JA: "Welcome to Hull House, Mr. Plato. I hope you can see that, unlike your time in Athens, we have free primary schools. In fact, "Adult night schools and settlements, of which Hull Houseais a pioneer, (has) helped educate the immigrants in American ways and to protect them from the rougher sort of exploitation" (Morison 1965 782).
P: My dear Miss Addams, Hull House and your enterprises certainly differ from what I consider the ideal Republic to be. Oh, I know about that famous statue in New York Harbor which offers indulgent welcome to the tired and the poor from other parts of the world, but, Miss Addams, there has to be a winnowing out of the strong and the intelligent and the useful. I strongly believe in the "abolition of the family within the ideal city·'All these women shall be wives in common to all the men, and not one of them shall live privately with any man; the children too should be held in common so that no parent shall know which is his own offspring, and no child shall know his parent' (Plato 119). This abolition of the family is made worse by a belief in the need for eugenics, in that "the best men must have intercourse with the best women as frequently as possible, and the opposite is true of the very inferior' (Plato 121)." (Poretsky 1999 2).
JA: That is close to being fascistic. Do not forget that we live under the principle that all men are created equal, and that free education, as espoused by one of our nation's founders, Thomas Jefferson, makes us far different than most of the rest of the world. And, the family that is educated and believes in free thought is a family that can and will contribute to the welfare of this nation.
P: In an ideal state, the family might well be irrelevant. "a there would still be procreation, and marriage would even be celebrated--"our poets must compose hymns to celebrate the marriages" (Plato 121). However, these marriages would be anything but pure in that they wou...