Dear Madam,
My wife and I are anxious to be placed on your list of prospective residents, and with that end in view are sending under separate cover, statements regarding our past experience and other qualifications which, I believe, indicate that we should be able to render useful service in your settlement.
At present I am studying in the Social Service Department at the University of Chicago. We have both been employed at this school (Chicago and Cook County School for Boys) for the last three years, having had charge of the working boys house.
We are leaving at the end of August, Mrs Wills to continue serving the school in probation work, and I to devote more of my time to study.
We are both graduates of a State Training College for teachers in New Zealand. I taught for two years in a High School for native boys in that country, and later had a successful record as a ↑public↓ school principal. (See Inspectors' Reports). Last June I passed the Chicago Teachers Examination.
I took an active part in the Workers' Educational Association in New Zealand, and was an active member of the Labor Party of that country, conducting a live Labor Sunday School for some time. [page 2]
Here we have belonged to the Lincoln Center Friday Forum, and Mrs Wills, as President of a study circle at Unity Church, Oak Park, has directed the work along broad international lines, emphasizing the fundamental common basis of all religions. She is also a member of the Women's International League. In New Zealand she [organized] a club for working girls that received enthusiastic support. I mention these facts to give you some idea of our attitudes and interests.
As I shall have more free time during the next two years than Mrs Wills, I should be able to give more in the way of service to Hull House than she would be able to do, but we should both be glad to help in every possible way.
We would like to earn a housekeeping apartment in Hull House and to do gratuitously anything that offered in the way of useful service. By so doing we should gain, it seems to us, rich experience along the lines of our major interests, and at the same time be helping in an extremely [worthwhile] undertaking.
May we hear from you regarding possibilities, and if these are favorable may we arrange for a personal interview?
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
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