Jane Addams
Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was an American social worker, sociologist, philosopher and reformer, known in America as the "mother of social work". Her work brought about many changes crucial to the creation of an external environment where people could develop their internal potential. She said that without “ethics” and “righteousness” life becomes meaningless. She took responsibility when she saw injustice and as a result helped bring about changes in almost every aspect of life. In her essay about Democracy and Social Ethics, she said: “to pride one’s self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation. … a standard of social ethics is not attained by traveling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another’s burdens.” Although she began by creating a settlement house (Hull-House) in Chicago where the better educated could mingle with and bring a more refined culture to the poor, she quickly began to work toward helping enact legislation to improve the daily lives of the people she saw each day. She began by starting art, literature and cooking clubs and progressed to providing a location for unions to meet. She attempted to address injustices as she saw them, dealing with everything from child labor to garbage collection and keeping the streets clean. She fought against women being sold into prostitution and worked to regulate the number of hours women should be allowed to work. Not only did she herself arise early and work hard so others could not keep up with her pace, but she encouraged those around her to excel. “If you want to be surrounded by second-rate ability, you will dominate your settlement. If you want the best ability, you must allow great liberty of action among your residents.” She worked internationally to support women’s suffrage and to establish world peace. In Patriotism and Pacifism in War Time, she wrote, “This world crisis should be utilized for the creation of an international government to secure without war, those high ends which they now gallantly seek to obtain upon the battlefield. With such a creed can the pacifists of today be accused of selfishness when they urge upon the United States no isolation, nor indifference to moral issues and to the fate of liberty and democracy, but a strenuous endeavor to lead all nations of the earth into an organized international life worthy of civilized men.” She emphasized the role of women in the establishment of world peace and started the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915. She was a founding member of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Although her father was a founding member of the Republican Party and she greatly admired Abraham Lincoln, many of her ideas were later considered part of the liberal political viewpoint. I do not believe that political association was as important to her as elimination of injustice. She was a woman of great integrity and was highly insulted when she was offered a bribe not to continue to support the unions. She carried out her efforts for world peace despite accusation of being a communist (which she emphatically denied, claiming that she did not even believe in socialism) and she held fast to her efforts despite expulsion from the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). She was twice turned down by the Nobel Peace committee because she was too radical. However, at the very end of her life, she received the Nobel Peace Prize, but was too ill to accept it herself. She wrote many books and essays. Twenty Years and Hull-House includes biographical notes explaining how even as a young child her humanitarianism began to develop.
Biography
Jane Addams had great aspirations to help resolve human injustice. Born in Cedarville, Illinois, .Jane Addams was educated in the United States and Europe, graduating from the Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford College) in Rockford, Illinois.
In 1889 she and Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, one of the first settlement houses in the United States. Influenced by Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, settlement houses provided welfare for a neighborhood's poor and a center for social reform. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around two thousand people. Its facilities included a night school for adults; kindergarten classes; clubs for older children; a public kitchen; an art gallery; a coffeehouse; a gymnasium; a girls club; a swimming pool; a book bindery; a music school; a drama group; a library; and labor-related divisions.
Hull House also served as a women's sociological institution. Addams was a friend and colleague to the early members of the Chicago School of Sociology, influencing their thought through her work in applied sociology and, in 1893, co-authoring the Hull-House Maps and Papers that came to define the interests and methodologies of the School. She worked with George Herbert Mead on social reform issues including women's rights and the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike. Although academic sociologists of the time defined her work as "social work", Addams did not consider herself a social worker. She combined the central concepts of symbolic interactionism with the theories of cultural feminism and pragmatism to form her sociological ideas. (Deegan, 1988)
In addition to her involvement in the American Anti-Imperialist League and the American Sociology Association, she was also a formative member of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1911 she helped to establish the National Foundation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers and became its first president. She was also a leader in women's suffrage and pacifist movements, and took part in the creation of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915. In 1931 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with American educator Nicholas Murray Butler.
Publications
- Addams, J. 1902. Democracy and social ethics. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishers.
- Addams, J. 1905. Children in American street trades. New York, NY: National Child Labor Committee.
- Addams, J. 1907. New ideals of peace. Chautauqua, NY: Chautauqua Press.
- Addams, J. 1910. The Wage-earning Woman and the State. Boston, MA: Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government.
- Addams, J. 1911. Symposium: child labor on the stage. New York, NY: National Child Labor Committee.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
Deegan, Mary, Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892-1918. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, Inc., 1988.
External links
- Harvard University Library Open Collections Program. Women Working, 1870-1930. Jane Addams (1860-1935). A full-text searchable online database with complete access to publications written by Jane Addams.
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