been ministers of understanding." Personally I have redoubled my feeble efforts the last two years toward this end here; sometimes within the settlement itself, often in different groups large and small outside the settlement.
In the natural tendency of the settlement movement today we have emphasized technique and have endeavored to develop standard forms of work. I need not speak of this to you because you understand and believe in this so thoroughly yourself. Our programs in the annual conference of the National Federation of Settlements have shown this tendency with a growth and development of departments and discussion of technique.
Personally as an advocate of the second idea I feel this is all fine and good, but secondary. The larger questions of life are the important ones for the settlement people to understand and to discuss in order to develop properly as liberalizing agencies of understanding and interpretation. With this in view I believe that such questions as Peace, Industrial Adjustment, Government, International Relations, Free Speech, Fundamentalism, (in ["]religion, politics, and industry"), etc., should be dominant in the thought of settlement folk today.
Take for instance the new morality, if I may so term it, or the new attitude toward morals, especially in the line of sex; personally I cannot see the end of this. It seems to me that in this phase of life as well as in many others we stand between a type of reactionary fundamentalism and an undisciplined or unregulated immoralism. I have great confidence that whatever the new morality will be, society will throw up safe-guards; but at the present time we are rapidly trending to the new morality and without any safe-guards. I know mothers from the very best and highest type of home who are worried and trembling at the outlook, and I fear that in unprivileged neighborhoods the condition may become much worse before it begins to mend. There certainly is need of some medium of interpretation and understanding and sympathy in this one situation alone.
To my mind the great challenge to the settlement today is a sympathetic finding of underlying unities back of the conflicts in thought and life today. Back of the conflict of creeds with its bitter prejudice is religion, and back of international jealousies and troubles is humanity.
I suppose you think I am making a speech, and I wish I had time to [page 3] rewrite and condense what I have said. I can only hurriedly dictate this and get away to Lillian Home at Valencia. What I have said all simmers down to this: Those responsible for the settlement policy today should think deeply of the tendency of the settlement. Then they should secure someone who is in entire sympathy with this policy. This brings me to the conclusion that I am not the one to serve as president for the development of highly technical standardized work; and if that be, in the providence of God, the next step in the settlement movement, then we should get the right person to lead toward this end. I am not this person.
Therefore I believe that we should leave the letterhead just as it is and as soon as possible we should find out and support the president who can carry forward the settlement movement along the line desired.
What I am writing is with the utmost good will and friendship, and with full understanding that more than likely my opinion is not right; that again I am in a hopeless minority, but I must work according to my light.
I have been very much interested lately in informally inviting to dinner at Kingsley House and to discussion afterward leaders in religious thought here. I need not tell you that religious differences here are very deep and dangerous. I have been surprised at the good will and fellowship and friendliness with which this group discussed several religious questions after a very little emphasis on the underlying unity in it all.
With best personal wishes, I remain,
Very sincerely,
(Signed) Charles C. Cooper
P.S. On reading this hurriedly on my way to the country I feel that I have not expressed strongly enough the fact that I heartily agree with you on developing higher standards in the settlement work and especially in the experimental educational lines and in arts and crafts. All this is very fine and I sincerely hope that in time funds will come in here for us to do this very thing.
C. C. C.
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