An awareness of morality in regard to one's behavior; a sense of right and wrong that urges one to act morally: Let your conscience be your guide. b. A source of moral or ethical judgment or pronouncement: a document that serves as the nation's conscience.
Inspired by the British movement, American social reformers began founding settlement houses in the late 1880s to respond to growing industrial poverty. In 1886, Stanton Coit founded Neighborhood Guild, the first US settlement house, in New York City.In 1889, Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Starr founded Hull-House in Chicago, which would eventually become the most famous settlement house in the US.By 1887, there were 74 settlements in the United States, and the number had ballooned to over 400 by 1890.pproximately half of the major US settlement houses were led and staffed predominantly by women. Among the most influential leaders were Jane Addams, Mary Simkhovitch, Helena Dudley, Lillian Wald, Mary McDowell, Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, and Edith Abbott.
Development of U.S. Settlement Model. Americans such as Jane Addams (1860-1935) and Lillian Wald (1867-1940) brought the settlement movement across the ocean by the early 1890s. Addams founded Hull-House in Chicago in 1889, and Wald opened the Henry Street Settlement in New York in 1895. But the American movement differed significantly from the English model. First, a large number of the U.S. settlement founders and residents were women, while in Great Britain the residents were mostly men. Given the greater opportunities for women in higher education in the United States, many of the settlement women had college degrees.