Jane Addams

Jane Addams (1860-1935) was a pioneer American settlement worker and founder of Hull House in Chicago, Ill., author, pacifist and woman's leader. She was the most prominent woman of the Progressive Era.

Early career

Addams was born in Cedarville, Ill., on Sept. 6, 1860; her father, a Yankee, was a prominent Republican politician and supporter of Abraham Lincoln. At Rockford Seminary, Ill., which she attended from 1877 to 1881, the conscientiousness tinged with rebellion that characterized her career began to appear. Valedictorian and president of her class, she played a leading part in transforming the Congregational finishing school school into a degree-conferring college. Elshtain (2002) emphasizes her religiosity, showing that Addams was influenced by Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and tried to imitate Christ through a service ethic.

In 1881 her father died. Eight restless and unhappy years followed in which she underwent painful operations to correct a spinal curvature. In 1883-1888 Addams traveled in Europe seeking a purpose in life. The idea of founding a settlement house for the underprivileged came to her in Spain in 1888. In England she visited Toynbee Hall, London's famous settlement house, and consulted the head resident, Canon Samuel A. Barnett.

Hull House

In September 1889, Addams and a friend, Ellen Gates Starr, moved into an 1850s mansion built by banker Charles Hull, but located in a neighborhood that had become a crowded multiethnic slum on the near West Side of Chicago controlled by local political bosses. Hull House, as Jane Addams called it, became America's best known settlement house. Elshtain (2002) argues that Addams used Hull House to generate system-directed change--to keep families safe, community and societal conditions must be improved. It offered a comprehensive program of civic, cultural, recreational, and educational activities and attracted admiring visitors from all over the world. In the 1890s Julia Lathrop, Florence Kelley, and other residents of the house made it a world center of social reform activity. Starting with efforts to improve the immediate neighborhood, the Hull House group became involved in city- and state-wide campaigns for better housing, improvements in public welfare, stricter child-labor laws, and protection of working women. Addams brought in prominent visitors from around the world, and had close links with leading Chicago intellectuals and philanthropists. In 1912 she helped found the Progressive Party and supported the presidential campaign of Theodore Roosevelt, even though his platform called for building more battleships.

World Peace

After 1915 Addams, who never married, centered her interests in the peace movement and was a founder and president of the Woman's International League for Peace and Freedom. Her pacifism was denounced by patriotic groups during World War I (1917-18), which she reluctantly supported. After 1920, however, she was widely regarded as the greatest woman of the Progressive Era and in 1931 she won the Nobel Peace prize.

Children

Hull House stressed the role of children in the Americanization process of new immigrants, and fostered the play movement and the research and service fields of leisure, youth, and human services. Addams argued in The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909) that play and recreation programs are needed because cities are destroying the spirit of youth. Addams feared that cities and factories were killing the spirit of youth; recreation and play were healthy mediums to channel the spirit of youth. Hull-House featured multiple programs in art and drama, along with a labor museum and playground. Addams spoke of the "undoubted powers of public recreation to bring together the classes of a community in the modern city unhappily so full of devices for keeping them apart." Addams worked with the Chicago Board of Health and served as the first vice-president of the Playground Association of America.

Addams ideals

Addams stressed that women--especially middle class women with leisure and energy, as well as rich philanthropists-- had a civic duty to become involved in municipal affairs as a matter of "civic housekeeping." Addams argued that women, as opposed to men, are trained in the delicate matters of human welfare and need to build upon their traditional roles of housekeeping to be civic housekeepers. Enlarged housekeeping duties involved reform efforts regarding poisonous sewage, impure milk (which often carried tuberculosis), smoke-laden air, and unsafe factory conditions. Addams led the "garbage wars"; in 1894 she became the first woman appointed as sanitary inspector of the Chicago 19th ward. With the help of the Hull-House Women's Club, within a year over 1000 health department violations were reported to city counsel and garbage collection reduced death and disease.

Legacy

She died on May 21, 1935, in Chicago. Her books include Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) and Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), as well as two influential autobiographies, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910), and The Second Twenty Years at Hull House (1930). Her work is commemorated by the Jane Addams School of Social Work, a unit of the University of Illinois, Chicago. Hull House is a museum, located on the university campus. A letterpress edition of Addams' letters and publications is underway.

Bibliography

• Davis, Allen.
• Deegan, M. J. Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago school, 1892-1918. (1988)
• Jean Bethke Elshtain; Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life 2002 online edition
• Linn, J. W. Jane Addams: A biography. (1935)
• Lissak, R. S. Pluralism and progressives: Hull-House and the new immigrants. (1989)
• Philpott, Thomas. L. The slum and the ghetto: Immigrants, Blacks, and reformers in Chicago, 1880-1930. (1991).
• Stebner, E. J. The women of Hull-House: A study in spirituality, vocation, and friendship. (1997).

Primary sources

• Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes, 1910 online edition
• Addams, Jane. Peace and Bread in Time of War 1922 online edition
• Jean B. Elshtain, ed. The Jane Addams Reader (2002)
• Lasch, Christopher, ed. The social thought of Jane Addams. (1965).

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