Jane Addams (1860 - 1935)

Perhaps no other social worker has been more influential in developing social work’s mission of fighting for social justice and advocating for the disenfranchised than Jane Addams. She overcame personal struggles with both physical and mental health to become one of the leading social reformers in the history of the United States. Jane Addams devoted her adult life to these activities. She is best known for her role in the founding and administration of Hull-House in Chicago, but her achievements stretched far beyond Chicago’s Near West Side.

Jane Addams was born in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. Her mother died while Jane was an infant. Therefore, she was very attached and strongly influenced by her father, John Addams. John Addams was a religious man and was deeply committed to public service. He instilled this sense of public service and Quaker values in Jane. Jane’s childhood was also influenced by her contracting of spinal tuberculosis, which left her unable to stand fully upright and kept her head permanently titled to one side. This was later corrected when Jane underwent a major back surgery and long recuperation as a young adult.

In the late 1800's there was a new breed of college educated women who were intelligent and eager to contribute to society. However, there were few doors open to these women for further education or careers. Jane Addams found herself in this predicament after graduating from Rockford College in 1887. She wanted more in her life than being an educated homemaker. Her plan was to attend the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia to train as a doctor. However, during her first year of course work Jane was bed ridden by her back surgery, and suffered one of her first episodes of deep depression and nervous exhaustion. It is interesting to note that mental illness was prominent in the Addams family. One of Jane’s brothers was completely incapacitated by mental illness. Jane began to take extended trips to Europe as a part of her recuperation and to find some meaningful activity with which to fill her time. It was during this trip that she was exposed to poverty and the oppression of the working class. She visited Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in East London, and began to develop a plan with her friend Ellen Star to open such a house in one of the poor neighborhoods of Chicago. Addams describes her conviction to do something about the poverty and injustice she witnessed:

[W]ith high expectations and a certain belief that whatever perplexities and discouragement concerning the life of the poor were in store for me, I should at least know something first hand and have the solace of daily activity. I had confidence that although life itself might contain many difficulties, the period of mere passive receptivity had come to an end, and I had at last finished with the everlasting ‘preparation for life,’ however ill-prepared I might be (Addams, 1990, p. 53).

On their return to the states Addams and Star moved to Chicago in January of 1889 and began their quest to open a settlement house in one of the poverty stricken immigrant neighborhoods. In part the success of their venture was related to the time they spent advertising and gathering support for their project. By the time they moved into Hull-House in September 1889, their project was widely covered in newspapers and magazines (Davis, 1973). The Hull-House settlement eventually expanded from a few rooms in the original Hull house to a complex which included 13 buildings and covered a city block.

Hull-House became The services at Hull-House can roughly be divided into three areas: direct services for neighborhood residents, research, and social reform. Some of the direct services that were provided at Hull-House were day care, health care, citizenship preparation courses, cultural and art activities, labor union organization, and English language courses. The Hull-House became a gathering spot for many of the important social reformers and researchers of the early 20^th century. Some of the social problems that were researched by residents were infant mortality, working conditions in the factories, housing conditions, sanitation, and truancy. Many of these investigations led to social reforms in Illinois such as juvenile courts, child labor laws, and compulsory educations laws. Some of Addams and other residents efforts led to social policy being enacted at the national level such as the creation of the Federal Children’s Bureau and a national child labor law.

Jane Addams wrote prolifically about her work at the Hull-House and broader areas of social reform that she played an active role in. This helped make her one of the most famous women in the world. She became increasingly political and vocal about her beliefs in social justice and empowerment of the oppressed at local, national and international levels. She began her political career by becoming the garbage inspector for the 19^th Ward in the Near West Side of Chicago in 1895. She went on to become a member of the Chicago Board of Education from 1905-1908. In 1909 she helped to found the National Association of Colored People and was elected as the first woman president of the what came to be the National Conference of Social Work. In 1920, she was involved in the creation of the American Civil Liberties Union which continues to be dedicated insuring social justice.

In 1912, Jane Addams had the attention of the nation when she seconded Theodore Roosevelt’s nomination for president at the Bull Moose Convention even though she would not be allowed to vote in the election. This was an exciting time for those committed to social reform, which is reflected in her approval of the Progressive party’s agenda in her nomination speech:

A great party has pledged itself to the protection of children, to the care of the aged, to the relief of overworked girls, to the safe guarding of burdened men (NYT cited in Davies, p. 189).

During this same period she was also involved in the fight for women’s suffrage in the United States and internationally. She was the first Vice President of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association and was actively involved in the Congress of International Women’s Suffrage. During World War I Addams became involved in the international peace movement. Her pacifist views were not very popular in the United States and she saw a decline in the public support for herself and for Hull-House. However, she continued her work with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Her efforts with this organization earned her the first Nobel Peace Prize awarded to an American woman in 1931.

By: Robin W. Allen, MSW, PhD & Denice Goodrich Liley, MSW, PhD

References

Addams, J. (1990). Twenty years at Hull-House with autobiographical notes. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Davis, A. F. (1973). American heroine: The life and legend of Jane Addams. NY: Oxford University Press.