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[VOL. 42

the-century Baltimore. Between 1870 and 1900, the city's population
grew from 250,000 to 500,000, as ex-Confederates, Negroes, and Euro-
pean refugees crowded into the city. The year 1890 was the beginning
of a severe slump in the economy. Families could not afford even the
cheapest housing so they doubled and tripled up. Unemployment was
rampant; women and children worked for minuscule wages under hor-
rendous conditions in an effort to make ends meet. Services proved
inadequate or nonexistent — police, fire protection, water supply, and
schools were deficient and the city had not yet constructed a sanitary
sewer system.15 Urbanization, industrialization, and depression had
concentrated in Baltimore a growing population of the poor, the sick,
and the ignorant.

The crisis in Baltimore and other cities produced a movement for
social reform. Social reformers joined the already established Progres-
sive Movement in opposing political machines such as the Rasin-
Gorman Ring in Baltimore, and in advocating civil service reform, the
merit system, streamlined government, home rule, and corrupt-prac-
tices legislation.16 But the social reformers who came from the univer-
sities and churches had greater ambitions. They advocated initiatives
designed to remedy the fundamental ills of society--  illiteracy, pes-
tilence, crime, and poverty.17

:        The first leader of the organized Social Reform Movement in Bal-
timore was Daniel Coit Oilman, President of the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity. In 1881, he founded the Charity Organization Society and
modeled it after similar groups in London, Buffalo, Boston, and New
York. It provided the poor with gifts of food, clothing, and coal, along
with "friendly visitors" who volunteered to help on a one-to-one ba-
sis,18 In addition, Jane Addams's pioneer settlement house in Chicago
was soon copied by Baltimore clergyman Edward H. Lawrence.19 Fur-
ther, Baltimore philanthropists Robert Garrett and Henry Walters cop-
ied projects undertaken elsewhere in sponsoring playgrounds and
public baths.20



Social reformers found support for their efforts among Baltimore's
medical community. Recent discoveries in bacteriology led prominent

15. J. CROOKS, supra note 7, at 155-56.

• 16. See generally J. CROOKS, supra note 7; R. HOFSTADTER, THE ACE OF REFORM:
FROM BRYAN TO F.D.R. (1955); Crane, The Origins of Progressivism, in THE PROGRESSIVE ERA 11-34 (1_ Gould ed. 1974).

17. S. HUSER, EFFICIENCY AND UPLIFT SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND THE PROGRES-
SIVE ERA 1890-1920 77 (1964).

18. J. CROOKS, supra note 7, at 158-59.

19. Id. at 162.

20. Id. at 180-83.