Why was Hull House Maps and Papers important as a sociological work?
ROBYN MUNCY: Hull House Maps and Papers was a sociological study of the nineteenth ward, the neighborhood in which Hull House was situated. And it was based on a social survey that Florence Kelly oversaw. Florence Kelly was one of the early residents of Hull House. She was, herself a social scientist, a graduate of Cornell [University]. She was commissioned by the Commissioner of Labor to oversee a study of the nineteenth ward that would include a study of wages, [and of] nationalities. The Commissioner of Labor sent three or four agents to help Florence Kelly do this social survey of the neighborhood. They compiled all these statistics, all this information, [which] they sent back to Washington. But before they did that, the women of Hull House took down some of the information for their own use. They took down all the information on nationalities, and all the information about wages, and then they transformed that information into two great big maps. One was the map of nationalities
