This story of the Henry Street Settlement, one of America's foremost centers for social work, is told mainly in terms of the people who benefited most from its existence - the new arrivals and immigrants who were drawn, as if by a magnet, from the Deep South and from the clearing rooms and corridors of Ellis Island to the tenements and streets of New York's Lower East Side. Chapters are devoted to all of the practical aspects of Lillian Wald's service as its Director to an impoverished community: medical care, education, labor organization, social and cultural life, and above all, the children, the youth of new America upon whose heads rested all the dreams of a displaced and embattled generation. Includes an Index.

(Key Words: Lillian D. Wald, Trade Unions, Settlement Houses, Social Service, Theodore Roosevelt, Nursing, Jews, Immigrants, Italians, Education, Child Labor, Henry Street Settlement House).