[From the Ward Street Settlement House Annual Report for 1922, printed as a 24-page booklet on cream paper, distributed to donors and to the Port Hume City Council in February 1923. Excerpted — the director's letter and the summary of services. Signed by the director.]

WARD STREET SETTLEMENT HOUSE

Annual Report, Year 1922

A LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR.

To the friends, supporters, and neighbors of the Ward Street Settlement House —

We come to the end of our fifteenth year at 114 Ward Street, and to the close of a year in which our community has suffered losses of a kind that have not been met, since my arrival in Port Hume in 1908, with such concentration. I will not, in this opening, recount those losses. Our friends of Little Warsaw know what they are; our friends of the Ward know what they are; our friends in the Heights and on the Crescent who support this House have read the newspapers and know, in outline, the summer of our year.

What I wish to say to you is not about what we have suffered. What I wish to say is about the thirty-seven families who came to this House's door, in the weeks that followed the events of July, for one thing or another — a meal, a translator, a lawyer, a loan, a place for a frightened mother and three children to sit for an hour without saying anything. We did our best for them. We did not do enough for all of them; we did something for most of them. Of those thirty-seven, twenty-eight are still in Port Hume; three have moved away (two to Chicago, one to Toronto); six are, as I write, in the Ward Street hospital with minor injuries or with infants who were born in the weeks of their mothers' particular fears. We will see all of them, I believe, at our Christmas party in December; Mrs. Blaine of the League has sent word that the League will, for the third year, underwrite the gifts for the children, to which I add the House's thanks on behalf of our neighbors.

I wish to thank, particularly, the women of our neighborhood whose work at this House throughout the year has been, as always, the thing that has made this House not a settlement but a home. Mrs. Halina Vasko has taught our sewing classes on Thursday afternoons since 1920 and did not miss a single class in 1922 — not a single one, though she had every reason in the world, in July, to let the class lapse. Mrs. Nowak of St. Casimir's school has been our Polish-English tutor on Wednesday evenings. Miss Thorogood of the Douglass School has extended her usual kindnesses in our matters of the Bethel congregation's Ward families, and has been instrumental in our joint coat-drive of last February. Fr. Jarzembek of St. Casimir's, whose death in October has fallen upon our house as upon every house in Little Warsaw, was for twenty-one years a steady friend of this settlement; the continuing friendship of his successor Fr. Kruszewski is already apparent.

Our financial position is sound, though not comfortable. Our year-end balance is positive. Our subscriptions from the Crescent and the Heights have been steady. Our collections-at-the-door remain the backbone of our operation. I ask, in closing, for your continued support in 1923, on the same footing as in 1922 — or, if 1923 has given you the means, on a marginally more generous one.

I remain, as always,

Your friend in the work,

Georgia Applegate Director, Ward Street Settlement House January 1923.

SERVICES TENDERED IN 1922 — SUMMARY.

===========================================================================
  SERVICE                                   FAMILIES SERVED    VALUE
===========================================================================
  English language classes                      127             $2,030
  Polish-English legal translations               68             $  810
  Maternal and infant health clinic (w/
    Mrs. Dr. Somers of the Ward and Mrs.
    Cornelia Nissen, visiting nurse)             89             $1,580
  Coat drive (winter 1921-22)                    212             $  412
    (coats and boots distributed)
  Summer children's camp (3 weeks, July
    1922; at Aldenhaven Point by courtesy of
    the Reddick family, who open their back
    field to the House each summer)               84             $  640
  Emergency aid in the matter of the
    Blackwell strike (July-August 1922)           37             $  524
  Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners              — (approx.
                                                  380 meals)    $  180
  Legal aid consultations (with pro-bono
    counsel of Mr. Stamford and Mr. Halpren
    of the Crescent; 14 consultations)             14             $  150
  Employment-finding (placed at Cadenza
    & Sons, Hume Shipping, Blackwell 
    Iron — post-strike — Apollo Club,             
    and three Heights households)                 23             $  (none
                                                                   charged)
===========================================================================

[the report continues for fourteen more pages with board membership, financial statements, and narrative case-studies (names withheld). Not reproduced here.]