Jane Addams, known as the "mother" of Social Work, was a pioneer American settlement activist reformer, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace.
Background
Addams was born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois, the eighth child of a successful miller, banker, and landowner. She did not remember her mother, who died when Jane was 3 years old. She was devoted to and profoundly influenced by her father, an idealist and philanthropist of Quaker tendencies and a state senator of Illinois for 16 years.
Education
Addams attended Rockford Female Seminary in northern Illinois, from which she graduated in 1881. The curriculum was dominated by religion and the classics, but she developed an interest in the sciences and entered the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia. After 6 months, illness forced her to discontinue her studies permanently and undergo a spinal operation; she was never quite free of illness throughout her life.
During a leisurely tour in Europe between 1883 and 1885 and winters spent in Baltimore in 1886 and 1887, Addams sought solace in religion. Only after a second trip to Europe in 1887-1888, however, when she visited Toynbee Hall, the famous settlement house in London, did she find a satisfactory outlet for her talents and energies. Toynbee Hall was a social and cultural center in the slums of London's East End; it was designed to introduce young ministerial candidates to the world of England's urban poor. Jane Addams hit upon the idea of providing a similar opportunity for young middle-class American women.
Hull House, in one of Chicago's most poverty-stricken immigrant slums, was originally envisioned as a service to young women desiring more than a homemaker's life. But it soon developed into a great center for the poor of the neighborhood, providing a home for working girls, a theater, a boys' club, a day nursery, and numerous other services. Thousands visited it annually, and Hull House was the source of inspiration for dozens of similar settlement houses in other cities. Its success catapulted Jane Addams into national prominence.
As a way of overcoming the split between immigrant parents and their Americanized offspring, she created the Hull-House Labor Museum in which immigrants were given the opportunity to practice the handicrafts they had learned in their home countries, demonstrating to their children the skills they retained despite the difficulties of acculturation in this strange new society.
Addams's view of education was broad, involving not only the Hull-House neighborhood, but also the larger Chicago community and eventually the world. Addams, who had been widely regarded as an American heroine, was reviled and denounced during these years (as were the immigrants she defended).
She became involved in an attempt to remedy Chicago's corrupt politics, served on a mediation commission in the Pullman railroad strike of 1894, supported the right of labor to organize, and spoke and wrote widely on virtually every reform issue of the day, from woman's suffrage to pacifism. Addams served as an officer for innumerable reform groups, including the Progressive party and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (of which she was president in 1915), and she attended international peace congresses in a dozen European cities. Her books cover wide-ranging subjects: prostitution and woman's rights (A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, 1912, and The Long Road of Woman's Memory, 1916), juvenile delinquency (The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 1909), and militarism in America (Newer ideals of peace, 1906). She was an informal adviser to several American presidents.
Addams died on May 21, 1935, in Chicago, Illinois.
While she remained a member of a Presbyterian church, Addams regularly attended a Unitarian Church and Ethical Society in Chicago. At one point, she was appointed "interim lecturer" at the Ethical Society. Addams also established a close relationship with members of the established Jewish community, notably with the rabbi of Chicago Sinai Congregation, Emil G. Hirsch, and several of Sinai's congregants, among them Judge Julian Mack and Julius Rosenwald.
Politics
In 1898 Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League, in opposition to the U. S. annexation of the Philippines. A staunch supporter of the 'Progressive' Party, she nominated Theodore Roosevelt for the Presidency during the Party Convention.
Views
Although she was not a radical feminist, in her neighborhood Addams worked to educate the women to extend their traditional duties of maintaining their households and protecting the health of their children to a broader concern for community cleanliness and hygiene. But she also isolated herself from the reformers by her willingness to compromise on the controversial issue of removing political influence from the process of teacher promotions.
Quotations:
She was convinced that an adequate education should not be "disconnected from the ultimate test of the conduct it inspired."
Among the first activities of the new settlement were clubs in which children were organized in groups rather than conventional classes.
"The value of these groups," she recalled in her autobiography, "consisted almost entirely in arousing a higher imagination and in giving the children the opportunity which they could not have in the crowded schools, for initiative and for independent social relationships … "
Membership
Addams was a charter member of the American Sociological Society, founded in 1905.
Fellowship of Reconciliation USA
,
United States
1917 - 1933
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Emily Balch recorded her impression of Jane Addams (April 1915):
"Miss Addams shines, so 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. No 'managing', no keeping dark and bringing things subtly to pass, just a radiating wisdom and power of judgement."
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Addams was influenced especially by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and by the pragmatism of philosophers John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.
Connections
Addams married Mary Rozet Smith, who was financially wealthy and supported Addams's work at Hull House. They shared the intimacy of a married couple. Their couplehood did not end until 1934, when Mary died of pneumonia, after forty years together.