Women of Influence: Jane Addams
A recent book about the coming of the first world war was published last year entitled The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future by Neil Lanctot. As someone who fancies himself as knowledgeable about Presidential history, I was embarrassed to admit that I had no idea who the Addams referred to was. I have since educated myself and learned more about the remarkable life of Jane Addams, a leading feminist and social reformer of her time and a Nobel Prize Winner.
Laura Jane Addams, better known by her middle name, was a prominent leader in the history of social work and in the women's suffrage movement in the United States, as well as a leading advocate for world peace. She was a co-founder of Chicago's Hull House, one of America's most famous settlement houses. In 1910, Addams was received an honorary master of arts degree from Yale University, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the school. In 1920, she was a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Today she is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States.
In the Progressive Era, when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were considered to be reformers, progressives and social activists, Addams was miles ahead of them and was considered to be the most prominent reformer of her time. She helped her nation confront issues of concern to women and to mothers, including the needs of children, local public health, and world peace.
Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois on September 6, 1860, the youngest of eight children born into a prosperous northern Illinois family. In 1863, when Addams was two years old, her mother, Sarah Addams (née Weber), died while pregnant with her ninth child. Addams was cared for mostly by her older sisters. Her father, John H. Addams, was a founding member of the Illinois Republican Party who served as an Illinois State Senator. He was a friend and supporter of Abraham Lincoln and he kept a letter from Lincoln in his desk. Addams loved and admired her father and he supported his daughter's goal of becoming a doctor. Jane Addams wanted to attend the new college for women, Smith College in Massachusetts, but her father required her to attend nearby Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford University), in Rockford, Illinois. After graduating from Rockford in 1881, she hoped to pursue her education but that summer, her father died unexpectedly from a sudden case of appendicitis. She and her siblings each inherited roughly $50,000 (equivalent to roughly $1.4 million today) from his estate. Addams, her sister Alice, Alice's husband Harry, and their stepmother, Anna Haldeman Addams, all moved to Philadelphia where Jane could pursue medical education. Jane and Alice completed their first year of medical school at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, but Jane's health prevented her from completing her degree. She required a spinal operation, which was subsequently performed by her brother-in-law Harry. In August 1883, she set off for a two-year tour of Europe with her stepmother. Addams decided to abandon her plans to become a doctor, but hoped to be able to help the poor in some other capacity.
In 1889 Addams and her college friend and romantic partner Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago. Addams paid for all of the capital expenses and most of the operating costs, supplemented by gifts from other individuals. A number of wealthy women became important long-term donors to the House. Addams and Starr were the first two occupants of the house, which would later become home to about 25 women. Hull House was later visited each week by about 2,000 people. It was a center for research, empirical analysis, study, and debate. Its aims were to give privileged, educated young people contact with the real life of the majority of the population. Residents of Hull House learned about housing conditions, midwifery, fatigue, tuberculosis, typhoid, garbage collection, cocaine abuse, and truancy. Hull House residents were primarily well-educated women who supported labor unions, the National Consumers League and the suffrage movement. The house also operated a night school for adults, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a gym, a girls' club, a bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group and a theater, apartments, a library, meeting rooms for discussion, clubs, an employment bureau, and a lunchroom. Hull House also provided young social workers to receive training. Eventually, Hull House became a 13-building settlement complex, which included a playground and a summer camp.
In 1898, Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League, an organization that opposed the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. In spite of this however she became a supporter of Theodore Roosevelt, and especially of the Progressive Party. It was Addams who nominated Roosevelt for President at the Party's convention in Chicago in August of 1912. She acknowledged her support for the party platform, even though it called for building more battleships. She went on to campaign extensively for Roosevelt during the 1912 presidential campaign.
In January 1915, she became involved in the Woman's Peace Party, a pacifist and feminist organization established in January 1915 in opposition to US involvement to World War I. She was elected as its national chairman. Addams was chosen by a women's group of European peace activists to preside over the International Congress of Women in The Hague, at its conference in April of 1915. She was also chosen to head the commission to look for solutions to end the war. She met with ten leaders of neutral countries as well as some of those at war to discuss mediation. Addams is described by one of her contemporaries as being "respectful of everyone's views, so eager to understand and sympathize, so patient of anarchy and even ego, yet always there, strong, wise and in the lead."
Addams was elected president of the International Committee of Women for a Permanent Peace, a group that was established to continue the work of the Hague Congress. The group met in 1919 in Zurich, Switzerland. The International Committee developed into the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Addams continued as president, and in that role would frequently travel to Europe and Asia for meetings.
When the US joined the allies in the first world war in 1917, Addams came under public criticism for her pacifist views. The New York Times was particularly antagonistic towards her, describing her as unpatriotic. Despite this, Addams continued to meet with diplomats and public leaders, in her continuing mission to bring about peace. In recognition of these efforts, she later received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, becoming the first American woman to win the prize. Addams her prize money to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Addams claimed to be influenced especially by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and by philosophers John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. Even before the first world war, she had opposed the Spanish–American War and she authored a book entitled Newer Ideals of Peace in 1907. In 1915 when she chaired this pathbreaking International Congress of Women at the Hague, almost 1,200 participants from 12 warring and neutral countries attended. Their goal was to develop a framework to end the violence of war. Addams and her fellow delegates asserted that national and international political systems excluded women's voices and that such exclusion led to flawed policy. The delegates adopted a series of resolutions addressing these problems. Her leadership during the conference and her travels to the capitals of the war-torn regions were mentioned in her nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1915 Addams gave a speech at Carnegie Hall and was booed offstage for opposing U.S. intervention into World War I. Her views were denounced by patriotic groups and newspapers during the war. She also had her defenders, including noted journalist Oswald Garrison Villard, who said of her: " With what abuse did not the [New York] Times cover her, one of the noblest of our women, because she told the simple truth that the Allied troops were often given liquor or drugs before charging across No Man's Land. Yet when the facts came out at the hands of Sir Philip Gibbs and others not one word of apology was ever forthcoming." The Daughters of the American Revolution expelled Addams from membership in their organization.
Addams regained support in the 1920s when President Calvin Coolidge spoke favorably about her efforts with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and her campaign to prohibit poison gas. President Woodrow Wilson had been quite critical of Addams. This was in keeping with Wilson's general point of view that anyone critical of the war effort was unpatriotic and treasonous. Addams views were more congruent with those of President Warren Harding, who convened an annual peace conference. Addams' receipt of the Nobel Peace prize enhanced her reputation even more.
One area in which Addams differed with Harding was when it came to prohibition, which she supported. She considered alcohol as being at the root of many social problems, in particular prostitution and violence against women. She argued that "professional houses of prostitution could not sustain themselves without the vehicle of alcohol."
Addams wrote an essay entitled "Utilization of Women in City Government", in which she drew a connection between the workings of government and the household. She commented on how many departments of government, such as sanitation and the educating children, could be traced back to traditional women's roles. From this, she argued that these were matters for which women had greater knowledge of than men, and should therefore have a greater decision making role when it came to such things. To do so, women needed to be able to vote to do so effectively.
Jane Addams died on May 21, 1935 at the age of 74 in Chicago. She continues to be remembered both in her field of sociology as well as in the LGBTQ+ community. She is credited with changing attitudes toward the less fortunate and with having made a major contribution to the field of sociology. She helped to bring about major changes related to child labor, mandatory education, the establishment of juvenile courts, and in improving the working conditions for both women and men. She is also remember for her work with women suffrage, with the NAACP and the ACLU and for her yeoman efforts to bring about peace during the First World War. But she was not one to rest on her laurels. In 1902 she wrote:
"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."
Hull House had to relocate when the University of Illinois established its Chicago campus, but the original residence has been preserved as a museum and monument to Jane Addams.
Laura Jane Addams, better known by her middle name, was a prominent leader in the history of social work and in the women's suffrage movement in the United States, as well as a leading advocate for world peace. She was a co-founder of Chicago's Hull House, one of America's most famous settlement houses. In 1910, Addams was received an honorary master of arts degree from Yale University, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the school. In 1920, she was a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Today she is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States.
In the Progressive Era, when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were considered to be reformers, progressives and social activists, Addams was miles ahead of them and was considered to be the most prominent reformer of her time. She helped her nation confront issues of concern to women and to mothers, including the needs of children, local public health, and world peace.
Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois on September 6, 1860, the youngest of eight children born into a prosperous northern Illinois family. In 1863, when Addams was two years old, her mother, Sarah Addams (née Weber), died while pregnant with her ninth child. Addams was cared for mostly by her older sisters. Her father, John H. Addams, was a founding member of the Illinois Republican Party who served as an Illinois State Senator. He was a friend and supporter of Abraham Lincoln and he kept a letter from Lincoln in his desk. Addams loved and admired her father and he supported his daughter's goal of becoming a doctor. Jane Addams wanted to attend the new college for women, Smith College in Massachusetts, but her father required her to attend nearby Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford University), in Rockford, Illinois. After graduating from Rockford in 1881, she hoped to pursue her education but that summer, her father died unexpectedly from a sudden case of appendicitis. She and her siblings each inherited roughly $50,000 (equivalent to roughly $1.4 million today) from his estate. Addams, her sister Alice, Alice's husband Harry, and their stepmother, Anna Haldeman Addams, all moved to Philadelphia where Jane could pursue medical education. Jane and Alice completed their first year of medical school at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, but Jane's health prevented her from completing her degree. She required a spinal operation, which was subsequently performed by her brother-in-law Harry. In August 1883, she set off for a two-year tour of Europe with her stepmother. Addams decided to abandon her plans to become a doctor, but hoped to be able to help the poor in some other capacity.
In 1889 Addams and her college friend and romantic partner Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago. Addams paid for all of the capital expenses and most of the operating costs, supplemented by gifts from other individuals. A number of wealthy women became important long-term donors to the House. Addams and Starr were the first two occupants of the house, which would later become home to about 25 women. Hull House was later visited each week by about 2,000 people. It was a center for research, empirical analysis, study, and debate. Its aims were to give privileged, educated young people contact with the real life of the majority of the population. Residents of Hull House learned about housing conditions, midwifery, fatigue, tuberculosis, typhoid, garbage collection, cocaine abuse, and truancy. Hull House residents were primarily well-educated women who supported labor unions, the National Consumers League and the suffrage movement. The house also operated a night school for adults, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a gym, a girls' club, a bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group and a theater, apartments, a library, meeting rooms for discussion, clubs, an employment bureau, and a lunchroom. Hull House also provided young social workers to receive training. Eventually, Hull House became a 13-building settlement complex, which included a playground and a summer camp.
In 1898, Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League, an organization that opposed the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. In spite of this however she became a supporter of Theodore Roosevelt, and especially of the Progressive Party. It was Addams who nominated Roosevelt for President at the Party's convention in Chicago in August of 1912. She acknowledged her support for the party platform, even though it called for building more battleships. She went on to campaign extensively for Roosevelt during the 1912 presidential campaign.
In January 1915, she became involved in the Woman's Peace Party, a pacifist and feminist organization established in January 1915 in opposition to US involvement to World War I. She was elected as its national chairman. Addams was chosen by a women's group of European peace activists to preside over the International Congress of Women in The Hague, at its conference in April of 1915. She was also chosen to head the commission to look for solutions to end the war. She met with ten leaders of neutral countries as well as some of those at war to discuss mediation. Addams is described by one of her contemporaries as being "respectful of everyone's views, so eager to understand and sympathize, so patient of anarchy and even ego, yet always there, strong, wise and in the lead."
Addams was elected president of the International Committee of Women for a Permanent Peace, a group that was established to continue the work of the Hague Congress. The group met in 1919 in Zurich, Switzerland. The International Committee developed into the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Addams continued as president, and in that role would frequently travel to Europe and Asia for meetings.
When the US joined the allies in the first world war in 1917, Addams came under public criticism for her pacifist views. The New York Times was particularly antagonistic towards her, describing her as unpatriotic. Despite this, Addams continued to meet with diplomats and public leaders, in her continuing mission to bring about peace. In recognition of these efforts, she later received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, becoming the first American woman to win the prize. Addams her prize money to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Addams claimed to be influenced especially by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and by philosophers John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. Even before the first world war, she had opposed the Spanish–American War and she authored a book entitled Newer Ideals of Peace in 1907. In 1915 when she chaired this pathbreaking International Congress of Women at the Hague, almost 1,200 participants from 12 warring and neutral countries attended. Their goal was to develop a framework to end the violence of war. Addams and her fellow delegates asserted that national and international political systems excluded women's voices and that such exclusion led to flawed policy. The delegates adopted a series of resolutions addressing these problems. Her leadership during the conference and her travels to the capitals of the war-torn regions were mentioned in her nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1915 Addams gave a speech at Carnegie Hall and was booed offstage for opposing U.S. intervention into World War I. Her views were denounced by patriotic groups and newspapers during the war. She also had her defenders, including noted journalist Oswald Garrison Villard, who said of her: " With what abuse did not the [New York] Times cover her, one of the noblest of our women, because she told the simple truth that the Allied troops were often given liquor or drugs before charging across No Man's Land. Yet when the facts came out at the hands of Sir Philip Gibbs and others not one word of apology was ever forthcoming." The Daughters of the American Revolution expelled Addams from membership in their organization.
Addams regained support in the 1920s when President Calvin Coolidge spoke favorably about her efforts with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and her campaign to prohibit poison gas. President Woodrow Wilson had been quite critical of Addams. This was in keeping with Wilson's general point of view that anyone critical of the war effort was unpatriotic and treasonous. Addams views were more congruent with those of President Warren Harding, who convened an annual peace conference. Addams' receipt of the Nobel Peace prize enhanced her reputation even more.
One area in which Addams differed with Harding was when it came to prohibition, which she supported. She considered alcohol as being at the root of many social problems, in particular prostitution and violence against women. She argued that "professional houses of prostitution could not sustain themselves without the vehicle of alcohol."
Addams wrote an essay entitled "Utilization of Women in City Government", in which she drew a connection between the workings of government and the household. She commented on how many departments of government, such as sanitation and the educating children, could be traced back to traditional women's roles. From this, she argued that these were matters for which women had greater knowledge of than men, and should therefore have a greater decision making role when it came to such things. To do so, women needed to be able to vote to do so effectively.
Jane Addams died on May 21, 1935 at the age of 74 in Chicago. She continues to be remembered both in her field of sociology as well as in the LGBTQ+ community. She is credited with changing attitudes toward the less fortunate and with having made a major contribution to the field of sociology. She helped to bring about major changes related to child labor, mandatory education, the establishment of juvenile courts, and in improving the working conditions for both women and men. She is also remember for her work with women suffrage, with the NAACP and the ACLU and for her yeoman efforts to bring about peace during the First World War. But she was not one to rest on her laurels. In 1902 she wrote:
"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."
Hull House had to relocate when the University of Illinois established its Chicago campus, but the original residence has been preserved as a museum and monument to Jane Addams.