Jane Addam - Trabajo Social

JANE ADDAMS AS SOCIAL WORKER
THE EARLY YEARS AT HULL HOUSE
by
Lionel Charles Lane
A DISSERTATION
IN SOCIAL WORK
Presented to the Faculty of the School of Social Work of

the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Social Work.
1963
&
Advisor of Dissertation
zn
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
PREFACE
Jane Addams, born into a comfortable middle class
family and reared in a small, rural community, devoted her
adult life to securing help and protection for the weak,
the defenseless and the exploited. Learning of the program
at London's Toynbee Hall, she traveled there to see how this
first of all settlement houses operated. She was immediately
captivated by the prospect of establishing a similar enter
prise in America, and characteristically proceeded to realize
this idea, using her own financial resources and her
indomitable will. Accompanied by her friend, Ellen Gates
Starr, a loved companion, Jane Addams moved into one of
Chicago's foulest slums in 1889, challenging in this one
step the social code of her own class and the accepted
practice that woman's place was in the home. She quickly
attracted to herself a group of able, intelligent and capable
women, such as Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop, and Dr. Alice
Hamilton, as well as a host of effective and devoted volun
teers whose contribution to the Hull House program had much
to do with its success.

iii
Sensitive, intelligent, and intuitively tuned in
to feeling, Jane Addams was also strong-willed, a hard
worker, and very much aware of her own strength. The pic
turesque and symbolic quality of her career brought her
immediately to public attention. She soon was surrounded
by an admiring corps of like-minded women and some men, who
saw in her the charismatic qualities of the leader who could
organize the efforts needed to correct the social evils and
economic exploitation of industrializing America. Miss
Addams was particularly appalled by the growing chasm between
the rich and the poor, so unlike the atmosphere in her own
home town of Cedarville, Illinois. The threat of class
cleavage, possibly ultimately class warfare, threatened to
reproduce in the democracy of America the intolerable
injustices of feudal Europe. Her beliefs in democratic
process, taught her by her noble and upright father— a
representative of pre-Civil War America at its best— were
outraged, and she embarked on her remarkable career to
prevent the further separation of American society into
classes. Her solution was to urge the spread of democratic
rights from the political arena to the sphere of economic
life, and to charge the government with responsibility for
the welfare— political, social and economic— of all its
citizens.
iv
From this ideological base Miss Addams created an
illustrious career for herself and an outstanding social
agency. Her success, established within a few, short years,
was compounded out of her heritage absorbed in early child
hood from her revered father, a unique, magnetic personality,
and the knowledge she acquired on Halsted Street where Hull
House was located. She was an extremely effective orator,
who captivated her audiences, and a fluent writer from whose
pen poured articles, papers, and books. Her career coincided
with the emergence of social work as a profession, and when
the words "social worker" were coined, the term was often
used to describe her.
For us today she remains an historic figure whose
position as a great American woman is secure. Whether or
not she was a great social worker has remained throughout
the years a moot point. Opinions have been expressed on
both sides of this question, notably, for example, by her
nephew, J. Weber Linn, who, in his fine biography of his
beloved aunt, on the whole gives a negative answer. Never
theless, she was and remains an inspiration for many social
workers who find in her career an example to emulate.
This dissertation is an attempt to throw some light
on Miss Addams' contributions to professional social work.
My method is to analyze, as specifically as possible, how
she handled her position as the head of Hull House (a role
she never claimed for herself), and to describe in some
detail the round of her activities in the early years there.
Though the years covered are approximately 1889-1910, more
attention is given to the first ten years; in some ways the
events that followed seem repetitive of this earlier period,
except for their operation on an increasing scale within an
expanded arena that eventually took in the entire world.
From this narrative some conclusions are drawn on the nature
and extent of Miss Addams' contributions to the profession
of social work.
I must pay tribute at this point to the many people
who helped in this enterprise, sometimes by supervision and
direction, at other times by assistance in research or
encouragement at times when weariness overtook me. Dr.
William D. Turner of the Faculty of the School of Social
Work, University of Pennsylvania, my dissertation adviser,
was a great source of encouragement and support, as well as
incisive comment on my progress, and I owe him a debt which
can be repaid only in terms of whatever success my efforts
have achieved. In addition the remaining members of my
dissertation committee— Dr. H. Moore and Dr. R. Artigue also
vi
of the School of Social Work, and Dr. T. Cochran and Dr. W.
Weaver of the University Departments of History and Sociology,
respectively— made many helpful comments and suggestions, for
which I am grateful.
During the course of gathering the research for this
dissertation I became even more aware of what significant
contributions librarians make to scholarship. Mrs. Marjorie
Edwards, Curator, Jane Addams Collection, Peace Collection,
Swarthmore College Library, was a source of great assistance
in providing me with the opportunity to use the Jane Addams
papers, in answering all the questions I asked, both verbally
and in correspondence, and in making so pleasant the many
days I spent in the library. Miss Elizabeth Duvall,
Bibliographer, Sophia smith Collection, Smith College, where
the Ellen Gates Starr papers are located, performed a like
service albeit on a smaller scale. Mr. Russell Ballard,
then Director of Hull House when I visited early in 1962,
made available to me such material as still remained from
the early days. My gratitude goes to all of them.
Without the encouragement and emotional support of
my wife, Mrs. Anne P. Lane, my intention to embark on a
doctoral program might never have been realized. My success
in arriving at the end is partly hers, and I am most happy
vii
to share it with her. My two daughters, Deborah and Jessica,
made excellent proofreaders, and, in the course of their
labors, joined the throng of Miss Addams1 admirers.
I must thank, too, the Board of Directors of the
Family Counseling Service, Northampton County, Pennsylvania,
whose interest and cooperation enabled me to begin and com
plete the doctoral program. ,
viii
CONTENTS
Page
P R E F A C E ............................................ iii
Chapter
I. THE B E G I N N I N G .............................. 2
II. THE CHOICE OF C H I C A G O ..................... 33
III. THE FOUNDING OF HULL H O U S E ................. 42
IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF A PROFESSIONALCAREER . . 53
V. THE SOCIAL AGENCY E M E R G E S ................. 68
VI. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND
GROWING A C C L A I M ........................... 84
VII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIAL W O R K E R ......... Ill
VIII. INCREASING F A M E ............................ 138
IX. MISS ADDAMS AT W O R K ........................ 157
X. JANE ADDAMS AND HER C O L L E A G U E S ............. 184
XI. THE END OF THE B E G I N N I N G ................... 206
XII. A BACKWARD G L A N C E .......................... 220
XIII. ONWARD AND O U T W A R D .......................... 256
XIV. JANE ADDAMS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF
PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL WORK ................... 269
BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................ 292
ix
"In truth the actual past is gone; and the world of history
is an intangible world, re-created imaginatively and present
in our minds. 11
Carl Becker, Detachment and the

Writing of History
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING
Jane Addams began her spectacular career at
twenty-nine in Chicago in 1889 when, singlehanded, she
opened Hull House, the second American settlement.^ Born
in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, she was the eighth child
of John H. and Sarah Weber Addams, christened at birth,
Laura Jane Addams. Her mother died in childbirth with the
ninth child, when Jane was two years and four months old.
From her early years, Jane (or "Jennie," as her family
called her) was deeply attached to and profoundly
influenced by her father whom she revered. John Addams,
who had a distinguished career in his own community, was
a man of strong moral integrity who clearly knew the
difference between right and wrong. He was a member of
the state legislature in Illinois throughout the Civil War,
and in 1861 helped raise and equip a company named the
"Addams Guard," after him. He represented the best of his
■^The first American settlement was the Neighborhood

Guild, opened in New York in 1887 by Stanton Coit. In 1891
the name was changed to the University Settlement. See
C. R. Henderson, Social Settlements (New York: Lentilhorn
and Co., 1899); also W. Reason (ed.), University and Social
Settlements (London: Methuen & C o . , 1898).
world, pre-Civil War America. "That had been a humane
world— man-centered, moralistic, a world of feeling and

2
qualities. "
If one can single out the one most important
influence on the life of Jane Addams, there is no ques
tion this would be her father. "Never a dreamer, John
Addams never became utterly trustful of humanity. . . .
He was not quite, perhaps, as his daughter remembered him.
But in his integrity, his incorruptibility of spirit, his
grave courtesy to the least as to the ablest, his invari
able recognition of the rights of the weak, his constant
silent generosity, he was the great man of his day, and
place— 1the king gentleman of the District,’ as one of

3
his sorrowing neighbors described him when he died."
In this terse description of John Addams, the
sources of the daughter’s professional career can be seen.
Two of his heroes were Abraham Lincoln and the Italian
patriot, Mazzini, both of whom Jane Addams greatly esteemed,
adding herself subsequently a third figure in whose image

4
she sought a model, Tolstoi. All of them, one notes, were
2
Stow Persons, American Minds, A History of Ideas
(New York: Henry Holt & C o . , 1958).
3
J. Weber Linn, Jane Addams (New York: D. Appleton-
Century C o . ,1935).
4
Of the three the only one with whom she had actual
experience was Tolstoi. She made a pilgrimage to Yasnaya
Polyana in 1895; the encounter was somewhat disillusioning.
See Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (New York:
The Macmillan Co. , 1910), Chap. VII.
men. In the era in which Miss Addams grew up in America,
however, what woman could she have used for this purpose?
The idea of purpose was bred into Jane Addams being
from the very beginning of her life. It permeated the
atmosphere in which she lived her early years, and its
influence was intensified by her home life and her educa
tional experiences. In particular, the example of Lincoln,
the man her father most admired, left a deep impression,
so much so that years later, in a memorial paper after

5
Miss Addams’ death, a resident who had lived at Hull House,
0
declared, "She often reminded her co-workers of Lincoln."
As a child, Jane Addams, frail and holding her head
to one side because of a slight spinal curvature, was rather
precocious, wistful, and given to reading and introspection.
From early childhood she impressed those who knew her as
"spiritual," very self-conscious of her appearance, and
acutely aware of her difference from others. This sense of
difference from others was a basic characteristic of hers
and had its beginning in her early parental relationships.
^Jane Addams always hyphenated Hull House, thus

Hull-House. However, even in her own day this usage was
rare, and all further references herein will omit the
hyphen, except where quoted.
g
Victor S. Yarros, "Jane Addams, Humanitarian,"
Character (September-October, 1935) , published by the
Character Associates. A copy of this publication is on
file at the Chicago Historical Association Library.
What could life have felt like to a little girl whose
mother died when she was two, and whose father, whose word
she accepted without question, must have seemed somewhat
overwhelming and far above her? "I imagined that the
strangers were filled with admiration for this dignified
person [her father] and I prayed with all my heart that
the ugly, pigeon-toed little girl, whose crooked back
obliged her to walk with her head held very much upon one
side, would never be pointed out to these visitors as the

7
daughter of this fine man."
Though much of her childhood was similar to that
of other children, with much time given to play and in
particular a close association with her stepbrother,

g
George, she always carried this sense of difference
within her. "Jane was indeed 'different' : more different
in her spirit and capacity than even in her wistful
visionary look. She was no more like other children than

9
when she grew up she came to be like other people."
The home in which she was reared was comfortable,
7
Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, p. 7.
g
John Hay Addams married a widow, Mrs. William
Haldeman, in 1868, when Jane Addams was eight. She brought
into the marriage two sons, Henry, 18, and George, 7, six
months younger than his stepsister, Jane. Henry later
married her sister, Alice, despite the opposition of
Mr. and Mrs. Addams.
9
Linn, Jane Addams, pp. 27-28.
and Jane Addams and George Haldeman were inseparable com
panions until they were seventeen. In 1877 George went
off to Beloit College while she entered Rockford Seminary.
Jane Addams had always studied hard and read much, par
ticularly in her father* s library. She always needed to
know more, and to want to ask questions. At thirteen she
received a letter from John Greenleaf Whittier who answered
a question she addressed to him. "Barbara Frietsche was
real . . . Dorothea S. Dix, the philanthropist, visited
Frederic City and wrote me a long letter about the brave
old lady, who had just died." Whittier thanked her for
her expression of pleasure in his writings.^
When the time came for her to go off to college,
she chose Smith as her preferred school, passing the orals
for admission. Her father wanted her to go to Rockford
Seminary instead; he was a trustee and several of her
sisters had already gone there before her. She wished to
attend Smith because degrees were granted while Rockford
was a seminary, and, although authorized to give degrees,
did not do so. Jane Addams had already developed a passion
for achievement and for excellence, and the ladies' seminary
of her father* s choice undoubtedly represented a lesser
■^Letter of John G. Whittier to JA, February 15,

187 3, Jane Addams Collection (Swarthmore College Peace
Collection, Swarthmore, Pa.). Hereafter this collection
is referred to as JAC.
distinction and a smaller test for her powers than did
Smith College. She obeyed her father, however; anything
else would have been unthinkable. For her and her con
temporaries , the authority of the father and his right
to make decisions for his children were unquestioned.
The four years Miss Addams spent at Rockford
were very important ones for her. Rockford Seminary in
those days was a high-minded institution under the firm
guidance of Miss Anna Sill, the headmistress and a former
missionary. Religious influences were very strong, and
"the air was heavy with a sense of responsibility— moral
responsibility, and cultural and perhaps social too. Here
one encountered the missionary tradition, the earnest dis
cussion of the purpose of life, the solemn consideration
of the role of woman in society.
Miss Addams* Christianity was of a much more
liberal kind, absorbed in a home where fundamentalism
and orthodox religiosity were absent. She found difficulty
with the rather oppressive nature of the atmosphere at
Rockford, and turned to her father later for some relief
and reassurance for her difference. "Once again I heard
''■'Saenry S. Commager, "Jane Addams, 1860-1960,"

Saturday Review, XLIII, No. 52 (December 24, 1960), 26-27.
his testimony in favor of mental integrity above every-
12
thing else." She pursued the question further, and
found, in her father1s reply, reaffirmation of her right
to her independent judgment. "What are you? What do you
say when people ask you? His eyes twinkled a little as
he soberly replied: 1I am a Quaker. ' 1But that isn11
enough to say,’ I urged. ’Very well,’ he added, ’to
people who insist upon details, as some one is doing now,
I add that I am a Hicksite Quaker,' and not another word

13
on that weighty subject could I induce him to utter."
To know what one was sufficed; justification and defense
of belief for "people who insist upon details" was a
secondary matter. From roots such as this sprang her
refusal to defend her beliefs while she remained steadfast
to them in the face of the personal attacks and sarcastic
denunciations she was to meet later on. Her liberal
religious viewpoint continued throughout her life, and
Hull House later was accused of being, if not irreligious,
at least non-religious. At Rockford Seminary there were
three missionary societies while Miss Addams was there;
they were the only societies in which she never held office.
Miss Addams’ struggle with her difference at

_ _
Addams, Twenty Years , p. 15.

13Ibid. , p. 16.
Rockford, and her need to know, to discover, and to make
use of her creative inwardness led her to a position of
prominence amongst the students who were her contemporaries.
Her high intelligence resulted in successful academic
achievement, and she often stood highest in a school where
academic success was not easily come by. She studied Latin,
Greek, History, Philosophy, concentrating on Greek and
Natural Science. In the course of her studies she read
both the Origin of Species and the Descent of M a n , "and
accepted the doctrine of 'evolution,1 though even then she
could not see that 1the struggle of the fittest for sur
vival’ in the physical world had any direct connection with

14
the ethical and moral struggle."
In her first year at Rockford, 1877, Miss Addams
met another student with whom a close friendship developed
which continued through many years of living at Hull House,
and ended with her death. What attracted Jane Addams to
Ellen Gates Starr, it is hard, and perhaps unnecessary, to
say. Ellen Starr remained at Rockford for only a year.
She then left because her family could not keep her there
and she needed to work. There seemed to be many differences
between Miss Addams and her new friend, Ellen. Miss Addams1
14
Linn, Jane Addams, p. 60.
10
major interest was in intellectual study and in achievement,
Ellen Starr's was in art to which she devoted a good deal
of her life, though she was also a good Latin student. The
only subject Miss Addams dropped at Rockford was music— and
for this she substituted mathematics! Ellen Starr was also
intensely interested in religious experience, and much later
on became a devout Roman Catholic. As Jane Addams wrote to
her from Rockford Seminary, "This is where I think we differ—
you long for a beautiful faith and experience of this kind.
I only feel that I need religion in a practical sense, that
if I could fix myself with my relations to God and the
universe, and so be in perfect harmony with nature and duty,
I could use my faculties and energy so much better and could
do almost anything. Mine is pre-eminently selfish and yours

15
is a reaching for higher things. ..." She might more
properly have written that her interest even then was in
the practical and workable, while Ellen Starr's was in the
abstract and esthetic.
Ellen Gates Starr was one of two people who managed
to pierce Miss Addams' self-reliance and formal exterior.
The second, Mary Rozet Smith, belongs to a later period of
■^Letter of JA to Ellen Gates Starr, January 29, 1880,

E. G. Starr papers (Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College,
Northampton, Mass.). Hereafter this collection is referred
to as EGSP.
Miss Addams' life, and we shall come to her. Miss Addams'
quality of distance was perceptible to her youthful friends,
and both obliquely and directly referred to by them. Her
seminary friend, Vallie E. Beck, in a letter written from
"Old Maid's Retreat, Glendale, Ohio"[the names of boys are
noticeably absent in the correspondence] comments, "No, in
your last [letter] you said you admired cold people, they
are few and far between, can that be the reason you like
16
them?" In an undated, unsigned letter, apparently from
a friend at another school, addressed to "My Dear Fellow,"
the writer comments on the "same sentimental 1 spooning*
malady which, you say, infests Rockford. I heartily agree
with you, old fellow, that it is both disgusting and
horrible and demoralizing to us as women. I have invariably
found that 'Familiarity breeds contempt. ' Indeed the girls
carried the thing so far as to actually flirt with one

17
another." Ellen Starr herself early encountered this
reserve of Miss Addams and complained. All her friends,
she said, called her "Miss Starr" and she would have pre
ferred less formality. A friend, on being asked why the
"Miss Starr," told her Jane.Addams had indicated that
16
Letter of Vallie E. Beck to JA, December 6, 1877,
JAG. 1?
Letter, unsigned and undated, JAC.
12
Ellen Starr wanted this formal approach. Ellen Starr, in
the same letter, scolds Miss Addams and reminds her that
she had so often pleaded she be called something other than

18
"Miss Starr" and of how Miss Addams had persistently refused.
From a sensitive child, Jane Addams had now become a
serious-minded, intellectual, formal young woman with a
quality which set her apart from others. She was, as she
had been, interested in ideas and in purpose, in moral courage
and integrity, and in making a world for herself. In an early
seminary exercise, she admonished herself to "Always do what
you are afraid to do." She modified this three years later
in a Seminary magazine editorial. "To do what you are afraid
to do is to guide your life by fear. How much better not
to be afraid to do what you believe in doing! Keep one
main idea and you will never be lost. *For the end of man
19
is an action and not a thought, were that of the noblest.' "
The idea of action as paramount, of thinking only as prepara
tion for doing, was foremost in Miss Addams' approach to the
world. As early as these seminary years, she had developed
little interest in abstraction and saw conceptualization
as unimportant unless it paved the way for action. For her
the abstraction came from the doing; what she was interested
TO
Letter, EGS to JA, July 27, 1879, JAC.
19
13
in was how life should be lived, not how it should be
thought. The important thing was integrity and, above all,
"to do what you believe in doing. "
Throughout her seminary years, Miss Addams was an
outstanding student and developed a keen interest in
writing, which later, as we shall see, helped considerably
in her development as an international celebrity. For her,
writing was not a means to an end; she seemed to write
because she needed to, and, though she was formal and
restrained ("gracious" was a word often used to describe
her) in personal relationships, when she wrote she seemed
much freer and her shyness lessened. "Dear Jane," writes
an early correspondent, "your excellent letter of twenty-

20
two [I] pages was received last week." She wrote
frequently for the Rockford Seminary Magazine, and in 1879
proposed to organize some kind of intercollegiate magazine.
She sent letters to the editors of magazines at Vassar,
Colby, Yale, and some other colleges. The Head Editor
of the Vassar Miscellany expressed considerably interest

21
in the idea. The editor of the Colby College Echo agreed
to submit an article, but diffidently asked that his name
be withheld. He t h a n k e d Miss Addams for "your recent very
20
Letter of Eva Campbell to JA, August 17, 1879, JAC.
21
Letter of Myra Reynolds to JA, October 24, 1879,
JAC.
favorable notice of us and also [congratulates her] upon
the educated tone and pleasing appearance of your magazine."
There is no evidence that the man from Yale ever answered.
Perhaps Yale was impervious to a plea emanating from a
backwater ladies* seminary!
In her senior year (1881) Jane Addams became
editor-in-chief of the Rockford Seminary Magazine and modi
fied the very moralistic approach which had up to then
characterized the publication. "Jane Addams* own contribu
tions to the magazine are from the first purely critical,
and they seem to this writer to become, as time goes on,
brilliantly critical; remarkable in various passages, and,

23
in one entire article, demanding preservation. "
One other skill which Miss Addams developed at
Rockford needs to be mentioned for its connection with her
later career. The countless lectures, formal addresses,
talks, etc. , she gave during her years at Hull House perhaps
had their beginnings in her debating interests at Rockford.
She developed into a star debater at the seminary, and in
June, 1881, her last year at school, was chosen to represent
Rockford at an Interstate Oratorical contest. "When I was

22
Letter of J. MacDonald to JA, November 18, 1879,
JAC- 23
Linn, Jane Addams, p. 55. The possible exaggera
tion in Linn1 s description of Miss Addams1 early pieces may
be due to the very pardonable affection and pride he had in
and for his beloved aunt.
15
finally selected as the orator, I was somewhat dismayed to
find that representing not only one school but college women
in general, I could not resent the brutal frankness with
which my oratorical possibilities were discussed by the
enthusiastic group who would allow no personal feeling to
stand in the way of progress, especially the progress of

24
Woman*s Cause." The cause of woman’s rights, which became
so central in Miss Addams* life, especially after 1910 and
secondary only to the cause of peace, was a sacred flame to
the vestal virgins of Rockford Seminary. She regretfully
notes that, "Woman*s Cause" or no, she only placed fifth in
a field of ten at the debating contest. The opposition,
however, must have been severe; one of her opponents was
the golden-voiced orator from the West, William Jennings
Bryan, who also did not win, though he placed higher than
she did.
In 1881, at the age of twenty-one, Jane Addams
graduated from Rockford and left, but by no means forever.
She still wanted her degree and was determined not to be
cheated of it. Nor was she planning to leave Rockford as
she found it. The redoubtable Miss Sill was mainly
interested in producing lady missionaries to spread
24
Addams, Twenty Years, p. 55.
16
25
Christianity amongst the heathen. She had little interest
in preparing women for other careers. Jane Addams, however,
was not to be so easily defeated, and proved herself more
than a match for Miss Sill.
Miss Addams' whole experience at Rockford emphasized
her refusal to take the easy way. She was class valedic
torian, and, to secure a degree, which required strenuous
preparation and study, she was willing to face and undergo
hard work. She had obtained permission to study calculus,
an unusual choice even for the intellectual girls at
Rockford, and the quality of her mind together with the
willingness (perhaps even eagerness) to meet challenge was
displayed when she chose to give her graduation oration in
Greek. Always she had to be different, but with a dis
tinction won through hard effort and with a persistent will.
She became the leader of a small group which proposed to
make Rockford a degree-giving college, and a year after her
graduation this was achieved. She returned for the degree
"we had so eagerly anticipated . . . and four of us were
dubbed B.A. on the very day that Rockford Seminary was

—
The early correspondence in the JA Collection at

Swarthmore College reveals a rather deprecating attitude by
Miss Addams and her friends towards Miss Sill whom they saw
as a moral tyrant.
17
declared a college in the midst of tumultuous anticipa-

26
tion." Rockford Seminary was henceforth Rockford
27
College.
The years of preparation were over C'the snare of
preparation" she called the experience), but Jane Addams
discovered that she had been prepared for nothing. She
expressed the bitter futility she felt in a paper written
years later. "She (the college-educated woman) either
hides her hurt and splendid resources of enthusiasm go
to waste, or her zeal and emotions are turned inward, and
the result is an unhappy woman, whose heart is consumed by

28
vain regrets and desires. "
Jane Addams and her friends were eager for partici
pation, for effort, for achievement, for contribution, but
their choices were very limited ones. For some there was
marriage; no evidence exists to suggest Miss Addams ever

—

27
J. Weber Linn, her nephew, credits her with being
more responsible than any other person for transforming
Rockford into a college. Jane Addams maintained her interest
in Rockford for many years. In 1887 she became the col
lege' s youngest trustee in its history; later on, from 1891
for ten years, she conducted the Hull House summer school
at Rockford. The college appreciated and reciprocated the
interest; the Jane Addams Professorship of Social Science
was created there in 1930. See Linn, Jane Addams, p. 62.
28
Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (New York:
The Macmillan Co. , 1902) , pp. 85-86.
18
considered this step seriously, or that the opportunity

29
ever presented itself. Her problem was intensified
because she was not driven into work of some kind by
financial need, as had happened to her friend, Ellen Starr.
Miss Addams1 father had died in 1881, and left an estate
which was considerable for those days. She was not
wealthy, but she had more than enough to live comfortably.
For a brief period after leaving Rockford in 1881,
Jane Addams toyed with the idea, once again, of attending
Smith, the college of her original choice. It is not clear
what studies she planned to pursue there? possibly the idea

30
of a master's degree appealed to her. However, this
31
uncertain idea was soon succeeded by another; she decided
29
J. Weber Linn suggests a romantic interest in
Miss Addams on the part of her stepbrother, George, and
also names a Beloit College student, Rollin Salisbury, as
having proposed to her. Margaret Tims, in her recent
biography, also makes vague reference to Miss Addams' pre
sumed interest in marriage. If these references are
accurate, there is no evidence to suggest they were other
than transient and very minor incidents in her life. She
herself never mentions or refers to them. See Linn,
Jane Addams, and Margaret Tims, Jane Addams of Hull House
(London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1961).
30
Interest in postgraduate work for women was m its
infancy. In a letter, dated March 9, 1882, to Miss Addams,
her friend, Helen Harrington refers to a Miss Williams "the
first lady to take a.master’s degree from here [University
of Michigan]," JAC.
^Letter of Helen Harrington to JA, dated July 23,
1881. "Emma Briggs wrote that she met your sister on the
train going home and she said you were not going to Smith
this year on account of your health," JAC.
19
32
to become a doctor. Before her father1s death, she made
plans to enter the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia,
and she went there. She did well in her studies, passed
her examinations, but she discovered quickly that medicine

33
as a career was not for her. The end came with a com
plete breakdown in the spring of 1882; she was very glad
"to have a physician’s sanction for giving up clinics and

34
dissecting rooms. ..." She was completely invalided
the following winter and spent six months being treated

35
for her illness. She recovered, although aftereffects
continued for several more years. Her ambition to become
a doctor, however, died, and she never regretted this
result of her poor health. Subsequently, Miss Addams
Medicine as a career attracted the attention of

several friends of Miss Addams, perhaps because of the
daring nature of such an ambition and also because it
promised a career of dedicated service to people. See
letter from Sarah G. Anderson to JA, November 16, 1881,
also letter from Emma Briggs to JA, December 30, 1881,
JAC.
33
Miss Addams may have complained of the nature of
the dissections she was required to do at the medical school.
At least in a letter to her from Sarah G. Anderson,
December 19, 1881, Miss Anderson makes the following observa
tion: "I wonder they do not give beginners in the dissecting
work less repulsive specimens. So be careful of yourself,
my little woman. I could not allow you to be sick far away
as you are there," JAC.
34 _
Addams, Twenty Years. p. 65.
■^The nature of this illness is not clear, but it
seems to have been related to her childhood ailment.
Dr. Haldeman, her brother-in-law, performed a spinal opera
tion, and she wore a sort of corset to support her spine for
over a year. See Linn, Jane Addams, p. 69.
20
received thirteen degrees, but all of them were honorary.
She never sat in another classroom again, except for a
reading course she took at Johns Hopkins University in
1886.
An interval of six years began for Miss Addams in
1883 which may be described as her Wanderjahre. Restless,
unfulfilled, dissatisfied but still seeking, she went
abroad with her stepmother in August, when her health had
sufficiently improved. She had spent tedious days recover
ing from her operation, though her convalescence had its
compensations. "The one of the many results I hope to find
from this long seclusion is that it has brought me back to
Books, to find more comfort and steadiness there than I

30
have discovered in reading for the last two years."
This period of Miss Addams' life must have been a
depressing one for her. Her attempt to find a career
apparently over with the end of her medical studies,
uncomfortable for many months after a serious operation
("The traces of it remaining long after Hull-House was

37
opened in 1889"), she faced the prospect of life as an
unmarried, well-to-do woman for whom there was nothing to
do. For a person of Miss Addams1 drive, determination and
30
Letter of JA to E G S , January 7, 1883, EGSP.
37
21
intelligence, a more depressing future could hardly be
imagined. Troubled as she was, however, by her ill
health and apparent lack of purpose in her life, she
wasted little time in self-consolation, a capacity she
always lacked. Her satisfactions were very early derived
from comforting and nourishing others. Her friend, Ellen
Starr, notes this in a letter addressed to "My dear girl,"
in which she writes, "I received your sweet letter this
afternoon: so thoughtful for others and so forgetful of
yourself, that it was just the sort of reproach to me that
I happened to need just now. You make me ashamed that I
ever allow myself to fall into a frame of mind to question
whether what we get out of existence is worth the trouble
it is to exist. . . . But I will say that I do take it as
a strong proof of friendship that you will write to me in
the midst of your troubles. . . . Believe me, my friend,
how much you always inspire me to a better view of life,

38
and how sincerely you are beloved by your friend. ..."
Already Miss Addams had developed the strength upon which
so many people in the future were to feed. The inspiration
Ellen felt was to be shared by countless others in the
years to come.
In August, 1883, then, she departed for Europe and
38 r
Letter of E"&S to JA, April 27, 1883, JAC.
22
and remained there almost two years. She and her step
mother toured England and the continent. Miss Addams,
however, was not only traveling as a young lady of
independent means, doing Europe as so many young ladies

39
of good fortune were. She visited the usual tourist
sights, but she brought with her an inner vision focused
more on people than on cathedrals and ruins. During this
first trip the famous incident occurred when she visited
a section of East London where decaying vegetables were

40
auctioned off. This was her first shocking encounter
with extreme poverty, and in the feelings generated,
Miss Addams, without awareness at the moment, found her
career. She was astonished that "the world should be

41
going on as usual," in the days that followed the East
End visit. Something, she felt strongly, needed to be
done; six years were to elapse before she set out to attack
the problem.
In the meantime her interest had been aroused, and
in her subsequent travels she sought out the poorer quarters
of the cities she visited. Nothing she saw subsequently
39
James Weber Linn quotes an amusing comment Miss
Addams made about Henry James who was traveling to Europe
on the same ship. "He is very English in appearance, but
not especially keen or intellectual." Linn, Jane Addams,
P* 21* 40
Addams, Twenty Years, pp. 66-68.
41
Ibid. , p. 68.
23
42
shocked her as much as the East London experience, but
the scenes she witnessed increased her sense of guilt and
worthlessness. She became haunted with "a sense of
futility, of misdirected energy, the belief that the
pursuit of cultivation would not in the end bring either
solace or relief. I gradually reached a conviction that
the first generation of college women had taken their
learning too quickly . . . ; that somewhere in the process
of *being educated1 they had lost that simple and almost
automatic response to the human appeal, that old healthful
reaction resulting in activity from the mere presence of

43
suffering or of helplessness. . . .
These comments were, of course, written twenty-
seven years later by an older and wiser Jane Addams as she
attempted to recapture feelings provoked by long-dead
experiences. She was deeply shocked by what she saw; her
whole life had prepared her to be. The moral earnestness

44
and strong principles of her father, the easy relationships
42 43
Ibid. , p. 69. Ibid. , p. 71.
44
Deep admiration for and strong influence from the
father seems typical of many of Jane Addams1 important col
leagues and contemporaries. Florence Kelley is an example
of this. "Throughout her young years, Florence's father was
the dominant influence in her life. She loved him with a
deep devotion, and in his study from which she 1was never
willingly absent when he was at home,' and in long walks
together, she enjoyed the close association with him which
she cherished in memory." Her father, like Jane Addams1
and Julia Lathrop's, was a prominent public servant, in
Mr. Kelley's case, a congressman from Philadelphia. J.
Goldmark, Impatient Crusader (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1953), pp. 5 and 29.
24
between poor and well-to-do as well as the absence of
poverty in her hometown of Cedarville, Illinois, the pro
tection and shelter surrounding her at home and later at
Rockford Seminary with its emphasis on missionary work,
her sensitivity to the needs of others and her drive to
find a career— and this, and much else besides, readied
her to react in moral, ethical and emotional terms.
Characteristically, too, she did not react with indignation,

45
personal attack, or a call to arms, but with deep identi
fication with the suffering and the oppressed, coupled with
a conviction that action towards change was essential.
Theory never interested her. "I believe more and more in
keeping the events, the facts of Christ's life before us,

45
and letting the philosophy go. "
Miss Addams, of course, was aware that poverty
existed before she went to Europe, but in her travels she

45
Florence Kelley's reactions, for example, were
angrier. "Once when it was my mother's turn to show inquir
ing visitors over the house, the visitor was Mr. William
Kent, a distinguished reformer in Chicago and a large land
owner. I cannot remember by what chance my mother let him
know how ill she thought of anybody who would own the
wretched houses that were then on the north side of Polk
Street somewhat east of Halsted. . . . " Nicholas Kelley,
"Early Days at Hull House," Social Service Review, XXVIII,
No. 4 (December, 1954), 427. Mr. Kent later became an
ardent admirer and supporter of Miss Addams and Hull
House.
Letter of JA to E G S , March 30, 1885, EGSP.
25
saw deprivation on a startling level, and in these experi
ences one discovers, not only a conviction that something
should be done, but increasing development of a sense of
personal responsibility, if not for the condition, at
least for its correction. She was taking her first big
steps toward Hull House and her career as a settlement
worker.
At the same time, despite her preoccupation with
the foor, she was taking in the usual sights and enjoying
them. Scotland, Paris, Rome, Athens, Bari, Brindisi,
Florence, the Black Forest, she saw them all, and wrote
long letters home about them. A typical excerpt reveals her
sense of humor which leavened her usual preoccupation with
serious matters. Writing to an old Rockford Seminary friend,
she describes her efforts to direct a cab driver in Padua
to Dante’s house. "After many reiterations of the words
1Dante, domus,1 the driver finally caught the word 1Dante’
and with a great flourish drove us up in front of a statue
of Dante in the public square. Again his ear was stunned
by the same sounds over and over again— this time with a
ring of impatience in them— and catching the word ’domus’
he drove us to the Great Duomo or Cathedral. On the whole

47
a rather disastrous rout of our classic attainments."
47
Letter of JA to Sarah Blaisdell, March 5,
1884, JAC.
26
She returned home in 1885, and became involved in
family matters, and, probably to use some of the time that
lay heavily on her, went to lectures and took a reading
course at Johns Hopkins University. She was tormented by
her uselessness; her intelligence and her need for purpose
and production could find no outlet. During this period
she "reached the nadir of my nervous depression and sense

48
of maladjustment." In an effort to resolve her
desperate feelings she wrote articles, and submitted them
to magazines which promptly returned them. She joined the
Presbyterian Church in Cedarville and underwent the rite
of baptism. None of this activity brought substantial
relief to her. "I am always floundering when I deal with
religious nomenclature or sensation simply because my
religious life has been so small— for many years it was
my ambition to reach my father1s moral requirements, and
now when I am needing something more, I find myself
approaching a crisis. I look rather wistfully to my

49
friends for help." Her mothering impulses found some
50
outlet in relationships with nieces and nephews. She
48
49Letter of JA to E G S , December 6 , 1885, EGSP.
James Weber Linn, her nephew and biographer, prac
tically grew up at Hull House. Another nephew, Stanley, and
a niece, Marcet, also stayed at Hull House at times and were
given much attention by their aunt. She was very fond of
them all, especially James Linn, who loved her deeply.
27
had a -warm appreciation and love for children, and from
this came her concern for them which took such precedence
in her professional activities. A charming vignette from
a letter written in this period carries the sense of this
feeling. "If you don1t take charge of a child at night
you can't feel a scared trembling little hand grow con
fiding and quiet as soon as it lies within your own. If
you don1t take little children out in the yard to spend the
morning you simply can1t see their unbounded delight and

51
extravagant joy when they see a robin taking his bath."
When her friend, Ellen Starr, went to Europe in
1887, Miss Addams decided to join her. Since Ellen Starr1s
income was small, Miss Addams paid half of her friend1s

52
expenses. This second trip was momentous since her visit
to Toynbee Hall, the model for Hull House, occurred during
her travels. Her determination to help right the conditions
under which the poor lived was already at least dimly
51Letter of JA to EG S , April 3, 1887, EGSP.

52
Notes by Miss Josephine Starr on the life of her
aunt, Ellen Gates Starr, EGSP. This generosity with her
money and her belongings was very typical of Miss Addams,
and there are references to it in the correspondence in the
SCPC JA files. For example, a letter in 1881 (specific
date not noted) from her friend Sarah Anderson says, "What
a darling you are for sending me so many valuable, books. . . .
You said something about picking out some books for m e , but
I thought, dear, you meant you would give me the names of
books that I ought to be reading."
Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
28
conscious. "It is hard to tell just when the very simple
plan which afterward developed into the Settlement began
to form itself in my mind. It may have been even before I
went to Europe for the second time, but I gradually became
convinced that it would be a good thing to rent a house in
a part of the city where many primitive and actual needs
are found. . . . M 53
Toynbee Hall, the first organized settlement, had

54
been founded in 1885, and possibly Miss Addams may have
read accounts of its program in publications of one sort

55
or another. Her idea of renting "a house in a part of
the city" was her half-formed answer to two problems—
what to do with her life and how to change the conditions
under which the poor lived. Both of these problems were
merging into one, and characteristically she sought their
resolution in contemplating action. Problems for her were
always calls to action. If conditions were intolerable,

—

54
There is some discrepancy in establishing the date
when Toynbee Hall was founded. An obituary of Canon Samuel A.
Barnett, published in the London Times, June 17, 1913, gives
1884 as the date. Other accounts, as, for example, C. R.
Henderson's in his Social Settlements, p. 30, give the year
as 1885.55
"Happening on an account of Toynbee Hall in the
back pages of a magazine, she made a memorandum of its
street address against a projected trip abroad." Robert Woods
and Albert J. Kennedy, The Settlement Horizon, A National
Estimate (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1922), p. 46.
29
they needed to be corrected, not through theories and
grand schemes, but by rolling up one's sleeves and taking
firm hold. She was practice-oriented from beginning to
end. Her impulse was not to write a book, but to rent a
house. Her second trip to Europe gave her the opportunity
to discover what to do with the house.
By this time— 1887— Jane Addams was twenty-seven
years old, unmarried, with an income of $3,000 a year, and
in danger of ending up as the family maiden aunt. Careers
for women were severely limited; most unmarried women of
any education became school teachers, a choice she never
contemplated. The dullness of ordinary school teaching,
the rigid discipline and insistence on drill, the limited
scope of most school teachers' lives— all may have accounted
for Jane's lack of interest in such a career. Perhaps more
than anything else, her deep compassion for people, with its
beginnings in the little girl who was ashamed to be her
father's child, and her strong intuitive response to feel
ings and the meaning of experience, are responsible for
her choice of a career which involved working with people
rather than teaching things to them. Her personality was
ideally suited to this purpose. As Ellen Starr wrote to
Mrs. Addams, Jane Addams' stepmother, from Florence during
her European trip, "I have spent the years of our
30
friendship in a futile effort toward making her [Jane]
less generous . . . Jane has a sort of genius for g u e s s i n g
meanings. She already carries on animated conversations
w i t h the p o p u l a c e w h i l e I stand by in w o n d e r and admiration
. . Jane is p e r f e c t l y w o n d e r f u l t o me. I wish I could be
l i k e her. X do try to be like her in h e r b e a u t i f u l ,
unpretentious interest in e v e r y b o d y , and voluntarily taking
of the second place to give others the first. " To these
attributes, which s e e m t o us t o d a y rather characteristic
of so c i a l w o r k e r s , one n e e d s to add another— her identifica
tion with and appreciation for d i f f e r e n c e and uniqueness in
others, which led her to stress so s t r o n g l y t h e value of
individuality. In a s e c o n d letter from Ellen Starr, one
finds an incident recorded which portrays this quality in
Miss Addams strikingly. Writing of their stay in Rome,
Ellen Starr s a y s , "Jane d e v o t e d the m o s t of her time at
table to an abs u r d Old M i s s o u r i a n , w h o w ore a flannel shirt
and a paper collar . . . and w h o m n o body else near him
would take the t r o u b l e t o t a l k to. I never admired her
more. She t a l k e d to th i s m a n as she w o u l d h a v e done to a
man of the world. I don* t k n o w w h a t I would not give to

have what prompts her and makes it p o s s i b l e for h e r to
57
act in this w a y . "
5 6 L e t t e r o f E G S t o Mrs. Addams, January 30, 1888 , EGSP.
57
L e t t e r o f E G S t o Mrs. Addams, February 5, 1888 , EGSP.
31
Miss Addams1 plan to "rent a house" crystallized
during her second European trip into a determination to
open a settlement house to be modeled on Toynbee Hall and

58
Walter Besant1s "Peoples1 Palace." In June, 1888, she
visited Toynbee Hall, "equipped not only with a letter of
introduction from Canon Fremantle, but with high expecta
tions 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 at first

39
hand and have the solace of daily activity."
Toynbee Hall had been founded by Cannon Samuel A.

60
Barnett, in Whitechapel as a memorial to Arnold Toynbee,
James Weber Linn says Miss Addams was particularly

attracted to Toynbee Hall because it had a university origin
which led her to believe she could use college-trained per
sons in a similar program at home. Linn adds she also visited
the Peoples1 Palace, but the program there did not appeal to
her. Linn, Jane Addams, Chap. IV.
59
60
Canon Barnett (he was actually Vicar of St. Jude1 s
when Toynbee Hall was founded), his wife (later Dame
Henrietta Barnett, honored for her "garden city" project in
Hampstead) and Miss Addams remained good friends throughout
their lives. Canon and Mrs. Barnett later visited Hull House
several times. Margaret Tims, in her biography, relates a
touching incident that occurred during one of these visits.
"Dame Henrietta Barnett, in her biography of her husband,
described the tiresome habit of the small boys of Chicago, of
ringing the doorbell at Hull House and then running away.
As a good Christian citizen she felt moved to reprimand them;
but . . . her intervention was not gratefully received. On
telling Miss Addams, her beautiful eyes filled with tears,
and she said in her gentle, undulating American voice, 1You
have put my work back, perhaps years. I was teaching them
what is meant by ’resist not evil.’ 11 Tims, Jane Addams of
Hull House, p. 79.
32
an Oxford University student much interested in East London
conditions. Toynbee died in 1883 while still young, and as
a memorial to his sympathy for and interest in the East
London poor, Canon Barnett and friends of Toynbee created
the University Settlement Association which set up Toynbee

61
Hall. A few years previously London had been shocked by
the Pall Mall Gazette series begun in 1881, "The Bitter Cry
of Outcast London," which graphically described life amongst
London1s poorest citizens. The sentiment aroused by the
articles prepared the ground for Barnett's efforts.
Jane Addams was welcomed at Toynbee Hall, and

62
absorbed what she could of its programs. She could not,
however, have studied the settlement in depth since she
returned to the United States in the same month, June, 1888.
Approximately a year afterwards Hull House was born, con
ceived from a determination to find a career and a deep
concern for the way people lived. Jane Addams had escaped
from the "snare of preparation."
61
See C. R. Henderson, Social Settlements, and
W. Reason, University and Social Settlements.
62
"Without the example of Toynbee Hall, it is doubt
ful if Hull-House would ever have been founded," writes
Margaret Tims in her book. Undoubtedly her visit to Toynbee
Hall sharpened Miss Addams thinking and gave her an example
to follow. Hull House undoubtedly would have been different
without i t , but that it would not have existed at all is
questionable.
CHAPTER II
THE CHOICE OF CHICAGO
Choosing Chicago as the setting for her great
experiment was natural for Jane Addams. The city was in
her home state of Illinois and not far from Cedarville.
One other factor seems to have influenced her to settle
in Chicago— the experiences of her friend, Ellen Gates
Starr. For several years after leaving Rockford Seminary,
Ellen Starr taught in a private school in Chicago, and
became familiar with the city. In addition, her aunt,
Eliza Allen, an art teacher and lecturer, was a well-
known Chicago figure, and introduced Miss Addams to some
prominent Chicagoans. "Always Miss A. gave full credit to
E.G.S.’s Chicago ties which she in turn had from aunt
Eliza. They were used to build up goodwill and secure
financial backing and active service.
Dynamic, bustling, unable to contain and assimilate
its own growth, Chicago exhibited both the virtues and vices
of the modern industrial society that Jane had witnessed
in London and Europe. In addition, the city was being
^Notes of Miss Josephine Starr, EGSP, p. 1.
33
R eproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
34
flooded with immigrants. In the process of this large-
scale influx of Europeans, problems were created with
which Canon Barnett and his colleagues never had to con
tend, since immigration to England was on a very small
scale. The division between rich and poor, more skillfully
disguised in the easy intercourse of small-town America,
which Jane Addams knew so well, was visible everywhere in
the city. The mansions of the very rich looked down on
the hovels of the very poor— the "horrid little houses so

2
close together" of her childhood experience.
America was emerging from its pastoral existence
and becoming rapidly urbanized and industrialized. "The
United States was born in the country and has moved to the
3
city." The changes created by this swift transformation
were invigorating, but many of ics side effects were
shocking, sometimes ghastly, to large numbers of people,
including some who were profiting materially from the change.
Not the least of these problems was the increasing distance
between the rich and the poor which seemed to be giving the
lie to America* s old equalitarian dream. "The discontent
of workers and farmers intensified a growing social cleavage
in the United States in the last third of the nineteenth

2
3
R. Hofstadder, The Age of Reform (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), p. 23.
35
century. The gulf between the rich and poor, who did not
share equally in the nation1s growing wealth, rapidly
widened. . . . Immigration intensified the gulf, adding
to the ranks of the urban poor and sharpening the contrast
between the native American middle class and the foreign
urban workingman. . . . The stark reality of social
conflict stunned Americans who had cherished the view that

4
class divisions did not exist in their country."
Some facts point up even more sharply tne nature of
life for the poor. In 1860 out of every six Americans, one
lived in the city; by 1900 this statistic had changed to
one out of every three. Some skilled workmen earned good
livings, but in a Chicago southside sweatshpp a worker
could labor seven days a week, sixteen hours a day, sewing
pants for eighteen cents a pair or finishing coats at the
rate of four to eight cents each. In 1884 the average
skilled worker in an Illinois factory earned less than
$2.50 per day; all workers, male, female, adult, children,
averaged $1.51 per day. The cost of living in those days
was low, but not so low as to prevent many people earning

5
these wages from living in extreme poverty.
4
A. P. Hayes, The Response to Industrialism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 37.
5
For a good picture of the situation, see F. Freidel,
America in the Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1960).
36
The Chicago to which Jane Addams came with Ellen
Gates Starr in 1889 was also exhibiting all the stresses
and strains of the rapid industrialization overtaking the
rest of the United States. Fortunes were piled onto
fortunes by the McCormicks, the Potter Palmers, the
Marshall Fields, the Armours, the Swifts, the Cranes;
while the Epsteins, the Marcianos, the Kubeks, the Hrycanys,
the Wagners, were arriving from the four corners of Europe.
"Within only ten years after the Fire, the population rose
to 503,185, and by 1890 it had surpassed the million mark
to make Chicago the second city of the continent. Even in
an era characterized by rapid urban expansion, a growth
of nearly 560 per cent in the twenty years following 1870

6
was breath-taking. " The scramble for housing, for jobs,
for all the elements of mere existence must have been.
highly competitive, and only the most aggressive could
have done more than survive. The problem was compounded
by the fact that so much of this population increase was
due to immigrants, mainly from Europe, many of whom could
neither speak the language nor understand the culture
into which they had moved. European society had not made
them familiar "with independent political action," and

6
B. Pierce, A History of Chicago, Vol. Ill
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), p. 20.
37
they "took for granted," as Miss Addams found out in her
struggle to depose Johnny Power, "that the political life

7
of the individual would arise out of family needs."
Wave after wave of immigration beat on Chicago's
lake front, and "within the nineties they [newcomers from
Central, Southern and Eastern Europe] were to make Chicago,
of all American cities, the home of the largest number of
Poles, Bohemians, Croatians, Slovakians, Lithuanians and

g
Greeks." To this must be added the 2 per cent of the
foreign population of Chicago in 1890, credited to Russia,
most of whom were undoubtedly Jews, and the Italians who
made up about 1 per cent of the foreign born. Amongst
this seething conglomeration of different nationalities
with their strange customs and their alien tongues, Jane
Addams, an old-stock American, went to live.
The conditions under which the poor of Chicago lived
(not all of them were immigrants) were the natural con
sequences of a society which more and more emphasized the
production of things and largely forgot the welfare of
people. Housing for the poor was appalling. "Different
indeed were the ramshackle dwellings of the poor on the
periphery of the business section. . . . Rear-lot shacks

7
Hof stadter, op. cit. , p. 8.
g
Pierce, op. cit. , III, 32.
38
without foundations or plumbing stood close by the house
at the front of a lot 25 by 125 feet. . . . Within one
room, entire families had a noisome abode, a place of
women's work by day and sleep by night. . . . Dank,
darkly shadowed cellars, pantries and clothes-closets
connected into sleeping rooms, housed the habitual lodger
who, at times, also shared the bed of a member of the

9
family." The area that subsequently surrounded Hull
House "in a third of a mile [contained] large undigested
groups of foreigners [amongst whom] all the sorry and
sinister aspects of such an existence could be found. From
this section, as from all others of like character, the
better-to-do inhabitants moved away at the first opportunity,
leaving to newly arrived immigrants a legacy of dilapidation
and filth. . . .
The sweatshop flourished like the proverbial green
bay tree and child labor consumed young lives. On this lower
fringe of life the careful protection surrounding the lives
of middle and upper class women did not exist. While Jane
Addams, if she followed the usual practice of her class,
was not supposed to have a career and had to create one
for herself, lower class women, driven by poverty, labored

9
Pierce, op. cit. , p. 53.
10„
Ibid. , p. 55.
39
long and wearily in low-paying jobs and under oppressive
conditions. "The economic necessity which took women
from the home and made wage earners of them wa.s also
responsible for the 5,67 3 ^ boys and girls from ten to
fifteen years of age listed in the 1880 federal census
as engaged in some occupation. Within the sweatshops
they toiled for ten or more hours a day alongside their
elders. Most of these child laborers came from immigrant
homes. Here in ramshackle buildings, in basement, loft
or stable— mere firetraps with no fire escapes— little
girls average fifty cents a week as pay in the coat shops
for sewing on buttons or pulling basting threads. . . .
They shortly became twisted and bent in body, the stooped
positions familiar in their elders to be theirs also in
years to come. . . . Less numerous than the little girls
in the sweatshops were the boys under sixteen, generally
employed as messengers or errand runners, their years, too,

12
empty of play.and schooling. . . .
Chicago was not without services in the form of
charitable agencies and institutions seeking to better
("uplift" was the usual word) the conditions of the poor.
Hull House1s fame grew so great it later obscured the fact
^'*'The figure was undoubtedly larger since census

taking then was not as accurate a process as it is now.
12
40
that agencies already existed which were attempting to
mitigate the effects of social and economic pressures on
people before Jane Addams opened her settlement. The
Armour Mission, which she visited, was opened in December,
1886, and provided facilities such as a kindergarten, a
library, lectures on various subjects, a free medical
dispensary, a kitchen garden, a workroom for women,
nurseries and bathrooms. The Chicago Relief and Aid

13
Society, organized before the Fire, supported lodging
houses, soup kitchens, employment bureaus, a wood yard,
assistance to old people and widows, and some general
financial help. In 1888 the Chicago Relief and Aid
Society merged with the Charity Organization Society.
Some of the other prominent private charitable groups
operating at the time Hull House was organized were the
House of the Good Shepherd, the Chicago Erring Woman*s
Refuge for Reform, Protective Agency for Women and
Children, Home for the Friendless, Woman*s Aid Association,
Chicago Orphan Asylum, Chicago Nursery and Half-Orphan
Asylum,. Chicago Foundlings Home, Prisoner*s Aid Association

14
of Illinois and the Newsboys' Home. In addition, there
13
The Fire (always capitalized) was of such sig
nificance in Chicago history, events can almost be described
in time as "B. F. " and "A. F. "
14
41
were huge county-operated institutions such as the hospitals,
insane asylum and the poorhouse.
In many of these activities women played significant
roles, and a goodly number of them were socially prominent. 15
Such women invaded mental institutions as volunteers,
devoted time to the care of the poor, set up kindergartens,
worked for sanitary improvements, and taught cooking to
underprivileged girls. This growth of interest in humani
tarian activities, especially by women, the fulminations of
social reformers like Henry Demarest Lloyd (who became a
..close friend of Miss Addams), articles in magazines, books
on social conditions (many of them offering solutions)—
all this ferment was part of the social situation that
produced Jane Addams and to which she gave her peculiar

16
genius. By 1888 she was ready to make her contribution.
A good example is Fannie Gary, the daughter of

Judge Gary, who was no friend of the workingman. Fannie
was very concerned with the lot of the working girls, and
in 1890 replaced a girl in a tailor shop so that she might
go on a two-week vacation. See Pierce, op. cit. , p. 464.
16
Charity and assistance to the poor did not, of
course, begin in Jane Addams1 day. History records the
important contributions of earlier generations as exhibited
by the efforts of Joseph Tuckerman, Charles Loring Brace,
Robert M. Hartley, Louisa Lee Schuyler, Dorothea Dix and
others. See the excellent account of the development of
scientific philanthropy and social work in R. H. Bremner,
From the Depths, The Discovery of Poverty in the United
States (New York: New York University Press, 1956).
CHAPTER III
THE FOUNDING OF HULL HOUSE
"The next January (1889) found Miss Starr and
myself in Chicago, searching for a neighborhood in which
we might put our plans into execution. In our eagerness
to win friends for the new undertaking, we used every
opportunity to set forth the meaning of the settlement
as it had been embodied in Toynbee Hall,''' although in
those days we made no appeal for money, meaning to start
with our own slender resources. From the very first the
plan received courteous attention. . . . Professor

2
Swing wrote a commendatory column in the Evening Journal,
and our early speeches were recorded quite out of pro-

3
portion to their worth."
Jane Addams had now found a channel for her drive,
her ambition and her intelligence, and from this point on
"'"An enterprise entirely operated by men, not women.

2
Dr. David Swing, a liberal minister, who joined
the Congregational Church after accusations of heresy.
"Through both the spoken and the written word Swing . . .
answered the increasing questioning of those longing to v
reconcile their religious faith and the new urban setting
in which they now found themselves. " Pierce, op. cit. ,
p. 432. 3
42
43
the record of her life is one of ceaseless activity. She
was incapable of remaining still, and once she had found
a focus for her energies they flowed from her unceasingly
in many directions— sometimes in too many.
The winter of 1888 and spring of 1889 found Miss
Addams busy with her plan. She visited ministers, wealthy
people, groups of all kinds, prominent women and others,
interpreting her "scheme." She sounded out opinion on her
settlement plan, although her own commitment to the idea
was irrevocable. Her capacity "to carry on animated
conversations with the populace" was amply displayed in the
very many contacts she made during this period. Her
organizing ability, which found challenge exhilirating,
became evident, as well as her capacity to inspire people
to follow her, a highly personal attribute. The personal
magnetism which later led many to serve in her programs
and others to adore her was present from the beginning.
As far as one can discover, she made little, if any attempt,
to spell out what she intended, to conceptualize the meaning
of her proposals, or to set down what she planned to do in
any detail. For Jane Addams, philosophy always followed
action. She used, of course, such information as she had
acquired on settlements such as Toynbee Hall and the
Peoples1 Palace, but this could not have been extensive
44
nor intensive. She was appalled at the life of the poor,
as she witnessed it, but her driving force at this point
was the "subjective necessity" to fulfill herself. As
she so often emphasized, she opened Hull House to take as
well as to give.^
Sharing her proposal with others, Jane Addams often
was encouraged by the responses she received. "So many
things keep happening and the ball is rolling at such a
cheerful pace, ’as Ellen says,’ that it is hard to keep
you all informed. . . ."^ In the same letter she mentions
Mr. Smith, the Superintendent of the Armour Mission, and
a Dr. Hollister, a faculty member of the Chicago Medical
School. "He listened with the utmost sympathy and
interest in the scheme saying now and then, ’Go on, Miss
Addams,’ altho’ when we finally went, there were eight
people waiting the outer office (i.e., Dr. Hollister's
office). He shook my hand warmly when I left and told me
to come to him whenever I felt the need of a friend. . . .
I met the entire board of the Armour Mission last Sunday

4
"There was a highly eulogistic, completely mis
understanding editorial in the Daily News last night about
Aunt Jane— how she ruined her health by her endeavor to
’live the life of the poor,’ scrubbing and cooking her own
meals, and ’denying herself all comforts.’ Can you believe
it. . . . Of course we have all scrubbed floors and cooked
in our time; but fancy the idea that you and Aunt Jane went
to Hull House as a ’sacrifice of self!’ " Letter of
J. Weber Linn to Ellen Gates Starr, January 21, 1885, EGSP.
5
Letter of JA to her sister, Mary Linn, February 13,
1889, JAC.
45
at four. . . . The effect was mixed. Mr. McCord, the old
minister who presided, thought that I was vaporizing,
talking sheer nonsense. Mr. Smith, Dr. Convers and a

&
Mr. Pond waxed enthusiastic. . . . Mr. Pond assured me
that I had voiced something hundreds of young people in the
city were trying to express and that he could send me
three young ladies at once who possessed both money and a
knowledge of Herbert Spencer1s "Sociology" but who were
dying from inaction and restlessness. . . .
Correspondence of this period reveals Miss Addams
rushing from one appointment to another, discussing her
"scheme" with everyone who would listen. She mentions
again, in a later letter to her sister, Mr. Smith of the
Armour Mission. "Ellen and I have fallen into the way of
calling him »the first convert1— he has proclaimed us far
and wide with more zeal than ourselves. I am never quite

7
sure that he has the idea exactly, but we are grateful to
him.
£
Probably Allen Pond, the architect, who became an
enthusiastic Hull House supporter and was professionally
involved in the buildings erected there during the next
two decades.
7
Miss Addams was already encountering the problem
of interpreting to the community the services of an agency
which did not intend to offer financial assistance or the
usual forms of charity.
^Letter of JA to Mary Linn, February 19 ,1889, JAC.
46
Ellen Starr was also actively engaged in setting
the "scheme" into motion, and, like Jane, wrote descrip
tions of her activities to family and friends. For both,
the length of the letters in this period testifies to the
enthusiasm they were feeling. The few letters that
remain of this preliminary era are the most detailed of
the entire correspondence. In a charming letter dated
February 23, 1889, so enthusiastic and detailed one can
scarcely refrain from quoting all of it, Ellen Starr
writes, "I will take part of the time to begin an account
of *the scheme1 . . . Jane intends to take a house or flat
in some district which we shall determine upon with the
aid of various wise persons. ... We should like to
have it in a neighborhood where there are a good many
Germans and French immigrants so as to utilize the French
or German which girls learn in school and have little or
no opportunity to practice. There are thousands of
Italians in the city who have no mission and *No Nothin1
to raise them out of their degradation and Jane leans
decidedly to them but she seems to think that Chicago is
swimming in girls who speak Italian fluently. . . . Jane
also thirsts very much for the Anarchists . . . Bien!
^ e 1 take a house, i.e. , Jane takes it, and furnishes it
prettily. She has a good deal of furniture and she intends
to spend several hundred dollars on some more. . . . Then
we shall both live there naturallement . . . Jane can
afford after furnishing the house to spend $100.00 a month
and we think by economy we can run the house on that. . . .
We shall make this as pretty as we can. Then besides our
own bedroom we shall have several others with little
single beds; and we desire and hope that certain young
ladies will from time to time wish to come and abide with
us for a season, longer or shorter, as they feel disposed.
. . . There is to be no *organization1 and 1no institution1
about it. The world is overstocked with institutions and
organizations; and after all, a personality is the only

9
thing that touches one. "
The efforts to find support continued throughout
the spring and summer of 1889. Very little attention was
paid to the question of money. As a beginning, the plan
included a heavy reliance on volunteers who were to pay
their own way. Since Miss Addams intended to use her own
income in the venture, what need was there for collection

9
Letter of EGS to her sister, Mary Blaisdeii,
February 23, 1889, EGSP. The original letter no longer
exists, and the version I used was copied from the original
into a Journal inscribed "J. Alice Haldemann, March 9,
1889. 11 At this period both Jane Addams and Ellen Starr,
in forwarding these long letters, suggested they be passed
on to other designated people, in round-robin style. Mrs.
Haldemann, Miss Addams1 sister, apparently received this
letter in turn, and copied it into her journal which was
preserved.
48
of funds? None of the staff would be drawing a salary,
residents were to pay their living expenses, and from the
outset she intended most of them, if not all, would be
women who would be more likely to serve in this way.
Characteristically, she was focused on making the
beginning; she had no way of visualizing the grand estab
lishment that Hull House eventually became. The question
of finances, on which she was to spend much of her time
in the future, did occur to her but was treated in a
rather off-hand manner. Other people were more conscious
of the need for money than she was. "On Wednesday after-
10
noon we saw Dr. Gunsaulus. ... He was extremely witty
and quite the most enthusiastic convert we have made. He
said that we could command him to any extent until we
1organized1 and commenced to print 'reports.' He promised
us a young lady with a million dollars to begin with. . .."
Other people were even more specific. "Two wealthy men have
offered to become 'associates on the paying bills position'
and a Mr. Hogg (an Englishman at the head of St. Andrew's
Guild who has friends in Toynbee Hall) thinks we will have
to have an association to manage the financial part of it.
We are not inclined to organize until we know our ground
prominent Chicago minister.

^Letter of JA to Mary Linn, February 26, 1889, JAC.
and people better, but if the promises are half fulfilled
we will have no trouble on the money side. . . . When we
are once started and need money, I think, that there will
be no difficulty; at present of course we have no use for

12
it nor are thirsty to collect it." In her own personal
life she had never needed to worry about money. Perhaps
the confidence engendered as a result carried over to an
experience in which a less secure person might have been
more anxious. That she could support herself without a
salary must have added to her comfort.
Miss Addams, encouraged by the support many people
gave her proposals, began seeking a residence into which
to mo v e , accompanied sometimes by ministers who knew the
area and at other times by Allen Pond. She received much
advice on where she should locate her establishment,
although everyone agreed a slum area was the proper loca-

f
tion. But which one? There were several such densely
populated sections in Chicago by this time. The question
was decided when Miss Addams, on one of her housing
expeditions, chanced to see a forlorn, old mansion, the
remains of what had once been a fine country home. On
12Letter of JA to Mary Linn, April 1, 1889, JAC.
50
13
further investigation the area seemed ideal. She later
described the neighborhood in some detail. "Between
Halsted Street and the river live about ten thousand
Italians: Neapolitans, Sicilians and Calabrians, with
an occasional Lombard or Venetian. To the south on Twelfth
Streetare many Germans, and side streets are given over
almost entirely to Polish and Russian Jews. Still further
south, these Jewish colonies merge into a huge Bohemian
colony, so vast that Chicago ranks as the third Bohemian
city in the world. . . . The ward has a population of
about fifty thousand. . . . The streets are impossibly
dirty, the numbers of schools inadequate, factory legis
lation unenforced, the street-lighting bad, the paving
miserable and altogether lacking in the alleys and smaller
streets, and the stables defy all laws of sanitation.
Hundreds of houses are unconnected with the street sewer.
. . . The Hebrews and Italians do the finishing for the
great clothing manufacturers. . . . Hence these shops
abound in the worst of the foreign districts, where the
13
The investigation was minimal. She found a house
she liked and that seemed to have possibilities for renova
tion, and the surrounding district was certainly a slum
area. These facts were enough for her to make her choice.
She was never plagued by indecision.
51
sweater finds his cheap basement and his home finishers.

14
There is a constant tendency to employ school children. "
Negotiations opened immediately between Miss Addams

15
and Helen Culver, the owner of the property, and a lease
for part of it arranged. On September 18, 1889, she, Ellen

16
Starr and Miss Mary Keyser, a housekeeper, moved in.
14
J. Addams, "The Objective Value of a Social
Settlement," published in Philanthropy and Social Progress
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Co. , 1893), pp. 28-40.
15
Helen Culver was secretary to Charles Hull, the
original owner, before his death. He bequeathed the mansion,
site of his former home, and considerable other property to
her. Helen Culver continued her interest in Hull House until
her death years later. She donated some property to the
agency over a period of years, and Miss Addams was properly
appreciative. In some instances property was bought and
Miss Addams was sometimes irritated at Miss Culver1 s haggling
over the price. See letter of JA to Mary Rozet Smith,
March 3, 1894, also letter of JA to MRS, May 1, 1894, JAC.
16
Rent was apparently paid for approximately six •
months, at the end of which period Miss Culver, by then a
convert to the cause, remitted payment. "Now comes the great
item of news. Miss Culver has given us the house rent free
for four years amounting to $2880. and we have decided to
call the house Hull-House. Connect these two facts in any
way that your refined imagination suggests. . . . It seems
to me the most natural and probably name imaginable, being
the name by which it is already known to old residents and
the neighborhood. Indeed such awful names have been sug
gested that this one, though not musical, and, I fear causing
restlessness and grief to the shade of Matthew Arnold, seems
positively refreshing from the absence of nauseating quali
ties. It was growing very inconvenient not to have a name,
and it is very convenient to have four years* rent. . . . "
Letter of EGS to her sister Mary Starr Blaisdell, May 18,
1890, EGSP. Ellen Starr was an accomplished letter writer
and many of her letters are charming, witty and incisive,
well worth reproducing. They are often more illuminating
than Miss Addams’ whose efforts were concentrated on lec
tures and articles, so that many of her letters are mere
notes written by a very busy woman.
The years of a futile search for purpose and usefulness,
the dread that her life would be unproductive and meaning
less, the drive to achieve which had characterized her
seminary years, the energy that would not permit her to
remain still except when she was ill, the shock of her
encounters with poverty and suffering, the strong moral
fibre of her personality, her conviction that change was
not only necessary but possible, and her tremendous belief
in human potentialities for growth and development,
together with her insistence that people were more alike
than they were different— all these experiences, feelings
and convictions were steps on the ladder that led to Hull
House.
CHAPTER IV
THE BEGINNINGS OF A PROFESSIONAL CAREER
" . . . I do know, however, the strength of a
beautiful spiritual life beside one, and that I have. I
could never do it without Miss Addams. She is a wonderful
person. How I wish you knew her! She 1strengthens the
weak knees' . . . and has no sense of strength herself.
It is a strange and beautiful thing for me to see. Every
body who comes near her is affected by her. It is as if
she simply diffused something which came from outside
herself, of which she is the luminous medium, and I suppose
that is precisely what she does do. We have our ordinary
relationship as friends who live together subject to
attacks of obstinacy, boorishness, conceit, and what not
on my part, and I scold her and oppose her, but outside
of that I always feel that rare and unattainable character
which means obeying God . . . I don't know just at this
point how I should live in my life without her. I
couldn't do this without her, and I couldn't very well not
do it. . . .
^"Letter of EGS to her cousin, Mary Allen,

September 15, 1889, EGSP.
53
54
The idea of two well brought-up women moving into
one of Chicago* s worst slums must have seemed strange and
unwholesome to some of their contemporaries and outlandish
to the families amongst whom they went to live. What did
their own families think of this step? Ellen Starr had
for several years been earning her own living and was
independent of her parents who were both still alive. For
the most part her decisions were her own. Of herself, in
the same letter quoted above, she wrote, "I need the
outside brace, and I've been very mercifully provided with
it. " She became dependent on Jane Addams for emotional and
2
financial support, and the latter cheerfully provided it.
Her reliance on Miss Addams for financial support

continued after the latter* s death. In the files at Smith
College there are several somewhat acrimonious letters
written between Mrs. Louise deKoven Bowen, Treasurer of the
Hull House trustees, and Ellen Starr who objected to what
she felt was a cut in her pension and a decrease in the
income from a bequest in Miss Addams* will. Ellen Starr
was then an old woman, an invalid, and was being cared for
in a convent in Suffern, N. Y . , where she went to live
in about 1920 after becoming a Roman Catholic convert.
Mrs. Bowen, a long-time associate of Miss Addams and a
wealthy woman, expressed some annoyance at her in these
letters. "I think Jane was rather sketchy in the way she
dealt with figures." Miss Addams apparently operated from
a conviction that money would always be available when
she wanted it; her subsequent experiences at Hull House,
into which many wealthy people poured thousands of dollars,
strengthened this attitude. As we shall se later, Jane
Addams never hesitated to ask for money when she felt it
was needed-— and it always was, of course.
55
Miss Addams, the prime mover, was also emancipated
from her family. Her relationship with her stepmother was

3
not close, she had an independent income which assured
her support, and, though she had never worked up to this
point, she was free to do as she wished. " Whether any
attempt was made to prevent her from moving into a some
what dangerous, foul slum is unknown. Perhaps she was
talking about herself when seh wrote, " . . . when the
daughter comes back from college and begins to recognize
her social claim to the 1 submerged truth1 and to evince
a disposition to fulfill it, the family claim is stren
uously asserted; she is told she is unjustified, ill
advised in her efforts. If she persists, the family too
often are injured and unhappy unless the efforts are called
missionary and the religious zeal of the family carry them

4
over their sense of abuse." For Jane Addams, top, the
3
"I remember you so distinctly as a little girl
tripping about your father* s house, and on my last visit
there I remember how much more acceptable to you was the
service of love from your eldest sister than the word of
authority from your stepmother. . . . " Letter of Mrs.
Sarah C. T. Uhl to JA, Shenandoah, Iowa, November 16,
1896, JAC.
4
Addams, Twenty Years, p. 119. This quotation is
taken from are article "The Subjective Value of a Social
Settlement," included in its entirety in Twenty Years.
The article, to which reference will be made later on was
originally published in Walter Hine Page* s "The Forum"
for November, 1892, and subsequently reproduced in the
book, Philanthropy and Social Progress (Thomas Crowell,
1894), under the title, "The Subjective Necessity for
Social Settlements. "
56
slum was foul, but full of life and fascinatingly different
in its human composition and its way of life.
The people amongst whom she and Ellen Starr went
to live must have been very puzzled by their presence, and
suspicious of them. They were no doubt used to the presence
of philanthropists, ministers, missionaries to the poor,
charity workers, and uplifters of various sorts. Few of
these people, however, lived amongst them, and those who
did were identified with some organized group— a church, a
mission society, etc. Jane Addams and Ellen Starr were
connected to nothing but themselves. "No organization"
and "no institution," Ellen Starr cried, and the senti
ments were as much Miss Addams1 as her own. From the
beginning the latter emphasized that this enterprise
belonged to her. This attitude came from her independent
spirit, her supreme belief in herself and her purpose
(so different from her feelings about herself as a person),
and her wish to be free of old ideas, organizational limi
tations, obligations to others, and imposed restrictions
on her activities. She was determined to fulfill herself,
to free her creative powers and harness them to a great
purpose. In many ways her motives were largely personal;
she wanted to be needed and to be used because only in
this sense could she find fulfillment. She herself was
57
very conscious, and aware that in serving others she was
serving herself. "Jane feels that it is not the Christian
spirit to go among these people as if you were bringing
them a great boon: that one gets as much as she gives.
More important than the "Christian spirit" was her own
determination not to separate herself from the people
amongst whom she was going to live and whom she was going
to help. Charity, with its implied distance between the
giver and the receiver, was not for her. She was aware,
too, from the very beginning, that in the process her own
needs would be satisfied, the "subjective necessity" which
she described as ". . . possibly the desire for a new form
of social success due to the nicety of imagination, which
refuses worldly pleasures unmixed with the joys of self-
sacrifice; possibly a love of approbation, so vast that
it is not content with the treble clapping of delicate
hands, but wishes also to hear the bass notes from

6
toughened palms, may mingle with these." Little did she
know then that the "treble clapping" as to become thunderous
approval.
Her very human need for approval.shines through,

5
Letter of EGS to her sister, Mary Blaisdell,
February 23, 1889, EGSP.
g
Addams, "The Subjective Necessity for Social
Settlements," p. 22.
58
but, perhaps more importantly, her introspective spirit
and her self-awareness illuminate her entire career. From
this inner well-spring she drew constantly for her incisive
knowledge of human motivation and human needs. Her
reliance on her strong intuitive sense was her mainstay
and her most valuable professional tool. The knowledge she
acquired was always connected with feeling. She knew how
she felt and what she needed; the emotional requirements
of other human beings could not be very different. She
trusted and believed in herself and felt no need for
organization and structure. These came later, but she
never permitted them to intrude too much into her pro
fessional career. Direct and meaningful contact between
one human being and another was the keynote.
When Jane Addams and Ellen Starr went to live at
335 Halsted Street, they hoped to attract other women to
join them, in the same manner that Toynbee Hall attracted
university men. Though Miss Addams, as an educated woman,
preferred college-trained women, no educational restriction
was set up. Her early efforts to explain the idea of
residents, which was a new concept in the United States,
resulted at times in misconceptions. When she and Ellen
Starr visited Dr. Gunsaulus in their pre-Hull House rounds,
he questioned them about their plan for residents,
59
. . lThen your idea perhaps would be to have a little
training school where young ladies could be instructed
how to deal with the poor1 and he said it as if he thought
nothing would be nicer than such a little training school.
When we quite repudiated it and said we would have naught
of such a training school or any 1institution’ whatever:
that we were tired of institutions: that Miss Addams and
Miss Starr simply intended to live there and get acquainted
with the people and ask their friends of both classes to

7
visit them he was 1tickled to deathl 1 "
Miss Addams, armed with her belief in herself, and
Ellen Starr, armed with her belief in Jane Addams, made it
clear from the beginning "that we were ready to perform the
hunblest neighborhood services. We were asked to wash the
new-born babies, and to prepare the dead for burial, to

g
nurse the sick and to mind the children." Life swarmed
around them, and the responses from their neighbors were
varied. "I believe we have no broken windows this week. . . .
7
Letter of EGS to Mary Blaisdell, February 23, 1889,
Chicago, EGSP. In some ways Hull House did later become
a training school, and pointed the way for the development
of schools of social work.
g
60
9
Perhaps there may be some later. . . Other experiences
were more pleasantly welcoming. "Two young men have called
voluntarily, a woman has presented us with a bottle of
catsup, and another has requested to leave her baby with
un one morning while she moved her household effects. . . .
One of the young men was very droll. He is a Hebrew German
by descent and Russian by birth and residence. ... He
informed me that he always made it a study to be as much
of a gentleman as he could. He succeeds, to a certain
degree, and we signified our willingness in polite terms,
to give him any assistance in our power.
In the first few years Jane Addams was actively
involved in the service end of the program. She tended
babies, visited sick neighbors, listened to troubled
people and tried to help in whatever way she could. The
development of a conscious helping process was still in
the future, but in the early days at Hull House she was
intuitively using methods that were later identified as a
prominent part of that process. She formed relationships
9
Letter of EGS to her parents, November 3, 1889,
EGSP. Another resident also commented on broken windows:
"Mr. Burchard remembered, too, how suspicious the neighbor
hood was about the whole project and how little boys
delighted in hurling bricks through Hull House windows
until the staff in desperation put in iron grills. "
"Homecoming at Hull House is Gala Affair," Chicago Daily
New s , April 27, 1940.
1Îbid. In a postscript added by Miss Addams, she
comments on the picture of Ellen Starr caring for dirty
babies.
in which genuine interest, honest warmth, and a wish to
help were prominent. She went to the homes of her
neighbors and invited them to hers.
The beginnings were thus very simple, but as time
went on programs became established which went beyond
friendly neighboring, The first of these was a kindergarten
children were always close to Miss Addams* heart, substi
tutes as they must have been for the ones she did not have.
Jennie Dow, a volunteer, organized and led this program .^

Receptions were arranged for various nationality groups in
the area, which not only brought cheer to the neighbors
who came but knowledge about immigrant customs and mores
to both Jane Addams and Ellen Starr. "Last night we had
a very peaceful and successful reception evening. The
previous Saturday evening was characterized by the
prevalence of the elite and conspicuous for the absence
of invited neighbors. ... A young Mr. Day . . . said he
didn* t know whether he approved of the scheme or n o t , but
he knew he had had the most delightful evening he had
enjoyed in Chicago, and that it was a charming place to go.
^ S e e Addams, Twenty Years, pp. 101-103. "... a

charming young girl conducted a kindergarten in the drawing
room, coming regularly every morning from her home in a
distant part of the North Side of the city. . . .
62
Last night we tried the experiment of asking mothers and

12
children and not inviting him. It seems to scare them
to have ’him’ invited. They aren't used to it, apparently,
and get embarrassed over it. A good many came last

13
night." The neighbors characteristically did not all
yield to the invitations, nor were they always the kind

14
of neighbors wanted. "Sig. V. has been very much
depressed lately over the indifference and obstinacy of
his countrymen, but his spirits were greatly raised last
night [at a reception for Italian immigrants]. . . . There
were a great many children, babies even, and some of the
women wore bright kerchiefs on their heads. The rich and
vulgar Italians are taking to coming, sporting diamond
crosses. ... We put them on the back seats and the
peasants to the front. One of the ladies of the diamond
cross recited a patriotic poem with great spirit. . . .
Jane says it was very spirited, and some of the people

15
were moved. . ." Classes and reading groups were
organized both for children and adults. "I am taking home
to read, Deepest England, which I haven't found time for,

12
Ellen Starr is referring to husbands.
13
Letter of EGS to her parents, November 3, 1889 or
1890 (year not clear), EGSP.
14
A Mr. Valerio, who later with his wife became a
resident at Hull House.
15
Letter of EGS to Mary Blaisdell, Hull House,
March 18, 1890, EGSP.
63
Fabian Essays in Socialism, and The Cid (the latter for
my boys— Knights of the Round Table). They have read the
Arthur stories with me, and are doing Charlemagne. . . .
They are lovely boys— the Knights, about 12 or 13 years of

16
age. . . . " Prejudice amongst immigrant groups was
encountered on more than one occasion. "A German parent
came one morning, and demanded the removal of all the
1Italienische Kinder1 on account of their being so dirty and
having bugs. She explained this to us and said that, if

17
she were in our place, she wouldn1t let any of them stay."
Volunteers and residents soon came to join Miss
Addams and Miss Starr. An early volunteer was Mary Rozet

18
Smith who brought her personal abilities and her money
■^Letter of EGS to Mary E. Allen, "On the Train,"

December 30, 1889 (?), EGSP.
17
Letter of EGS to Mary Blaisdell, Hull House,
December 19, 1889, or 1890, EGSP.
"I O
Many of the letters in the Jane Addams collection

at Swarthmore College are to Miss Smith, the daughter of
wealthy Chicagoans. "Miss Addams and Miss Smith were con
stant companions for many years. When Miss Addams found
that living with her work at Hull House became too strenu
ous, she was welcomed to Miss Smith’s beautiful home on
Walton Place. Miss Smith virtually took care of Miss Addams;
she shielded her from her friends as well as from her foes
. . . protected her from the curiosity seekers who wished to
shake hands with this great woman. . . . For twenty years or
m o r e , Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith owned a cottage
together at Hull’s Cove, Main. . . . " From an unpublished
paper written by Mary Swain Wagner, entitled "Jane Addams1
Friends at Hull House," S CPC, pp. 10-11. Mrs. Joseph
deKoven Bowen, another Hull House volunteer, described the
intimate nature of this relationship. "Mary [Rozet Smith]
was in the habit of following her with a shawl, pocket
handkerchiefs, crackers, if she thought Miss Addams might be
hungry, or anything else she might want, and was always ready
to supply Miss Addams1 needs, whatever they were. " Louise
deKoven Bowen, Open Windows (Chicago: Ralph Fletcher
Seymour, 1946), p. 227.
64
to Hull House, and a deep affection to Miss Addams which
resulted in a life-long friendship, the most intense of her
relationships. "The smallest Friday girls (not Italians)
have made marvelous things: picture-books, which they
have been pasting for weeks (under the direction of Mary
Rozet)— also needle books for their mothers, and handker
chiefs for their fathers. Mary took all the hkfs home,
marked them with an initial in ink, and washed and ironed
them. 1,19
The first resident came, soon to be followed by
many more, a galaxy of brilliant, able women, and some men,
with whom Miss Addams must share much credit for the
startling success of Hull House. Miss Anna Farnsworth led
the way, described by Ellen Starr as "our first resident,
a society girl, par excellence, but she stuck it pretty

20
well. " Her contributions to the early success of Hull
House came from her "gracious gifts of free time and
abundant good-will for counselling perplexed immigrants,
finding comfortable quarters for old people who could do
19
Letter of EGS to Mary Blaisdell, December 19,
1889 or 1890, EGSP.
20
This comment, made in 1937 when Ellen Starr was
examining her early correspondence, is pencilled on the
reverse of p. 5 of a letter addressed to Mary E. Allen,
December 30, 1889 (?), EGSP.
65
a little work but not fend for themselves in the labor
market, providing happy Saturdays in the parks for little
groups of school children whose mothers worked away from
home [which] were among the Settlement1s early enrichment

21
of the neighborhood life. . . . "
Hull House was thus scarcely established before it
was a success. Program was added to program, activity to
activity, and within a few years its early informal recep
tions and easy "neighbouring" gave way to organized clubs,
structured programs (like college extension courses), and
services of every conceivable kind. Although Jane Addams
and Hull House can be separated only with great difficulty,
this dissertation, focusing as it does on the career of
Jane Addams as a social worker, is not a history of Hull
House. A few remarks, however, seem essential before we
turn the spotlight on Jane. The settlement was her brain
child, but its success was due also to the hundreds of
capable people who worked in its innumerable programs.
The idea of Hull House caught on very quickly, and
it soon became a fulcrum for many men and women, young and
old, into which they could pour their capacities, their
21
Florence Kelley, "I Go to Work," The Survey,
LVIII, No. 5 (June 1, 1927), 271-74, 301.
66
intelligences and their money. The personal magnetism of
Jane Addams and her pronounced organizing abilities account
for some of the success, a matter we will need to examine
more closely. Beyond this, Miss Addams was a child of her
times, and her concern for the victims of industrial America
was reflected in the minds and hearts of many sensitive
people. Hull House offered them an opportunity to transform
concern into action on a people-to-people level. In con
trast to charity and alms-giving, programs which "urged the
rich to engage in friendly visiting and other voluntary
charitable activities in order that the poor might be
improved by coming into contact with superior beings,"
settlement programs "emphasized the reciprocal advantage
which resulted from the association of persons of different

22
economic and social levels. 11 The idea was borrowed from
Arnold Toynbee and Canon Barnett. Caught hold of by a
woman of great compassion and a driving will which impelled
her on relentlessly, transferred across the ocean, the
concept was received readily by many people in America.
Though Jane Addams could not really have known it in 1889
when Hull House opened its doors, all over Chicago people
were waiting for it. An agency which refused to call
22
Bremner, From the Depths, p. 61.
itself a charity, which emphasized friendship, warmth and
unpatronizing concern and whose workers were willing to
share neighborhood conditions and problems, was bringing
something new and attractive to American philanthropy.
This difference in an approach to helping people with its
emphasis on the value of relationships as a primary factor
was ultimately an element in the emergence of a new pro
fession— social work. Though Jane was many things— a
social reformer, a successful popular writer, a fund
raiser, a leading peace worker, an ardent advocate of
woman1s rights, she was also a pioneer settlement worker.
Let us look at how she operated in this role.
23
"The article in the Tribune [describing Hull
House] was disgustingly vulgar and horrid. . . . The
worst thing was her saying . . . 1It will be greater
than any charity. 1 Whe she wanted to slap it in the
face by comparing it with a charity, I can1t grasp. "
Letter of EGS to Mary Blaisdell, May 18, 1890, EGSP.
CHAPTER V
A SOCIAL AGENCY EMERGES
When Jane Addams went to live at 335 Halsted Street,
her knowledge of how the poor lived, what their values were
and how they felt must have been very meager. Her impulse
to help by establishing a settlement house came from her
emotional reactions to the things she saw on her travels,
as described in her autobiography, together with a sense
of outrage that society was being divided into victors
and victims. She was twenty-nine at the time, and until
she was touched by the scenes she witnessed in her trips
abroad, she was apparently unaware of or uninvolved in
events at home. There is no reference in her early cor
respondence or in her later writing which indicates that
as a young woman she reacted to the social and economic
conflicts that were being waged in America. The dis
content of the farmers, the beginnings of labor organiza
tions , most of all the Haymarket riot in Chicago which
shook all of America in 1886— none of these, nor any other
event of a similar nature, seemed to have touched her.
"I was myself an invalid during much of the decade of the
68
69
eighties and was abroad during the year of the Riot and
the hectic year following, . . . " she later wrote.^
Invalids can, however, and do read newspapers, periodicals
and books. Jane Addams had, of course, led a sheltered
life, but so had Florence Kelley who was also born into
a comfortable middle-class home. As a young woman, however,
she translated Engels1 The Condition of the Working Classes
in England in 1844, into English. She also later went
abroad and became involved in some of the activities of

2
Russian exiles in Switzerland.
Characteristically, when Jane Addams1 attention
finally turned to social problems, her reaction was
"'‘Jane Addams, My Friend, Julia Lathrop (New York:

Macmillan, 1935), p. 47.
2
See Goldmark, Impatient Crusader. Before her
death, Florence Kelley also began writing her memoirs,
and four chapters of a proposed book were published in
The Survey in October, 1926, and February, April, and
June, 1927. Mrs. Kelley was a remarkable woman, able,
resourceful and intelligent. Her colorful and productive
life deserves a more intensive examination than Miss
Goldmark, a social worker who was her friend and co-worker,
was able to give it in her biography. Mrs. Kelley, a
resident at Hull House for eight years, was a friend and
admirer of Miss Addams but saw her in very human terms.
"She was perhaps the only resident of Hull who ever
habitually made fun of ‘Sister Jane.1 1Do you know what
I would do,1 she said once, ‘if that woman calls you a
saint again? I1d show her my teeth and if that didn11
convince her, I would bite her!* " Linn, Jane Addams,
p. 139.
70
emotional, in terms of people and not in terms of ideas.

3
Magazine articles, newspaper stories, books, — none of
these stirred her as did the sight of suffering people.
As uneventful as Jane Addams* first thirty years had been,
once she found her career, her life was filled with
unceasing activity which, looked at in detail, sometimes
seems overwhelming. How does one take hold of the career
of a woman who never seems to have stopped for breath,

4
whose energy, while not inexhaustible, was extraordinary,
and who often darted off in many directions at the same
time? The only way is what undoubtedly Jane Addams would
have suggested. If there is a task ahead, decide what you
want to do and just begin; where you will be, you will
discover when you get there. If there was anything

3
Looking Backward and Progress and Poverty must have
been read by thousands of Jane Addams’ contemporaries. If
she read them, which of course is possible, they did not
impress themselves enough on her to inspire any impulse to
action.
4
There were her illnesses, her trips abroad, and her
summers at Bar Harbor, Maine. At such times, however, her
activity did not entirely cease. Miss Addams "was a regular
visitor at Bar Harbor, Maine, in spite of its wealthy
snobbery and its marked bias against women, because she
found she could get nearly as much in contributions in a
summer there as she could during the rest of the year
elsewhere." Ray Ginger, Altgeld*s America, The Lincoln
Ideal vs. Changing Realities (New York: Funk and Wagnalls
Co. , 1958) , pp. 131-32.
Miss Addams trusted it was the flowing process of life.
Though she saw life whole, she attacked its problems in
pieces as they came to her attention. Life, for Jane
Addams, was never static; she believed people could make
things happen. She, herself, was a prime example of this
conviction.
By the time Jane Addams established Hull House, she
had already made contacts in important areas of the Chicago
community and with influential people. The ministers she
consulted, for example, Dr. Gunsaulus and Dr. Swing, were
prominent Chicago clergymen. Many of the groups before
whom she talked were significant sources of support, like
the Woman’s Club which was a force in Chicago civic life.
"Saturday morning we received a note from a Mrs. Simmons,
chairman of the Philanthropy Committee of the Woman [sic!
Club, saying the members of the Committee would drink tea
at her house between three and five and asking us to come
and address them. It was rather inconvenient as Ellen had
invited Miss Locke, the Industrial Art teacher, to lunch
on Saturday, but we hurried her off as soon as we decently
could, and reached Mrs. Simmons about four. I was almost
immediately requested to begin and talked for about fifteen
minutes as well as I could. Some of the older ladles cried.
’Surprises never cease1 Ellen says— and the minute I stopped
there was a general discussion of pros and cons. The
chairman brought them to order and said they would hear
from Mrs. Starrett. She is of much weight in the Club,
has written books . . . and I quite trembled when this
dignified personage began and thought if she wants, she
can crush the whole thing at a blow. She began by saying
that her ancestors were Quakers and that occasionally she
found herself back to their point of view. She believed
that just now she had felt the stirring of the Spirit.
She intended to follow whither it led and she advised the
other ladies to meditate on the matter which had been pre
sented. The effect was very good for u s , two or three of
the other ladies made appointments for u s , among them a
Dr. Fox, a physician on the South side who was greatly

5
taken with it. . . . " The magic of Jane Addams1 per
sonality, compounded of her gentleness, her sincerity, her
choice of a career in serving others, and her deep convic
tion was already working for her and bringing her supporters.
Invitations to address groups poured in on her. "On
Saturday afternoon Ellen had invited a few ladies to our
room who all took stock every one of them my dear [sicl.
Sunday morning we heard Mr. Gass and in the afternoon I
talked for half an hour to the Boys [sic] of Mrs. Stryker1s

5
Letter of JA to Mary Linn, 4 Washington Place,
February 19, 1889, JAC.
Miss, band . . . but altho1 I said about the same things I
had told the boys at Norwood the latter seemed to me the
brighter boys and the more attractive. Mason Trowbridge
told his mother when he went home that 'it was awful
interesting but Miss A. didn* t know nothing of Chicago
mickey* s.* Monday afternoon I talked at the training
school for Home and Foreign Missionary [work] to about

0
sixty embryo missionaries . . . and did not mention the
scheme. I told Ellen it was a great relief to my mind to
find that I could ignore the scheme when I choose. We . . .

7
get invitations from all sides. . . . " The oratorical
abilities she had developed at Rockford College were being
put to good use.
She appealed in her speeches not only for support
for the "scheme" but for consideration of active service
in the settlement. "In the winter of 1888-89 when Ellen
Gates Starr . . . and myself were advocating a new Toynbee
Hall and were asking our old friends for their cooperation
and understanding, we naturally spoke at Rockford College.
As I recall that initial meeting, Mr. Lathrop although very
friendly was not convinced of the usefulness of our plan

0
The missionaries were apparently interested in
conditions in East London, and Miss Addams must have dis
cussed her experiences there.
7
Letter of JA to Mary Linn, February 26, 1889, JAC.
74
but he assured us of his good will and made no objection

0
when Julia decided to go to Hull House. "
These early speaking engagements were the fore
runners of hundreds of talks, lectures, speeches, even
orations, that Jane Addams was to give in the future. The
invitations she was getting "from all sides" developed later
into a torrent of requests, few of which she refused. Shy
and formal as she was in personal relationships, she
blossomed out in front of groups. She was from all the
evidence an extremely effective speaker, able to project
her concern and her conviction effectively, and move her
audiences. Many other people were to feel "the stirring
of the Spirit" just as Mrs. Starrett did.
In this period, too, either just before the
establishment of Hull House or very soon afterwards, in
addition to attracting residents, she came to the attention
of the like-minded; one of these was Henry Demarest Lloyd
who, as a social reformer, humanitarian and writer, shared
many of Jane Addams* convictions. The meeting, whichever
way it came about, developed into a close friendship and

8
Addams, My Friend, Julia Lathrop, pp. 47-48. Miss
Lathrop later became a county visitor for families receiv
ing assistance, was subsequently appointed by Governor
Altgeld to the Illinois State Board of Charities, and from
1912 to 1921 was the first head of the Children* s Bureau.
Throughout her social work career, Miss Lathrop remained
a friend of Miss Addams.
75
attachment on Miss Addams1 part to Mr. Lloyd. Some of his
opinions were cut from the same cloth as hers. "Our
civilization is not a failure; it does not have to he
turned back; it needs only to be carried further along its
own path. We need no revolution, only the next step in
evolution and historic development. We do not need to
retrace, unlearn, destroy, but to go on, do more, study

9
the same things, but harder." Mr. Lloyd soon offered his
services to Miss Addams. "Mr. Lloyd has spoken for us this
year, but not as well as usual. Mr. Lloyd thinks and
studies too much in proportion, and we too little. I wish
there were some sort of moderator. There is no moderation
where Jane is— can11 be. Visitors from Hull House were
also frequent in the home of Mr. Lloyd. "Reformers and
social workers came (to his home) in Winnetka . . . (the
9
Henry Demarest Lloyd, Man: The Social Creator,
ed.Jane Addams and Anne Withington (New York: Doubleday,
Page and Co., 1906). Miss Addams and Miss Withington
collected some of Mr. Lloyd1s unpublished papers after his
death, and issued them in this volume.
"''^Letter of EGS to Mary E. Allen, "On the Train,"
December 30, 1889 (?), EGSP. Ellen Starr here is des
cribing the difference she sees between the social reformer,
who theorizes too much and does too little, and the social
worker, who does too much and theorizes too little. Her
comment "There is no moderation where Jane is" might well
serve as a capsule description of her career.
76
latter, as Jane said, was practically an annex to Hull
House). . .
Henry Demarest Lloyd was only the first of many
outstanding people Jane Addams was able to attract to
herself and to Hull House. He was soon followed by John
Dewey, then teaching psychology at the University of
Michigan, later by William Dean Howells, Clarence Darrow,
Eugene Debs, Charles Beard, and many others.
In the meantime Jane Addams was busy consolidat
ing the establishment she had begun at 335 S. Halsted
Street. Though Miss Addams was the instigator and
organizer of the whole project, in the first several
years no distinction was made between her position at
Hull House and those held by other residents and volun
teers. She carried no title, and never referred to
herself as other than Jane Addams of Hull House. The
distinctions came later, but she never seemed entirely
comfortable with them.
Nor was there much difference at the beginning in
Miss Addams1 activities from those others were performing.
"I have been very busy this week inviting for a Wednesday
evening club Mr. Hicks is starting, and so postponed the
‘^Daniel Aaron, Men of Good Hope, A Story of

American Progressives (New York: Oxford University Press,
1961), Chap. V, p. 149.
12
lunch invitations until today." She was very fond of
receiving people at the door, in the manner of the hostess
greeting her guests. She wanted to see everyone who came
and, as her fame increased, everyone who came wanted to
see her. "In its first year, no less than 90,000 people
came to the house, by the second year visitors averaged
a steady 2,000 a week— and most of these were seen per-

13
sonally by Jane Addams." Was this because of her
insatiable curiosity, her need for approval or for con
tact with people, or a wish to be a part of everything?
Perhaps, the little girl who felt left out developed into
a woman who needed to be a part of all that went on.
Whatever it was, the impression was strengthened for
many people that Jane Addams and Hull House were one and
the same. They'soon did not see a social agency, when they
thought of Hull House; they were more likely to visualize
an appealing and saint-like woman.
Moving on from its conception and birth, very
rapidly Hull House proved how badly it was needed. Though
Jane Addams may have considered herself in the beginning a
resident amongst residents, the responsibilities she
12Letter of JA to MRS, May 20, 1890, JAC.

13
Tims, Jane Addams of Hull House, p. 55.
assumed soon separated her from the others. Though sig
nificantly she started off with no association behind
her— no board of directors, no constitution, and only
vague pledges of financial support— she soon discovered
that something more than interest and conviction were
necessary to maintain a social agency. If nothing more,
money was required. Jane Addams, as we have seen, made
no attempt to collect funds before Hull House was
established, preferring to begin by using her own money.
The need for additional funds was soon apparent, and
Miss Addams began her appeals for contributions which

14
occupied much of her time later on. References to
money appear in her early correspondence accompanied
later on by comments on the poor state of Hull House
finances. "There is no haste about the money, as Mrs.

15
Coonley and Mrs. Wilmarth have paid for this month."
Again, "The check came duly to hand, I hope you did not
16
hurry to send it," and "Your letter with the news of
14
A ledger in the possession of Hull House when I
was there in January, 1962, lists on its pages contribu
tions to Hull House over a period of years. For example,
under the date of September 1, 1889 to (date is omitted)
the following contributions are listed: "Mrs. Coonley
100. , Miss Culver 100. , Mr. Barrett 100. , Mr. Orr 100. ,
Mrs. McCormick 120., Mrs. Wilmarth 75., Mr. Wilson 200."
Contributions later were much more sizable.
15
Letter of JA to MRS, December 19, 1890, JAC.
I
Letter of JA to MRS, July 4, 1892, JAC.
the generous check came to hand this morning. I cannot
tell you how relieved and grateful I am, and what a
difference it will make in the running order of things

17
for all the next months." Later on, when the board of
trustees was formed, the financial affairs of Hull House
fell into the very capable hands of Mrs. Joseph deKoven

18
Bowen, as treasurer. However, Miss Addams' personal
appeals for funds continued, and very wisely; a letter
from her was far more effective in producing revenue than
an appeal from a board member.
As activity piled on activity, the need for addi
tional finances obviously increased, but Miss Addams,
though certainly worried about bills and expenses, never
1^Letter of JA to MRS, July 27, 1892, JAC. The

comments on money are contained in letters to Mary Rozet
Smith, which were preserved. One can assume appeals were
going out to others in correspondence that has been
destroyed. Letters to Anita McCormick Blaine, which I
shall mention later on, are full of appeals for funds.
18
Mrs. Bowen was a prominent and wealthy civic
leader, the wife of a banker. She met Miss Addams at a
meeting she addressed on the Pullman strike, and sub
sequently went to visit. Hull House. Miss Addams asked
Mrs. Bowen to join the Hull House Woman! s Club and give
the group some leadership. Somewhat frightened by this
assignment, she accepted, went home and studied parlia
mentary procedure. "For about seventeen years I filled
some official position in the club, many years being
president, and I have always felt that any experience
I acquired in speaking was entirely due to practice in
this club." Louise deKoven Bowen, Growing Up With a^
City (New York: Macmillan Co. , 1926) , p. 83.
lost her confidence that money would be found. "But in
spite of our financial stringency, I always believed that
money would be given when we had once clearly reduced the
Settlement idea to the actual deed . . . for I was con
vinced that disinterested action was like truth or beauty

19
in its lucidity and power of appeal." The explanation
is respectable, but must also have been accompanied by an
inner attitude of security about where money would come
from. Jane Addams had never had to worry about her own
finances, and though she worried later about money for
Hull House ("we gave up one golden scheme after another

, 20
because we could not afford it"), her own personal
experience lessened the anxiety. Money was also avail
able from the great fortunes that were being built up.
Some of the new millionaires began to regard their money
as a "sacred trust" to be poured back into the community
to support a variety of good causes. "Believing that
enormous differences in the economic condition of men were
normal and beneficent, Carnegie asserted that wealth was
a sacred trust administered by the person possessing for
the welfare of the community. The aim of the millionaire,
19
20
Ibid. , p. 150.
81
21
he declared, should be to die poor. An example of this
attitude closer to home comes from Mrs. Bowen who wrote,
"I had been brought up with the idea that some day I would
inherit a fortune and I was always taught that the responsi
bility of money was great, and that God would hold me
accountable for the manner in which I used my talents. I
was, therefore, most eager to learn how to spend what I had

22
in a proper way."
The money that flowed in was not only used to
finance existing programs, but also to expand them. Hull
House had scarcely drawn its first breath when Jane Addams
was busy with increasing the scope of its activities. Hull
House was opened in September 1889; in 1890 the first of
eleven additional buildings was begun. It was completed in
1891. Edward Butler, a Chicago business man, contributed

23
the funds to erect an art gallery. The fact that so
quickly money could have been given to expand Hull House
is a tribute to Miss Addams' persuasiveness. The agency
was still unincorporated, unorganized and with no visible
21
Bremner, From the Depths, pp. 31-32.
22
Bowen, Growing Up With a. City, p. 51.
23
Since Hull House and Jane Addams are an insep
arable combination, her demands for Hull House may very
well have reflected what she wanted for herself. In any
case her freedom in pressuring people for money and
service was essential to the success of the agency pro
gram..
82
structure in the form of a board of influential directors

24
or anything else. The success of the initial phase
rested almost entirely in Jane Addams1 hands, and the
power of her appeal, with its emphasis on bringing people
together, rather than setting them against each other,
found ready response in many Americans. Edward Butler
was an early example. ^
In the first volume of her autobiography, Jane
Addams comments on the use of Mr. Butler1s donation to

26
construct an art gallery, but does not explain the
reason for the decision. In the midst of such dire
poverty the decision does seem, if not odd, somewhat
unrelated to the area1s more basic needs, as though cake
were being offered where bread was required. To dismiss
this venture as somewhat fanciful, however, is to miss
an essential element in Jane Addams1 convictions, which
was exhibited on many occasions and in many ways. She
2^When Barnett founded Toynbee Hall, for example,

he and his colleagues formed the University Settlement
Association to provide necessary funds. See Henderson,
Social Settlements.
25
At this period. Miss Addams, like many of her
colleagues, became concerned over the question of "tainted
money. " In Twenty Years she described an episode involv
ing the offer of a considerable sum from a man "notorious
for underpaying the girls in his establishment." The
money was refused but she was never sure how justified the
refusal was, and in the future showed little concern for
this issue. See Twenty Years, pp. 138-39.
26Ibid., p. 148.
83
was very concerned with the physical effects of poverty
and deprivation— the stunted bodies, the children sent to
work far too early in their lives, the wretched homes, the
close relationship between poverty and disease. But above
these results of deprivation, she responded most deeply to
the maiming of the human spirit— the disappearance of joy
and rapture, and the oppression on man's nature which
twisted and corrupted the ways it found expression.
Building an art gallery in a South Chicago slum was an
expression of this concern.
CHAPTER V I
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND GROWING ACCLAIM
By 1892 Hull House was a flourishing success and
Jane Addams was becoming a celebrity. Programs multiplied
and additional services spring up— the coffee-house, the
Hull House Cooperative Coal Association, the Jane Club
(a residence for working girls), the summer school program
at Rockford College, college extension courses, a branch
library, a labor exchangey^ reading clubs, discussion
groups, social clubs of all kinds, a day nursery, and

2
advice and assistance to people in trouble. It is impos
sible to say for how many of these services Miss Addams
had direct responsibility, either in initiating or leading
them. By this time she was surrounded by a corps of
"My first activity . . . was conducting for a few

months a small, experimental employment office for working
girls and women . . . [for] finding work for people of
every conceivable qualification, from high federal and
state offices to rat-catching, forms a continuing chapter
in the history of the House." Kelley, "I Go to Work,"
p. 27 2.
The details of these activities are described in
Twenty Years and need not be repeated. This classic
American document, a best-seller in its day, deserves far
more attention now than it is getting— and not only by
social workers.
84
85
3
residents and volunteers, some able and efficient, others
of outstanding ability, who were deeply involved in the
activities at Hull House. Their contributions cannot be
overestimated, but a line between what they did and what
were the specific contributions of Miss Addams cannot
always be drawn. She was taking on increasing responsi
bility for the over-all management of Hull House, but she
was always deeply involved in practice. As busy as she
became with administrative matters, she never permitted
these pressures to separate her from the people whom Hull
House served in its many programs. This was even true
years later when she was an international celebrity and
president of the Women1s International League for Peace
and Freedom. She always needed and loved her neighbors
on Halsted Street and they responded with a like sentiment.
For some programs, however, Miss Addams must have

3
The earliest list of residents I could find is
included in a booklet identified as Hull House, A Social
Settlement, issued on February 1, 1894, and in the JAC,
SCPC. The following persons are indicated as having
resided at Hull House for six months or longer: Jane
Addams, Ellen G. Starr, Julia C. Lathrop, Florence Kelley,
Mary A. Keyzer, Anna M. Farnsworth, Agnes Sinclair Holbrook,
Josephine Milligan, M. D. , Wilfreda Brockway, Margaret M.
West, Jeannette C. Welch, Enella Benedict, Clifford W.
Barnes, Alex A. Bruce, Edward L. Burchard, Henry B. Learned,
Charles C. Arnold, John Addams Linn. All residents paid
their own way and contributed their services. Note that
Miss Addams lists herself as a resident, and indicates in
no way that she was actually the head of the settlement.
taken more responsibility than for others. A prospectus
of weekly programs, dated March 1, 1892, lists Jane Addams

4
as secretary to the "Working Peoples Social Science Club."
The programs described, for which it is reasonable to give
her responsibility, indicate, as nothing else can, the
calibre of person sought out for the audiences at Hull
House. She hesitated as little to demand service as she
did money; the programs do credit to both her intelligence
and her determination to bring only the best to her neighbors
on Halsted Street. On February 2, Florence Kelley is listed

5
for a talk on child labor; February 9, "Our Jury System,"
Mr. Sigmund Zeisler; February 16, "The Chicago Police,"
Major R. W. McClaughry, Supt. of Police; February 23, "Labor
Organizations," Mr. Samuel Gompers, Pres., American Federation
of Labor; March 1, "Competition," Col. Aldace F. Walker,
Chairman, Western Traffic Association; March 8 , "Single Tax,"
Mr. John Z. White; March 15, "Some Phases of Business Done
on the Chicago Board of Trades," Mr. George F. Stone, Sec'y,
Board of Trade; March 22, "Rules of the House," Hon. George E.
Adams, Prest. fsic] Union League Club; Mar. 29, "The Cook
County Courts," Judge M. F. Tuley; April 5, "What can the
4
Jane Addams Collection, SCPC
^Since the prospectus is dated March 1, 1892, some
of the programs must have already taken place.
Law do for the Poor Man," Mr. I. K. Boyesen; April 12, "The
Cook County House of Correction," Mr. Mark Crawford, Sup1t
of Bridewell; April 19, "The Municipal Control of Heat,
Light and Transportation,” Col. Augustus Jacobson. The
prospectus also lists a lecture and concern series, and
amongst the programs appear a lecture by John Dewey on
"Psychology and History" and another on "Classic Art" by
Lorado Taft, topped off on March 24 by a "Concern-Organ
Recital. At the house of Mrs. John C. Coonley, Cor.
Division St. and Lake Shore Drive." The talent coming to
Hull House, indicated in a very small way by this pro
spectus , amazes us today, and all for free! Success came
deservedly to Miss Addams, but seems to have lain in wait
for her.
Hull House was now a complex arrangement of
services and activities. The business of running the
agency— the calls to make, the correspondence to answer,
the complaints to settle, the injured feelings to soothe—
must have kept Miss Addams busy daily from the moment she
arose to the time she retired. Glimpses of this ceaseless
round of action can be found in some of the correspondence
that survives from this period. Arrangements for a
program— undoubtedly a typical responsibility for Miss
Addams— can be seen in the following letter to Lorado Taft,
88
one of the several between them. “You are very kind to

6
offer us the lectures. My delay in writing is because
I waited to consult Miss Miller as to times, etc., she
is rather at the head of the "College Extension" work
before the students of which the Lectures should be given.
As you will see by the enclosed program, Thursday is the
one evening we reserve for literary lectures, and the
course is filled until March nineteenth. . . . May we
not put down for two in the next course, and also arrange
7
for rParis from a Mansard1 to be given in French during
0
the Spring vacation of the College Extension work. . . . "
Residents were coming and going, and not everyone
was satisfied with her assignment. "Miss Holbrook goes

9
this week and Gertrude Barnum comes to take her place.
^Did he offer, or was he asked? I would suspect

Miss Addams initiated the correspondence.
7
This suggestion is not so strange as it sounds;
one area around Hull House contained a number of French
immigrants.
0
Letter of JA to Lorado Taft, Hull House, February 3,
1891, in Chicago Historical Association Library.
9
Some confusion exists here. The list of residents
detailed previously lists Miss Holbrook and omits Miss
Barnum, as of February 1, 1894. Jane Addams was never
particular about dates nor specific details; she had not
the kind of mind to whom this is important. The past also
held little fascination for her; only the present mattered.
As valuable a document as Twenty Years is, there is
scarcely a specific date mentioned in the whole book nor
is the "how" ever really described. Significantly, too,
she kept few records, and those which she did are rather
vague and hard to follow. The frustration for researchers
is obvious.
89
I have had a frank talk with Dr. Rice and she accepts the
twenty five dollars a month knowing that it comes from
you. I don11 believe that she would care to take it from
anyone else . . . Mrs. Losfill (name?) is so worn out that
she declares her intention of leaving May 1st. She wants
some work in the Coffee House but is not willing to keep
on with the creche. I have not promised the Coffee House
but I fear the other is final. We have been very much
aghast over the disappearance of Mr. Waldo. . . ." ^
By this time, as this correspondence shows, no
one had any question who the director of Hull House was.
Mrs. Losfill, whoever she was, did not discuss her dis
satisfactions with Julia Lathrop, with Florence Kelley
or any of the other residents. She knew who the boss
was, and went to her.
When Hull House was established and Jane Addams
was busy broadcasting details of her "scheme" far and wide
in Chicago, she paid little attention, if any, to admini
strative structure or organization details, as we have seen.
10Letter of JA to MRS, July 29, 1892, JAC, SCPC.

Mr. Waldo may be the person to whom Miss Addams refers in
her book, M y Friend, Julia Lathrop, pp. 78-79. He dis
appeared from Hull House one evening and was not heard
from for thirty-five years when Miss Addams ran across
him again. He had apparently been an amnesia victim.
While he appears to have lived at Hull House, he was an
employee of the Charity Organization Society.
90
Partly she did not seem to recognize or want to acknowledge
that she was starting an agency. She consciously refused
to characterize her efforts in these terms, identifying
them more as "neighboring," reconciling the two halves of
a divided society, and of establishing "communication
between the benevolent people at [one] end of the city and
poverty at the other. She was concerned that her pro
posal not be identified as an effort to establish another
charity, and disapproved strongly of the charitable atti
tudes she saw reflected in the practice of agencies then
operating in Chicago. The patronizing air and the superior
manner, the smugness of the alms-giver and his satisfac
tion at his own nobility, most of all the humiliation
implicit in the way most charitable help was given— Jane
Addams saw all these undesirable manifestations of giving
help incorporated in the agencies of her time. Even some
of their names emphasized the difference between the givers
and the receivers of help, the superiority of one and the
inferiority of the other— the House of the Good Shepherd
with its implication of caring for straying lambs, the
Erring Woman* s Refuge for Reform, emphasizing the personal
responsibility of those who "erred," as though they had
■^Letter of JA to Mary Linn, April 1, 1889, JAC.
91
given wrong and ignorant answers to the test of life, the
Armour Mission, whose supporters were bringing light and
civilization to the slums like missionaries voyaging to
foreign, heathen lands. Miss Addams in no sense attacked
the services these and other agencies were giving; she had
no question how helpful they were to many people. The
question she raised was in relati on to the spirit animating
their efforts which was out of touch with the realities of
their time. If people led hand-to-mouth existences in
wretched hovels, if children were deprived of childhood,
if slum areas were filthy and disease-ridden, if women
were unable to be mothers because they had to be bread
winners , the responsibility lay with the social order
which had remained unchanged in the face of tremendous
economic shifts and dislocations. People were not responsi
ble for their misery because the forces that shaped their
destinies were out of their control.
Jane Addams saw in agency structure— in rules,
regulations, hierarchy, reports— a hindrance to communica
tion between those who had and wanted to give, and those
who had not, which made true help impossible. In 1889
she recognized this dimly and for the most part intuitively.
By 1892 her conviction was strengthened by experience and
she began to share what she learned on Halsted Street with
92
others. She was, for example, invited to present her ideas
together with other women before the Chicago Sunset Club,
a well-known social organization, on the subject, "How You
Would Uplift the Masses." Here are some of her commentsi
"Self-respect is the basis of character and no man or child
can have much respect for himself who has nothing of either
property or character which he fears to lose. Charity
which consists of almsgiving will never help uplift. . . .
Instead of alms I would give justice without money and
without price. There should be courts where politics did
not rule, and where every poor man, woman or child could
have every case of fraud, injury and injustice investigated
and righted without cost to them." She goes on to say that
legislation against trusts was needed, that supervision over
tenements should be established together with better and
more stringent laws for sanitary inspection of buildings.

12
Laws against child labor should be strictly enforced.
And, to sum up, "I think we are working from the wrong end.
We punish in place of educating; we give alms in place of
justice; we degrade instead of elevate, and then wonder
that people are not satisfied and that social conditions
grow worse instead of better. It is very easy when we
have plenty to put our hands in our pockets and give $5.
12
There were few of them at the time, of course.
r
93
to the man who asks, but it is very hard to stop and con
sider his condition and its causes. This is the lesson
our friends, the directors of Chicago Relief and Aid

r , 13
society Isic I, have yet to take to heart. They are
rich men; they are conscientious men; they are generous
men with their money, but they have never yet learned the
first principles of true charity or the necessity of seek-

14
ing to remove causes in place of giving alleviations. "
Jane Addams quickly acquired a reputation for

never getting angry, but she certainly had a capacity for
irritation and the Chicago Relief and Aid Society was
several times a target. "At one particular meeting we
had felt our plans for what we considered a better type
of organization estopped as it were by the complacency
of the upholders of the existing Relief and Aid Society.
. . . In a closing speech I had told the story of Boston
whose charities were so thoroughly organized that if a
three-quarter orphan were discovered today, tomorrow
Boston would found a society for the care of three-
quarter orphans. I added that if a three quarter orphan
were discovered in Chicago today, that tomorrow the
Relief and Aid Society would assert that they had taken
excellent care of all the three-quarter orphans ever
since the fire." Julia Lathrop was present at this meet
ing and was somewhat disapproving of Miss Addam^ remarks.
"Inner irritation is so hard to suppress that an audience
can detect it even in a joke," she said. Miss Addams and
Miss Lathrop had been introduced in extravagant terms and
the latter wryly made a pointed comment, "It is not very
complimentary to either of us, J. A. , but I am afraid that
it is a true word that we are the more highly praised in
proportion as we are misunderstood. " Addams, My Friend,
Julia Lathrop, pp. 77-78. Miss Addams characteristically
gives no date for this meeting but it most likely occurred
in the first several years. As the passage indicates, she
was already involved in community activities outside Hull
House. -j.4
Newspaper clipping dated February, 1892, JAC.
Only part of the newspaper* s name is decipherable as
"Chicago Daily ? "
94
These words must have seemed hoth startling and
challenging to the uplifters of 1890. In a sense Miss
Addams* establishment of Hull House brought not only a
new kind of agency to the United States, but one animated
by a new spirit. As she wrote much later, "In that remote
decade the young men* s movements in the church, in politics,
in labor reform, in philanthropies as diverse as the
Settlement and the Salvation Army, were all characterized
by a desire to get back to the people. . . . Her
attraction to Tolstoyan philosophy and her pilgrimage to
Yasnaya Polyana has already been described. "I had read,"
she said earlier," the books of Tolstoy steadily all the
years since *My Religion* had come into my hands immed-

16
iately after I left college." The connection between
"getting back to the people" and "no institutions" was
one Jane made early in her career, and this attitude was
an essential part of early settlement philosophy. "But
at every American settlement there was a jealous watch
fulness to keep the house as far as possible like a family
residence and to prevent institutional developments from
embarrassing any overture made by those who had come above

15
J. Addams, "Americanization," Reprinted for
private circulation from the Publications of the American
Sociological Society, XIV (1919) , 206-14, JAC.
■Âddams, Twenty Years, p. 261.
95
17
all to be neighbors among other neighbors." From the
beginning Miss Addams strove to establish a service that
would not be institutional, and she tried to avoid this
as she would the plague.
But a settlement house is not a "family residence,"
no matter how hard it tried, and as informal as Miss
Addams wanted Hull House to be with "no need of rules,

18
regulations, injunctions," organization nevertheless
crept in. Programs were established and clubs organized,
which met at stated times for specific purposes. The
organized groups elected officers, and procedure was kept
as parliamentary as possible. Small fees were charged
for some activities. Students paid fifty cents for
courses in the college extension program, for example.
Those who went to the summer school at Rockford College
paid $3.00 per week for board.
Procedures were established to exercise some
control over residency. "The organization of the settle
ment has been extremely informal; but an attempt has been
made during the last winter to limit the number of
residents to twenty. The household, augmented by visitors,
has occasionally exceeded that number. Applicants for
17
Woods and Kennedy, The Settlement Horizon, p. 53.
18
Yarros, "Jane Addams, Humanitarian," p. 4.
96
residence are received for six weeks, during which time
they have all privileges, save a vote, at residents'
meeting. At the end of that period, if they have proved
valuable to the work of the House, they are more invited
to remain, if it is probable they can be in residence
for six months. . . .^
The residents themselves began to have meetings
during which various decisions were made ranging from job
assignments to what should be done about the "eviction
movement." At some of these Jane Addams presided, at

20
others various residents. At a residents' meeting on
July 23 (presumably 1893), a suggestion was made that the
playground be opened "all the time. 11 The residents were
also requested to fill in and verify schedules on
nationalities and wages in preparation for Hull House
Maps and Papers, then being written. On August 27 the
question of securing additional money for relief was dis
cussed as well as the many cases of evictions that were
coming to the attention of the residents. On September 10
Mr. Barnes moved, supported by Miss Lathrop, that the
19
Jane Addams (ed. ), Hull House Maps and Papers
New York: Thomas Y. Crowwell & Co., 1895), p. 101.
20
The material here is extracted from a ledger
marked "Hull House Jan. 1893 Residents' Meetings," in
the possession of Hull House, January, 1962.
number of "settlers be limited to twelve or thirteen" unless
desirable for some reason to increase it beyond that number.
Subsequently, on the 24th, an announcement was made of
committee chairmen. The important matter of relief-giving
came up. "The matter of cooperating with Professor Swing's
church in giving outdoor relief was discussed. It was
said that systematized charitable work was not the province
of the house, and had been avoided heretofore, that if this
were done it should be understood that it was in view of

21
the present season. Upon motion it was voted to accept
the assistance of Dr. Swing1s church." Dr. Stanton Coit
was present at this meeting and "spoke to the residents,
especially stating his desire to get into the Labor
Movement and his appreciation of the cordial relations
between this House and the Labor Unions. . . . " In many
of these minutes the matter of tending the door comes up;
inviting people in, as one would into a "family residence,"
was considered important.
The minutes of a residents' meeting on September 19,
1893, describes Miss Addams discussing a proposed lodging
house for women. She announced that a cottage was avail
able at’243 W. Polk-Street for $35.00 a month which might

21
As well as elsewhere in the United States, 1893
was a year of severe depression in Chicago.
98
cost $10.00 to $15.00 to heat. The residents voted, in
true staff style, to support the venture. Alderman Johnny
Powers, with whom Miss Addams battled at the polls

22
unsuccessfully in 1895-1896 is mentioned. "Miss Addams
announced that she had been honored with a visit from
Alderman Powers, who proposed giving some thousands of
pounds of turkey and beef to the poor of the Ward at
Christmas, and desired Hull House to make the distribution
and that she had said all Hull House could do would be to
send him lists of needy and deserving persons. Mr. Barnes
protested against the furnishing of lists to Alderman
Powers . . . Moved by Miss Starr, supported by Mr. Barnes
and Miss Lathrop, that Hull House have nothing to do with
Mr. Powers and his charities. . . . By general consent

23
it was (finally) agreed that the Chief should write to
Mr. Powers, as she had herself suggested, to the effect
that Hull House had so much provender sent in at Christmas
time that it would be well for him to distribute his
22
See Allen F. Davis, "Jane Addams vs The Ward
Boss," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society,
LIII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1960). Jane based one of her papers
on her experiences with Powers, "Ethical Survivals in
Municipal Corruption," International Journal of Ethics
(April, 1898), pp. 273-91.
23
The term "Chief" was by this time in general use
to describe Jane Addams. Though she was still seeing her
self as one of the residents, they themselves recognized
her special position.
turkeys through other agencies." Though the meeting
apparently ended in a draw between those residents who
wanted nothing further to do with the ubiquitous Mr.
Powers and those who favored cooperation, Miss Addams1
tendency to compromise was stiffened by the attitudes of
the residents. The relationship between Miss Addams and
the residents, as these minutes indicate, had come to
resemble that between a director and his staff. Never
theless, much informality remained, and when Miss Addams
made her frequent trips to other cities and abroad, the
impression remains that the agency operated without a
director.
Planning there was, but much of Miss Addams'
attention was focused on where to go next rather than
developing in depth where' she was at any particular
moment. The needs of the community were, of course,
limitless, and her attention was focused on providing
more programs, expanding services, raising money for
more buildings, accepting more residents, conferring with
Miss Culver or Mr. Pond, addressing groups, and starting
her successful career as a writer. Here is a glimpse of
Miss Addams busy at work— "I have been literally homesick
for you ever since last Wednesday when we took possession
of the cottage for the creche. It needs a great deal of
100
repairing . . . Miss C. [Culver] does the plumbing, we do
the carpenter work. Miss C. furnishes the paper and we
put it on. . . . We have t o m down two partitions and
made a beautifully large playroom. One end of it is
occupied by a lounge lj feet high, about two long and
three wide. . . . I went to visit the creche on Friday.
There were sixteen children, two were sleeping in the
crib, two on chairs and five were profoundly slumbering
on the floor. . . . I am going out to Rockford next
Thursday to make the final arrangements in regard to the
summer school. . . . I should like one young lady
(excuse the false social distinction, a remnant of former
prejudice) to at least every ten girls. The new building
is up to the top of the piazza. . . . We have another
resident whom we hope to have room [for] in the Creche
cottage. She frankly acknowledges she is 'self-centered’ ;
no one disputes her, and I pity her from the bottom of my
heart. If the children can’t help her nothing human

fl
24
can. . . .
At the same time she continued her relationships
with and interest in her neighbors who were coming to Hull
House and using its services. There was, for example,

24
Letter of JA to MRS, undated, probably 1893, JAC.
Miss Addams' friendship with Miss Smith had already deepened
into intimacy.
101
Georgiana Smith, a young girl living at the Jane Club who
needed employment. She had training in "massage," and
"is rather a ladylike pleasant girl— that is she would
always be well bred." Miss Addams asks Miss Smith if her
aunt could use Georgiana. "She could also massage your

25
father’s head— 'if not the altogether' — as Trilby said. "
By 1895 the growing complexity of its business—
the expanding services, the additional buildings, the
countless details that needed attention, the large con
tributions coming in, made it impossible to regard Hull
House any longer as a "family residence" except in spirit.
Miss Addams’ role as the head of Hull House also needed
some formal recognition. Besides, administrative and
organizational details had increased to the point where
no one person could handle them. Her talents, which were
many, were not limitless? she needed help, for example,
in the area of financing, though she was by this time
raising considerable amounts of money on her own. "The
check came this afternoon," she wrote Miss Smith. "It
gives me a lump in my throat to think of the round
thousand dollars you have put into the prosaic bakery
and the more prosaic debt. ... I had a long and solemn
25Letter of JA to MRS, March 14, 1895, JAC.
102
talk with all the residents last evening. I hope we are
going to be more intimate and mutually responsible on the
financial side. I am never going to let things get so bad
again before I lay it before folks for help and sug
gestions. . . . Mr. Kohlsaal sent a hundred dollars this
morning with a charming letter. I think by the end of the
week we will be quite 1out. 1 I am grateful to all of them

26
but I am more than that to you. 11 If the spirit was that
of a "family residence," there was no doubt who mother was1

.
By 1895 the need for less informality and more
organization was very apparent, and the Hull House Board
of Trustees was established. Miss Addams, no doubt, had
regrets about this step, but could recognize "the house"
needed more direction and its activities more organization
in line with the continual expansion of its services. A

27
Hull House Bulletin, published in 1896, affords a
glimpse of what was going on at Hull House, and provides
startling evidence of the accomplishments within a span
of seven years. The bulletin makes reference to the Hull
House ..Summer School at Rockford, the Hull House Country

28
Club at Lakeside, the Hull House kindergarten, the day
26Letter of JA to MRS, 1894, JAC.

27
Hull House Bulletin, I, No. 6 , November 24, 1896.
28
This estate was provided through the benevolence
of Mrs. Bowen whose country home it was. The year 1896
was the club1s second.
nursery, the Penny Provident Bank, the Labor Bureau, the
Coffee House, the circulating pictures program, the
Visiting Nurse program ("A nurse from the Chicago Visiting
Nurses* Association has her headquarters at Hull-House
and receives her telephone messages there"), and the

29
Relief Bureau ("Miss Gernon, who is in charge of this
bureau, is in constant communication with the Chicago
Bureau of Charities. Information is given concerning
the Societies and charitable institutions of the city and
every effort is made to put the applicants in communica
tion with the proper sources for their relief. Applicants
are requested to come in the morning as far as possible."
The Bureau was obviously a referral and information center. )
The Hull House clubs listed are too numerous to mention
but include the Jane Club, the Men’s Club, the Women's
Club, the Shakespear (sic) Club, the Henry Learned Club
(literary and social), the Young Citizen's Club, George
Washington Club (boys eight to ten), American Rose Club
(girls' reading club, twelve to fifteen years), the Maud
Warner Club (social club for young women), and others.
Outside groups were also using Hull House facili
ties for meetings— the Dorcas Federal Labor Union (open
to all wage earning women who believed in labor

29
A resident of Hull House.
104
organization), the Chicago Working Women* s Council (a cen
tral labor organization), the Alumni Club of the Chicago
Froebel Association, the Laundry Employes Union ("all
women employed in laundries wishing to join the union may
apply for membership at Hull-House"). Miss Addams*
advocacy of labor unions will be discussed later, but, as
several of these excerpts show, her interest was prin
cipally in the woman worker. This attitude reflects what
was always one of her major concerns— the position of
women and the cause of women* s rights.
As a result of its phenomenal growth, exhibited
only partly in the material just cited, Hull House or
Jane Addams accepted regretfully the need to formalize
its structure. It was incorporated in the spring of 1895,
and a charter was issued wherein the purposes of Hull
House were inscribed as follows: "To provide a center
for a higher civic life, to initiate and maintain educa
tional and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate
and improve conditions in the industrial districts of

30
Chicago." Formal arrangements were drawn up with Miss
Culver at the same time regarding the Hull House property.
30
Quoted in Linn, Jane Addams, p. 111. Linn goes
on to say, "It was not to provide a higher civic and
social life for anybody; it was to provide a center for
the development of such a life."
105
31
The lease gives the property for one dollar from the
first day of May, 1895, until the last day of April, 1920,
a period of twenty-five years. The lessor (Helen Culver)
or "her heirs, representatives or assigns" are to be
represented on the Board of Trustees. . If denied such
representation, the lease will end; if, however, the
lessor or her h'eirs fail to fill the position, the lease
shall continue in effect. The lease includes, as most
leases do, a series of conditions which "the party of the
second part" is required to fulfill, such as pay all water
and gas rates, and keep the streets in good repair.
The final step was the creation of the Board of
Trustees who thenceforth carried over-all responsibility
for the operation of Hull House. The very obvious pro
cedure of looking to its best friends was followed in

32
forming the Board. "My dear sister," Miss Addams wrote
to her friend, "will you consent to be one of our

33
1trustees,* the fatal moment has arrived when we must
34
incorporate. I want very much to have you. 11 Miss Smith
31JAC, SCPC.
32
The term "sister" was often used by Hull House
residents and supporters in addressing each other. Jane
Addams referred to Florence Kelley as "Sister Kelley," to
Mary Kenney as "Sister Kenney," etc.
33
She makes it sound like a death-knell; perhaps
it was, to the carefree, informal spirit with which she
began.
Letter of JA to MRS, March 26, 1895, JAC.
106
35
must have quickly accepted because a more formal note,
as befitted a new dignity, is addressed to her shortly
afterwards. "My dear Miss Smith," it said, "there will be
a meeting of the Hull-House trustees next Friday after
noon (April 26) at four o' clock in the library at Hull-
House. We hope very much that that hour will be convenient

for you as it is important that the first meeting of the
board shall be a full one." Instead of her usual "Always
yours," it was signed, "Very sincerely yours, Jane Addams. "
The others elected to the Hull House Board of
Trustees were Miss Helen Culver, Mrs. Mary H. Wilmarth,
36
Mr. Edward B. Butler, Professor John Dewey, and Mr. Allen B.
35Letter of JA to MRS, April 20, 1895, JAC.
John Dewey was an early friend of Hull House and
Jane Addams, and, as we have seen, gave lectures at the house
even before he came to the University of Chicago in 1894. His
relationship with Miss Addams and his admiration of her, whifch
she returned, was lifelong. She ascribed to him later on con
siderable influence on the new profession of social work.
"John Dewey was a member of the first board of Hull-House
trustees. It consisted of two or three business men, two or
three philanthropic women [note again her vagueness about
detail in the "two or three"] and the philosopher to keep us
from becoming hard-boiled or sentimental in this new under
taking, which the English somewhat heavily called 1residential
study of the problems of poverty' . . . John Dewey's little
yellow-covered book, School and Society, made so clear the
necessity for individualizing each child that it is quite fair
to say that his insistence upon an atmosphere of freedom and
confidence between the teacher and pupil, of a common interest
in the life they led together, profoundly affected all similar
relationships, certainly those between the social worker and
his client. . . . Perhaps the entire psychological approach
to the problems of social welfare was implicit in the situa
tion when that group of brilliant men formed the Department
of Philosophy at the new University of Chicago. . . . They
were James Tufts, John Dewey, George Mead and James Angell
[all had some connection with Hull House] . . . Perhaps we may
trace back to this group of men the movement now culminating
in the brand new psychiatric social worker and in the insti
tutes of juvenile research. . . . 11 Jane Addams, "A Toast to
John Devfey," an address given at a luncheon in honor of John
Dewey's seventieth birthday, published in The Survey
(November 15, 1929), pp. 203-204.
107
Pond who was designated Secretary. The person chosen to be

president of the Board was none other than Jane Addams her
self, and she retained this position to the day of her death
in 1935. Her position in this regard is probably unique in
the history of social agencies, whose board presidents are
normally volunteers, in those days "philanthropists."
To psychologize on the basis of historical evidence
is always very risky, but so compelling, at least to one
keenly interested in personality, that the offense perhaps
may be forgiven. The question arrises: Was Jane Addams1

insistence on keeping Hull House as much like a family as
possible a reflection of facets of her personality developed
in childhood experiences? Was she looking for a family where
she could truly belong, where she could find the acceptance
and comfort she had missed in her own? "I dreamed night
after night that everyone in the world was dead except myself,
and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon
wheel. . . . They [the people in the dream] had all gone
around the edge of the hill to the village cemetery and I
alone remained alive in the deserted world. . . . Every

victim of nightmare is, I imagine, overwhelmed by an excessive
sense of responsibility, and the consciousness of a fearful
handicap in the effort to perform what is required; but

perhaps never were the odds more heavily against 'a warder
of the world' than in those reiterated dreams of mine. . . .

[The next morning after visiting a blacksmith shop] I would
sigh heavily and walk away, bearing my responsibility as best
108
I could, and this of course I confided to no one, but there is
something too mysterious in the burden of *the winds that come
from the fields of sleep* to be communicated, although it is

37
at the same time too heavy a burden to be borne alone."
Her own mother, who died when Miss Addams was two,
she, of course, hardly knew or remembered. Her father, whom
she venerated, was an admirable person, kind and just, but
also remote. When she was eight, he married again, and her
relationship with her stepmother was apparently somewhat
strained. She probably resented the marriage. In any case
the second Mrs. Addams is scarcely mentioned in any of her
writings. The omission is undoubtedly significant.
In 1897 Mrs. Addams was interviewed by a reporter, and
her remarks as quoted in the newspaper article are rather

38
curious. Throughout Mrs. Addams appears determined to
deflate Miss Addams* reputation which by that time was con
siderable. "What sort of a little girl was Jane?" she
repeated smilingly. "Just like them all, only more delicate.
. . . The stories that are told of her cliff-climbing feats
belong to her older sister who was absolutely fearless. . . .
Always fond of charitable work? Not more than any other well-
regulated child. I can only account for her by remembering
that even as a little child she seemed inclined toward special
work of some sort. In fact, she was anxious to have a career,
you understand. . . . Jane was a general reader of the very
37Addams, Twenty Years, pp. 5-6.

3®"The Girl of Cedar Cliff," Chicago Record,
June 19, 1897. Clipping is in the JA Collection, SCPC.
best literature, but her tastes during her home life led me
39
to read along no special line. 1 selected her books and
she was always satisfied with m y choice. Of course I was
very much gratified when she entered Rockford seminary that
her instructors considered her surprisingly well versed in
literature [Mrs. Addams no doubt means Miss Addams owed this
to her]. . . . What relative shares of responsibility did
Miss Starr and Miss Addams assume in organizing for the Hull
House work? [The reporter's question]. "I'm glad you mention
Miss Starr," said Mrs. Addams enthusiastically, "for her name
has been ignored in so many instances. She was in reality
the prime mover. It was her enthusiasm that fired Jane. It
was her acquaintance with Chicago people that brought their
movement before the public and gained them contributions.
Jane furnished capital and many talents, but Miss Starr
deserves mention as the author of the plan." The rather
spiteful tone of Mrs. Addams' comments, culminating in some
statements about Miss Addams and Miss Starr which are untrue,
certainly must reflect the long-standing nature of the rela
tionship between stepmother and stepdaughter. The remote
father and the competitive stepmother— how much sense of
belonging could they have transmitted to Jane Addams?
Does this past history help us understand the attrac
tion she felt towards the settlement house and its "family
residence" idea? Does this explain, too, her resistance to
taking a salary and becoming the headworker, as directors

39
Italics mine.
110
of settlements were coming to be called? Did she fear the
separation from the other residents and from the neighbors
implicit in such a step? Many of her letters to Mary Rozet

Smith and to others begin with "Dear Sister"; in the body of
communications other women are often referred to with the
same appellation. She called her friend, Robert A. Woods of
Boston1s Andover House, "Brother Woods." At many points in
her letters Miss Addams sounds like mother admonishing her
family to be better children. "I had a long and solemn talk
with all the residents," she wrote, for example, "I hope we
40
are going to be more intimate."
The parallels between the settlement and her wish for
a close family where she could belong may be further illus
trated, but there seems no need to do so. If these
observations are accurate, Jane was doing what every creative

person is impelled to do— illuminate and transform outer
experience with the flame of the self. The result is often
an amalgam which makes impossible thereafter the separation

of the artist from his work. For Jane Addams, the process
was the same. She became forever after "Jane Addams of Hull
House." If there is an element of pride in the innocence
of this title, Jane had every right to so venial a sin.
40
Letter of JA to MRS, 1894, JAC.
CHAPTER VII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIAL WORKER
"The Ethical Culture Societies held a summer school
at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1892, to which they invited
several people representing the then new Settlement move
ment, that they might discuss with others the general theme
of Philanthropy and Social Progress."1
Jane Addams presented two papers at this conference,
and formally began her career as a lecturer and writer.
She had talked to many groups by this time, but the papers
she presented at the Plymouth meeting were organized and
professional in tone and content. They were the first of
many addresses she was to give in the future; almost all

2
of them found their way into print sooner or later.
■'"Addams, Twenty Years, p. 113. The Society for

Ethical Culture of Chicago was founded by Felix Adler in
1883, and from then until 1892 it was led by William M.
Salter, a former Unitarian minister. Salter was a fre
quent visitor to Hull House, gave lectures there, and
later was the recipient of gift copies of Miss Addams1
books. See Pierce, History of Chicago, III.
2
"Found" is perhaps a euphemism. Miss Addams was
very eager for publication of her papers, and pursued
publishing sources rather vigorously. Once her reputa
tion was established, the tables were turned, and they
pursued her.
Ill
112
She called these two papers, "The Subjective
Necessity for Social Settlements," and "The Objective Value
of a Social Settlement. " In both, but particularly in the
first, she formulated her philosophy, drawn from her own
living experience and from the turbulent flow of life which
she witnessed all around her after she moved to Halsted
Street. Just as she had done in founding Hull House, so in
her papers, which found such a wide and varied audience, her
emphasis was on the need to rescue the human spirit from the
deadening effects of the machine. The social settlements
were established to fight against man1s loss of his humanity
to the dynamo, and in "The Subjective Necessity for Social

3
Settlements" Jane Addams describes the motives and feelings
which led her and others to the settlement movement. Her
opening remarks remain as the theme of her whole career.
"These young men and women," she said, "longing to socialize
their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be
thus loosely formulated: That if in a democratic country
nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses
of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher
political life than the people themselves crave; that it is
difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can
be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings

which we associate with life of refinement and cultivation can
be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be
permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious

3
The entire paper is reproduced in Twenty Years,
pp. 115-127.
113
and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured
4
for all of us and incorporated into our common life." The
American dream envisioned the good of all, not a fortunate
few. Jane Addams was intent on transforming more of this
dream into reality, especially for those whose dream had
turned into a nightmare.
With these words Jane Addams was adding her unique
talents to those of others who were transforming charity and
"scientific philanthropy" into the emerging profession of
social work. Her nephew, John Linn, was justified years later
in describing "The Subjective Necessity" as marking the birth

5
of "a new era in social service in the United States."
Jane Addams did not go to live on Halsted Street as a social
worker, nor, despite her unsalaried status and the use of
her own money, was she a philanthropist. She disliked charity
and, though she was impelled by some of the motives that char
acterized the "scientific philanthropist," she went beyond
them when she insisted that "the blessings which we associate
with a life of refinement" must be made universal. On several
issues she parted company with them. "It was not salaries
4
Addams, Philanthropy and Social Progress. This
book, which included her two papers, "The Subjective
Necessity" and "The Objective Value" contained also the
remaining lectures given at the Plymouth meeting of the
Ethical Culture Societies. They were Robert Woods' "The
University Settlement Idea," Father 0. S. Huntington's
"Philanthropy— Its Success and Failure" (a vigorous attack
on the methods of charity organizations), another paper of
Huntington's "Philanthropy of Morality," "The Ethics of
Social Progress" by Professor Franklyn H. Giddings of Bryn
Mawr, and "The Principles and Chief Dangers of the
Administration of Charity" by Bernard Bosanquet of the
London Charity Organization Society.
^Linn, Jane Addams, p. 104.
114
that the so-called professional philanthropists demanded
[although the paid charity agents began to be employed during
the depression] but something better than soups and alms for
the poor. They wanted better organization of relief opera
tions, more discrimination in the bestowal of assistance, and
more attention to the individual needs of the persons helped.

Much of their emphasis . . . was negative. They did not urge
improved administration of public relief but cessation of all
public aid to the poor outside of institutions. . . . Private
charity, properly organized and administered, could do all

that needed to be done for the poor who did not require
0
institutional care. 11 Early in her career Jane Addams
insisted that private charity could never meet the needs of
the masses realistically, and the welfare of people was the
responsibility of government. "One of the first lessons we
learned at Hull-House was that private beneficence is totally
inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city1s dis
inherited. We also came to realize that there are certain
types of wretchedness from which every private philanthropy

7
shrinks. . . . "
At the beginning of her career Jane Addams was often

referred to as a philanthropist since no other term existed
to describe her efforts. She did not describe herself as
such; throughout her life, however, she refused to identify
herself professionally, insisting that all of life was her
g
Robert H. Bremner, American Philanthropy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 97-98.
7
115
concern. Nor was she then a social worker. "There were no
1 social workers1 in 1889. . . . There was not even a
department of 1 sociology* in an American University [sic ];
the first such department was established in the New
University of Chicago in 1892. Jane Addams, as she lived

g
on, learned by experience the profession of social work."-
This learning took effect immediately on her moving
to Halsted Street. Philanthropy was left behind as she
began to erect a body of knowledge drawn from her experiences
which she shared with others through her lectures, her
articles and her books. Her first efforts in this direction
were the two papers delivered at the Plymouth meeting,
already referred to. In the one, "The Subjective Necessity,"
she described what drew young people to the social settle
ments, and in analyzing her own motives (undoubtedly much
of the paper is based on these) she helped others to identify
with and seek out a new method of helping people. She went
beyond this to identify some of the important aspects of
this new process. "The Settlement," she said, "is an experi
mental effort to aid in the solution of the social and
industrial problems which are engendered by the modern
conditions of life in a great city. . . . From its very
nature it can stand for no political or social propaganda.
. . . The one thing to be dreaded in the Settlement is
that it lose its flexibility, its power of quick adaptation,
its readiness to change its methods as its environment may

g
Linn, 'rane Addams, p. 110.
116
demand. ... It must be hospitable and ready for experiment.
It should demand from its residents a scientific patience in
the accumulation of facts and the steady holding of their
sympathies as one of the best instruments for that accumula
tion. It must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation
is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which
will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a
drunken woman or an idiot boy. . . . They [the residents]
are bound to see the needs of their neighborhood as a whole,
to furnish data for legislation, and to use their influence
to secure it. . . . They are bound to regard the entire life
of their city as organic, to make an effort to unify it, and

9
to protest against its over-differentiation." These words
are a far cry from philanthropy, "scientific" or not, from
charity, from uplift, and from the condescension and
patronage that characterized all these efforts to help people.
The spirit that Miss Addams introduced was creating a method
and a process of helping people which emphasized mutual
dignity and respect, and the right of everyone to be as he
was, even an "idiot boy." Beyond this, Jane Addams emphasized
that people had a "right" to the help that must be made avail
able to them. From such fertile ground, with its emphasis on
the fusion of fact and feeling, it was possible for a profes
sion toanerge. Though she was not alone in this development,
Jane Addams was certainly a "prime mover."

9
Addams, Philanthropy and Social Progress, p. 23.
As I indicated before, Miss Addams also incorporated this
essay into Twenty Years, pp. 115-26.
117
The second paper Miss Addams delivered at Plymouth,
"The Objective Value of a Social Settlement" describes in
some detail the neighborhood in which Hull House was
located, and its program. It presents a very good picture
of the activities there, ranging from the art gallery to
the deliverations of the Working People1s Social Science

Club.^ The paper closes with the following significant
passage in which Jane Addams further attempts to clarify
the nature of her efforts, and to emphasize the new
elements in her method of helping people. "I am always
sorry," she writes, "to have Hull-House regarded as
philanthropy, although it doubtless has strong philan
thropic tendencies, and has several distinct charitable
departments which are conscientiously carried on. It is
unfair, however, to apply the word philanthropic to the
activities of the House as a whole. Charles Booth, in
his brilliant chapter on 1The Unemployed' expresses regret
that the problems of the working class are so often con
founded with the problems of the inefficient, the idle,
and distressed. To confound thus two problems is to render
the solution of both impossible. Hull-House, while
endeavoring to fulfill its obligation to neighbors of

—
The Working People's Social Science Club is also

referred to elsewhere as the Hull House Social Science Club.
Its programs and discussions were later to alarm many con
servative forces in Chicago, and bring down anathema on
both Jane Addams and Hull House. "It was doubtlesssowing
largely to this club that Hull House contracted its early
reputation for radicalism. Visitors refused to dis
tinguish between the sentiments expressed by its members
in the heat of discussion and the opinions held by the
residents themselves." Addams, Twenty Years, p. 183.
118
varying needs, will do great harm if it confounds distinct
problems. Working people live in the same streets with
those in need of charity, but they themselves, as long as
they have health and good wages, require and want none of
it. As one of their number has said, they require only
that their aspirations be recognized and stimulated, and
the means of attaining them put at their disposal. Hull-
House makes a constant effort to secure these means for its
neighbors, but to call that effort philanthropy is to use
the word unfairly, and to underestimate the duties of good
c i t i z e n s h i p . T o provide the facilities through which
people could enrich their powers and develop their talents—
this was Jane Addams1 purpose in establishing Hull House.
She believed the community was responsible for providing
such resources be this on a public or private level. Her
belief in people was deep enough for her to be willing to
leave the rest up to them. Philanthropy was not the answer
nor was charity; though perhaps necessary, they were both
essentially degrading and divisive. A new method had to
be found which was not palliative and changed nothing, but
which recognized and used man1 s capacity to grow once
provided with the means of attaining his "aspiration. "
■Âddams, Philanthropy and Social Progress, pp. 55-56.
119
The connection between the environment in which people
lived and the way they behaved was a causal one. If the
one is changed, the likelihood that the other will be
different— more noble, more truly geared to human
capacity— is great. If the means were not provided, the
community had no one to blame for the results than itself.
When Miss Addams returned to Chicago from Plymouth,
her mind dwelt on the possibility of publishing these two
papers. She was prodded by Julia Lathrop who stressed the
opportunity publication would give to spread her message.
They both went to the offices of The Forum, a lively
topical magazine then edited by the very able Walter Hines
Page. "Never," wrote Jane Addams later, "was a callow
writer ’peddling her own wares,’ as I scathingly said to

12
myself, more embarrassed and weak-kneed and never was a
13
friend more valiant than the one who conducted me. 11
Julia Lathrop apparently did most of the talking
and convincing, and "much to our astonishment Mr. Page took
both articles and afterwards sent a generous check in
12
All evidence points to the fact that Jane Addams
was a very introspective person, quite shy in personal
encounters.
13
Addams, My Friend, Julia Lathrop, p. 56.
120
14
payment which astonished us even more."
Published in The Forum, Jane Addams1 views received
national circulation for the first time, and the article
increased her reputation. Her fame was spreading beyond
the limits of Chicago, and beyond the small circle of
settlement house workers who began to look to her for
leadership and inspiration. The growing influence of
Miss Addams and Hull House was given added impetus with
the publication of Hull-House Maps and Papers in 1895.
The model for this book was Charles Booth's monumental,
many-volumed study of the life and problems of London* s

15
poor. J. Weber Linn ascribes to Julia Lathrop the
initiative which led the residents of Hull House to
record the knowledge, the facts and the observations
they absorbed from their experiences and daily round of

14
Ibid. , p. 57. Miss Addams adds that when the
papers were reprinted in Philanthropy and Social Progress,
they, as well as the rest of the book, were referred to
by "our more radical friends . . . as a fine Victorian
example of rose water for the plague. 11 Possibly she was
mistaken about the origin of this remark, since the con
nection between the phrase and this particular book seems
somewhat obscure. Her nephew, J. Weber Linn, in his
biography, writes that when her paper on the Pullman
strike was published (it was called "A Modern King Lear"),
Eugene Debs criticized it as "another attempt to put out
a fire with rosewater." This comment which seems more
appropriate to its source, may have been the one she was
referring to above. See Linn, Jane Addams, p. 167.
15
121
activities on Halsted Street. The notion to produce this
volume captivated the residents, and references to it
appear in Miss Addams1 letters to her friend. "Miss
Starr," she wrote Mary Rozet Smith, "is doing some work on
the book Hull-House Maps and Papers— doesn1t it sound

16
fine?" The plan called for the residents to contribute
to the volume specialized papers on one aspect of their
activities. There is no record of how these assignments
were made or worked out. In any case the finished product

17
contained the following papers: "Map Notes and Comments,"
by Agnes Sinclair Holbrook; "The Sweating System," by
Florence Kelley, then State Inspector of Factories and

18
Workshops for Illinois; "Wage-Earning Children," by
Florence Kelley and Alzina P. Stevens, an Assistant
Factory Inspector; "Receipts and Expenditures of Cloak-makers

16
Letter of JA to MRS, August 23, 1893, SCPC.
17
Florence Kelley worked on the maps. "The 1maps1
were made from material collected at Hull-House by
Florence Kelley who was in charge for Chicago of the 1slum
investigation1 made by the U.S. Bureau of Labor." Addams,
My Friend, Julia Lathrop, p. 68. Actually, Mrs. Kelley
was selected to do the investigation by Carroll D. Wright,
at that time Commissioner of Commerce and Labor. This was
before the Department of Labor was created.
18
A post created under the first Illinois factory
inspection law in which MisS'Addams had a great deal of
interest. Governor Altgeld originally offered the post
to Henry Demarest Lloyd who refused to accept, and sug
gested Florence Kelley instead.
122
in Chicago, Compared with Those of That Trade in New
York," by Isabel Eaton, Dutton Fellow, College' Settlements
Association; "The Chicago Ghetto," by Charles Zeublin;
"The Bohemian People in Chicago," by Josefa Humpal Zeman;
"Remarks Upon the Italian Colony in Chicago," by
Alessandro Mastro-Valerio; "The Cook County Charities,"
by Julia C. Lathrop, Member of Illinois State Board of

19
Charities; "Art and Labor," by Ellen Gates Starr; and,
the last piece, "The Settlement As A Factor in the Labor
Movement," by Jane Addams. Miss Addams* paper is a clear
expression of her own point of view, beautifully expressed,

19
One sometimes wonders how Ellen Gates Starr,
aesthetic, dependent, and religious, fitted in with the
bustling, vigorous, strong-willed women of Hull House.
She led literary and art groups at Hull House, and later
taught book-binding. She was sent abroad to learn the
art of book-bindery at a famous English establishment, and
she later produced some beautifully illustrated and strik
ingly designed books. Despite her artistic bent, however,
she had strong sympathies with the working class and
picketed in strikes. A letter in the Sophia Smith
Collection, Smith College, from Sidney Hillman, dated
December 22, 1915, begins, "My dear Miss Starr, I wish to
thank you sincerely for the splendid work you did for the
clothing workers of Chicago in the long and bitter struggle
now virtually ended. . . . At a great deal of discomfort
to yourself, you took your place on the firing line and
personally bore the insults of the police and private
sluggers of the employers. . . . " Miss Starr was arrested
for picketing during this strike, and was bailed out by
Mrs. Wilmarth who, when asked by the police what kind of
assets she had,, timidly replied that she owned the property
on which stood the Congress Hotel. iShe wondered whether
this was sufficient security.
123
and is important enough in her career to be examined with
some thoroughness.
The article that Jane Addams wrote for this book
attested to her belief in the value of trade unions and
the right of working people to organize for their own
protection. She became interested in and sympathetic to
trade unionism early in her career and acquired a reputa
tion as a labor supporter. A letter from Miss Addams to
Mrs. Potter Palmer attests to Miss Addams' labor connec
tions. "My dear Mrs. Palmer," she wrote, "after careful
consideration of the subject related to in the note you
were so good to write me, and [in] consultation with
several Knights of Labor, I am quite sure that the inter
ests of the project will be better served by a direct
message from yourself to Mr. Powderly than by the use of
my name. . . . We have known Mr. Gompers and many of the
Trades Union men, but have never had much to do with the
Knights of Labor, who as you know are not very vigorous
here, and there is no question that your own request

20
will have more weight than mine.
Jane Addams' attitude towards labor was
20
Letter of JA to Mrs. Potter Palmer, September 13,
1893, Chicago Historical Association Library. Powderly
was the head of the Knights of Labor, which was very much
in decline by 1893.
124
characteristic of settlement house residents in general,
and was part of their identification with the neighborhoods
in which they lived. Antagonism towards labor would hardly
have created popularity in working-class neighborhoods.
Most of the early settlement house workers were also
philosphically in favor of labor organization and saw this
as a means by which industrial wrongs could be corrected.
Hull House was a good example of this attitude. "One of
the most interesting features of Hull House is its con
nection with the labor movement. It has consistently
applied the principle it proposes, and has supported
every judicious attempt on the part of the workers to
better their positions; therefore it is on excellent
terms with the labor organizations. One very great
result of this was the Factory Inspection Law, passed
in the spring of 1893 by the Legislature of Illinois.
. . . Some of the women's unions regularly hold their
meetings at the House— two were organized there; and in
four cases men and women on strike against reductions in
their wages have met there while the strike lasted. In
one case a trade dispute was successfully arbitrated by
Miss Addams, the abuses of which the employees complained

21
being removed."
21
Reason, University and Social Settlements, p. 142.
125
In "The Settlement as a Factor in the Labor

22
Movement," Miss Addams describes why she believes trade
unions are necessary, and how they fit in with the settle
ment house. She also warns of some perils she sees in the
increasing warfare between capital and labor. A settle
ment, she says, is faced daily with evidence of social
injustice by virtue of its location. "Propinquity is an

23
unceasing factor in its existence. 11 She mentions that
the residents of Hull House early believed in the value of
labor organization. The value of combination was char
acteristic of the age; business men recognized how important
this was, and out of this recognition great industries
developed. The residents at Hull House agreed on the value
of combination but not until they lived and worked at the
settlement did they realize how essential it was for working
people to combine too. Living in the midst of garment
workers and "having observed the workers in this trade as
compared to those in organized trades, they have gradually
discovered that lack of organization in a trade tends to
22
It is interesting to note that all the papers in
this volume (Hull-House Maps and Papers) are "by" one
resident or another. The only exception is Jane Addams'
paper which gives the author as simply "Jane Addams. " The
"by" is omitted.
23
Addams, Hull-House Maps and Papers, p. 183.
126
the industrial helplessness in that trade. If in all
departments of social, political, and commercial life,
isolation is a blunder, and results in dreariness and
apathy, then in industrial affairs isolation is a social
crime; for if there tends to extermination. . . . This
process of extermination entails starvation and suffering,
and the desperate moral disintegration which inevitably
follows in their train, until the need of organization
in industry assumes a moral aspect. The conviction arrived

24
at entails a moral obligation. " Jane Addams always had
to find the moral issue; she believed that starvation in
and of itself was wrong, but the greater crime was what
it did to the spirit. She went on to illustrate her argu
ments with reference to cases Hull House residents had
investigated. "... the Italian widow who finishes the
cheapest goods, although she sews from six in the morning
until eleven at night, can only get enough to keep her
children clothed and fed; while for her rent and fuel she
must always depend on charity or the hospitality of her
countrymen. If the American sewing-woman supporting herself
alone, lives on bread and butter and tea, she finds a
Bohemian woman next door whose diet of black bread and

25
coffee enables her to undercut. . . ." The illustrations
24 25
Ibid. , p. 185. Ibid. , p. 186.
V
127
indicate again that one of Jane Addams' major preoccupations
was the position of woman in society. In this paper, as in
many others, her concern with injustices to women is a major
theme. The two unions organized at Hull House in the early
nineties were for women, and the four others meeting there
were also unions whose membership was female.
Miss Addams describes, however, the formation at
Hull House of one union for both sexes, and in the process
comments on differences which arise within the working class
itself and the way labor organization acts as a unifying
force. The union of the cloakmakers, and the first meet
ing at Hull House for men and women, was also attended by
several of the residents. "The meeting was a revelation
to all present. The men, perhaps forty in number, were
Russian-Jewish tailors, many of whom could command not
even broken English. They were ill-dressed and grimy,
suspicious that Hull-House was a spy in the service of
the capitalists. . . . The American-Irish girls were well-
dressed and comparatively at ease. . . . These two sets
of people were held together only by the pressures upon
their trade. They were separated by strong racial differ
ences, by language, by nationality, by religion, by mode
of life, by every possible social distinction. The
interpreter stood between the two sides of the room,
128
somewhat helpless. . . . The residents felt that between
these men and girls was a deeper gulf than the much talked
of 'chasm1 between the favored and unfavored classes. . . .
There was much less difference between the residents and
working-girls than between the men and girls of the same
trade. . . . Working-people among themselves are being
forced into a social democracy from the pressure of the
economic situation. It presents an educating and broaden-

26
ing aspect of no small value. ..."
The settlement's endorsement of labor organization,
however, is no simple matter; it is quite likely to be
caught between the viewpoint of the individualists and
the "scientific socialist." The former believes in better
industrial organization, but sees the solution for labor
in the widening of the equality of opportunity so that
competition becomes absolutely free. His antagonist
furiously opposes this point of view; he "reads his Karl
Marx and sees a gradual and inevitable absorption of all
the means of production and of all capital by one entity,

27
called the community. " Between these two extremes —
and all the other varying shades of opinion— the settlement
has great difficulty in determining its own position.
Here again Miss Addams turns to morality and ethics
26Ibid. , pp. 189-190. 2?Ibid. , p. 191.
129
in defining her own stand. Both points of view, she writes,
have value, but there is a third which is more valid because
it has no interest at stake. The issues between capital
and labor must be related to a larger framework— the
evolutionary development of democratic rights. "The
settlement may be of value if it can take a larger and
steadier view than is always possible to the workingman,
smarting under a sense, of wrong; or to the capitalist,
seeking only to 'quiet down,' without regard to the historic
significance of the case, and insisting upon the inalien
able right of invested capital to a return of at least
four percent, ignoring human passion. It is possible to

28
recall them both to a sense of the larger development."
Miss Addams refers to the development of political and
economic democracy and brings in two of her heroes to
support her arguments. "Mazzini was the inspired prophet
of the political democracy, preaching duties and responsi
bilities rather than rights and franchises; and we might
call Arnold Toynbee the prophet of the second development
when we contend that the task of the labor movement is the

29
interpretation of democracy into industrial affairs. . . . 11
Miss Addams expresses her abhorrence of the growing hostility
and tension between capital and labor, each in claiming the

o q 2Q
Ibid. , p. 196. Ibid. , pp. 196-97.
130
rightness of his own side. In a fine.passage Miss Addams
defines her own viewpoint. In clarifying her stand on
labor organization she shares with us important aspects
of her general philosophy of life. "But life itself
teaches us nothing more inevitable than that right and
wrong are most confusedly mixed; that the blackest wrong
is by our side and within our own motives, that right does
not dazzle our eyes with its radiant shining, but has to
be found by exerting patience, discrimination, and impar
tiality. We cease to listen for the bugle note of victory
our childish imagination anticipated, and learn that our
finest victories are attained in the midst of self-distrust,
and that the waving banner of triumph is sooner or later

30
trailed to the dust by the weight of self-righteousness. 11
There are no simple solutions to complicated problems, Jane
Addams tells us. Inner doubt can be more productive than
certainty which blinds us to the real nature of events.
Every victory contains a partial defeat.
The paper ends as Miss Addams cautions settlements
not to be timid in expressing their own convictions, nor
frightened by the turbulence of most labor meetings. In
summing up, she declared that "the settlement, then, urges
first, the organization of working people in order that

30
Ibid. , p. 199.
131
as much leisure and orderly life as possible may be secured
to them in which to carry out the higher aims of living;
in the second place, it should make a constant effort to
bring to bear upon the labor movement a consciousness of
its historic development; and lastly, it accentuates the

31
ultimate ethical aims of the movement. " For Jane Addams,
the last purpose was probably the most important.
The publication of Hull-House Maps and Papers,
Volume V in Crowell's Library of Economics and Politics,
edited by Richard T. Ely of the University of Wisconsin,
brought increased fame to the settlement and to Jane Addams
in particular. Reviews of the book appeared in all the
leading newspapers and magazines in the country, many of

32
them very favorable. The reviewer in The Atlantic
Monthly, for example, after approving the book and Miss
Addams' contribution to it, ended with the following state
ment, "If the work of Hull-House may be taken as typical of
what is best and most active in 'the movement,' the feeling
of confidence and hope can only be strengthened by the
knowledge that since 1889 twenty similar settlements have
31Ibid. , p. 203.
32
An exception was the review in The Nation, then
a conservative publication. The article was severely
critical of the book, of Miss Addams and of the whole
settlement house movement.
132
been been established in America." In some of these
reviews, adoration of Jane Addams, already in its
beginning stages, was expressed in the rather exaggerated
terms that became frequent later on. The reviewer in the
New Unity, an important liberal religious publication,
suggested Miss Addams be given a "chair of Sociology" at
a "People1s University" where her influence would be
greater than if she continued at Hull House. A copy of
the publications a few days afterwards contained a reply
to this suggestion by Professor Ely. He picked up the
idea and carried it one step further. "It seems to me,"
he wrote, "what should be done is for all people of
liberal minds and altruistic sympathies to rally about
Hull-House and to make it in every particular all that
Miss Addams would have it. Hull-House itself should

33
become the true 1People's University.'"
Jane Addams had by now acquired a national reputa
tion, which none of her colleagues, able as they were,
could equal. Her fame was also spreading overseas, to
Europe. One other paper of this period, again with the
roots of its contents in her experiences in Chicago and
at Hull House, helped establish her fame securely and

33
Letter of Professor Richard Ely, June 3, 1865,
published in the New Unity, JAC.
133
"made Jane Addams a figure of national importance in the

34
philosophy of social progress." From this point on she
was looked up to as an authority on the lives and needs
of the poor, how they lived and what should be done to
help them. This paper (originally a speech given before
the Chicago Woman's Club), called originally "A Modern

35
King Lear" arose from her reactions to the Pullman strike
in 1894 and in it she analyzes Mr. Pullman1s character and
behavior, comparing him to King Lear. Lear’s children were
ungrateful, and in a like manner so were Pullman's. In
his case, however, the sin was more Pullman's because the
objects of his beneficence were not children, but grown men
and women who needed no father. Miss Addams compared
Pullman to a parent who cannot bear to have his children
grow up and away from him. She ended by describing Pullman
as that kind of benefactor who, wanting to do good, expects,
as a reward, gratitude, obedience and the status quo. "The
danger," she wrote, "of professionally attaining to the
power of the righteous man, of yielding to the ambition
'for doing good,' compared to which the ambitions for
34
35
The paper was called variously, "A Modern King
Lear," "A Modern Tragedy," and "A Modern Lear. " It was
finally published in 1912 under the last of these titles.
134
political position, learning or wealth, are vulgar and
commonplace, ramifies throughout our modern life, and is
a constant and settled danger in philanthropy, in politics,
and among business men, who aim to be noble benefactors

36
to their age by the disposition of their wealth. "
"A modern King Lear" was a vigorous, incisive
attack on well-meaning philanthropy, and was so successful
when it was originally presented that the Twentieth Century
Club asked her to come and give it at one of their meetings.
However, Miss Addams had a great deal of trouble getting it
published. She submitted it to the Review of Reviews,
whose editor, Albert Shaw, recognized its "strong and true
note" but he explained he already had more manuscripts

37
than he could publish for some time to come. A. E. Keet
36
Addams, "A Modern Tragedy," JAC. The insistence
on regarding helping people as a process which was the com
munity' s responsibility to provide, rather than a privilege
extended by philanthropists to worthy people, was a char
acteristic attitude of the new professional social workers.
Mrs. Bowen in her memoirs cites an example of this in
discussing her friendship with Jane Addams. "Miss Addams
always had a very clear vision and a great sense of justice
and I can remember my mortification one day when I said,
'I have done everything in the world for that woman and she
is not even grateful. ' She looked at me quizzically and
said, 'Is that the reason you helped her, because you
wanted gratitude?' " Bowen, Growing Up With a City, pp. 87-88.
37Letter of Albert Shaw to JA, Review of Reviews,
January 18, 1896, JAC.
135
of The Forum, her original publisher, denied himself "the
pleasure of using your interesting and striking article"
because "so long a time has now elapsed since the Chicago
strike that I could not make room for an unexpected paper

38
for several months." Lloyd Bryce of the North American
Review also refused much more tersely than the other.
"I have read over,11 he said, "your article entitled
"Modern Tragedy" with much interest, and I regret to say
that I am unable to find space for it in the pages of the

39
Review. Thanking you, etc." What is possibly the last
attempt Miss Addams made to publish "Lear," until much
later, is reported in a letter from H. E. Scudder of
The Atlantic Monthly. Writing to Mrs. Wilmarth, Miss
Addams’ friend, who apparently submitted the article to
him, Scudder indicates his deep respect for Jane Addams
and her writing skill, but he declines publication, find
ing it somewhat confused. He explains at some length why,
but one suspects the real reason lies in the following
words, "and since Mr. Pullman is a living man I should
proceed with the greatest caution in The Atlantic. Even
38
Letter of A. E. Keet to JA, The Forum,
39
Letter of Lloyd Bruce, The North American Review,
to JA, February 6 , 1896, JAC.
136
capitalists are persons.
There is no record that Jane Addams submitted this
paper elsewhere until 1912 when it was published. However,
it seems apparent that the "weak-kneed" and "embarrassed"
woman who asked The Forum to publish her maiden efforts in
1892 had given way to a more determined and confident person
who no longer hesitated to send her manuscripts to publishers
or to various prominent people for reading and criticism.
Among the latter were two friends who were very devoted to
her. Henry Demarest Lloyd read "A Modern King Lear" with
considerable enthusiasm and approval, commenting that
"Carnegie too is a kind of Lear with his libraries, and
all." He ended his letter by inviting Miss Addams to
write for him. "The Fabians in London are about to start
a new monthly— The Progressive Review. They have asked me
to give them the American Outlook. Would you be too busy
to send me by return mail, as near as maybe, two or three
hundred words about the Social Settlement Situation, up-to-
date , in the broadest aspects? It would help the spread

41
of the socialising idea. "
The second friend, John Dewey, likewise approved
40
Letter of H. E. Scudder, The Atlantic Monthly,
to JA, April 18, 1896, JAC.
^Letter of H. D. Lloyd to JA, February 23, 1896,
JAC.
137
of her ideas, and, while making some specific criticism
of form and style, he felt in "Lear" Miss Addams had said
"exactly the thing that must be realized if the affair
is going to be anything more than a brutal and disgusting

42
memory. "
Jane Addams1 experience with "A Modern King Lear"
was the last time she had any difficulty achieving publi
cation for her papers, articles and books. It is very
possible that Mr. Pullman's presence on the American scene
and Mr. Scudder1s comment that "even capitalists are
persons" account for the rejections. In the future Miss
Addams was to be much sought after by publishers, and the
question arises whether she was not over-published at
some detriment to her own development.
42
Letter of John Dewey, Department of Philosophy,
University of Chicago, to JA, January 19, 1896, JAC.
CHAPTER VIII
INCREASING FAME
Jane Addams of Hull House was now a celebrity, an
engaging and stimulating lecturer, a writer with a growing
audience, and a busy director-resident of the most famous
settlement house in America, if not in the world. She went
from an interview with a troubled immigrant, to a committee
meeting whose members were investigating conditions in the
county poorhouse (she was appointed to this group in 1895),
to an address before any one of a dozen organizations, to
a conference with Miss Culver about building plans, to
two luncheon meetings at the Union League Club, "Once
with the p r e . and one with the Sec'y of the Manufacturer's
Assoc, who are desperately fighting the 8 Hour law. We
successfully 'moralized' the Pres, but not the Sec'y,”i-
but who can follow Jane Addams on her apparently ceaseless
round of activities? The most we can hope to do is catch
glimpses of her as she rushes about, and attempt to read
some meaning into the mosaic that emerges.
^"Letter of JA to MRS, January 16, 1895, JAC.
138
139
The reputation Jane Addams had already achieved
as an authority on the lives of the working class and the
poor in general, as well as a fighter for their rights,
attracted other celebrated personalities to Hull House
where they sought advice, offered their services, consulted
Miss Addams about projects of their own, or came simply to
express their admiration. The same magnetic quality—
"luminous” as Ellen Gates Starr called it— attracted them
too, and many of them left with increased respect, even
the cynical Clarence D a r r o w who, though he thought her
efforts to improve the lot of the poor rather hopeless,

2
admired Miss Addams greatly and was a friend of hers .
Her personality and her appearance were part of her
magnetism. A newspaper article, reporting a talk she gave
before a group of women at the San Francisco Fair of 1894,
describes this appeal for us. The reporter was captivated
by Miss Addams "who, by request, on this morning, related
her experiences in a clear, simple and earnest way, impressing

——
W h e n G o v e r n o r A l t g e l d d i e d in 1902, D a r r o w and
M i s s Addams w e r e the o n l y speakers at the f u n e r a l services,
besides a minister. M i s s A d d a m s h a d b e e n c a u t i o n e d to
refuse w h e n she was asked to speak b y friends w h o w a r n e d
h e r she w o u l d "wreck the influence of Hull House." See
L i n n , J a n e A d d a m s , p. 1 5 8 .
her listeners and touching- t h e i r h e a r t s as she stood before
them, a g i r l i s h figure, with a refined and sympathetic
face, glow ing w i t h the b e a u t y of p urpose that h ad no

3
thought of self." Another report of a speech Jane Addams
gave before the C inci n n a t i Teachers' Club paints a similar
picture. "Miss Addams," the r e p o r t e r wrote, "made a sweet,
womanly figure as she stood b y the s m a l l desk: a n d b e g a n
her address, her gown a severely plain and simple one of
dark blue silk wit h a little relief of velvet, her soft
hair brushed away off of her face w i t h no suspicion of
curl or bang, and he r luminous eyes lighting up her
expressive face. Simply and in a direct and u n s t u d i e d
manner, yet with great force and clearness, she set forth
4
the i d e a of Hull House, with which her name is inseparable.”
5
The m y t h of "Sai nt Jane” was already current and
creating a popular i mage of a figure pure in h e a r t and
selfless in spirit. L i k e m o s t my t h s , it incorporates only

; . — -
Unidentified newspaper clipping, presumably 1894, JAC.

4
Unidentified newspaper clipping, dated May 19, 1895,
JAC .
5
Miss Addams was already b e i n g r e f e r r e d to this way.
A newspaper clipping from The L e d g e r , Philadelphia, Pennsylvani
d a t e d J u l y 1, 1895, b e g i n s w i t h " M i s s J a n e A d d a m [ s i c ] o f
C h i c a g o — t h e ' S a i n t Jane' o f H u l l H o u s e f a m e ” . . .etc. J A C .
141
part of the reality. Jane Addams, with her gentleness and
the strong maternal quality of her nature, which sought
expression in nourishing and feeding others, was a woman
of determination, undeterred by obstacles, her will focused

»
on her purpose, and very much aware of herself. How
otherwise could she have established Hull House, virtually
all by herself and brought it and herself to the eminence
they had both achieved by 1895? The lack of ease in her
personal encounters, her shyness and gentle manner, the

0
sweet charm — these were only part of Jane Addams1 person
ality. The other part was compounded of a strong will,
dedication to her goal, and a firmly-held conviction that
she had the ability to achieve her purpose. The woman who
wanted nothing for herself, wanted everything for Hull House.
But was not one the alter ego of the other?
The popular imagination was also by this time
captivated by the picturesqueness of Miss Addams' career.

6
This enchanted people throughout her life, and
afterwards too. Many years after this era in Jane Addams'
life, Edmund Wilson, the celebrated literary critic, visited
Hull House and was charmed by a portrait of Miss Addams "in
a big-sleeved and high-collared gown of the nineties, a
young woman, slender and winning and almost like anillustra
tion for some old serial by William Dean Howells orMrs.
Burton Harrison in The Century Magazine." Edmund Wilson,
"Hull-House in 1932," The American Earthquake (New York:
Doubleday & Co., 1958), p. 449.
142
First of all, the idea of a young woman of Miss Addams'
breeding, refinement and station in life, choosing to
live in a Chicago slum was startling, attention-drawing,
and indicated self-sacrifice which is always attractive
to people who avoid it. Instead of a round of ladylike
activities, which often included a little dabbling in
charity to ennoble the spirit, here was a young woman who
scorned so empty a life and made her own choice. The
unprecedented step of living in a foul neighborhood amongst
foreigners, in an area where prostitution and crime were
commonplace, was shocking to many people but inspiring in
its apparent nobility.
Hull House, of course, was not a typical slum
dwelling. Forlorn as it was when Jane Addams found it,
the mansion still preserved a hint of former elegance in
its solid exterior, so different in appearance from its
neighbors. The building was also considerably renovated
before Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr moved in. Here
is a description of the result, part of a newspaper article
which was headlined, "Work of Two Women-Philanthropic
Feminine Efforts in the way of West-Side Moral Elevation.
Old London's Toynbee Hall Used as a Model by Miss Jane Addams
and Miss Ellen S t a r r . T h e article continues "Out of the
chaos of shocking unrepair a delightful house arose. New
windows were put in, floors mended, doors varnished and
rehung. The wide hallways were done in delicate terra-cotta
tints and the rooms in ivory and gold. The floors were
polished and laid with rugs from the orient. There was
the music-room with its classic simplicity, its dainty
piano, and soft etchings and water colors on the walls.
The library blossomed forth with rows of books in scented
leather bindings, and in dusky niches flashed the snowy
marble of bits of rare statuary. The same thought pre
vailed in all the other rooms. A chord of quiet, almost
severe, elegance had been struck, and the whole house
joined in its harmony." Despite the gushing, exaggerated
tone of this report, which seems to describe an Italian
villa rather than Hull House as it probably was, unques
tionably there was truth in its picture of a house far more

7
An unidentified newspaper clipping pasted into
a volume entitled "Jane's Letters, 1889-1896:" the byline
ascribes authorship to Eva Bright, EGSP.
144
g
habitable than most of its neighbors.
Nevertheless, despite the renovated elegancecf Hull
House, for a young, middle-class woman to choose to live
on Halsted Street was at the very least unusual and at
once drew public attention to Jane Addams. The newspapers
began reporting her many activities; as time went on they
began to look to her for stories of unusual interest.
Almost one can visualize an editor directing a reporter
to go down to Halsted Street to see what Jane Addams was

g
The "Notes by Miss Josephine Starr on Ellen Gates
Starr," EGSP, gives a picture of Miss Starr's Hull House
apartment which also suggests taste and comfort. "The first
floor contained her living room, bedroom and kitchenette.
William Morris papers were on the walls. There was some
family furniture, but mostly what Mrs. Wiimarth had given
her with the apartment-good and solid but not distinguished.
The pictures lent distinction. Various framed Arundel
prints of Italian and Flemish pictures were on the walls.
The Primavera (Botticelli) hung over the diamond paned
book cases. The Fra Angelico, Christ and Mary in the Garden,
the Carpaccio, St. George, Etc., lent color, and Mr. Linden
had painted a broad lunette over the double doors between
the living and bedrooms. Later a prediue (from Mrs. Lillie)
was constructed to hold crucifix, candles, and four handsome
volumes of the Breviary bound in crimson and tooled in gold
that had been her Aunt Eliza's.” Mrs. Lillie, a very wealthy
woman, was a patroness of Ellen Gates Starr and over the
years contributed much money to her support.
145
9
doing today'. The famous garbage inspector incident, for
example, contained the same element of high drama as Miss
Addams' decision to live in a slum. By this time, however,—
1895— Jane Addams was a national figure, and the story was
published far and wide. The Omaha Bee, one instance of
this, had the following to say: "Miss Jane Addams, the head
of Hull house [sic], who was appointed garbage inspector,
for one ward in Chicago a couple of months ago, has been
doing effective work in her new position. Garbage pails
are to be found where they never were before, and alleys
wear an unwonted appearance of cleanliness. Every morning
at 6 o'clock a low-covered buggy, drawn by a sturdy gray
nag, comes to the door of Hull house and Miss Addams, and
her assistant start on their rounds. They come back for
an 8 o'clock breakfast, and then are off again until
11 o'clock. Everything in connection with the inspectorship
is done with the same, methodical neatness which marks Miss
Addams' work at Hull house, and it is expected that the
Nineteenth ward will soon be a shining example of cleanliness

9
The details of Miss Addams1 appointment as a garbage
inspector are so well known, they need not be repeated. For
those unfamiliar with the story, see Twenty Years, 281-89.
146
and order.” A humorous note, which reflects a reaction
to the unusual nature of the experience, was struck by a
newspaper nearer to home. With tongue in cheek the Chicago
Times Herald declares, ”Uniforms for all inspectors of
street cleaning except Miss Jane Addams were yesterday
decided upon as essential to the better performance of
their increasingly important business. 'Now, don't suggest
b l o o m e r s , ' said Superintendent T h o d e , after explaining that
the one exception would for the present be made Miss
Addams herself carried out her plan with the utmost serious
ness and her typical thoroughness, but with some awareness
of its dramatic quality. 11X w o n d e r , ” she w r o t e Mary Rozet
Smith, ” if your father would be cheered by an account of
my garbage investigations. The contracts are let next
week and if I am going to get the 19th Ward, my bid must
go in next week. Seymour Coman, Mr. Valerio and myself
have spent days investigating and estimating. We find that
the contractor bid $1,050.00 a mo. when it would properly
take $1,500. a mo., then he actually spends about $500.
"''^Newspaper clipping, Omaha, Nebraska, B e e , July 21,

1895, JAC.
"''Newspaper clipping, Chicago Times Herald, July 23,

1895, JAC.
147
If we bid what would clean it— we can't get it, if we bid
low enough to get it we probably can't keep it clean. So
here we are'."^
Miss Addams, of course, cannot be held responsible
that her activities were dramatic and drew public attention.
Her intention was not to become popular, though, no doubt,
the applause was pleasant to her ears. But why should it
not have been? The unusual nature of her career, with its
emphasis on helping others, was bound to focus attention on
her, but, as we shall see further on, it was not always
approbation she received. In either case, the applause or
the vilification were by-products of her method of attacking
problem situations. I doubt that Jane Addams had any
particular wish to be a garbage inspector; from any possible
point of view— sex, experience, education, etc.— this was
hardly a suitable occupation for her. She became a garbage
inspector to demonstrate that with the proper will, problems
in living can be resolved, change is possible and the human
will can become engaged for good as well as evil.
Though Jane Addams sometimes underestimated the
dark side of man's nature, she refused to acknowledge any

— _ _ _ _ _ _
Letter from JA to MRS, February 24, 1895, JAC.
limitation to the potentialities of the human spirit, her
own most of all. Streets could be clean, disease-breeding
conditions could be eradicated, housing improved, personal
lives ennobled rather than degraded, the destruction of
children's lives through early labor in dangerous and
health-destroying trades prevented, and class cleavage
avoided. Set down on paper in the 1890's, these aims would
have appeared a noble dream, the vision of a voyager to
Utopia. Jane Addams, however, was neither a weaver of
utopian tapestries nor an idealist dreaming in the garden.
She was first and foremost a demonstrator, a salesman of
change who, by her own example, showed what could be done.
The quality of leadership was within her, and she never
spared it. That her activities became meat and drink to
her, a source of tremendous inner satisfaction and the
basis of a fascinating career which eventually led her to
high places, is a testimonial to the flowering of her own
spirit. "See,’1 she seemed always to be saying, "If I can
do it, so can you." Not the apparent sacrifice, which she
always denied, not the humility and loss of self, but the
triumph of the human will over great odds was the message
she brought.
149
Mankind, in Jane Addams' day, was, as always,
struggling with the eternal conflict between the good which
glorifies man and the evil which degrades him. The sight
of so noble a person and so vigorous a fighter engaged on
the side of the good was a tremendous inspiration to
thousands of her contemporaries. This fact, much more
than her picturesqueness or the drama of her activities,
brought residents flocking to Hull House, and earned for
Miss Addams the respect of learned scholars and distin
guished men in many professions, and the admiration of
thousands of people all over the world. Eventually her
activities also brought her insults and slander from those
who opposed her, as well as scorn from those who dismissed
her efforts as paltry and in vain.
By 1895, however, Jane Addams' fame was well-
established, and her leadership, built up through practical
demonstrations, was acknowledged at home and abroad. "From
other states, from Europe and Asia, visitors came to exa
mine this Chicago on Lake Michigan. For many, there were
three attractions: the stockyards, the new university,
150
13
and Hull-House. In 1893 Sidney and Beatrice Webb and
Governor Altgeld were the guests of Clarence Darrow at
Hull-House, where the visiting Englishwoman persuaded
Jane Addams to try a cigarette for the first and last
time. This was the year of the Exposition and prominent
speakers were happy to lecture at Hull-House; Dr. Bayard
Holmes discussed "The Conscience of the State,1 and Swami
Vivehanande, ’The Economic and Social Conditions of India1
Miss Addams was an admirer of Fabian philosophy

and tactics, and there were similarities between her view
points and methods, and those of the Webbs. Anne Fremantle
in her study of the British Fabians describes an attempt
to found an American Fabian Society. "John W. Martin, who
was a member of the Fabian Executive from 1884 to 1889 and
who wrote Fabian Tract No. 52, 'State Education at Home and
Abroad,' in 1894 married the leading United States exponent
of Fabianism, and settled in New York as editor of the
"American Fabian," which ran for several issues. Martin
had considerable subsequent influence in local American
education and progressive politics. But he, too, failed
in transplanting Fabianism to the U.S.A., although such
intensely American figures as Jane Addams heartily endorsed
it." Anne Fremantle, This Little Band of Prophets, The
British Fabians (New York: New American Library, 1960),
originally published by George Allen and Unwin Ltd,,London,
1959. Later on in the book the author describes other
attempts to establish a Fabian Society in America by
Stuart Chase, but these too failed. The "League for
Industrial Democracy," founded by H. Laidler in 1905, was
the only successful attempt to establish a similar group
in the States.
151
. . . Now the activity of the women of Hull-House was to
spread into a far wider field. The core of this remarkable
work was concern for the family: the unschooled child, the
14
working mother, the exploited father."
Another English visitor was William T. Stead, a
reformer and crusading reporter, who had startled all
England with his book, If_ Christ Came to London. He
visited Chicago in 1893 to make a similar investigation
there, as he had in London, and one of the authorities he
consulted was Jane Addams. "I can vividly recall," Miss
Addams wrote later, "his visits to Hull-House, some of
them between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when he
would come in wet and hungry from an investigation of the
levee district, and, while he was drinking hot chocolate
before an open fire, would relate in one of his curious
monologues, his experiences as an out-of-door laborer
standing in line without an overcoat for two hours in the
sleet, that he might have a chance to sweep the streets;
or his adventures with a crook, who mistook him for one
of his own kind and offered him a place as an agent for a

—- .
Ginger, Altgeld1s America, p. 132.
gambling house, which he promptly accepted."^
Stead's relationship with Miss Addams continued
over the years until his death in 1912; he was a passenger
on the ill-fated Titanic and went down with the ship. He
saw Jane Addams as a kindred spirit, and praised her highly
in the book which he based on his Chicago experiences and
which he called, in imitation of his first publication,
If Christ Came to Chicago He was critical of the Chicago
Relief and Aid Society whose good intentions were marred
by rigid policies. "The temptation of the Relief and
Aid Society, as of all other societies, is to apply a
cut-and-dried standard to all cases, and to conclude that
if the circumstances of the applicant do not fit their

17
requirements he is unworthy of relief." In contrast to
_ _ _

16
Despite the title, which was meant to shock, the
book is not particularly religious in tone, and Stead saw
the solution to social problems in social action, not in
the church. He was essentially an early muckraker, exposing
social evils in his articles and books in the hope that
correction would follow. He became editor of the English
publication, The Review of Reviews, and remained at that
post until his death.
17
William T. Stead, l£ Christ Came to Chicago (London
Review of Reviews, 1894), p. 128.
this arid approach to need, Stead contrasts the warmth and
openness of Hull House. Miss Addams and the residents, at
Hull House, he declared, had good reason to reflect on
their accomplishments in the five years that Hull House
existed. "For they realized the ideal settlement of which
many have dreamed, but which they alone have brought into
life. Hull-House has avoided the Scylla of denominational
narrowness, and at the same time has not less dexterously
steered past the Charybdis of the luke-warmedness and
apathetic indifference which are the bane of much

18
undenominational effort. . ." When Stead returned to
England, he added his influential voice to the many others
advertising Miss Addams’ accomplishments. In a letter dated

19
December 29, 1894, he wrote to her, "The Old Year is now
fast coming to a close, but before it departs, I must just
write you a line to say how much your good work is appre
ciated on this side of the Water [sic] . Sir John Gorst
came to see me yesterday, and he could talk about nothing
else than Hull House in every centre of population where
150,000 persons could be found gathered together. Canon
18Ibid., p. 400.
19
Letter of W. H. Stead to JA, December 29, 1894, JAC.
154
Barnett, as perhaps you may know, acting under Sir John's
influence, is summoning a conference at Toynbee Hall for
January 28th, for all those who are interested in the
existing Settlements. . . . The idea is to secure a general
declaration in favour of the Hull-House idea, and to set
on foot work for realising it elsewhere. . . . Sir John
Gorst delighted me much by the emphatic manner in which
he sang your praises. I regret to say that he did not
think we had anybody in this country who was worthy to
tie your shoes. . ." The adoration Miss Addams inspired
at home had spread overseas.
Though Stead recognized that Hull House was a
Chicago institution of outstanding merit by 1894, he responded
to the human spirit which pervaded the settlement. Miss

I
Addams determination to lessen class cleavage, to "reconcile"
warring classes with each other, was reflected in the
mutuality of individual relationships which was established
between the residents and the neighbors, of Hull House. The
keynote was respect for individual worth and potential, and
the recognition that giving and taking need to be reciprocal
experiences between people, never more so than between the
social worker and his "client." When this occurs, gratitude
155
is meaningless, unless both are grateful to each other.
Jane Addams could not avoid the transformation of
her early enthusiasm and her plan, which began in such a
small way, into an institution. She yielded to this
development when the "fatal" decision was made to incor
porate Hull House. She continued to fight, however, against
the institutional spirit with its inflexibility and its
rejection of people in favor of rules. Her attitude
towards organized charity, for example, was similar to
Stead's. Out of her experience she had learned that "life
cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations,
that wisdom to deal with a man's difficulties comes only
through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole;
and that to treat an isolated episode is almost sure to

20
invite blundering." Nevertheless, the early cry of "No
institutions" had given way to a recognition that, in an
organized society, social work would be organized too, just
as Hull House w a s . She was not so foolish either as to
believe that rules and system were unnecessary, and she

i
learned Hull House could not function solely on good will.
Organization, system, rules, procedures, however, must

20
156
operate to ease the flow of services, take into account
individual experiences and behavior, and apply knowledge
and understanding to them. Flexibility is the keynote, and,
while stressing the value of individual differences, she
insisted on the likenesses that all human beings shared
with each other. "I have long ceased," she wroteinan
article of this period, "to apologize for the views and
opinions of working people. I am quite sure that on the
whole they are just about as wise and just about as foolish
21
as the views and opinions of other people." Jane Addams'
view of humanity may have seemed somewhat too optimistic
to many people. Her head may have sometimes been inthe
clouds, but her feet were always on the ground.

21
J. Addams t "A Belated Industry; or Domestic
Service,” American Journal of Sociology, I, No. 5 (March,
1896), pp. 536-50. The passage quoted is on p. 546.
CHAPTER IX
MISS ADDAMS AT WORK
Money matters continued to take up a good deal of
Miss Addams1 time and efforts. Hull House was flourishing
and by 1895 considerable sums of money were needed to keep
it going. In addition Miss Addams was forever planning to
meet new needs in the community. Just as Hull House grew
from the original house to a complex of twelve separate
buildings, one added on almost as soon as the last one was
finished, so the programs kept increasing as new *.ideas to
resolve old problems occurred to Miss Addams and the resi
dents. Jane Addams became indefatigable in collecting funds
to finance these programs, very often successfully. Always,
too, the accounts were in arrears, and very naturally so
since money was spent faster than it came in. Though Jane
Addams continued to express regret at the arrearages and
promised to reform, she never mended her bad habit of spend
ing more than she took in. "I have made," she wrote to
Mary Smith, "Herculean efforts to bring up the nursery
account— but as yet no one has subscribed by the month.
Mrs. Bowen gave $100.00 which paid up the coal bills (50.00)
157
158
and paid Mary and Mrs. Hensen to Feb. 1st. I have made
one or two futile attempts at the kindergarten but may be
more successful on my return."^
Building plans occupied much of her time, and she
was often in conference with the architect-trustee, Mr.
Pond. In the same letter quoted above she refers to money
in the bank contributed by a Mrs. Foster with which "we
will begin to build as soon as the weather moderates.
Seven single rooms with two back rooms is what the present
plan calls for— it fills our heart with joy." She con
tinued to struggle with Miss Culver who didn't always
yield to Miss Addams' importunities. "In the meantime
Mr. Pond and I are greatly working on Miss Culver's feeling.
She may yet part with the corner on Ewing and Halsted."
She also found time for some reading. "I have ordered from
McClure's Warner's book on "American Charities"— it is very
interesting. I am enjoying it greatly."
As Jane Addams' fame spread, contributions poured
in from near and far, much of it the result of her efforts
to extract money from influential and wealthy people. Some
of the funds which came in were used for food, lodging or
special needs of people who came for this kind of help.
^Letter of JA to MRS, January 15, 1895, JAC.
159
"The check for one hundred dollars came duly to hand and
is being cautiously given out in food or coal. We are
feeding a good many of the lodging house ladies. They
are rather short of sewing there and have just about enough
2
to pay for the lodging."
Though Hull House was not a relief agency, Miss
Addams’ inclination was to meet need when it presented
itself. If relief funds were needed, she would find some.
She was not particularly concerned at this point with the
function of her agency, which would tend to limit its scope
of service. If a particular need existed she tended immedi
ately to plan how Hull House might meet this lack. Her
impulse was to resolve the problem by offering the service.
She was always eager to set up new programs, but very often
eager to give them up to others once their usefulness was
demonstrated. On with the new and off with the old was a
standard Hull House practice.
A good example of Jane Addams1 method of determina
tion and salesmanship is exhibited in a letter to Mrs. Anita
McCormick Blaine, a frequent contributor to Hull House from
1894 on, and an ardent admirer of Miss Addams. In this
2
Letter of JA to MRS, February 16, 1895, JAC.
160
letter. Miss Addams shared with Mrs. Blaine her concern
for a neighborhood problem, and says a Dr. Thomas Hall sug
gested she write to Mrs. Blaine about it. The problem
itself is about "young girls who are beginning to go the
wrong way." The letter itself is rather long, but since
it demonstrates so vividly how Miss Addams attachedprob
lems and introduced solutions, it would be best touse her
own words.
This fall [she writes] quite a number of

peculiar and atrocious cases have come under
our notice, which might have been prevented
if some one person had been able to give her
full time to it, and had known more about the
workings of the two neighboring Police Stations.
We hope very much to have a resident detailed
solely to this sort of work, who shall go two
days a week to the Maxwell St. and the
Desplaines St. Station, who shall put herself
in connection with all the Refuges and
Anchorages of the city, and keep her evenings
free to attend the balls and parties of the
neighborhood where much of the 'procuring' is
done. Miss Anne Withington, who has worked
at the House more or less, and who at one time
had charge of the Model Lodging House, which
has been established near us, I am quite sure
could do this work exceptionally well . She is
a girl of rather unusual advantages, who has
travelled and seen enough of different sorts
of people to make her judgment lenient and at
the same time penetrating, and who has an
Mrs. Blaine's letter to JA is part of the Anita

McCormick Blaine papers in the McCormick Collection owned
by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin at Madison.
A goodly number of Mrs. Blaine's letters to Miss Addams
were microfilmed and are in the Jane Addams Collection,
SCPC. The letters I have read are from the microfilm.
The letter cited here is from JA to AMB, December 11, 1895.
161
unfailing spring of sympathy. Perhaps her

distinguishing trait is her ability of inter
pretation. She is obliged to be self-supporting,
and could not possibly give her time for less
than $50.00 a month. It would cost her about
$25.00 a month to live at the house, and as her
mother is partially dependent upon her, she
could not come for less. . . . Several people—
Mrs. Coonley, Mrs. Wilmarth, Miss Mary Rozet
Smith, and Miss Colvin— pay sums of $50.00 a
month, which are known as fellowships. The
person receiving these sums devotes herself to
a special sort of work and reports to me, of
course, but [also] directly to the persons giv
ing the money. . . . Mrs. Hall McCormick has
recently established a fellowship of $25.00.
The young lady holding it, Miss Brockway,
devotes her time to reading to the sick chil
dren. She has some income of her own, and is
able to do it for the sum named, which pays
her expenses at the house. . . . If you would
be willing to consider such a fellowship, I
should be very glad indeed to talk with you
further about it, and to assure you of the
value I believe such a work would be. . . .
So much of the rescue work of the city is
made so unattractive, and stripped so largely
of the social features, which, in the beginning,
draw many a lonely girl. I have several theories
which I should be glad to work out in conjunction
with so sympathetic a person as Miss Withington.
. . . If the plan strikes you as in the least
feasible or valuable, could you make an appoint
ment so that I may come and talk it over with you . . .
Mrs. Blaine agreed to finance the project, although aDr.
Loomis, a teacher of physiology and hygiene, was substituted
for Miss Withington whose circumstances did not permit her
to accept the position.
By being present at the spot and being part of the
neighborhood, Jane Addams saw problems acted out in the
162
lives of the people who lived around her. In this particular
case she came into first-hand contact with girls enticed
into the houses of prostitution that abounded in the immedi
ate neighborhood of Hull House. The blame, Miss Addams
felt, lay in the environment and the social situation which
needed to be changed, rather than in the girls themselves.
If women fell, society gave them a good push down the stairs.
In assuming the position that environmental forces
were largely responsible for social problems, Jane Addams
did not naively believe that man was all good and society
all evil. She viewed the human personality as containing
within itself potential for development in several direc
tions. The choices people made for themselves were related,
however, to the environmental pressures under which they
lived. The idea expressed in the legend "There but for
the grace of God go I" was central to Jane Addams1 philoso
phy, except for "God" she would substitute a more secular
idea— society, community, etc. Holding such a point of
view about human behavior and willing to extend this insight
to understand the behavior of people she opposed, like the
politician Johnny Powers, she never could become personally
angry and accusatory. As her nephew was to write in his
fine biography of his aunt, Miss Addams "never in all her
life was . . . absolutely sure she was right. The
certainties of individuals like Charles Sumner and Theodore
Roosevelt, of groups like the abolitionists and prohibi
tionists, were never hers. She could not help seeing the
point of view of the manufacturers, even of the sweat-shop
proprietors, even of the owners of the glass companies, who
were as certain that a child-labor law would put them out
of business, as she was that without a child-labor law,
the infant democracy of Illinois would be put out of busi-

4
ness." I do not believe, however, that this attitude
arises from Miss Addams' unsureness that she was right, as
Professor Linn suggests. How could she not believe she
was right in fighting child labor when the evidence of the
destruction it wrought was all around her in the families
of her neighbors? She understood "the point of view of
the manufacturers" just as she did that of Johnny Powers,
and, on the other side, Prince Kropotkin, not because she
believed that any of them might possibly be right and she
wrong, but because she believed that all human beings were
the results of their social opportunities and their living
experiences. With this conviction, held very deeply, how
could she attack individuals for what they were since,
given their lives, they could not be otherwise? Fight
4
what they were doing, yes; to attach them personally was
beside the point. To understand all was for Jane Addams
not to forgive all; she was not interested in forgiving
anybody. This, if it mattered at all, was a divine, not
a human, prerogative. Understanding was, however, a neces
sary step in penetrating to the heart of the matter which
lay in the social environment, its effect on people, ancT
the interaction between the two. This attitude, later
disciplined through professional education, became central
in social work philosophy.
In writing to Mrs. Blaine, then, Miss Addams did
not waste words on the procurers and the madams, holding
them responsible for the problem. Nor did she exhort the
prostitutes to a better life through prayer, penance, or
the exaction of promises to reform. If they were to escape
the abuses to which they were subjected, means had to be
provided which would make a different life possible— "to
substitute simple pleasures and a safer social life for the
questionable ones." The community had provided the environ
ment which led these girls into prostitution; the community
was then responsible for providing the means for solving
the problem. The means Jane Addams was considering, how
ever, was small in scope. No long-considered planning, no
development of extensive resources, no appeal for large
165
contributions; only one resident at $50 a month. 5
This small-scale solution, which might seem absurd
in the face of the problem, did not arise from seeming
naivete on Miss Addams’ part. She had no illusions, as so
many other reformers had, that she and Hull House could
abolish prostitution in the area surrounding Hull House,
much less in all Chicago. She was not interested either
in saving prostitutes. She wished, however, to demonstrate
a method whereby help could be given to those individuals
caught in the problem who were seeking a way out. In
describing to Mrs. Blaine the rationale behind her plan, she
emphasized, perhaps not too consciously, the interaction
she saw between the environment and the person. "So much
of the rescue work of the city is made so unattractive,
and stripped so largely of the social features, which, in
the beginning, draw many a lonely girl. " An environment
"unattractive" and joyless, and a "lonely girl" wanting
attention do not mix very well. "I have several theories,"
she added, and, if Mrs. Blaine would supply the funds, a
demonstration of what could be accomplished would follow.
If the demonstration was successful, Jane Addams and Hull

-
Jane Addams always clung to her original intention

to avoid paying salaries, as though money might sully the
purity of the helping heart. At times, as in this case,
she had, however, to face the fact that some people had to
work for a living.
166
House were always willing, even eager, to hand the program
over to another agency for further development and the
establishment of a more permanent service, leaving Miss
Addams and- the residents free to explore other-problems.
"Hull-House has always held its activities lightly, as it
were, in the hollow of its hand, ready to hand them over to
others, for there is among the residents a distrust of the
institutional and a desire to be free for experiment and
the initiative of new enterprises."^
The eagerness with which Miss Addams yielded up
her demonstrations to others, while undoubtedly a pre-
fessional attitude ("a distrust of the institutional and.a
desire to be free for experiment"), arose also from aspects
of her personality. Years later, when Mrs. Bowen wrote
her memoirs, she commented on Miss Addams1 extreme gener
osity and her refusal to keep anything for herself. Gifts
to Jane Addams were given away as soon as they were received,
"almost before she really thanked the person for it. I
remember one year when she complained that she had no nice
underwear. That was at a time when women wore considerably
more than they do at present, and I had a dozen of almost
everything worn by women made up to fit Miss Addams and

g
Hull-House Year Book, May 1, 1910, JAC. This
statement appears in many other Hull House pamphlets and
publications.
167
marked 'JA1 so that she could not give it away. On
Christmas day she asked a number of the residents to her
room and was handing out all these carefully made pieces
when I bounded in. I did persuade her to keep a few in

7
order that she might have something to wear herself."
Miss Addams displayed the same generosity with Hull
House programs as she had with Mrs. Bowen's gift of lingerie.
In both cases she exhibited an abhorrence of holding on and
of permanence. The glory of her peculiar genius was in
breaking new paths and giving birth to new ideas. Growth
and development of programs she was willing to leave to
others. The exception of this was Hull House itself, but
this after all was her home. Experimentation attracted her,
and sometimes Hull House was referred to as a laboratory.
"I have always objected," she wrote, "to the phrase socio
logical laboratory applied to us, because Settlements should
be something much more human and spontaneous than such a

g
phrase connotes. . . . " Nevertheless, a Hull House bore
7
Bowen, Open Windows, pp. 219-20.
8
Addams, Twenty Years, p. 308. Her insistence on
human values is also expressed in a letter she wrote to her
sister while in London in 1896. She met with a group of
English settlement house workers and had this to say:
" . . . the meeting of the Southwark Settlement was inter
esting but powerful cold and scholarly. 'The poor' might
have been another name for microbes. They asked me to
speak but I didn't dare say what was on my tongue and so
only made a brief remark." Letter, JA, Woman's University
Settlement, London, June 22, 1896, JAC.
168
some similaritiesto a laboratory which examined a problem,
made a diagnosis, and suggested a remedy, always focused
on a small sample but with direct bearing on the universal
situation.
Miss Addams' concentration on demonstrations, on
money, on counseling troubled parents and children, and
promoting legislation were only parts of her very active
career. From the beginning she spent considerable amounts
of her waking hours talking and lecturing, at first locally
in Chicago, and throughout the state of Illinois, then
nationally and ultimately overseas. Her subjects included
descriptions of Hull House and settlement houses in general,
the role of women in society, the Pullman strike, the value
of play and recreation, and many other topics. The pub
licity she received was invaluable in spreading her influ
ence, and the settlement house movement in general.
A newspaper report of June 20, 1894, reports Jane
Addams' address at the Commencement Exercises of the College
for Women of Western Reserve in which she declared, "Men
seek to make their political life democratic, but it is

9
left to woman to perform a like task for the social life."
Here Miss Addams voiced her opinion, as she did on many
occasions, that settlement house work and welfare in general

9
Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 20, 1894. Clipping
f ile, JAC.
169
was mostly a female responsibility, perhaps because the
mothering element in her approach loomed so large. Ironi
cally enough, the model after which Hull House was created—
Toynbee Hall— was a completely male enterprise.
A sampling of newspaper reports of the period points
up the variety of topics Miss Addams was prepared to dis
course on. One of these mentions her talk before the
Society for Ethical Culture; her topic there was "The Social
Settlement Idea." ^ Again on home territory her talk before
a Woman's Club meeting is described as follows. "Miss Jane
Addams," the reporter wrote, "drew attention to Chicago's
lack, compared to Boston and other eastern (sic] cities,
of lodging-houses for women, restricted pawn shops and
laundries."’*’^' No need of her neighbors could escape Jane
Addams' attentionI
On the very next night (the last meeting was on
February 11, 1895, the next on February 12, 1895), Miss
Addams spoke at a meeting of the Chicago Baptist Social
Union, the topic "Woman's Work in Modern Society." "Miss
Jane Addams of Hull will speak on that branch of the subject

12
which bears upon 'Philanthropy.'" An unidentified paper
~^The Times, Chicago, November 17, 1893, JAC.

^ T h e Herald, Chicago, February 12, 1895, JAC.
12
The Journal, Chicago, February 12, 1895, JAC.
of the same perioa refers to a meeting in Chicago in the
Auditorium Building called by the Bindery Girls Protective
Union to endorse the eight-hour law for women. Besides
Miss Addams, the report lists as speakers Miss Mary E.
Kenney (a Hull House worker), Mrs. Charles Henrotin (a
"Janeite"), and Henry Demarest Lloyd. A Freeport, Illinois,
paper reports Miss Addams’ visit to her home town. "Miss
Jane Addams of the Chicago Hull house , was in Freeport
Monday calling on friends. The lady was at Cedarville over
Sunday visiting the home of her childhood. Miss Addams
returned last evening to Rockford, where she is conducting
a summer school for poor young girls. Wednesday she will
go to Toronto, Canada, to deliver an address before the
Congress of Liberal Religions. Miss Addams was accompanied
to Freeport by Miss Julia Lathrop, secretary of the Chicago
bureau of charities [sic], and Robert A. Woods, head resi
dent of Andover house, the famous social settlement of

14
Boston." A report dated a few days later refers to Miss
Addams1 talk on "the settlement idea" at the Pan-American

15
Congress in Toronto. This meeting is apprently the one
— . .
Unidentified newspaper clipping, possibly 1894

or 1895, JAC.
^Freeport, 111., Journal, July 16, 1895, JAC.
Julia Lathrop was not the "secretary of the Chicago bureau
of Charities"; Robert Woods and Jane Addams were already
very friendly colleagues.
15
The Journal, Boston, July 21, 1895, JAC.
171
referred to in the Freeport Journal; its correct title
seems to have been the Pan-American Congress of Religion
and Education. Local papers in Burlington (Vermont?) and
Buffalo note Miss Addams1 appearance in those cities to dis-

16
cuss social settlements. In January, 1896, Miss Addams
discussed social problems in the first of a series of

17
lectures at the First Congregational Church in Toledo, Ohio.
In February of the same year she was in Boston discussing
social settlements before a Trinity Chapel meeting; in
September she was again in Boston to lecture before the

18
members of the Twentieth Century Club. On this occasion
she delivered her paper comparing Pullman to King Lear.
The Pullman strike and her analysis of the relation
ship between Mr. Pullman and his employees was used by Miss
Addams as the subject for many of her lectures at this time.
From this situation (and in the paper she wrote about it),
she drew many morals, depending on the audience she was
addressing. For example, one newspaper report describes
an address she made at a meeting of settlement workers in

19
New York City. After commenting on the support many
16
The Hawkeye, Burlington (?), March 22, 1896, and
the Enquirer, Buffalo, March 24, 1896, JAC.
17
The Journal, Toledo, January 10, 1896, JAC.
18
The Transcript, Boston, February 10 and September 30,
1896, JAC.
■^This newspaper is not identifiable; the report is
dated "May 3," but no year is given. Possibly it is 1896,
JAC.
172
Chicagoans gave Pullman strikers, until the sympathetic
strike was ordered, Jane Addams remarked on the sympathy
bodily suffering invoked, but how little concern people had
for mental suffering. Drawing a moral for the settlement
workers, she continued, "The college settlement movement
stands today in much the same danger as did Lear and
Pullman. There is nothing so dangerous as being good to

20
people. . . . You must be good with people, and here lies
the entire secret of success of college settlement. I
sum it up in one word— co-operation. If the college
settlement would succeed it must do so upon that basis."
The newspapers not only reported Miss Addams' com-
ingsand goings, her talks and lectures, her trips to
Europe and elsewhere, but her illnesses, accidents and
midadventures were also described. Her papers were dis
cussed in editorials and used as authoritative source
material for articles on the poor, municipal corruption,
child labor, and a host of other subjects. When Miss
Addams1 article on domestic service was published in the
American Journal of Sociology in March 1896, the following

20
"Doing good" with people, not to them, was a
constant reminder of Jane Addams'. In 1932 she spoke at
a ceremony celebrating the fiftieth year of her graduation
from Rockford. "May I warn you," she said, "against doing
good to people, and trying to make others good by law.
One does good, if at all, with people, not to people."
Quoted by Linn, Jane Addams, p. 387.
173
newspapers used her material for articles and editorials:
The Tribune, Chicago, March 1; The Record, Chicago, March 2;
The Post, Chicago, March 2; The Record, Boston, March 4;
The Journal, Chicago, March 9; The Literary Digest (a peri
odical), March 2, 1896; The Globe, St. Paul, March 29;
The Bulletin, San Francisco, April 2; and The Herald,

21
Rochester, April 5. Later on, when her paper, "Ethical
Survivals in Municipal Corruption" was given as an address
before a meeting of the Ethical Culture Society (later pub
lished in the International Journal of Ethics, April, 1898),
the following newspapers commented approvingly on Miss
Addams' analysis of city politics: The Chronicle, Chicago,
January 28, 1898; The Herald, Chicago, January 25; The
Record, Chicago, January 25; The Tribune, Chicago, January 25;
The Republican, Springfield (111.?), January 26; The Sentinel,
Milwaukee, January 28; The Post, Pittsburgh, January 30;
The Dispatch, Pittsburgh, January 30; Public Opinion (a
periodical), February 3; The Herald, Los Angeles, February 13.
The following publications commented on the published paper:
The Dispatch, Pittsburgh, March 28; The Express, Buffalo,
April 2; The Blade, Toledo, April 2; City and State (a
periodical), Philadelphia, April 7; The Post Express,
Rochester, April 7; The Courant, Hartford, April 9, The

—
Newspaper Clipping file, JAC.
174
Times, Richmond, April 19.22 Most likely there were many
other published references to this paper which were not
included in Miss Addams' clipping file. Despite her
modesty and shyness, which were quite genuine, she was
not above subscribing early in her career to a clipping
bureau which duly sent her notices of her activities as
they were reported on in newspapers all over the country.
Anecdotes based on Jane Addams1 wit were reproduced
for the edification of newspaper readers. Notice of this
kind is a sure sign of fame, and indicates that already
Jane Addams had become a legend. "Miss Jane Addam [sic]
of Chicago— the 'Saint Jane' of Hull House fame," reported
the Omaha, Neb., Bee, "whose work shows her to be anything
but an injudicious or demoralizing philanthropist— tells
a story at the expense of those who are afraid to help
anybody for fear of hurting somebody. The incident occurred
in Boston, where Miss Addam had been visiting the homes of
the poor. Her companion was a well-to-do Bostonian, who
had theories as to the danger of 'pauperizing' the poor,
which forbade him to give anything whatever the need. In
one house they found a destitute old woman, whose condition
moved them both to pity. The young man stood firmly to his
22
Newspaper clipping file, JAC.
175
principle, however, and after leaving the house expressed
to Miss Addam the difficulty with which he had restrained
himself from giving and so, perhaps, 'pauperizing1 the
woman. Iinmediately afterward the two took a horse car,
and the young man started at once to pay his companion's
fare; but Miss Addam stopped him, 'I do not recognize class
distinction,' she said,to the discomfitted theorist, 'and

23
I object to being pauperized.' And she paid her own fare."
"Pauperizing the poor" was a fear of many charity
workers and philanthropists who were anxious lest they
create a class of dependents content to live on alms.
"Pauperism and taxation were the twin bugbears of most
nineteenth century philanthropists. . . . They wanted to
help the unemployed and the deserving poor, but not to be
so kind about it that those groups would be tempted into
permanent dependency. They yearned to feed the hungry—
but they suspected that many persons who seemed to be

24
famished and freezing were actually imposters." Jane
Addams who lived in an area where poverty was the rule, was
23
The Bee, Omaha, July 23, 1895, JAC. The news
papers of the period had trouble deciding the title to be
used in referring to Jane Addams. Sometimes she was a
"scientific philanthropist," at other times a "scientific
sociologist." More often she was simply "Jane Addams of
Hull House," the title she preferred.
24
Bremner, From the Depths, pp. 50-51.
176
never much concerned with "pauperizing the poor."
The newspapers were also concerned with Miss
Addams' health and her vacations. In September, 1895,
the Chicago Times Herald expressed relief that an illness
of Miss Addams, at first thought serious, was discovered
to be minor; Miss Addams is referred to as "the noted

25
philanthropic worker." In November, 1896, The Inter-
Ocean headlined an article "Accident to Miss Addams," and
gave the following report: "Head of Hull House Had a Fall
Which Was Not Serious. Miss Jane Addams met with a painful
accident Monday night while entering Hull House. She had
attended a labor meeting at Bricklayers' Hall and was
returning home. As she started to enter the house her
foot slipped and she fell, striking her head against the
pavement. For several minutes Miss Addams was dazed from
the effects of the fall. She was carried into Hull House
and given medical attention and was able to attend her

26
duties yesterday." When Jane Addams went on vacations,
her departures were noted and her returns aroused expressions

27
of "welcome back." The Evening Telegram, Portland, Oregon,
_ _
Times Herald, Chicago, September 12, 1895, JAC.

26
The Inter-Ocean, Chicago, November, 1896, JAC.
27
On the whole up to this point the attitude of the
press toward Miss Addams was positive. The insults were to
come later.
177
28
on May 21, 1896 reported Miss Addams' departure for
Europe. "Miss Adams [sic] will go direct to Russia, where
she means to make certain interesting investigations in
the social and political affairs of that country. In her
absence Miss Star [sic], who has always been her coworker
at Hull House, will assume all the responsibility of the
institution. Miss Star took a very active interest in the
recent cutter's strike in Chicago. She attended all the
strikers' meetings, and when one of the leaders found it
impossible to obtain employment in the Windy City she
secured for him a half-ticket to New York, paying the price
out of her own pocket."
During this trip Miss Addams made her famous pil
grimage to Tolstoy, described at length in Twenty Years.
She was still an admirer of the sage of Yasnaya Polyana,
but her enthusiasm had been tempered by the doctrinaire
quality she came to discern in Tolstoy's "back to the
people" philosophy. "I am sorry," she wrote her friend,
Mary Rozet Smith, "that Tolstoi gives you such a hard time
with your principles. I had an awful time the two years

28
Clipping File, JAC. It would be interesting
to know where the paper received the information that
Ellen Starr would head the settlement while Miss Addams
was gone. In general the impression is that Hull House
ran itself while she was away.
before I came to Hull-House. I do not like it now when
my farmer pays his rent [for land rented from Jane Addams]
but I do not believe that Tolstoi's position is tenable. . .
When Miss Addams returned to the United States
four months later, the newspaper reporters were at hand to
greet her. The Rochester Herald, for example, commented on
the observations Miss Addams had made on her trip, and how
valuable these would be in her future activities. "While
the lady does not meditate sending any formal communication
to the city authorities, she will, nevertheless, stand
ready to give them the benefit of her observations, and it
may be that out of her suggestions will come several

30
reforms." The city fathers, one suspects, felt differ
ently about Jane Addams' observations. The article goes
on to mention her comments on the superior cleanliness of
European cities, and quotes her words, which, if not exact,
are characteristic of her approach. "About the only thing
I can think of," she is reputed to have said, "to help the
situation is for the people of Chicago to go to work and
clean and improve them [the streets and alleys]. Talking
about this will do no good. What we want is work!" Roll
up your sleeves, and clean the house!

29
Letter of JA to MRS, September 4, 1895, JAC.
30-
The Herald, Rochester, September 26, 1896, JAC.
179
A reporter from The Inter-Ocean also interviewed
Jane Addams on her return, and his article appeared under
the heading "Miss Addams on London Social Reforms." The
reporter interviewed her, and she talked of her visit to
a London settlement, Kingsley House, run by Mrs. Humphrey
Ward, a novelist who wrote best-selling romances with a
liberal tinge. After several comments on Toynbee Hall and
"dear Canon Barnett," she mentions the process by which
that settlement started reforms, "and, then, as they prove
expedient and efficient, allowing them to work themselves
out. That is our idea at Hull House, too; we want to cast

31
off our offspring as soon as they can stand alone."
Jane Addams also became the subject of feature
articles which paid tribute to her achievements and made
many personal observations about her. On March 7, 1895,
The Philadelphia Press published a piece about her entitled

32
"Jane Addams Life and Philanthropic Labor." It describes
her early life, and gives some details about the founding
of Hull House, emphasizing her use of her own money.
"There was no association, and they came without any finan
cial backing of any sort except their own incomes. At
first assistance came slowly, then several donations for

31
The Inter-Ocean, September 29, 1896, JAC.
32
The Philadelphia Press, March 7, 1895, JAC.
180
definite purposes were made, and now considerable money is
being placed at their disposal." On October 17, 1895,
another newspaper in the same city, The American, published
an article about Miss Addams which described her physical
appearance and admired her talents. The writer describes
her as "attractive" and comments, as others did, on her
"almost indescribable personal magnetism." The reporter
goes on, "Of medium height and slight build, her face
fairly beams with the intensity of her noble purposes.
Her eyes are blue, and the brown hair, always arranged in
a simple style, shows a broad, intellectual forehead. The
features are delicate, and bear the stamp of a sweet dig
nity. Chiefest of all her charms, however, is the quiet
dignity and utter unostentation of manner. Miss Addams is
the personification of simplicity whether speaking on the
public platform before a vast concourse of people or moving
from room to room in the daily performance of countless
duties. . . . in the execution of such philanthropic work
the great executive ability is apt to be overlooked. One
commendable virtue which Miss Addams possesses to a remark
able degree has been designated as 'exalted common sense.1
She never poses. In no sense is she a faddist. In short,
she is perfectly genuine. . . . On the other hand, Miss
181
Addams is intensely practical. This power, backed by the
unusual mental force, has enabled her to accomplish so
much in seven years [it was really six!] for the poor
people who live in proximity to Hull House." 33
Homage to Jane Addams had by this time reached
extravagant proportions, and one wonders how she felt about
the adjectives used to describe her. The approbation, "so
vast that it is not content with the treble clapping of
delicate hands," seemed not to affect her, just as later
the attacks provoked no visible response. One newspaper
referred to Miss Addams as being "in the truest sense the
patron-saint of these social devotees, but [also], as
already suggested, this little woman is as hard headed,
strong-willed, clear-sighted and plain-spoken as ever was

34
the most practical man of affairs." An article in The
Chicago Chronicle, written when Jane Addams was in Europe,
quotes a "Labor Leader of Glasgow, Scotland" as declaring
that she "is one of the most remarkable women in the
United States. Miss Addams is held in high repute by edu-

35
cationalists, prison reformers and reformers generally."
— —
The American, Philadelphia, October 17, 1895, JAC.

34
The Evening Transcript, city unknown, possibly
New York, June 6, 1895, JAC.
35
The Chicago Chronicle, July 5, 1896, JAC.
182
While all this was going on— speeches, lectures,
trips abroad— the business of Hull House still occupied her.
Buildings, plots of land, meetings, relief funds, giving
lectures (she also attended them; Washington Gladden was
a favorite)— all this and more occupied her. Nothing
apparently failed to draw her attention. "I have been dis
tressed," she wrote in one of her letters, "over the big
pillars but they look smaller each day as the building is
higher [another story had been added]. . . . It is such a
satisfaction to have one building all of red brick and
goodly to look upon. The kindergarten started last Monday
and the singing wafts in to the octagon now [Jane's famous
octagonal-shaped office]. I am very hopeful of all the
new plans. As soon as you get back we are going to have
a lunch with Dr. Parker [presumably Francis Parker of
Chicago University] and other educators to discuss the
opening we have before us. I go to Denver to speak
Thursday evening, Sept 15, but I refused almost everything
for Sept and Oct. as I am very anxious to get affairs into
shape for the winter. We have had a fearful time with
the 'Unemployed' all summer, the 'Relief and Aid,‘ the
United Hebrew Charities, and all the 'offices' of the
Central Relief has [sic] been closed up, so that pitiful
cases come to us from all over town. [Hull House, of
183
course, never closed down]. Miss Gernon [the resident in
charge of relief] is a fine visitor. . . . I have collected
about one hundred dollars since I came from Rockford [where
the summer school was conducted] but we are still almost
two hundred dollars behind. I don't know what to do [a
favorite device of Jane's to prompt a donation] I am glad
your father enjoyed the Pullman [Jane's paper on the
strike]. . . . I read it one day at the Commons [the
Chicago Commons, Graham Taylor's settlement] where it cer
tainly excited great interest and I think I will publish

36
it."
Just as Jane Addams was attracting attention
nationally and internationally, she was also gaining
attention from another kind of audience. Her professional
colleagues in the settlement house movement and in charity
organization were very much aware of her efforts and her
leadership. Here too there was much applause— and some
criticism.
36
Letter of JA to MRS, September 4, 1895, JAC.
CHAPTER X
JANE ADDAMS AND HER COLLEAGUES
By 1895 the settlement house movement was in full
swing in the United States, and Jane Addams was its acknowl
edged leader. "It is the rare fortune of settlements that
their chief interpreter is also their pre-eminent leader,"
Robert Woods wrote years later in his history of the
settlement house movement. "Reverencing individuals and
the fundamental personal relationships as only a woman can,
Jane Addams interprets each particular outward situation
in terms of the deepest convictions. . . . With simple
feminine directness she points out the duty of the state
to guard and upbuild individuals and families. Whether
interpreting immigrants, pleading for a better educational
system . . . there looms through all her words the vision
of a redeemed society."'*"
'*'Woods and Kennedy, The Settlement Horizon, P. 388.
184
185
2
In Chicago itself as elsewhere settlements sprang
up in various neighborhoods, the most important of which
were Graham Taylor's Chicago Commons, established in 1894,
and the Chicago University settlement set up in the Chicago

3
stockyards area and headed by Mary McDowell. With both
of these settlements Jane Addams established a cooperative
relationship— and with both of these people warm friend
ships. Besides Dr. Taylor, Miss MacDowell and Robert Woods,
her closest relationships in the settlement house movement
were with Lillian Wald of New York and Helen Dudley of
Boston's Denison House.
Graham Taylor was particularly close to Miss Addams.
He had been a minister who had come west from Hartford,
Connecticut, to become a professor of sociology in the
Chicago Theological Seminary. He was attracted to the
For example, the College Settlement Association, in

which Wellesley professor Vida Scudder took an active part,
established three settlements, one each in New York,
Philadelphia, and Boston. Andover House, of which Robert A.
Woods was the head, was already in operation by 1895, and so
was Kingsley House, directed by Luella Meloy. See Henderson,
C. R., Social Settlements. Henderson was a professor of
sociology at the University of Chicago, and was much inter
ested in social settlements and social reform in general.
For'1further information on Chicago settlements of
this period, see J. Addams, "Social Settlements in Illinois,"
Transactions q £_ the Illinois S.t.ate Historical Society (70th
Annual Meeting, January 24-25, 1906), Springfield, Illinois
State Journal Co., 1906.
social gospel movement in the church, and was convinced that
the church was neglecting the welfare of the poor. The
establishment of the Chicago Commons followed, with Dr.
Taylor at its head. He and Miss Addams very quickly were
attracted to each other, and a cordial cooperation developed
which lasted throughout their lives. Taylor, however,
always yielded first place to Miss Addams in this relation
ship, and seemed always to see her as the source of his

4
own inspiration. A letter he wrote to her m 1897, for
example, gives evidence of how much he depended on her.
"I want to tell you all of it [he had been on a trip out
west],11 he wrote, "for I deeply feel my everlasting debt
of gratitude to you for inspiring and encouraging me to
much of such service. ... In my own life's hard struggle
for reality, simple honesty, and ingenuousness in religious
and social relationships, in thinking and living, you have
helped me more than any other, by the simplicity and
single-heartedness which you have attained or, I suspect,
always had. And I really need to see or hear from you
about every so often, to test things by the touchstone of
your judgment or experience at so many fronts where you

4
Letter of Graham Taylor, Commons, to Jane Addams,
June 26, 1897, JAC.
187
have been tested as I am being. . . . If you realized the
good your interviews and correspondence do me, and through me,
others, you would rate them among the services, if not in the
pleasure of your all too largely shared life." Jane Addams
repaid the encomiums in her autobiography when she wrote,
"Perhaps Dr. Taylor offers the best possible example of the
value of the Settlement experience to public undertakings,
in his manifold public activities of which one might instance
his work at the moment upon a commission recently appointed
by the governor of Illinois to report upon the best method of
Industrial Insurance or Employer* s Liability Acts, and
his influence in securing another study into the subject

5
of Industrial Diseases. 11 Years later (in 1928) , she
paid tribute to Taylor in an address she gave at the
Chicago Theological Seminary. She pointed out particularly
the contribution he made to professional social work educa
tion. "He saw the necessity for trained workers in every
field of social endeavor. . . . These classes [lay classes
Taylor conducted at the Commons] finally resulted in the
establishment of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy,
with which Julia Lathrop was connected from its beginning.
. . . Long before anyone was called a psychiatric social
5
188
worker these students [at the school] were carefully studying
Dr. Healy's investigation into the mental processes of the

0
delinquent."
Two "social economic conferences" sponsored by Hull
House and the Commons indicate the spirit of cooperation
that existed between Dr. Taylor and Jane Addams from the
beginning. The first was in 1896 and was held from
December 7th to the 15th with meetings alternately at the
Commons and Hull House. The general subject was "Social

7
Reconstruction." The conference was opened on the first
day, December 7th, with an address by Dr. Taylor. The
following lectures indicate the kind of subjects that attracted
the attention of Taylor and Miss Addams as leading settlement
house workers: "Society and Evolution and Growth" given by
Professor Henderson of the University of Chicago; "The
Social Basis Afforded by the Sermon on the Mount," by Dr.
Washington Gladden, and a second, untitled address by
Dr. Gladden; "The Philosophy of Tolstoy" by Ernest Howard

—
J. Addams, "Graham T&ylor— Pioneer in Sociology,"

Chicago Theological Seminary Register, Vol. 18, No. 4
(November, 1928), 17-22, JAC.
7
See Hull House Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 7 (December 8 ,
1896), JAC.
189
Crosby; "The Single Tax," by Mr. John Z. White; "The Money
of the New Conscience," by Henry Demarest Lloyd; "Ethical
Impulses Working Toward Social Reconstruction," by Miss
Jane Addams; "The Fabian Movement," by Dr. John Graham
Brooks; "The Relation of Education to Social Reform," Dr.
John Dewey; "Christ's Words to His Disciples in the Matter
of Reform," Rev. Thomas C. Hall; "Cooperation— Applied
Christianity," Mr. Charles O. Boring; and "The Christian
Social Ideal of the Kingdom of God," Prof. William D.
MacKenzie.
In 1897 the second conference took place from
October 4th to 7th, and this time the subject was "Scope
of City Government; or the Function of the Municipality,"
a matter of particular concern for Jane Addams who was
then struggling with political corruption in the Nineteenth

g
Ward as personified by Johnny Powers. The conference is
noteworthy for the presence of two celebrities. J. Ramsay
MacDonald, "a member of the Executive Committee of the
Fabian Society and of the Administrative Council of the
Independent Labor Party in England" was scheduled to discuss
"Municipalities." The second celebrity was Mr. Samuel Jones

g
See Hull House Bulletin, Vol. II, No. 6 (October 1,
1897), JAC.
190
who was to describe conditions in Toledo where his reform

9
regime (he was mayor) was attracting national attention.
Mary MacDowell was another admirer of Miss Adams'
and, like Graham Taylor, was willing from the beginning
to acknowledge her leadership. A letter of hers"*"^ to
Miss Addams shows the same kind of devotion and extreme
admiration that Jane Addams was able to inspire in lay and
professional people alike. After describing how often she
was tempted to run away from her frustrations, Miss
MacDowell continues, "and then the thought of you, and of
your courage, and your faith brings me to my best self,
and on I go thankful that I live today, and have the
opportunity of knowing Jane Addams. The love I have for
you has grown stronger every day since I first knew you
and Hull-House. . . . It seems always that you reflect for
me the Christ spirit as no one else does, and I am braver
after I have thought of you . . . " Lillian Wald, whose
fame almost rivalled Jane Addams', thought of her in much
the same way.'*''*' "I am tongue tied," she wrote to Miss Addams,
9 ~
"Golden-rule Jones" was a frequent visitor at Hull

House and a friend of Miss Addams.
^Letter of Mary McDowell to Jane Addams, February 7,
1898, JAC.
■^Letter of Lillian Wald to Jane Addams, November 15,
1898, JAC.
191
"when deep feelings possess me but I am struggling between
the longing to weep and the longing to say in more articu
late language to you how much realizing you is to me. . . .
It may be of some little service to you that one small group
has a deeper desire than ever to press its service into and
for a fairer society for having touched you. It isn’t at all
said as it should be but turn your perceptions here and know
that we want to be good, and, like children, look up to you
for guidance. " Jane Addams was no longer just mother to the
residents of Hull House and to her neighbors, but now appar
ently to the whole settlement house movement. If her desire
was to have a family of her own, she was succeeding beyond
any of her early anticipations. Her family had grown to
extravagant proportions, and she was outdistancing the fecund
and celebrated old woman who lived in a shoe.
Miss Addams spent a good deal of time speaking at
various settlement houses, and lecturing at meetings and con
ferences of settlement house workers. The Dispatch, Pittsburgh,

12
Pennsylvania, for example, reported that she spoke at a
reception when Kingsley House was opened. She gave a brief
history of the settlement house movement, and mentioned the
fact that there were then twenty social settlements in the
United States, of which six were in Chicago. "It is impossible,"
she added, "for settlements to plan after one idea. Each

12
Newspaper clipping, JAC.
192
settlement must work itself to characteristics and environments,
fit in and be neighborly without upsetting or trying to upset
notions already grounded." Her often-repeated caution that
the settlement house needed to adapt itself to its neighborhood,
and not vice versa, was a cardinal element in her philosophy of
practice.
During the first decade of Hull House's existence,
Miss Addams was learning many other lessons too on Halsted
Street which she passed on to her colleagues in the settlement
house movement. In her messages to them she urged them to get
to know their neighbors and to become part of their lives.
Her own personal investment in her professional activity was
by this time so enormous, little time could have remained for
a private life. Even her trips abroad, where she sought respite
from fund-gathering, speech-making, and daily routines, were
usually filled with trips to English settlement houses, dis
cussions with political reformers, and meetings with philan
thropists. In a sketchy diary (really only a collection of
jottings), she made the following notes for Thursday, May 21,
1896, while in England, "Called on Mr. Pease of Fabian Society
and Mr. Hill of Union Club and Institute of Working (word
indecipherable) Clubs. P.M. Went to University Hall, Gordon
Square, met the warden Mr. Russel. Called at Leighton Hall.
Saw Dr. Cort who was having a class of teachers for the ethical
13
development of children."
13
The diary is in the JAC at Swarthmore College.
193
Miss Addaxns was indefatigable in her professional
efforts, and so she tended to demand the same of her co-workers.
She always felt the staff was the most important aspect of
settlement house programs. "When'I am asked, as I often am, in
regard to starting new settlements, I always urge, first find
your residents and then proceed to build the settlement as fast

V.1 n14
as you are able.
For Miss Addams, of course, the great contribution of
the settlement house was the opportunity it offered the resi
dents to live among the people whom they wished to help and to
merge their lives with those of their neighbors. "The residents
of settlements," she wrote years later, "perhaps more than other
people, are brought close to the mysterious shortcomings on the
part of life itself7 they become oppressed by that 1grief of
things as they are1 over and above the griefs of circumstance
or wrongdoing; they have been forced to realize that what we
need in the world over against i t , is a certain power of com
passion, that humanity requires a standing force of self-pity
as an elementary ingredient in our social atmosphere if we are
to live in it at all.
This necessary ingredient of compassion the early
residents had in full measure, and along with this went

14
Report of Proceedings, Dedication of Hull House Boys’
Club Building, JAC.
J. Addams, The Second Twenty Years at Hull House
(New York: The Macmillan Co. , 1930) , p. 15.
intelligence, a strong sense of social justice and large
amounts of energy. Her relationships with the Hull House
residents appear to have been informal with a pronounced

note of "one happy family." Her leadership was undisputed
but exercised very flexibly. She provided the opportunity
for the residents to exercise their talents for helping

others and for stimulating community development. As her
fame spread, she gave many lectures and addresses to settle

ment house workers throughout the country. One she delivered
before the College Settlement workers at the Nurses'
Settlement (Lillian Wald* s establishment) on Henry Street

reflects some important aspects of Miss Addams* philosophy,
acquired in more than a decade of living on Halstead Street.
The emphasis was on resolving class cleavage, and on the
residents' need for absolute honesty of spirit. Her mood
was critical as she described the cardinal sin of the
settlement house worker— patronizing the poor. She lashed
out at "the philanthropic smile," and declared, "Another
thing I am frequently afraid of is that settlement workers
only pretend to be friends with their people, and if there

is anything that to me is terrible it is the pretension. The
worker must be without the benefactor feeling. We are apt to
believe that what we do is best, and this class feeling of

believing that our way is best brings petty result. . . . We
must judge life freely, and believe that in these working
people there are charms and virtues. Don't treat them as
195
babies; don't go about with a philanthropic smile. Keep

democratic; then your work will be easy and profitable."
She ended her talk by expressing regret settlement houses
were at all necessary in America, "for it is so short a time
16
that every man started here on an equal footing."
Her relationships with her colleagues in another
setting— the charity organization movement— lacked the warmth
she felt for the settlement workers. "The benefactor feeling"
always troubled Miss Addams, and above all she always avoided
the role of Lady Bountiful. She never liked the word
"philanthropy" as applied to herself or Hull House, and even
the word "charity" troubled her because of the humiliation
she felt it implied. At best, it would seem, she accepted

17
charity as a necessary evil. A newspaper report in 1896
quotes from remarks she made at a meeting under the auspices
of the Chicago Bureau of Charities. She defended "a system
atic system of charitable enterprise" and pleaded for an
enlarged understanding of the needs of the poor. At the same
time she decried the spirit of condescension she felt charity
workers and "friendly visitors" too often displayed.
In December, 1897, she voiced this criticism sharply

1 f\
New York Evening Telegram, March 3, 1900, JAC.
17
Chicago newspaper, not further identified, August,
1896, JAC.
in an address she gave before the Nineteenth Century Club
in Chicago which had arranged for a forum on the subject,
"Why Is Systematic Charity Disliked?" Disagreeing with
the previous speaker who defended charity organization,
Miss Addams launched into a slashing assault on the
"friendly visitor.” "What are those friendly visitors as
a rule?" she exclaimed, "Women, yes, too many women, who
have been reared in luxury, who have never earned a penny
in their lives by hard work, whose hands are white and
soft, whose tastes are dainty, and whose lives have been
spent in colleges and homes of ease and leisure. They
come to teach the poor wretches industry and thrift. Are
they competent to do that? Indeed not 1 . . . The working
man does not want charity. The class that is beneath the
workingman £tnd does want charity dislikes the organized
system, because it brings them down from a certain nobility
all their own. . . . The charity visitor has a certain
subject that is uppermost in her mind, and this is soon
discovered. If it be cleanliness, the poor woman who expects
to receive the benefits will appear cleanly and produce
cleanliness to gain the good favor of the visitor. If it
be the church, a seemingly holy atmosphere will pervade
197
the home. If it be temperance, the honest jug of beer that
is drunk with the meal will be smuggled in on the sly or
given up. Result hypocrisy and ill-bestowed benefit . . ."
Despite these evils, she concluded that systematic organiza-

18
tion of charity was necessary. The days when financial
assistance was considered a government responsibility were
still in the future, and in none of her early writings is
this idea suggested.
She continued to dwell on the problem of organized
charity and the dilemma of the friendly visitor. She drew
together her conclusions in an article she wrote which she
called "The Subtle Problems of Charity," published in The
Atlantic Monthly in February, 1899. In this paper, an
important one in social work history, Miss Addams dwelt
on the cross-current of feeling evoked in the giving and
receiving of assistance. "Of the various struggles," she
writes, "which a decade of residence in a settlement implies,
none have made a more definite impression on my mind than
the incredible painful difficulties which involve both
giver and recipient when one person asks charitable aid
of another." The charity visitor cannot help but feel

18
Unidentified newspaper article, dated December 10,
1897, JAC.
198
dishonest as she compares her own life of ease with that of
her "broken-down family." Given their circumstances, would
she have managed her life any better? "She [the charity
visitor] says sometimes, 'Why must I talk always on getting
work and saving money, the things I know nothing about?
If it were anything else I had to urge, I could do it;
anything like Latin prose, which I had worried through
myself, would not be too hard.'"
With her usual aptitude for getting to the heart
of a problem, Kiss Addams declared that the difficulty is
not that charity has become too "scientific," but rather
not scientific enough. In a fine passage she attacks the
dogmatist who knows all the answers and who approaches
human behavior with a closed mind. "Human motives have
been so long a matter of dogmatism that to act upon the
assumption that they are the result of growth, and to study
their status with an open mind and a scientific conscience,
seems well-nigh impossible to us. A man who would hesitate
to pronounce an opinion upon the stones lying by the way
side because he has a suspicion that they are "geological
specimens" and his veneration for science is such that he
would not venture to state to which period they belonged,
199
will, without a moment's hesitation, dogmatize about the
delicate problems of human conduct. . . . But, in our char
itable efforts, we think much more of what a man ought to
be than of what he is or what he may become; and we
ruthlessly force our conventions and standards upon him,
with a sternness which we would consider stupid, indeed,
did an educator use it in forcing his mature, intellectual
conviction upon an undeveloped mind."
Her solution is to emphasize the need for deeper
understanding and "an appeal to the sympathies so severe
that all the knowledge in the possession of the visitor
is continually applied." Her remarks in the concluding
section convey a feeling of "for the time being," because
her basic conclusion is that the problem can only be solved
by the growth of industrial democracy. "The incessant
clashing of ethical standards, which has been honestly gained
from widely varying industrial experience— the misunder
standings inevitable between people whose conventions and
mode of life had been so totally unlike— made it seem
reasonable to say that nothing could be done until industrial
conditions were made absolutely democratic. The position
of a settlement, which attempts at one and the same time
200
to declare its belief in this eventual industrial democracy,
and to labor toward that end, to maintain a standard of
living, and to deal humanly and simply with those in what
often seems utterly untenable and preposterous." Working
in this direction, however, the solution can be found.
She adds, too, that administering charity does have some
value; it brings life into the consideration of data and
theory, and makes valuable contribution to the understanding

19
of the problems of the poor.
The gulf that Miss Addams describes here between
the haves and the have-nots was one she herself wanted to
bridge by moving to Halsted Street, and attempting to
interpret one class to the other. Actually, she herself
had grown up in a comfortable middle-class home and lived
on inherited money. In this way she was not different
from many charity workers. For the charity visitor, however,
the solution lay in an increasing organization and "scientific"
refinement of her methods in dispensing charity, not in the
abolition of charity altogether. Miss Addams and some of

— -
J. Addams, "The Subtle Problems of Charity,"

Atlantic Monthly, LXXXII, No. CCCCXC VI, (February, 1899),
163-78. The article was reprinted later as Chapter I of
Democracy and Social Ethics, Miss Addams' book which
Macmillan brought out in 1902.
201
her settlement colleagues, on the other hand, saw their
solution in the eventual disappearance of charity entirely
as industrial democracy took its place alongside political
freedom as the right of all.
Considering the nature of Miss Addams’ remarks on
charity organization, it is not surprising that her col
leagues in this area of social welfare were at times displeased
with her and settlement workers in general. In particular
Mary Richmond, who, like Miss Addams was to become a high
priestess of her particular calling, voiced her displeasure
on several occasions. "Mary Richmond was harshly critical
of some agencies. The new social settlement movement she
thought much too socialistically inclined. 'We are in for
another fight,1 and 'are going to have to stand between
old fogies on one side and hot heads on the other,' she
prophesied at the National Conference in 1895. 'The first
we know the head of the New York settlement is sitting on
the platform of a big meeting to express sympathy with
the strike at Chicago at a time when the wisest heads in

20
this country didn't know what to think of it.'"
20
Muriel Warren Pumphrey, "Mary Richmond and the
Rise of Professional Social Work in Baltimore" (unpublished
D.S.W. dissertation, New York School of Social Work, Columbia
University), p. 250.
202
During the next few years Miss Addams and Miss
Richmond occasionally exchanged criticisms of each others'
methods. A newspaper report in 1900 quoted from an address
Miss Richmond made to the Woman's Conference of the Society
for Ethical Culture. Her topic was 11Pseudo-Scientific
Charity" and in this talk Miss Richmond took exception to
some remarks Miss Addams had made in the Atlantic article
quoted above. "In her article," Miss Richmond said,
"Miss Addams is somewhat influenced by her environment.
Chicago is nothing but a great, overgrown village, and it
hasn't yet grown into being a big city in its methods. It
is far behind the times in its method of charity, and only
for a very few years has scientific investigation been
known there. Investigation which seeks not the exact
truth, but rather to prove something favorable or unfavorable,

21
is dishonest and always harmful."
At the same time this difference of opinion never
developed into a feud, and beneath some of the acrimonious
words was a recognition that Miss Addams and Miss Richmond,
and their followers, were all working in the same vineyard.

21
New York Sun, January 23, 1900, JAC.
In a letter to Miss Addams, dated May 11, 1898, before the
Atlantic Monthly article to be sure, Miss Richmond praises
the former's article "Ethical Survivals in Municipal Corruption,
published in the International Journal of Ethics in April,
1898. "We read it together," Miss Richmond wrote, "at our
agents meeting a week ago, and discussed the resemblance
to Baltimore conditions. . . . I know of only one or two
people in America and England who, out of ripe experience,
have been able to give us so just and human a view of the
movements of the public mind and conscience; in fact there's
no one else on this side of the water, come to think of it."
Miss Richmond concludes with a message of regards to

22
Mrs. Kelley and Miss Lathrop. Miss Richmond also met
Miss Addams informally when she came to speak at the Johns
Hopkins School of Nursing in the spring of 1899. "Perhaps
this contact led to the 'liberal interpretation' which
admitted Mary Wilcox Brown, Jeffrey Brackett, and Mary
Richmond to the Conference on Settlements at Hull House
in Chicago in May. . . . Mary Richmond appealed [to the
conference] for generous recognition of what the charity

23
organization was trying to do."
Letter of Mary Richmond to JA, May 11, 1898.

23
Pumphrey, Mary Richmond, p. 410.
204
The two viewpoints represented in these early days
by Miss Addams and Miss Richmond were eventually to emerge
as distinct emphases in the practice of social work. Miss
Addams underlined social change, but was also committed to
the development of individual potential and had a keen,
intuitive understanding of human behavior. Without this
she could never have written such an article as "The Subtle
Problems of Charity.” Later on, when psychiatric social
work appeared, she gave it her blessing. In the second
half of her autobiography, she mentions the development of
the first Psychopathic Clinic for the Study of Delinquent
Children, which grew out of efforts made by some Hull House
trustees, especially Louise deKoven Bowen, to provide better
care for children in trouble. Miss Addams notes with
approval that this agency later became a research organiza
tion and mentions that "Social workers come from every
part of the United States to add a practical study of

24
psychiatry to their equipment."
Miss Richmond, on the other hand, was a pioneer in
the establishment of social casework with its emphasis on

—
Addams, Second Twenty Years, p. 307.
205
individual behavior and careful diagnosis of family situa
tions . She was nevertheless aware of the influence of
social forces on individual lives. "She did not want to
concentrate on improving living conditions through large-
scale economic change or through what she considered
artificial or patronizing mingling of classes as in a
social settlement. At the same time she believed in giving
the poor opportunities to enrich their own lives and in

25
protecting the helpless from exploiters.”
As different as Miss Addams and Miss Richmond were
from each other, they both sought to develop a more
scientific approach to the process of helping people.
Though at times the settlement house worker and the family
welfare worker seemed separated by apparently serious
differences in point of view, for the most part the ideas
that governed their practice remained intertwined and
accommodating to each other.

25
Pumphrey, Mary Richmond, p. 371.
CHAPTER XI
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
By the end of its first decade of existence Hull
House was securely established as an American institution.
Its fame was greater than the model after which it had been
patterned, Toynbee Hall. During most of this period Miss
Addams, despite her involvement in a variety of activities,
was still devoting most of her time to Hull House and its
expansion. Money for financing the operation was still a
major concern, and the collection of funds is frequently
mentioned in letters. In a letter to her friend, Miss
Smith, for example, Miss Addams mentions that "Mrs. Foster
has given a thousand dollars and I am now up to $8,500.00
and have not yet heard from Mrs. Bowen."'*’ Across the top
of this letter Miss Addams wrote, perhaps enviously, "Miss
Wald had $50,000.00 given her for a country club." In
another letter appears the following comment: "I seem to
give most of my energy this summer to the financial end and
’’’Letter of JA to MRS, July 9, 1898, JAC.
206
207
2
we have now decided to put in new walks.”
Her speaking engagements and lecture tours continued
unabated. The following schedule gives, if anything can,
an impressive account of the demands for Miss Addams as a
speaker and illustrates her inability to spare herself.
More than likely, she thrived on this demand for her ser
vices. On Monday, February 13, 1899, she was to leave
Chicago by train and for the next several weeks she was
to give the following talks: Tuesday, February 14, 8 p.m.,
Wells College, Aurora, New York; Wednesday, February 15,
8 p.m., Auburn Seminary, Auburn, New York; Thursday,
February 16, 8 p.m., Wells College again; Friday, February 17,
arrive New York City and leave there at 10 p.m.; Saturday,
February 18, 2:30 p.m., Woman's Club, Cambridge, Massachusetts;
Saturday, February 18, 8 p.m., Woman's Club, Brighton,
Massachusetts; Sunday, February 19, 3 p.m., Mrs. Bull's
[whoever that may be], Cambridge, Massachusetts; Sunday,
February 19, 8 p.m., Dennison House, Boston, Massachusetts;
Monday, February 20, 8 p.m., University, Burlington, Vermont;
Tuesday, February 21, 4 p.m., Radclyffe [sic]; Tuesday,
February 21, 7 p.m., Theological Seminary; Wednesday,

2
Letter of JA to MRS, July 2, 1899, JAC.
208
February 22, 3 p.m., Consumers' League, Boston, Massachusetts;
Wednesday, February 22, 8 p.m., Municipal Lecture Course,
Boston, Massachusetts; Thursday, February 23, 10:30 a.m.,
Housekeeping School, Boston, Massachusetts; same day, 2:30 p.m..
Concord Woman's Club; Friday, February 24, no entry [a day
off?]; February 25, 26, and 27, she was to spend in Meadville,
Pennsylvania. Two further lecture dates are noted, Wednesday,
March 1, Civics Club, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and on
Friday, March 3, Woman's Club, Richmond, Virginia.^ The
time Jane Addams had left over for a private life must have
been very small indeed. She seems hardly to have needed
one.
An excellent picture of Miss Addams at work, again
describing a woman who scarcely stopped to breathe, is
contained in a letter Gertrude Barnum, another very able

4
Hull House resident, wrote to Mary Rozet Smith. The letter
gives so striking a picture of the insatiable nature of
Miss Addams1 needs I cannot refrain from quoting it almost
in its entirety: "Lady Jane [a favorite title for Miss Addams,

3
Schedule is enclosed in a.letter from JA to MRS,
4
Letter of G. Barnum to MRS, August 16, 1899, JAC.
sometimes abbreviated to The Lady] and Mrs. Kelley are
rejoicing greatly together over their liberty— the bugbear
lectures had disastrous effects on them both [Miss Addams
and Mrs. Kelley had given a joint lecture course at the
University of Chicago, Extension Division]. Mrs. Kelley
said yesterday that her last audience consisted of thirty-
eight persons, none of whom had ever attended before. . . .
Lady Jane's audiences have not been large but she has not
lost any— rather gained on the whole. . . . She is very
tired and has had bowel-trouble added to lady-trouble the
last few days— of course she did not let either deter her
much from tearing about. She preached for the Methodists
last Sunday, entertained the colored women of the National
Council (Mrs. Booker Washington ejt al.) yesterday and went
later to Winnetka. . . . She runs over to Mrs. Jones—
around to Mrs. Fullers, up to Mrs. Kenyons— off with
Mrs. Haldeman, down to inquiring strangers, and in and out
and round about to Italian fetes, forced marriages, rows
by scabs and unions, etc. etc. etc. till my head spins and
I sink exhausted while she poses to Mr. Linden [Miss Addams1
picture was being painted] and discusses the questions of
the day with freshness and calmness that put the finishing
210
touches to my amazement. She says cheerfully that she is
within $1,800.00 of money enough to [for?] the building
and Mr. L. Morgan is to help her with that. The sidewalk
is a great joy but I can picture no other person with
courage to assume that extra $600.00 debt. The building
goes so slowly, and is wearing her sadly. Yesterday a
committee from the Building Trades Council waited upon her
very courteously to tell her that the mosaic workers now
at last engaged on the floor were 'each and all1 scabs and
that the Union plasterers would have to be called off. So
I left the Lady starting off for Mr. Pond's office while
Mr. Linden folded up his tools in despair." Miss Barnum
wished Miss Addams would go east for a vacation, adding,
"She says she is not going to lecture at all in September
and is going to rest— but I don't believe anything but an
organized jaunt away will accomplish the recreation which
she needs."
This inability to stand still for even a moment
and her need to touch and influence almost everything that
went on around her made Hull House itself too small a world
for her efforts. Throughout her career Miss Addams remained
devoted to Hull House, but from the early days on Halsted
211
Street she began moving out into a larger world. From
inspecting garbage disposal, setting up a public playground,
serving as a member of a commission appointed by the mayor
of Chicago to investigate conditions in the country poor-
house (1895), investigating the Pullman strike (she was
sent to the scene by the "Citizen's Arbitration Committee"),
she continuously enlarged the arena of her operations.
Towards the middle and end of this first decade she took
another giant step forward when she threw herself into a
fight to unseat the political boss of the Nineteenth Ward.
The episode (there were actually three of these encounters,
the last one in 1898 being the most vigorous) illustrates
again the force and drive that were central to her personality.
Though the encounter sprang from her life and labors

I
at Hull House and her residence there, the experience had
its center not within its walls but in the world outside.
Miss Addams had learned, as so many of her colleagues in
social welfare had too, that a community is a whole; if
you touch any of its vital parts, the rest will quiver.
Living on Halsted Street, she was a constituent of the
Nineteenth Ward, and early learned of the power of Alderman
Johnny Powers. He was the political boss of the Nineteenth
212
Ward, and his life followed the usual pattern of the suc
cessful politician of his day. He had come to America at
the age of ten from Ireland, and worked in his father's
grocery store. "Powers in time came to the ownership of
his father's grocer, and after that he opened a saloon,
and in 1888 was elected to the council. . . . His ownership
of saloons increased, but he had them managed by others.
Gambling houses were opened in connection with his saloons.
. . . Poolrooms were encouraged. . . . He purchased real
estate, but agents cared for it. Stocks of the various
street railways, telephone companies, gas companies, elevated
roads and banks passed into his hands, but his attorneys
looked after them. He gave himself solely to municipal
work of the character that would prove most profitable to

5
him and those who followed in his wake.”
Miss Addams found evidences of Mr. Power's influence
on every side. Finding his hand in every profitable pie,
she suspected that the responsibility for the foul garbage
situation could also be traced to the ubiquitous Mr. Powers.
On investigation she discovered her suspicions were

5
"Johnny Powers Turns His Back on Chicago," feature
article in the Sunday Record-Herald, Chicago, May 5, 1901,
p. 41, JAC.
213
correct.^ Further examination of this situation revealed
that many of the citizens of the Nineteenth Ward were
economically dependent on the Alderman; one out of every
five voters in the ward owed his job to Powers. "The
alderman was even more fortunate in finding places with
the franchise-seeking corporations; it took us some time
to understand why so large a proportion of our neighbors
were street-car employees and why we had such a large club
composed solely of telephone girls. Our powerful alderman

7
had various methods of intrenching himself."
All in all three campaigns were waged to depose
Mr. Powers as the community czar, but none succeeded.
The most ambitious of these occurred in 1898 when Miss
Addams threw her energy into an effort to defeat the
alderman. Echoes of the campaign appear in some of her
letters to Miss Smith. "I love you more than I ever did
for in the midst of this horrible election and all the rest
of it, I find myself depending upon your moral fibre as

g
For a good brief account of Jane Addams' experi
ences with Johnny Powers, see Allen Davis, "Jane Addams vs.
The Ward Boss," Journal of the Illinois State Historical
Society, LIII, No. 3 (Autumn 1960).
7
214
never before. . . . M r . Powers had a fine procession last
evening led by the band of the Jesuit Chr. temperance [sic]
Cadets . It has raised much talk in the neighborhood. . . .
There was a picture of your humble servant on a transparancy
[sic] and others such as "No petticoat government for us."
We all stood out on the cor. to see it, Mr. Deknatel care-
0
fully shielding me from public view." In another letter,
again to Miss Smith, she also mentions a contribution of
$1,000.00 from Mr. Robinson of the Railway Age, a magazine,

9
"for the campaign." The day before the election, Miss
Addams wrote jubilantly, "Tomorrow is the great day when
we will know the worst or best. We have been discovering
all kinds of frauds in the registration. . . . Mrs. Coonley
sent us $13 7.00 this morning wh [sic] she had collected for
the campaign. . Defeat was announced laconically in
a fourth letter, "We are completely snowed under but curious
to me not so blue . . . as before election."'*'^ Very probably
Miss Addams who was always a realist, never expected to win,

8
Letter of JA to MRS, March o• 1898, JAC. /
9
Letter of JA to MRS, April 1, 1898, JAC.
10Letter of JA to MRS, April 3, 1898, JAC.
^Letter of JA to MRS, April 6, 1898, JAC.
and was relieved when the fight was over.
This whole experience taught her a good deal about
city politics and with her usual insight she penetrated to
the heart of the matter in an article she wrote for the
International Journal of Ethics. Refusing to see the
struggle in terms of good and evil, virtue and vice, or
other simplistic reductions, she recognized that the alder
man's power was based on the services he performed for his
constituents. By helping people he created obligations
which were discharged at the voting places. The alderman
paid rent for the hard-pressed tenant, found scarce jobs,
appeared at weddings and christenings as the family friend
bearing gifts, handed out turkeys at Christmas time ("with
none of the nagging rules of the charitable societies, nor
was he ready to declare that, because a man wanted two
turkeys for Christmas, he was a scoundrel, who should never
be allowed to eat turkey again”), paid for burials to
prevent the dread fate of burial at county expense, and
was in general a benefactor of the family. In his own way
Alderman Powers was thus a friendly visitor (how the charity
workers must have liked this comparison1

.) who asked for
nothing more than a vote of confidence on Election Day.
216
Besides, for the immigrants who crowded the Nineteenth
Ward, Alderman Powers was a figure familiar to them out of
their European past; that he profited from his position,
like any overlord, was to be expected.
Miss Addams1 solution was, as usual, not to call
names and to denounce. Let us see, she said, what the
situation really is that makes the wheels go round, and
thus learn what this particular experience has to teach
us. She stated, as she had before and was to again in
articles she was to write in the future, a principle funda
mental to her philosophy. "The meaning of life," she
declared, "is, after all, to search out and then to conform
our activities to our new knowledge." Find out the facts
and then act accordingly. This attitude was very little
different from Mary Richmond's insistence on scientific
investigation. While Miss Richmond, however, was holding
this light steady within the framework of a segment of
experience which was becoming increasingly professionalized,
Miss Addams was already scanning the entire firmament and
the light therefrom, revealing as it might be, was necessarily
more diffuse. With Johnny Powers, she ended her remarks by
stating that if "men of low ideals and corrupt practices are
217
forming popular political standards simply because such
men stand by and for and with the people, then nothing
remains but to obtain a like sense of identification

12
before we can hope to modify ethical standards."
Though Miss Addams had been defeated in her efforts
to dethrone Mr. Powers, the campaign yielded other rewards
besides insight into the way elections are won and lost.
The position of Hull House in the community was strengthened
as it attracted to its support all those citizens who stood
for good government. In addition--and perhaps more signifi
cantly for her later career— her reputation as a leader in
social reform increased (the publicity must have been
enormous) and she became a power to be reckoned within
the city of Chicago.
The experience must also have strengthened her
belief in her own powers, and added to her abilities as
an organizer and leader of men and women of good will. We
have already seen how fearless Miss Addams could be, and
as she was tested in the crucible of experience, her willing
ness to face the lion in his own den grew. Addressing a

—
J. Addams, "Ethical Survivals in Municipal

Corruption," International Journal of Ethics (April, 1898),
273-91.
218
group of people "in a millionaire's home" she was quoted
as having administered the following verbal spanking, "You
search the aldermen with a microscope for their indications
of honesty, and you search yourself with a telescope with
your eyes at the wrong end. . . . The richest man in my
neighborhood [she is referring to Johnny Powers] is the one
who has sold out the city council; the richest man among
you is the one who bought what our man had to sell. . . . I
am candid when I tell you that I have more love for my man
who boasts of nothing but his big heart and who divides his
spoils among our poor than I have for your man who . . .
calls people Anarchists who frown upon fortunes that come
through robbery of the masses. . . . You and your man talk
of philanthropy and the necessity for the improvement of
this great city. It all ends in talk, so far as you and
your man are concerned. . . . Chicago will begin to improve
when the north and south sides begin to live the integrity
which they hope to see prevalent in the neglected, begrimed
and deserted alleys of the section in which it is my pleasure

13
to live." For all her capacity to charm and inspire, she
—
Editorial, The National Single Taxer (a periodical)

(October, 1898), JAC.
219
could speak very plainly when she wanted to.
Defeated as she was in the campaign itself, the
fight itself left her personally unconquered and surer
of her own position. She was by now well on her way to
becoming America's most prominent woman. That she was
moving away from identification with a single agency and
an evolving professional discipline which was apparently
too confining for so much drive is indicated in the following
two newspaper reports, chosen from several. The Boston,
Massachusetts, Beacon, on February 20, 1897 noted that the
Woman Suffrage Association was giving a large reception
for Jane Addams. The Evening Post, Chicago, Illinois, on
August 6, 1898, reported that Miss Addams had "notified
the populist state committee that she had decided to decline

14
the populist nomination for university trustee." Her
popular image was made up of many roles, of which being a
social worker was only one. As time went on and the world
of her influence increased, this role was increasingly sub
merged in others. Her principle role, however, was always
that of being Jane Addams. She would have no other by her
own choice.
14 “
Both these newspaper reports are in the clipping
file, JAC.
CHAPTER XII
A BACKWARD GLANCE
As the decade ended, however, Miss Addams was still
very much preoccupied with affairs at Hull House. Two
buildings had already been added to the four in use, and
the money invested in these establishments was considerable.
Though the trustees must have helped collect some of it,
she continued to be occupied with fund raising. Her letters
to Anita McCormick Blaine contain many expressions of grati
tude for "your generous check" and "your regular donation."
Since she was continuing to organize new programs, the
need for increasing amounts of money, over and above general
operation funds never ceased.
From a small, somewhat dilapidated mansion, she had
built Hull House into an enterprise of considerable magni
tude . Her organizational and administrative abilities must
have been first rate— but particularly the former, since
there is some question whether the role of administrator
appealed to her. As she moved into her second decade at
Hull House the tempi of these activities altered a little,
220
221
though the scene on which they were played out enlarged.
More buildings were built,^ programs expanded and residents
came and went. The nature of her experience during these
first ten years, however, needs evaluation since within this
period of time she planted the seeds of her entire career.
Miss Addams went down to Halsted Street, she said,
to prevent, if she could, further, divisionsin society and
to "reconcile" the two warring sides that had already been
created. She must have, therefore, seen herself as able
to serve as a human bridge over a chasm that was becoming
ever deeper. No one but a supremely self-confident person
could have chosen such a role for herself.
Jane Addams by birth, inheritance and breeding,
was a member of the upper classes. As we have seen, however,
the world she grew up in offered her little opportunity to
use her energy and intelligence. She was a woman who wanted
desperately to be needed— and her own world seemed to hold
no place for her, except possibly that of family dependent.
‘''The chronology of Hull House buildings is as follows:

1889, Hull House itself, 1890, Butler Building, 1895, Smith
Building, 1897, Theatre and Restaurant, 1898, Jane Club (a
girls’ residence), 1899, Gymnasium Building, 1901, Hull House
Apartments, 1904, Bowen Hall, 1905, Music School, Dining Room
and Terrace, 1906, Boys' Club, 1910, Mary Crane Building, 1912,
Bowen Country Club. The latter was in the country, and not
at Hull House.
222
A more uncomfortable position for so energetic and aggressive
a personality as Miss Addams possessed could hardly be
imagined. Looking about her, then, for a means of expending
this energy, she espied a world sinking beneath its misery,
subjected to shocking injustices, and seemingly unable to
better its own situation. She felt a strong kinship with
this dispossessed social class, much of it at the beginning
a sympathetic response to suffering.
The dullness of her own existence must have been
sharpened by the possibilities for a full life that beckoned

2
to her from Chicago's south side. There, she felt, was
where she belonged, with the vanquished not with the victors.
Her impulse, however, was not to help turn the tide of
battle in the opposite direction, but rather to assist the
defeated in retrieving what belonged to them— their dignity
as human beings and their pride in themselves. Her goals
for herself may have very well had the same quality of
finding what had either been lost within herself or unrealized.

2
It is interesting to compare Miss Addams' situation
as the daughter of an upper class family who moved into a
slum with that of Mary Richmond who viewed such a step with
misgivings. "To one who, like Mary Richmond, had grown up
in a laborer's neighborhood, the idea of living with the
poor smacked of curiosity." Pumphrey, Mary Richmond,
pp. 408-09.
223
She turned her back on upper middle class comfort and
domesticity in order to find an identity that was peculiarly
her own elsewhere. For a woman of her determination the
move to Halsted Street followed naturally.
Once settled in Hull House, Miss Addams set eagerly
to work. This early period in her career was itself a
demonstration, the first of many she was to sponsor. Fully
aware that her neighbors could only have viewed her behavior
as incomprehensible and suspected her motives, the first
problem was how to elicit their support.
In her paper on the charity visitor, Jane Addams
pointed to a handicap which the relief worker carried with
her. "They [the clients of relief agencies] feel remotely
that the charity visitor is moved by motives that are alien
and unreal. They may be superior motives but they are

3
different and they are 'agin nature.' " True for the charity
visitor, but not true for Jane Addams? Why should not the
Hull House neighbors have felt it even stranger that a young
woman of her background and income should want to live in
their miserable area when she could reside elsewhere? Given
a similar choice, many, if not most of them, would have

3
Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, p. 23.
224
made a different decision. When this became possible later
on for many of them they di d .
Miss Addams must have realized that the charity
worker's position vis-a-vis her client was not too dissimilar
from her own on Halsted Street. She resolved the dilemma,
after moving to the area, by making herself available for
whatever was asked of her— washing dirty children, delivering
babies, sitting with the dying, entertaining the neighbors
in her "home." By eliminating rules, regulations, organiza
tion, requirements, all of which she saw as separating
agents, she hoped to elicit the trust and confidence of her
new neighbors. Stripping away the overlay which society
and culture had provided, she wanted to show that the
reconciliation she talked about could take place. She
stressed her common humanity with the people amongst whom
she chose to live, and saw the difference between them as
superficial
That Miss Addams never succeeded in wiping out the

differences entirely is referred to by J. Weber Linn.
"Sometimes," he wrote, "Jane Addams worried over 'the essen
tial difference between the neighbors and ourselves,' in
that she had 'a sense of security in regard to illness and
old age, and the lack of these two securities is the spector
which must persistently haunt the poor;' but sometimes that
sense of security faded into the background." Linn, Jane
Addams, p. 120. Her life was also different from her neigh
bors in other ways too— her summers at Bar Harbor later, her
trips to Europe, and similar experiences.
225
She expressed this later on in terms such as these:
“We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not
attained by travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing
on the thronged or common road where all must turn out for
one another, and at least see the size of one another's

5
burdens." There was more, however, to her "mixing on the
thronged or common road" than a wish to share humanity's
heavy burdens. To belong, to share, to help— yes, she was
eager for all this. But above all she wished to lead at
least part of the parade to greener pastures. The magic
quality of the leader was upon her, and subsequently the
hopes, aspirations and needs of thousands were projected
upon h e r .
The first demonstration succeeded, and the neighbors
on Halsted Street responded to her need of them. Herein
perhaps lay her essential difference from the charity visitors
of the time to whom they were accustomed and whose attitudes
Miss Addams scorned. Lady Bountiful also had a need which
she projected onto her "families"— perhaps to feel noble,
to perform a duty as custodian of great wealth, to satisfy
curiosity about the poor, and to resolve guilt feelings

—
226
about privilege which felt undeserved. Miss Addams' need
of her families went far deeper than this, however. She
needed them to realize herself, and it seems likely that
her emphasis on the development of human potential arose
from her drive to fulfill her own. Speaking most assuredly
of herself in 1890, she declared, "It is inevitable that
those who feel most keenly this- deprivation and partial
living are our young people; our so-called favored, edu
cated young people; who have to bear the brunt of being
cultivated into unnourished, over-sensitive lives. They
have been shut-off from the common labor by which they
live; from the great sources of moral and physical health.”
She added that young girls feel this discomfort most in
the first years after they leave school; life turns out
to be far different from expectations, duller and less
meaningful.^ The real disadvantage from which Miss Addams
suffered the most, as she saw it, was being a woman; and
in her day this meant most careers were closed to her. She
was captivated by settlement work because it appeared to
be an area of service where a woman could reasonably enter
^J. Addams, "Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall," an

unpublished speech delivered to the Chicago Woman's Club
in 1890, manuscript in the JAC.
227
without opposition, and it appealed to her as an appropriately
female activity. Though she modeled Hull House on Toynbee
Hall, the note of originality which she gave it was to turn
her establishment into a female enterprise. Toynbee Hall,
when Jane Addams knew it at any rate, was run by men; Hull
House, despite the fact that some males ventured within
its precinct, as residents,started out and remained for
many years a secular nunnery.
She was determined to make her womanhood less of
a handicap than it was, and in so doing helping to loosen
the shackles that society had fastened onto the female.
Many years later, in the second volume of her autobiography,
she wrote the following, "Perhaps this astounding emphasis
upon sex was the less comprehensible because of the unique
element in the social situation during the last half cen
tury regarding the role played by the educated, unmarried
woman. . . . For a considerable period after the door of
opportunity began to be slowly opened to woman, she was
practically faced with an alternative of marriage or a
career. She could not have both apparently for two reasons.
Men did not at first want to marryfwomen of the new type,
and women could not fulfill the two functions of profession
228
and home-making until modern inventions had made a new type
of housekeeping practicable, and perhaps one should add,
until public opinion tolerated the double role. Little
had been offered to the unmarried women of the earlier
generations but a dependence upon relatives which was
either grudged or exploited, with the result that the old
maid herself was generally regarded as narrow and unhappy
and, above all, hopelessly embittered. Changing conditions,
however, gradually produced a large number of women, selected
by pioneer qualities of character and sometimes at least
by the divine urge of intellectual hunger, who were self-

7
supporting and devoted to their chosen fields of activity.11
Miss Addams was from the beginning a fighter for
women's rights, and much of her later activity arose from
this basic concern. In encouraging young people to become
residents at Hull House, she thought primarily of women,
and she may perhaps have been surprised at finding some
men willing to join the party. Her early activities at
Hull House were those appropriate for a woman to perform,
like the already mentioned washing dirty children. The
main emphasis, at least in the early days at Hull House,

7 “ -
Addams, The Second Twenty Years, pp. 196-97.
229
was on measure to protect and enhance the welfare of women,
and the care of children. The trades unions which began at
Hull House or used the settlement as their base of operation
were often composed of women workers— the Dorcas Federal
Labor Union, the Laundry Employees' Union and the Chicago
Working Women's Council. The residents who flocked to
Hull House were mostly women, and some of them, including
Florence Kelley and Julia Lathrop. were forever grateful
to Miss Addams for the opportunity she gave them to begin
noteworthy careers. All the residents for the first three

g
years were women. A booklet entitled Hull House, A Social
Settlement, and dated February 1, 1894, lists seventeen
residents, including Miss Addams, of which twelve were

9
women.
Altogether Miss Addams viewed social welfare and
social reform as particularly appropriate areas of activity
for women, and she voiced this attitude many times in her
career. An address she gave at Smith College in 1908 is

8
Hull House Maps and Papers. Appendix
9
Hull House, A Social Settlement, booklet dated
February 1, 1894, JAC. An eighteenth resident is listed
J. Weber Linn, but this is by way of being a loving, family
gesture. Linn was Jane Addams' nephew, and at that point
scarcely more than a b o y .
230
almost entirely devoted to emphasizing the natural aptitudes
of women for social welfare work.^
Included in these remarks are the following state
ments: "All legislation that pertains to children, whether
educational, industrial or corrective, relates to the chief
occupation of women. Men can never feel so intense an
interest or have so large a part in the training of children
as do women. . . . Women are increasingly interested in
legislation for the protection and improvement of the
working people. . . . The social life of working young
people of both sexes outside of working hours is a matter
of far-reaching and vital importance, and one in which
women have a deep and peculiar interest. . . . Women are
also especially interested in all matters relating to food
and clothing. . . . Very many matters of legislation, whether
by city, state or nation, are of as much interest to an
effect upon women as men, and not a few of them concern
women more closely. . . . It is a matter of orderly direction
of affairs and of justice to all people, in which women have
both a deep interest and ability to act.” By the time she
"^Published in the Woman1s Journal, Boston,

Massachusetts, April 4, 1908, JAC.
231
gave this speech she was very much involved in the suffragist
movement.
Social work was, then, the vehicle through which
Miss Addams sought to increase the professional opportunities
for women in what was still a man's world. She seems to
have been first a fighter for women's rights and then a
social worker, rather than the other way around. Because
of her admirable organizing abilities, her deep apprecia
tion of people, and, by no means least of all, her high
visibility, she helped place a stamp of femaleness on a
profession to which some very able men— Graham Taylor and
Robert Woods to name only two— were also making very
important contributions.
The world of men reacted to this female invasion,
at times with hatred and at other times with admiration.
In campaigning against Johnny Powers, for example, Miss
Addams became a recipient of obscene letters, one of which
she p r e s e r v e d D a t e d January 17, 1898, the anonymous
writer denounced Jane Addams for deserting her sex and
wanting to take "her place among men." He went on to
■^Letter to JA from "A Voter,” January 17, 1898, JAC.
232
describe how she might complete the transformation. On the
other end of the scale some distinguished English gentlemen
paid her a compliment she may have considered unflattering.
"Four eminent British gentlemen— Samuel Barnett, John Burns,
Sir John Gorst and Sidney Webb— went perhaps one better in
giving their united opinion, after meeting her, that Jane

12
Addams 'is the greatest man xn ^ 6 0 0 3 1'”
Social injustice reared its ugly head in all the
alleys and by-ways surrounding Hull House, and was, of
course, not just confined to women. One could touch evil
by simply stretching out one's hand. In seeking solutions
Miss Addams' approach from the outset was to move from the
particular to the general, from the problem as it exhibited
itself in the case situation to its resolution in a demon
stration, or, increasingly, in pressure for government
action and legislation. The vastness of the problem
convinced her that private benevolence could never do the
job, and she transformed this insight into a working principle.
The private agency, she decided, should take responsibility
for focusing its attention on the problem in terms of a

12 ~
Tims, Jane Addams of Hull House, p. 14.
233
small sample of the universe, suggest a solution and
demonstrate how this could work. The private agency had
the funds, the personnel and above all, the flexibility
to experiment. "For this willingness to take risks for the
sake of an idea for those experiments which must be under
taken with vigor and boldness in order to secure didactic
value in failure as well as in success, society must depend
upon the individual possessed with money, and also dis
tinguished by earnest and unselfish purpose. . . . Each
social experiment is thus tested by a few people, given
wide publicity, that it may be observed and discussed by
the bulk of the citizens before the public prudently makes
up its mind whether or not it is wise to incorporate it
into the functions of government. If the decision is in
its favor and it is so incorporated, it can then be carried

13
on with confidence and enthusiasm."
For Miss Addams the welfare of citizenry was very
much the business of government, and she carried on an
unceasing battle to convince the powers-that-be of their
responsibility for social reform. The fight was waged both

13
2 34
in terms of a principle, but always too in terms of what
was happening to people. Early in her career she declared,
"The blessings which we associate with a life of refinement
and cultivation can be made universal if they are to be
permanent. The good we secure for ourselves is precarious
and uncertain, is floating in midair, until it is secured

14
for all of us and incorporated into our common life."
There could be only one way that "good" could be "secured
for all," and that was through governmental guarantee.
Looking to government for final responsibility was
a most natural thing for Miss Addams to do, as such an
attitude had been more or less bred into her bones . Her
father, one recalls, had served as a state senator in
Illinois seven successive times, and the atmosphere in the
Addams1 home must have reflected his involvement in public
service. Government, Miss Addams learned as a child, was
run by people she knew and loved, and the how and why of
legislative action must have been a familiar subject to
her. She had had before her an example of an excellent
public servant, upright, moral and devoted to principle.

14
J. Addams, "A New Impulse to an Old Gospel," The
Forum, XIV, No. 8 (November, 1892), 345.
235
Her turning to government to solve the social problems she
saw on Halsted Street was thus quite natural. Her later
involvement in politics was also quite understandable.
In this connection it is interesting to note that
the fathers of Florence Kelley and Julia Lathrop were also
government servants, one a Congressman for many years,
closely attached to Lincoln, and the other, like Mr. Addams,
served in the Illinois State Legislature. "Thus, the
children of abolitionist families in the midwest [i.e. Jane
Addams and Julia Lathrop], like the child of Quaker tradi
tion in Philadelphia and of a radical reconstructionist
father [Florence Kelley] grew up catching the enthusiasm
of their elders for the great political issues of their
times, and they valued this common background. The similarity
of experience of the three friends in the support each
received from her father in the women's rights movement

15
also had an important bearing on their development."
Thus for Miss Addams to have turned to government for the
correction of social injustice was inevitable, and her
insights in this connection, which became a part of social
work history, arose from her own early experience. Had

_
Goldmark, Impatient Crusader, p. 29.
236
she come on the scene when women's rights were more securely-
established, the likelihood is that her involvement in
legislative activity might have been more direct. In a
particular way Miss Addams was an unelected representative
from the people of Southside Chicago to the great American
public in these early days of Hull House's existence. She
acted often as their spokesman, and by virtue of her knowl
edge of their lives assumed a position of expertness in
interpreting their needs to the nation. Later on her
constituency increased to include all the underprivileged
people in the Union.
Her emphasis on government responsibility may also
have been connected with a personal idiosyncracy, her
delight in the new and her disenchantment with the old.
She was a great activator and organizer, moving from one
piece of experience to another. No sooner was one activity
organized or one process begun before she was off to develop
another interest. A case in point is the proliferation of
Hull House buildings that sprang up one after another, each
of them apparently starting as an idea in the mind of Jane
Addams. One edifice was hardly begun before ideas for
another were germinating in her fertile imagination. In
237
nineteenth century industrial America there was so much
injustice, so many problems to tackle, and so many people
to help. Miss Addams’ method was to call the community's
attention to one area of social distress and try to provide
an answer to the problem. Like the teacher with a pointer
in front of a blackboard, she then moved the class on to the
next subject, secure in the knowledge that she had provided
an answer to the preceding one. The new always drew her
attention, and the old had to be provided for somehow.
In whose better hands could she leave her brain children
than in those of the government where some permanence and
support could be secured, once they were adopted? Always
the exception to this rule was Hull House itself which she
never relinquished to anyone. With all her insistence on
change and her recognition that life was a process, the
guiding hand at Hull House never changed in a period of
forty-six years.
To prevail on government to initiate and pass reform
legislation, however, was a more difficult task than to
extract funds from well-intentioned and civic-minded citizens
for the support of a private agency. With her philanthropic
friends, Miss Addams used her personal influence, her capacity
238
to stir feeling, and the persuasive tongue and fluent pen
through which she projected her own deep sympathy for her
neighbors. With more tough-minded legislators something
more was needed. Their response, as she well knew, was
less to sentiment and more to votes. "But the phil
anthropists," she wrote later when she was reviewing past
experience, "also found that when they actually appeared
before a parliament or legislature they were obliged to
wield the weapon of statistics, if only that they might
appear as men of science and not as sentimentalists.
Although the philanthropist has often spoken slightingly
of 'mere knowledge'^ which informs the mind without
resulting in action, he knows in his heart that knowledge
is never 'mere knowledge' and that it is indispensable
to right conduct. . . . Lord Shaftesbury's calculation of
the distance daily traveled by a child tending a machine
brought to his cause those members of Parliament who had
been quite untouched by his humanitarian enthusiasm and

16
Jane Addams herself at times felt this way. Recall
her experience at a meeting in London's Southwark Settlement,
and her comment in a letter to Miss Smith about the presenta
tion she heard there. "Powerful cold and scholarly," she
called it. See footnote 8, Chap. IX.
religious zeal."'*'7
Voters, of course, could very well be swayed by
feeling, but, with the increasing vogue for being "scientific"
and the contempt for theory unsupported by facts, emotion
became suspect in many places. Feeling could be fended off
by counter-feeling. Many people were appalled by the human
misery in industrialized America, but others viewed this
with more equanimity, backing up their attitudes with
reference to Darwin and evolution. This.was the heyday
of Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, the "law" of
the jungle directly applied to human society, and the develop
ment of an "unsentimental" business philosophy expressed
by John D. Rockefeller, among others, in the following
pithy terms: "The growth of a large business is merely
the survival of the fittest. . . . The American Beauty
rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which
brings cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing buds which
grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business.
It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law

17 '
J. Addams, "Charity and Social Justice," read
before the National Conference of Charities and Correction
at St. Louis on May 19, 1910. This paper was later pub
lished in The Survey, XXIX, No. 11 (Junell, 1910), 441-49.
The excerpt quoted is on p. 444.
240
18
of God." The implication was that only sentimentalists
such as lady social workers could see the situation other
wise . In attempting to meet such an argument on its own
ground— the world of hard facts— Miss Addams and the
residents at Hull House concluded that facts, data and
statistics were all essential weapons in their battle for
justice.
"A settlement," Miss Addams wrote in 1892, "should
demand from its residents a scientific patience in the
accumulation of facts and the steady holding of their
sympathies as one of the best instruments for that accumu
lation. . . . They are bound to see the needs of their
neighborhood as a whole, to furnish data for legislation,

19
and use their influence to secure it." The facts in any
particular situation were to be discovered by careful
investigation of the problem itself in a scientific manner.
No sooner had the residents settled in their quarters
before they were out investigating the facts in the lives
of their neighbors. Miss Addams in her autobiography,

18
Quoted in R. Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in
American Thought (rev.ed.; Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955),
p. 45.
19
Addams, "A New Impulse to an Old Gospel," p. 356-57.
mentions an early example. "If the early American Settlements
stood for a more exigent standard in philanthropic activities,
insisting that each new undertaking should be preceded by
carefully ascertained facts, then certainly Hull House
held to this standard in the opening of our new coffee
house first started as a public kitchen. An investigation
of the sweetshops had disclosed the fact, that sewing women
during the busy season paid little attention to the feeding
of their families, for it was only by working steadily
through the long day that the scanty pay of five, seven
or nine cents for finishing a dozen pairs of trousers could

20
be made into a day's wage. . ." This was only one, and
perhaps a less important one, of numerous investigations
that took place in Hull House quite early in its life.
The total are too numerous to mention, and Miss Addams
herself described many of them in Twenty Years At Hull-House,
particularly in Chapter XIII, "Public Activities and
Investigations."
She, of course, cannot be given credit for introducing
fact-gathering and investigations into the field of social
work, or philanthropy, as it was called in those days. The

20
men at Toynbee Hall were already, when Miss Addams visited,
busy digging into neighborhood problems, collecting data
and establishing causal relationships, all this in a
scholarly way befitting university-trained men. In America
many social workers in both the charity organization move
ment and settlement house work were pursuing the cause of
social reform through collecting data. An early example
of this is cited by Margaret Rich in her history of family
social work. "Important as it was to make sure that community
resources were adequate to cure distress, it was even more
important to discover and root out the conditions that
caused the distress. The Buffalo society [for charity
organizations] had an early opportunity to demonstrate how
scientific charity could accomplish this aim. Gurteen
described the situation and the action taken by the society:
'The grain shovellers who worked in the holds of vessels,
shovelling grain to the leg of the elevators, lived during
working hours, in an atmosphere of intense heat and thick
dust, which, on an average, produced death by 'elevator
pneumonia' within five years. . . . The wages were high,
but the work lasted only a few months. . . . Few beyond the
businessmen actually engaged in the grain trade,knew anything
243
of this crying evil, and had it not been for the action
of the Charity Organization Society [to which the families
of the shovellers became known], no reform would have been

21
attempted.1" The process here was essentially the same—
gaining knowledge of the problem through knowing the
people who lived it, and then press for reform of the
condition through a public campaign. This material was
published in 1882, and therefore antedated the establish
ment of Hull House and the beginning of Miss Addams1 career.
In exploring the investigations at Hull House, it is diffi
cult to determine in many instances who was responsible
for originating, planning and carrying out the various
investigations that were made— or even how they were done.
Miss Addams, in her own writings and talks— and particularly
in the autobiography (which is really an autobiography of
Hull House rather than of Jane Addams)--was very fond of
the editorial "we," rather than "I." Here again one
encounters her curious reluctance to separate herself out

21 "
Margaret Rich, A Belief in People, A History of
Family Social Work (New York: Family Service Association of
America, 1956), p. 27. The quotation is taken from
A Handbook of Charity Organization, written by Humphreys
Gurteen, a minister connected with the Buffalo Charity
Organization Society, and published by the author in 1882.
244
from others. The result perhaps was that Miss Addams was
given credit for things other may have done.
Mary Richmond's insistence on careful investigation
of relief applications was also an underlining of the need
for obtaining the facts. Amos Warner in his American
Charities, first published in 1894, and which Miss Addams

22
read, is replete with data, charts, statistics and dia
grams, outdoing in this regard Hull-House Maps and Papers.

23
Warner's booh is actually a far more scholarly document.
To all these social workers (or philanthropists,
if you will) the idea that poverty was caused and that
social ills had at least some of their roots in society
was becoming self-evident. They were eager to convert the
community at large to this point of view, and many of the
"x have ordered from McClure's Warner's book on

"American Charities"--it is very interesting. I am enjoying
it greatly." Letter of JA to MRS, January 15, 1895, JAC.
23
Amos Warner became General Secretary of the
Charity Organization Society of Baltimore in 1887 and
remained until 1889. He then accepted an appointment as
associate professor and head of the Department of Economics
in the University of Nebraska. In 1891 he became first
Superintendent of Charities for the District of Columbia,
serving until 1893. In that year he accepted an appoint
ment to Stanford University and wrote American Charities
while teaching there. His health began to fail, and he
died in 1900.
2 45
residents in particular were qualified to undertake such
a responsibility. "Early residents brought to their tasks
special educational equipment. Many had carried on graduate
studies both at home and abroad. They represented the
first generation of students whose thinking was molded
by the principles of natural science that the mass is to
be identified and affected through the molecule or atom,
and the living organism through the cell. They were

24
prepared for a similar point of view in social science."
Despite Miss Addams' distaste for the term, Hull
House was in some ways a social laboratory for many of the
residents who came to make studies, collect facts and
investigate conditions. She, however, intelligently
aware of the need for facts and knowledge to support a
drive for social reform, was not a collector of statistics,
and it is doubtful whether she investigated anything
"scientifically." Her own interests appear not to have
been scholarly and, intelligent as she was, she was not
an intellectual. Her emphasis was always on feeling—
compassion, identification with suffering, intuitive

24 ~ ~
Woods and Kellog, The Settlement Horizon, p. 59.
246
understanding— and on morals, ethics and human values. Such
facts as appear in her writings are the facts of the humani
tarian rather than the researcher, of the artist rather
than the scientist. Twenty Years at Hull-House abounds
in statements like: "I have heard a broken-hearted mother,"
"I recall our perplexity over the first girls who had 'gone
astray,'" "I recall the dying hour of one old Scotchwoman,"
"I remember one family in which the father had been out of
work for this same winter," and "the first Italian girl
to go astray known to the residents of Hull-House." Much
less scientific data or statistical facts appear. Her
emphasis was more likely to be on the individual and the
personal. Perhaps only a person so constituted could have
insisted on standing at the Hull House door, greeting every
one who entered, or have inserted the following notice in
a Hull House bulletin: "Miss Addams will be home [note
the word'.] as far as possible Saturday afternoons and
evenings and will be happy to meet any one who may wish to
25
consult her in regard to Hull-House matters."
Similarly, Miss Addams' contribution to Hull-House
Maps and Papers, which enhanced the settlement's reputation,

—
Hull-House Bulletin, I, No. 6 (October 15, 1896), 3.
247
is called "The Settlement as a Factor in the Labor Movement."
The paper is an intelligent appraisal of labor's right to
organize and delineates the justified interest of the
settlement in the union movement. In contrast to some of
the other contributions to the same book such as Florence
Kelley's article, "The Sweating System," Miss Addams' paper
depends on her consummate ability to know what confronts
her through an intuitive capacity to make connections,
rather than through a careful piling up of evidence. The
emphasis is on morality, sometimes expressed in ringing
tones. The paper, for example, ends thus: "All sense of
injury must fall away and be absorbed in the consciousness
of a common brotherhood. If to insist upon the universality
of the best is the function of the settlement, nowhere is
its influence more needed than in the labor movement, where

26
there is a constant temptation toward a class warfare."
The style and tone is much more that of the politician at
his best, rather than of the scientist viewing his data.
The research and fact-gathering at Hull-House, then,
seems to have been done by the Florence Kelleys, the Julia

26
Addams, Hull-House Maps and Papers, p. 204.
248
27
Lathrops and the Alice Hamiltons. Miss Addams' contri
bution— and it was a major one— was to provide the oppor
tunity, the encouragement and the resources to make such
activity possible. In 1890 very few facilities existed
where people like the residents at Hull House could engage
in social research. The charity organization societies
did not offer the same opportunities. In that setting,
investigation of social conditions was secondary to
individual service. Sociology was a new discipline, and
departments of sociology did not exist in most American
universities. As Miss Addams wrote in the second half of
her autobiography, "During the first two decades, Hull-House
with other American settlements, issued various studies and
fact-finding analysis of the city areas with which they
were most familiar.The settlements had antedated by three

28
years the first sociological departments in the universities
27
The contribution of these women to Hull House and
social reform in the United States has never been properly
appreciated. I doubt that Hull House ever again gathered
to itself so notable a collection of able women as it did
in the first fifteen years of its existence.
28
Though Jane Addams used the plural here, she is
referring to Hull House and the sociology department at the
University of Chicago, established 1892.
249
and by ten years the establishment of the first Foundations
so that in a sense we were the actual pioneers in field

29
research." Thus, for those interested in social research
in 1890, and especially for women so inclined, Hull House
had a ready welcome.
Beyond encouraging the investigating spirit and
sponsoring studies of many kinds, Miss Addams made use of
the results in her efforts to change conditions. Sometimes
she did this directly as in the following maneuver. "An
investigation by one of the settlement workers showed that
there were over three thousand more pupils in the ward than
there were seats in the school. With these statistics, and
a petition signed by many of the residents of the ward, Jane
Addams put the case for a new school before the Chicago
30
School Board." More often, however, she translated the
results of investigations into terms that caught the popular
imagination and stirred public sentiment. As the decade
ended publishers of popular magazines such as The American
and The Ladies Home Journal vied with each other for contri
butions from Jane Addams1 pen. Using this pen and her
29
Addams, The Second Twenty Years, p. 405.
30
Davis, "Jane Addams vs. The Ward Boss," p. 250.
250
oratorical persuasiveness, she helped turn American attention
to the evils of sweated labor, of the condition of women in
industry, of the vicious industrial system which swallowed
children whole, and of the slums where thousands of new
Americans congregated.
Miss Addams never needed research data for the
decisions she made within Hull House itself. The way she
worked is very well illustrated by the incident which led

31
to the establishment of the Hull House Labor Museum.
Walking down Polk Street one day, her mind, so she says,
was concentrated on how "to come into genuine relations
with Italian women" who were apparently resisting being
gathered into the fold. Just as she had originally wanted
to span the gap separating social classes from each other,
she wanted to build another bridge "between European and
American experiences in such a way as to give them both
more meaning and a sense of relation." Suddenly she espied
an old Italian woman spinning and the answer was soon
suggested to h e r . This little walk down a South Chicago
street and the sight of an old woman apparently quite

—
For a description of the incident in her own words,

see Twenty Years, pp. 235-37.
251
contentedly spinning set off a whole train of ideas in her
mind. "The occupation of the old woman gave me the clew
[sic] that was needed. Could we not interest the young
people working in the neighboring factories, in these older
forms of industry, so that, through their own parents and
grandparents, they would find a dramatic representation of
the inherited resources of their daily occupation. If
these young people could actually see that the complicated
machinery of the factory had been evolved from simple tools,
they might at least make a beginning toward that education
which Dr. Dewey defines as 'a continuing reconstruction of
experience1. . . . Within a month a room was fitted up to
which we might invite those of our neighbors who were
possessed of old crafts and who were eager to use them."
Municipal bodies and state legislatures might need statis
tics, and studies with charts and tables. All Jane Addams
needed was a walk in the sun.
Much of her efforts during this first decade were
devoted to bettering the lives of the immigrants who
clustered around Hull House. Many of them were Hull House
clients and for Miss Addams, always attracted to difference,
living amongst people with such various.backgrounds must
25 2
have been a fascinating experience. Much effort went into
the task of helping these new Americans adjust to an alien
culture, and in the process Miss Addams always emphasized
her own appreciation of the customs they brought from the

32
old world as she helped them adapt to the new.
—
Valuing the old as attention was concentrated upon

the new was characteristic of Miss Addams, and again the
image of the bridge is suggested. Many values she herself
treasured, especially her commitment to democratic process,
were imparted to her as a child and were grounded in pre-
Civil War American social philosophy. Though she viewed
society as a constantly changing entity and derided efforts
to turn back the clock, she held to the belief that the
values of an earlier America still needed to be cherished.
The shape of American society was changing, and the results
were both good and bad. For Miss Addams, the child of rural,
midwestern America where sharp class divisions had not
existed, the worst evil of industrial America was the
sharpening class division. Her answer to this was not to
discover or endorse a revolutionary solution which would
match the industrial revolution. Rather she held to the
democratic values she had been taught and still believed in.
She insisted, however, that these beliefs and the rights
they implied should be extended to all of life's concerns.
Political democracy should not be given up because pre
sumably it had failed. Social injustice had not arisen
because of this failure but because of changes in industrial
production which no one could foresee. The solution was
to extend democratic rights to the area of economics and
industry. Thus, contrary to the accusations hurled at her
later that she was a socialist— obviously false— Miss
Addams was essentially a conservative of the most
enlightened kind.
253
Hull House became so concerned with the lot of the
immigrants that much later Miss Addams stated that helping
them was the primary reason for the existence of a settle
ment house. "The Early Settlements," she wrote in 1931,
"practically staked their future upon an identification
with the alien and considered his interpretation their main
business. We stuck to this at some cost. . . . We especially
urged upon the immigrant that he talk out his preconceived
theories and outward experiences, believing that widespread
discussion might gradually rid him of old compulsions and

33
inhibitions. . ."
Her identification with the immigrant, however, and
the effort she made to help him, was not based on a predilec
tion for foreigners, but arose because they happened to
live in the area she had chosen for her settlement house.
They were, in a sense, directly in the path of her some
times relentless need to help others. If the neighborhood
around Hull House had been settled by mountaineers of
pre-revolutionary American stock— migrants from the Kentucky
Hills— Miss Addams would have undoubtedly functioned in the

— ■ —
J. Addams, "A Needed Implement in Social Reform,"

Christian Leader, XXXIV (June 20, 1931), 778-80.
254
same way, No doubt she was very attracted to the many and
colorful differences in custom and background exhibited by
the "Germans and Bohemians and Italians and Poles and Russians
and Greeks and Arabs in Chicago, vainly trying to adjust

34
their peasant habits to the life of a large city." Her
eye was always focused on what people needed to find greater
fulfillment, and her attention was as apt to be directed
to the inner need as to the more visible ones. The estab
lishment of the Labor Museum at Hull House is a case in
point, one of many attempts to nourish the inner self.
If immigrants were derided, increasingly even by their own
children, for their old-world habits and their clinging
to outmoded ways of living, then establish a museum where
examples of their handicraft could be displayed, thus helping
to re-establish their pride in themselves. Had her neighbors
been Kentucky mountaineers, she would undoubtedly have
sponsored folk-song festivals, if this experience had
meaning for them. Her solutions were always practical,
as immediate as she could make them, and as far from the
theoretical as they could be. The motto "All ye who enter

34
J. Addams, "Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall," p. 13,
unpublished speech, 1890, manuscript in the JAC.
here, roll up your sleeves and do something, just don't
sit there and think," could well have been carved over
the front-door at Hull House'.
CHAPTER XIII
ONWARD AND OUTWARD
With the years at H u l l H o u s e b e h i n d H e r , Miss Addams
faced the future w i t h confidence. Hull House was bigger and
better t h a n ever, a n d she w a s consorting with statesmen and
high-ranking government officials, as w e l l as w r i t e r s ,
philosophers, social reformers and her fellow social workers.
A letter she w r o t e to Miss Smith in J u l y , 1898, mentions an
interview she a n d Mrs. Kelley had with "the P r e s i d e n t of the
U . S . A . "; the subject of the audience is n o t m e n t i o n e d . 1
Another communication, initialed "F. K- " (undoubtedly Florence
Kelley) describes a forthcoming visit Miss Addams plans to
make on "Teddy," w h o must be Theodore Roosevelt. "Lady jane,"
the letter says, "is t o s e e Teddy at his house on the 17th
i n N e w York. I have ab a n d o n e d all hope because Teddy has not
answered my letter or t a k e n any notice of m y e x i s t e n c e . He
has, however, written Jacob Riis that while he Teddy h a s no
prejudices, the community would object to an A l t g e l d appointee,
which, of course, m ay be true and is certainly polite and a
tenable position. However, we know t he p e r s u a s i v e qualities
better o f J A t o MRS , July 18, 1898, JAC.
256
257
2
of the Lady on her native heath . . . ."
Miss Addams' activities continued to be so varied
that the problem of pursuing her as she rushed about Chicago,
the United States, and Europe increased with the passage of
years. More and more her activities took her outside Hull
House as requests for lectures, talks, articles and books
poured in on her from all sides.
An example of her established fame as an authority
on social reform came in the form of a request for a series
of twelve lectures from the University of Chicago. The

3
announcement describes A Syllabus of a Course of Twelve
Lectures, Democracy and Social Ethics by Jane Addams, A. B. ,
Hull House, Chicago. Lecture I was to deal with present day
attitudes toward social problems; Lecture II, "City Politics,"
III. "Charitable Relations," IV. "Educational Methods," iv.
"Industrial Relations," VI. "Trade Unions," VII. "Filial

2
Letter of F.K. to MRS, February 4, 1899, JAC.
Florence Kelley left Hull House soon after this to become
secretary of the National Consumer's League in New York. In
a letter to Miss Smith, dated August 14, 1899, Miss Addams
wrote, "sister Kelley has been miserable all summer but we
are blue at the prospect of her leaving on Friday," JAC, SCPC.
However, in her biography of Florence Kelley, Josephine
Goldmark gives the date of May 1, 1899 when Mrs. Kelley assumed
her new position. If this is true, Mrs. Kelley must have spent
some time the following summer at Hull House.
■^Circular enclosed in a letter from JA to Mrs. Blaine,

October 10, 1899, JAC.
258
Relations," VIII. "Domestic Service," IX. "Individual Effort
(Tolstoi), " X. "Contemporary Efforts of Industrial Community, "
XI. "Contemporary Efforts of Social Settlements," and XII.
"Contemporary Efforts at Social Control Through the Agency of

4
Government.” The syllabus in itself illustrates Miss Addams'
strength— and also her weakness. The range of her sympathies
was wide, but, if only on the basis of the fact that Jane
Addams was just one person, her knowledge in many of these
areas must have lacked depth.
Her work at Hull House continued unabated, and her
correspondence reveals a preoccupation that was with her from
the beginning— how to get money for more programs and more
buildings, as well as for activities already under way. The
state of Hull House finances, so frequently in a parlous way,
worried her, but her attitude that somehow money would be
found never changed. The condition of the budget, however,
The syllabus also contained a comprehensive reading

list, which includes the following, among others: The Duties
of Man by Joseph Mazzini, The Capture of Government by
Commercialism by J. J. Chapman, American Charities by Amos
Warner, Friendly Visiting Among the Poor by Mary Richmond,
Mv Educational Creed by John Dewey, Problems of Modern Industry
by the Webbs, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorsten
Veblen, English Social Movements by Robert A. Woods,
Philanthropy and Social Progress, Chaps. I and II by Jane
Addams, Socialism in England by Sidney Webb, and German Social
Democracy by Bertrand Russell.
259
led her to resort to such expedients as the following, which
appears in a letter to Mrs. Blaine. Referring to her yearly
contribution of $500 "toward the industrial classes," Miss
Addams asks "if it would be convenient for you to send it this
month instead of later, it would help out our depleted treasury

5
very much." Accounting methods at Hull House appear to have
been somewhat casual, if one judges from the many references
in Miss Addams' letters to the grave condition of finances.
Child labor, women in industry, trade unionism,
settlement house work, education, housing conditions, immi
gration, play and recreation— all these topics and many more
were the subjects of speeches and articles that she prepared.
Child labor in particular concerned her a good deal. From
her earliest days at Hull House she had been concerned for
the welfare of children, and the distressing condition of the
child laborers who lived in the Hull House neighborhood appalled
her. She always, too, claimed special competence in this
area because she was a woman.
Many of the early investigations at Hull House focused
on this situation and Miss Addams campaigned ardently for
reform through her early career there. Her attacks on this
practice continued into the 1900's and she spoke and wrote
frequently on its viciousness. For example, The Chicago
5Letter of JA to Mrs. Blaine, November 20, 1903,

microfilm, JAC.
Tribune for December 15, 1901 reports on an address she gave
before the Chicago Business Woman's Club on child labor.
Citing case examples, Miss Addams declared, "At Hull House
we have been observing these facts, collecting this data, for
six or seven years, ever since the last wave of interest in
child conditions and child labor. It takes nearly ten years
to secure any reliable or valuable data of this kind. And
we notice that the child workers who were bright and eager and
ambitious when commencing work some six or seven years ago
are different nowadays . . . ." The Homestead. Springfield,
Massachusetts, on December 5, 1902, reported on her appointment
to the chairmanship of the child labor committee of the
General Federation of Women's Clubs at its last biennial
meeting. To counteract the argument that families (more par
ticularly the legendary, hard-pressed widow) were dependent
on the earnings of their children, Miss Addams advocated the
following plan: "that when children under legal age were
found working a thorough investigation should be made. if it
were found that a mother or a family of young children was
actually dependent on the wages of this child, then the club
(presumably the local woman's club) should pay the weekly
earnings of this child, in the form of a 'scholarship' and
see that the child was kept in school until the age when it
261
could legally gen its working papers.” Whether she originated
this plan is uncertain, but she advocated it strongly in many
places. Possibly this idea (and other similar ones elsewhere)
was the genesis for the later advocacy of mothers’ pensions
with funds supplied by government.^ This same newspaper
report comments too on Miss A d d a m s ’ leadership, together with
Mrs. Harriet Vandervoort of the Illinois Federation of

7
Women's Clubs and Dr. Cornelia Bey, a prominent physician, in
the passage of a bill by the Illinois State Legislature to
protect working children. The law restricted the employment
of children under sixteen to eight hours per day, prohibited
such employment after seven in the evening, and any employment
for children under fourteen. Many children, the newspaper
report went on to say, lost their jobs, and a hue and cry
about hardship arose. The clubwomen, and some public
officials investigated, with the result that "the clubwomen
of Illinois will supply scholarships equal to the wages they
lost by the new law. in the case of the three Chicago children
6It is probably significant that the firststate-wide

law providing "Funds to Parents" was passed in 1911 inIllinois.
See Rich, A Belief in People, p. 67.
7
Dr. Bey later served on the Chicago Board of
Education with Jane Addams, w ho always considered her service
of several years on this board as inglorious. Miss Addams
became involved in the contretemps that followed the ejection
of Raymond Robbins and others from the board. She was
criticized for not supporting them in fighting Mayor Busse.
262
this was $4 a week for two of them and $2.50 per week for
O
the third . . . ."
Miss Addams herself wrote a number of articles
attacking child labor of which the following two are examples.
In June 1903 the social work magazine Charities published a
full-length article by Miss Addams on this subject entitled

9
"Child Labor and Pauperism." Though the paper contained
some reference to numbers, the approach is typically hers as
she describes poignantly the sights she has seen around Hull
House. "I have taken a Chicago street car on a night in
December at ten o'clock," she wrote, "when dozens of little
girls who have worked in the department stores all day are
also boarding the cars. I know as many others do, that these
children will not get into their beds much before midnight
and that they will have to be up again early in the morning
to go to their daily work. . . . The boys and girls have a
peculiar hue, a color so distinctive that anyone meeting them
on the street, even on Sunday in their best clothes and mixed
up with other children who go to school and play out of doors,
can distinguish in an instant the children working in factories.

g
Both these newspaper reports are part of the JAC.
9
Jane Addams, "Child Labor and Pauperism," Charities
(October 3, 1903), JAC.
263
There is also on their faces a something indescribable, a
premature anxiety and sense of responsibility, which we
should declare pathetic if we were not used to it. " She
demolished the arguments of those who saw child labor as not
only necessary but even beneficial. Attacking, for example,
the "self-made" man ("rags to riches") idea, she cited
questions 3ie had asked of some successful men about their
childhood experiences, which revealed that, while some of them
did work while young, what they did was a far cry from what
child laborers of the new industrial age were asked to do.
In 1905 Miss Addams expressed similar sentiments in
an address she gave at the first annual meeting of the National
Child Labor Committee held in New York from February 14-16,
1 9 0 5 . She pleaded for public recognition of the effects
of industrial labor on children, and, in line with the
national character of the committee she represented,^ spoke
out for a national solution. "In a democratic country, 11 she
said, "children in one station of life are quite as valuable
10Jane Addams, "Child Labor Legislation— A Request

for Industrial Efficiency," printed in the Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science, XXV, No. 3.
(May,,1905).
'*'^When Jane Addams died in 1935, the National Child
Labor Committee memorialized her in these terms: "Jane
Addams was one of a small group who in 1904 issued the call
for a meeting in Carnegie Hall to launch the National Child
Labor Committee and she remained a member of its Board of
Trustees until her death, always ready to help and advise on
its problems and activities. Her concern was both for the
children who toiled and for the nation which would suffer from
over-burdening its youth. . . ." Excerpted from "Memorial
Adopted by the National Child Labor Committee on the Death of
Miss Jane Addams," JAC.
264
as those in another . . . and we may discover that children
cannot be protected by too much deference to state lines,
quite as it was found that a railroad commission must repre
sent interstate authority in order to deal with railroads
which were independent of state boundaries." Referring to
labor conditions in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio, she
commented on the different kind of protection given children
in each of these states, and brings in a compelling argument.
"The manufacturing establishments in these three states enjoy
the same protective tariff and railroad rates, concerning
which the federal government is most alert that no dis
crimination shall be made, and yet the nation is quite unmoved
if the children in West Virginia are crushed and brutalized
by being allowed to do night work four years earlier than the
children of O h i o . "
Thus, starting with the neighborhood around Hull
House, Miss Addams had widened her frame of operations to the
city of Chicago first, and then to the state of Illinois.
During the second ten years at Hull House, she moved out to
become a spokesman for women and children, always her major
areas of interest, all over the United States. She was no
longer content to battle for the rights of children in
Illinois, but spoke out for the child laborers of Pennsylvania,
265
West Virginia, Ohio, and the remaining states of the Union.
She became increasingly active in the women1s suffrage move
ment, and write popular articles on the subject like "The
Working Woman and the Ballot," published in The Woman1s Home
Companion, April, 1908, and "Why Women Should Vote" which
appeared in the Ladies Home Journal, June, 1910. She stressed
the need for recreation and play activities, as in her
address at a banquet to the English novelist and settlement
house patron, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, on March 31, 1908; her
remarks were published subsequently in the periodical
Playground in April, 1908. In particular the peace movement
attracted her attention, and articles on this subject poured
from her pen. She gave two addresses on "The Newer Ideals for
Peace" at Chautauqua on Tuesday, July 8 , and Thursday, July 10,
1902, which were published in The Chautauqua Herald. These
remarks and others she made on the same subject were sub
sequently gathered together in a volume published by Macmillan

12
in 1907 and given the same title, Newer Ideals of Peace.
1^Many of her books were made up of papers originally
published separately or given as addresses. The list is as
follows, the first two published by Thomas Y. Crowell, the rest
by Macmillan: 1893, Philanthropy and Social Progress (only two
papers in this volume are by Jane)” r895, Hull House Maps and
papers (Jane was the editor") , 1902, Democracy and social iij-cFircs,
1907, Newer Ideals of Peace, 1909, The Spirit of Youth ancT~the
City Streets" 1910, Twenty Years at Hull House" 1912, A New
Conscience and an Ancient Evil (much of this was serialized in
McClure1s Magazine"^ 1915, Women at the Hague; the International
Congress of Women and Its Results (written in collaboration
with Emily Balch and Alice Hamilton), 1916, The Long Road of
Women1s Memory, 1922, Peace and Bread in Time or war, i^jOT
The Second Twenty Years at Hull House, 1932, The Excellent
Becomes the Permanent, and 1935, My Friend, Julia Lathrop.
266
Her interest in peace became a major one, and later brought
her interest to bear on the international scene. She became
Chairman of the Woman's Peace Party in January 1915, and sub
sequently chaired an international meeting at The Hague. She
was often abroad thereafter, helping with German war relief,
and acting in her capacity as Chairman of the Woman's
International League for Peace and Freedom.
The first decade of the twentieth century, then, saw
Miss Addams' emergence as a national and international
celebrity. Her fame had been established before this; after

13
the turn of the century her reputation soared to new heights.
Accompanying the praise were also some attacks on her reputed
socialism, the hospitality Hull House gave figures like Peter
Kropotkin, and her defense of people like Abraham Isaak, or

14
Issac and later Lazarus Averbuch. The Chicago Chronicle, a
1-3The chorus of adulation that sang Miss Addams'

virtues is typified in a poem called simply "Jane Addams" by
William Aspenwall Bradley which appeared in The Atlantic in
August 1910. The last fxve lines read as follows:
"This woman who grows never faint
In bearing burdens for her kind
0 brooding heart, 0 boundless mind
That, reading deep, divine God's plan
^ Of perfect love, obscured by man!'"
Isaac was an anarchist, so-called, who was jailed
in the hysteria that ensued after President McKinley's assasina-
tion. Averbuch was an unfortunate young man similarly caught
in "anarchist" hysteria in 1908. He was killed in an alleged
attempt to assassinate the police chief of Chicago, although
no evidence of such an intention was ever discovered. In the
Isaac affair Miss Addams attempted to get at the rQal facts in
the situation and get legal representation for him. In the
second situation she figured prominently in an attempt to dis
cover how Averbuch had been slain by Chief of Police Shippy
himself. She (together with Mrs. Bowen and Mrs. Wilmarth)
secured the services of the then young attorney, Harold Ickes,
who volunteered to take charge of the investigation. Sophanisba
Breckinridge was also a member of the committee sponsoring the
inve stigation.
rather disreputable paper, over a period of several years
published vicious attacks on Miss Addams as a socialist and
an associate of revolutionaries, as well as being herself
godless. These assaults on her reputation and good intentions
were not always verbal. The Chicago Examiner on December 19,
1909, headlined a news story thus: "Mrs. Palmer Stops Gifts
Breaks With Jane Addams," and went on to say, "Mrs. Potter
Palmer, formerly one of the most liberal,supporters of Hull-
House, has discontinued her contributions to that world-famous
social settlement. . . . The absence of her name from the list
of donors . . . has been ascribed to displeasure on her part
with the activity of Hull House and Miss Jane Addams, its
founder and head, in the cause of Christian Rudowitz, the
Russian political refugee . . . . Miss Addams, possibly
out of her interest in Tolstoi and her inability to limit her
interests and activities, had become very much interested
in the cause of Russian freedom. In reply to Mrs. Palmer,
she declared that anyway Mrs. Palmer never contributed very
much to Hull House, and she had never directly expressed her
displeasure over Miss Addams1 activities in this matter.
■Ân article in Collier1s Weekly on June 29, 1907,

accuses the Chronicle of abusing Miss Addams because "she
preached and practiced real democracy." See newspaper clipping
file, JAC.
16
In JAC newspaper clipping file.
268
In their own way, of course, these attacks were a
tribute to her integrity and influence. As long as she was
just helping the poor, no one minded. When she bacame
involved in social issues, the attacks began. The name-
calling anticipated the insults to which she was later sub
jected as a result of her peace work and her opposition to
America's entry into World War I. In the era with which this
dissertation is concerned, however, the denigration was far
overshadowed by the applause. Increasingly she became a
symbol for goodness, the brotherhood of man, and the ever-loving
heart. Onto her were projected the hopes of many for a better
world, as well as the fears of others whose status and
privilege were threatened. For some she represented the
virtues of an earlier America, rural, pastoral, and serene,
while to others she offered a peaceful, democratic method for
ameliorating social injustice in the jungles of industrial
Anerica. For the friendless, the dispossessed, the troubled,
and the wronged, she was the helping hand which asked for no
reward. Opposing organization and beginning with a cry of
"No institution," Jane Addams became an American institution.
Her other name was Hull House.
C H A P T E R X I V
JANE ADDAMS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF
PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL WORK
The place of Jane Addams in American history as a
notable social reformer is secure, but her importance in the
development of social work as a profession is difficult to
assess. Two points of view prevail amongst those who have
attempted to evaluate her contributions to social work. On
the one hand there are those who consider Miss Addams a
minor figure in relation to the profession. This is the
position taken by Frank Bruno, a social worker himself,
when he wrote, "Hull House was their (the residents) alma
mater in social ethics, but neither they nor Hull House
felt their relationship to the settlement to be profes
sional in any sense of the word. They were not studying a
method or perfecting a technique . . . . The settlement,
therefore, made no direct contribution to the professional
development of social w o r k . A non-social worker, Professor
Linn, to whom Miss Addams was very dear, had somewhat the
"'’Frank Bruno, Trends in Social Work (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 119.
269
270
same opinion when he wrote that she "did not go to Halsted
Street either as a 'social worker' or as a student; nor
have the purposes of either been her primary aspiration

2
since that time. 11
On the other hand, in the popular mind and for many
social workers, Miss Addams was a great social worker and
made outstanding contributions to the growth of the pro
fession. Only recently a graduate school of social work was
named after her. In her own day, after the success of Hull
House and the spread of her reputation, she was at first
acclaimed as a "scientific philanthropist" or as a "sociolo
gist, " but later on the term "social worker" was used to
describe her. Many of the newspapers of the day referred
to her in such terms, of which the following are two of many
examples. On November 5, 1902, The Sp y , a Worcester,
Massachusetts, paper, carried a long adulatory article called

3
"Jane Addams, Social Worker." The report must have been
syndicated as it appeared in other newspapers as well. By
the time the second newspaper account appeared in The Press,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 16, 1908, her reputation
had waxed exceedingly. This story described her attendance
at a meeting of the "Ethical society" (sic). She was

2
Linn, Jane A d d a m s , p.112.
3
271
introduced as "the foremost social worker of this or any

4
country."
However, at no time in her career did Miss Addams
ever identify herself as a social worker. She never referred
to herself as other than Jane Addams of Hull House. Herein
lies an important key to the question. The profession may
lay claim to Miss Addams as one of its great practitioners,
hut how valid is this if she would not claim the profession
as her own? Perhaps a further elucidation of her method of
operation would help to clarify the issue, before we examine
the contributions she did make. In my own view these are
significant, though limited, and, as Bruno maintains,
"indirect." Though Miss Addams was never a professional
social worker, the profession can be grateful to her on
several accounts.
Jane Addams was perfectly justified in identifying
herself only as "Jane Addams of Hull House" because the
personal elements in her career far overshadowed any that
can be described as professional. She operated largely on
the individual qualities she possessed— a creative, intuitive
imagination, a store of almost inexhaustible energy, and a
capacity to attract attention to herself which made her
4 Ibid-
272
highly visible as a public figure. she drew the affection
and admiration of many people from the lowly to the highly-
placed through a quality that can only be described as

5
charismatic. The admiration and devotion was largely for
Jane Addams as herself.
She never felt any need for discipline or for
sustained effort directed toward developing method or tech-

0
nique which are so necessary for the creation of a profession.
The impulse which sent her to Southside Chicago, as Miss
Addams herself described it, had somewhat the character of a
mystical revelation, and had little to do with an effort to

5 ' ‘
I am indebted to Dr. Weaver of the Department of

Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, for calling my atten
tion to this quality in Miss Addams' personality, and his
reference to Max Weber's formulation of this concept. Though
I use the term in its popular sense, the usage is related to
Weber's classic formulation of the charismatic basis of one
type of legitimate authority, "resting on devotion to the
specific and exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary
character of an individual person, and of the normative pat
terns or order revealed or ordained by him." Max Weber,
Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1947), p. 328.
6
The word “profession" is defined thusly: "a voca
tion or occupation requiring advanced training in some
liberal art or science, and usually involving mental rather
than manual work." Webster's New World Dictionary of the
American Language (Cleveland, 0. The World Publishing
Co., 1957).
273
find a way of helping people, or even to obtain a job. The
idea was born from personal, inner need completely. "Nothing .
less," she wrote, "than the moral reaction following the
experience at a bull-fight had been able to reveal to me
that so far from following in the wake of a chariot of
philanthropic fire, I had been tied to the tail of the

7
veriest ox-cart of self-seeking." She was escaping from
the "snare of preparation," and she was finished with formal

8
learning. As she herself described her decision to open a
settlement, ". . . the period of mere passive receptivity
had come to an end, and I had at last finished with the
ever-lasting 'preparation for life,' however ill-prepared I

9
might be." Miss Addams wanted to live, to escape from the
restrictions with which middle-class life had surrounded
her. She did not want to be a student of life. She wanted
to do rather than to think what to do or how to do it. She
wrote an important American book, Twenty Years at Hull House,
but its style would be almost exclusively descriptive of
what happened, far more than it would reveal how it happened.

7
g
Though the practice of medicine as a career may have
been unattractive to Miss Addams, her decision not to continue
her medical studies may also have indicated an inability to
accept professional discipline.
9
274
Her powers of description were admirable, and her writing
filled with poignant appeals to feeling and stirring calls
to action. Process, however, had hardly any place in her
books, manuscripts, and speeches. Her messages to her con
temporaries and those coming after her were far more inspira
tional than educational. Her genius lay in calling people to
action, not in encouraging them to choose a profession.
The same personal emphasis, which did not encourage
the growth of professional discipline, prevailed in the
pattern Miss Addams set for the operation of Hull House. The
entire program was built on the use of volunteers, which, of
course, was true of many other philanthropic ventures of the
day. At a time, however, when, as an example, the use of the
paid agent was developing in the charity organization move
ment, Hull House held firmly to the principle that no staff
member would receive a salary for his services, except in
exceptional circumstances when it could not be avoided.^
Just as there would be "no institution," there would be no
salaried staff; time and effort would be freely given, and
virtue would be its own reward.
When Miss Addams started her career, she considered
herself one amongst a group of residents, though she soon
■Âs already indicated, in addition residents were

asked to pay their own way.
acquired the designation of "Chief. 11 When a board of direc
tors was set up in 1895, Miss Adams became president, a title
which she never used. Despite the fact that, as her fame
increased she spent long periods of time away from Hull House,
and, when there, had more work than one person could do, she
refused assistance and continued to spread herself more thinly
than was wise. "There were many times," Mrs. Bowen wrote
after Miss Addams' death, "when she had to retire from the
House for several weeks in order to get physical strength to
go on. Also causes in which she was vitally interested
called her to all parts of the world. She was absent some
times for as long as a year. During these times the management
of the House fell upon me. Those of us who were with her most
urged her to get a competent assistant whom she could train
in her own way . . . and to whom she could perhaps give some
of her own vision and hopes for the future. She always
refused to have an assistant, saying that when she was gone
the work of the House should be taken over by someone young
and with new ideas, capable of carrying on the work in an
ever-changing society. She didn't believe in the place being
ruled by a dead hand. Her idea was that the time might come
when settlements would no longer be needed and that all
charitable work might be taken over by the government . . . .
27 6
The result was that Miss Addams left us without anyone at
the head except myself. I was made President of the Board,
and, alas, I was then seventy-six years old, and would have
been so happy had there been an able and tried assistant to
whom I could have turned over the work of the House. For
a period of forty years (1895-1935) Jane Addams remained
President of the Hull House Board, a position normally occu
pied by a philanthropist. In so doing she guaranteed that
the place would be ruled by a dead hand despite her wish to
avoid this.
In such an atmosphere where everyone was equal to
everyone else, in true democratic style, where long-range
planning, supervision and administrative controls were kept
to a minimum, if they existed at all, where attention was
always focused on moving forward and rarely on looking back
to examine where one had come from, a profession with its
emphasis on discipline and the examination of process could
not develop. The atmosphere had in it much to satisfy
personal need, but was inimical to the growth of system,
order and continuity. An experience at Hull House under
Jane Addams was largely personal, and, while-'emphasis was
put on individual attributes— intelligence, respect for
difference, sincerity, etc.— no effort was made to channel

••■Bowen, Open Windows, p. 262.
277
these in professional directions. Inevitably, too, for many
people, residency at Hull House was a temporary experience.
For some it was a way station on the road to some other
career, which, at times was in the case of the Abbotts, was
social work. For others the settlement offered the oppor
tunity for a passing experience in which many motives were
mixed.
Many agencies of Miss Addams' day, of course, were
using volunteers to carry a large part of the program, but
in some settings staff was recruited whose interests became
more and more professional. Many residents came to Hull
House, however, to know and to live with Jane Addams, who, in
the short space of six years, became a living legend. She,
of course, cannot be held responsible for newspaper accounts
of her career, but as her fame rose ever higher on the
national scene, stories appeared which highlighted the drama
and the legend of "Saint Jane." The following two examples
illustrate how large a part personality played in her career.
The Star, a newspaper in Indianapolis, Indiana, ran
a feature article in its page on October 25, 1903 about a
local belle who became a Hull House resident. Headlined
"Loves Work in Chicago Slum," the story concerned a Miss
Eleanor Lemcke who enrolled at the settlement. After a
278
touching description of the heroine, "the beautiful and
accomplished daughter of Captain J. A. Lemcke," the report
concludes: "Chicago and Hull House are the richer for the
sacrifice, for this beautiful Hoosier girl has given herself
heart and soul to the settlement work under Miss Jane Addams
tl
The second story is even more to the point. When
Ruth Bryart, the daughter of William Jennings Bryan, joined
the residents at Hull House, similar effusions filled the
newspapers. One paper, The Chicago Post, made some illumi
nating remarks, in its edition of August 26, 1903. "The
philanthropic intentions of Miss Ruth Bryan of Lincoln," the
reporter wrote, "have been very highly commended in all parts
of the united States, but it remains for a New York newspaper
to announce that she is a !sociologist. 1 Up to this time we
have been somewhat in doubt as to the limitations of the word.
We have supposed that men and women who have devoted ten,
twenty and thirty years to the close study of social science,
college professors who have contributed huge tomes to the dis
cussion of social questions, properly come within the general
significance, but we did not know that as soon as a young
woman applies to Miss Addams for permission to observe settle
ment work at Hull House she is a 'sociologist.' Certainly
279
this is all very clear and rational, and it gratifies us to
k n o w that Miss A d d a m s h as it in h e r p o w e r to create socio l o -
12
gists by a friendly nod and a gracious smile. Why work?"
To achieve professional status, the article implies, requires
more than an eager heart, good intentions and a welcome from
Jane Addams. Concentrated study within a disciplined frame
work and a commitment to professional goals are also required.
I n addition, the c a p a c i t y t o analyze, to m a s t e r the w h o l e b y
separating component parts out, one f r o m the other, a n d the
w i l l i n g n e s s to c l a i m a p a r t i c u l a r funct i o n are a l s o e s s e n t i a l
ingredients. None of t h e s e a c t i v i t i e s i n t e r e s t e d Miss Addams,
l e a s t of all a n a l y t i c a l e x a m i n a t i o n or the narrowed, b ut
deepened, perspective of a p r o f e s s i o n a l pursuit.
Yet the view that Jane Addams made little, if any,
contribution to the development of social work under-estimates
her achievements. She did assist in the development of this
profession, even if what she gave was a by-product of a personal
career, and "indirect." Much of this was contributed in her
early years at Hull House, climaxed by her election to the
presidency of the National Conference of Charities and
Corrections in' 1909. From then on her connections with
social work became increasingly tenuous, though on occasion
she offered advice to the profession. As we examine some of
-^Both newspaper reports are filed in the JAC.
280
her contributions, we can see how deeply embedded they too
are in the rich soil of her personality. One needs also to
remember a fact that Miss .Addams1 ardent admirers sometimes
forgot— that she was not plowing the field of social injustice
all by herself. Particularly in regard to the emergence of
social work as a profession much progress had already been
made by others. Margaret Rich, for example, has this to say
about some of Miss A d dams 1 .contemporaries: "In addition to
having a strong belief in the need for order and for system
and kindliness in meeting human need, the men and women who
started the charity organization movement were convinced
that there was a science of charity, that poverty could be
cured and could be prevented because it was a result of

13
causes that could be discovered and be removed. 11
First of all, with the move to Halsted street Miss
Addams parted company with the many philanthropists of her day
who were essentially diletantes with their major interests
elsewhere. For some philanthropy was a means to correct
obvious injustice and deprivation. For others, it repre
sented a duty, a means of passing the time, a way to achieve
a reputation for nobility or to satisfy curiosity. For all
of them, philanthropy represented at most a part-time,
possibly leasure-time activity. Miss A d dams1 approach was

13
Rich, A Belief in P e ople, p. 13.
281
very different from this. Though she did not seek a profes
sion and never did, she found a career into which she poured
serious purpose, an inexorable determination and a conviction
that individual ills had their source in social injustice,
all of which philanthropists by and large lacked. In her
deep belief in individual potential for self-fulfillment and
self-direction, in her recognition of the role feeling and
emotion play in relationships between people as well as within
the self, in her wish to bridge the gap between the giver and
14
receiver of help so as to create a reciprocal relationship,
and in her stress on the need for knowledge, Miss Addams
anticipated the professional social workers who appeared on
the scene after she had left the field to move on to greener
pastures. All these convictions became part of the new
profession.
She expressed these sentiments in her early papers
and speeches, and then repeated them many times during the
next twenty years. These opinions, of course, were not all

14
Jane Addams' determination to break down the walls
between herself and her neighbors was most sincere. However,
in her refusal to accept a salary for her services, she failed
to recognize how different this fact made her life from the
lives of her neighbors. They all worked for a living; she
did not. Did this not land her inevitably in the position of
a patron? Perhaps Mary Richmond was not altogether wrong
when she labeled the need of the settlement house workers to
live among the poor as patronizing.
28 2
original with her, but were expressed before, during and after
her time. Through the force and glamour of her personality,
the fluency of her oratory and the power of her pen (at her
best she wrote very w e l l ) , and the impress of a noble person-

15
ality seeking no rewards, Miss Addams achieved wider
publicity for her ideas amongst philanthropists and non-phi
lanthropists than others like John Glenn, Amos Warner, Mary
Richmond or Robert Woods, could give them. Subsequently,
when Miss Addams was labeled a social worker, whether cor
rectly or not, she undoubtedly inspired others to enter the
profession and encouraged its support in the general popula
tion. She was by far the best publicist social work has ever
had. Though this did not always resound to the profession1s
advantage, social work profited from the demonstration she
gave that a lifetime of significant work and creativity could
be spent in helping people.
Perhaps her most significant contribution to social
work came from her insistence that government was responsible
for the welfare of the governed, not just for that part of
"^This impression was, of course, a gross misinter

pretation of Miss A d d a m s 1 career. In seeking to help others
and to correct social injustice, she found a fascinating and
extremely rewarding career. This public impression of "self-
sacrifice" created problems for other social workers who were
expected to do likewise. They were not, however, seeking
sainthood, but rather professional status.
the citizenry close to the sources of power by virtue of
wealth or social position. she derived this principle from
two sources— the democratic ideas absorbed in her paternal
home and her experiences on Halsted Street. as the most
famous resident of Hull House, she recognized quickly that the
vast amount of suffering that surrounded her could never be
resolved through private benevolence. Even were this possible
in her own immediate area, social injustice would prevail in
thousands of other places in the nation. The only sensible
solution was government intervention, since only government
could protect the welfare of everyone throughout the nation.
In particular, her involvement in two of her major concerns—
child labor and the integration of immigrants into American
life— taught her this lesson. Once having learned, and pos
sessing evidence in the form of facts about people, she
worked very actively and very vigorously to establish govern
ment responsibility for public welfare with considerable
success. Her method was not so much to insist on the
principle, but rather to focus on one aspect of national
reality after another and work for government action. The
more government intervened in th'ese problem areas, the more
possible did it become to request action in other areas.
The subsequent development of huge government welfare
284
programs, in many of which professional social workers were
and are active, came from these efforts. Miss Addams, here
too, was not alone in urging this solution, hut again was a
leading, resourceful and very effective proponent of the idea.
This development opened up areas of concentration
for many social workers, but its main significance for the
profession lies in the fact that she was fighting for this
cause at a time when others, who were more significant in
creating a profession, tended to oppose government action.
This latter viewpoint was particularly prominent, though by
no means unanimous, in the charity organization movement.
Public relief, for example, was seen as demoralizing, subject
to political manipulation, "and harmful to those for whose

16
help it was intended." The impulse was to stress the
giving of help through the private agency to the exclusion
of government. Miss Addams, however, pressed for government
action early in her career. As time went on and experience
broadened perception, these two viewpoints came together.
This merger of ideas was recognized by Miss Addams in her
address to the National Conference of Charities and Correction
when she was president in 1910. In this speech she declared
"These two groups [the charitable and those interested in
16
Rich, A Belief in People, p. 59.
285
social reform, like the settlement house workers], as a
result of the growing awareness of distress and of a slowly
deepening perception of its causes, are at last uniting into
an effective demand for juster social conditions. The
charitable have been brought to this combination through the
conviction that the poverty and crime with which they con
stantly deal are often the result of untoward industrial
conditions, while the radicals have been slowly forced to the
conclusion that if they would make an effective appeal to
public opinion they must utilize carefully collected data as
to the effect of existing conditions upon the poor and criminal.
It is as if the charitable had been brought through the care
of the individual to a contemplation of social causes, and
as if the radical had been forced to test his social doctrine
by a sympathetic observation of actual p e o p l e . W i t h this
development, her criticism of the charity organization move
ment, which had been considerable in the early days, mitigated
a good deal.
As a corollary to the principle of government
responsibility for public welfare, Miss Addams also spelled
out the role of the private social agency, as she saw it.
With its greater flexibility and freedom of movement, and its

17
Jane Addams, "Charity and Social Justice," published
in The Survey, XXIX, No. 11 (June 11, 1910), 441-49.
ability to make personal appeals and use the resources of
private individuals, the private agency would demonstrate
the value or inutility of a particular program or plan. It
would he a testing ground for resources designed to meet
specific need, and success or failure in this area would
condition future existence. This concept, too, as has already
been indicated, arose from the nature of her personality, and
her need to move on from one cause to another which did not
permit concentration in any one area. However, her experi
ence on Halsted Street, facing so much need and so many
problems, gave greater depth to the idea and helped her see
in reality how government programs and those of the private
agency could dovetail. In the former would be lodged the
responsibility for meeting large-scale need on a permanent
basis and covering every American citizen. The private
agency, on the other hand, would take responsibility for
pioneering, thereby meeting challenge with a daring spirit.
This concept of welfare service, which for many social workers
became part of their professional philosophy, has had a con
siderable influence on the development of public and private
programs.
Lastly, though her concentration was never on method,
technique or process and the training of staff members in how
to give the service was never important at Hull House, she
did lend her support to the plans under way elsewhere to train
social workers. In particular, when Graham Taylor of the
Chicago Commons, a neighboring settlement house, began the
school for training "philanthropic" workers which later
became the school of social work at the University of Chicago,
Miss Addams actively supported him. The Chicago Tribune
makes mention of this in its edition of December 18, 1905.
The report of this development, which other papers also com
mented on, stated: "Under the auspices of Professor Graham
Taylor and the trustees of Chicago Commons, including Edward
L. Ryerson, Miss Jane Addams, Edwin Burritt Smith, and others,
a local school for 'philanthropic and civic training' has
been launched, to be known as the Chicago Institute of Social
Science . . . . The school is an outgrowth of an enthusiastic
study class held under the auspices of the University of

, 18
Chicago for the last three years." Though Julia Lathrop
was more active in this development than Miss Addams, never
theless the latter gave the development her blessing and by
1905 this meant a good deal. Miss Addams gave talks under
the school's auspices a number of times, as, for example, on
November 8 , 1909, when she discussed the progress in the

18
288
dispensing of charity. "Administration of charities in
Chicago has greatly improved in the last twenty years,
according to Miss Jane Addams, who spoke at Hull House last
night under the auspices of the School of Civics and
Philanthropy . . . . Miss Addams' declaration was given
added weight from the fact that she recently was elected
president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections,
being the first woman so honored. 'Charity is more kindly and
more efficiently dispensed in Chicago now than it was twenty
years ago1 said Miss Addams. 'This applies both to charities
under public control and to those in private hands. Applicants
are better treated now, and their wants more intelligently
supplied. The improvement is due, I believe, to the educa
tional influences at work among those who administer our
charities. There is also a growing tendency to go beyond
the mere relief of individual cases and to seek out the causes
19
to apply prevention as well as cure." In this last part of
the address, Miss Addams seemed to emphasize the need for the
development of a profession, recognized that this is already
taking place, and endorsed it strongly by crediting this fact
with the progress she saw in charity programs.

—
The Record, Chicago, 111., November-9, 1909, JAC,

SCPC.
289
Thus, though Jane Addams does not rank in the fore
front of those who created a profession of social work, her
influence on professional social workers has been significant.
Her genius lay in emphasizing the social base in which indi
vidual maladjustment so often lies embedded, and in demon
strating that, through democratic values and procedures, social
injustice could be resolved, provided the assault was vigorous
enough. She was not herself interested in professional
methods, techniques and processes, though she encouraged
those who were, and she believed such efforts were necessary.
Practical as she was, she had little interest in practice;
she left this to others. She may perhaps be characterized
as a transitional figure in the development of social work as
a profession. She brought to philanthropy a host of new
ideas and a devotion to her career which make it impossible
to consider her a philanthropist, "scientific" or otherwise.
At the same time her position as president of the Hull House
Board of Trustees, her unsalaried status, her freedom to
choose and to act as she wished, and her commitment to
volunteer effort make it difficult to describe her as a pro
fessional social worker. Development of professionalism
occurred largely elsewhere, especially in the charity
organization movement where "salaried workers, although
290
outnumbered by volunteer friendly visitors, played an
increasingly important part . . . . These paid workers, who
supervised and trained volunteers, were already numerous
enough in the 1890's to suggest that a new profession was in

20
the making. "
The contributions Jane Addams did make to social
work occurred in the first twenty years of her life at Hull
House, and the National Conference of Charities and Corrections
recognized her achievements by electing her president in 1909.
With the publication of Twenty Years at Hull House in 1910,
and her subsequent turning to the causes of the Progressive
Party and international peace, Miss Addams' connection with
the field of social work became more distant, though certainly
it never ceased.
Throughout her career, she remained Jane Addams of
Hull House, an inspiration to many Americans, including social
workers. Her achievements came from her unique personality
and, while one can admire, love and be inspired by'her, one
cannot "follow"her. Her interests ranged far and wide, but
not in depth within a professional framework. Though social
work owes its development as a profession largely to people
other than Jane Addams, her influence was significant and

20
Bremner, American Philanthropy, p. 102.
social work is richer for the contributions she did make.
She remains, however, a fighter for social justice with great
skill as a propagandist, an able, sensitive writer and a
noble woman. She was not a social worker by profession, but
in this connection she was really a great amateur. She herself
would not have it otherwise.
B IB L IO G R A P H Y
Books
Aaron, Daniel. Men of Good Hope; A Story of American

Progressives. New York: Oxford University Press,
1951.
Addams, Jane (ed.). Hull House Maps and Papers. New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1895.
Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. New York: The

Macmillan Co., 1902.
_______ • The Spirit of Youth and the City streets. New York
The Macmillan Co., 1909.
_______ • Twenty Years at Hull House. New York: The

Macmillan Co., 1910.
_______ • New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. New York:

_______ . The Second Twenty Years at Hull House. New York:

_______ • My. Friend, Julia Lathrop. New York: The Macmillan

Co., 1935.
Allen, Frederick Lewis. The Big Change. New York: Harper

& Bros. , 1952.
Arnold, Thurman W. The Folklore of Capitalism. New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1937-
Becker, Carl L. Detachment and the Writing of History.

New York: Cornell university press, 1958.
Boorstin, Daniel j. The Genius of American Politics. Chicago

The University of Chicago Press, 1953.
Bowen, Louise deKoven. Growing Up With a City. New York:

292
293
_______ • Open Windows. Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour,

1946.
Bremner, Robert H. From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty

in the United States. New York: New York University
Press, 1956.
_________. American Philanthropy. Chicago: The University

of Chicago Press, 1960.
Bruno, Frank J. Trends in Social Work, 1874-1956. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1957.
Cochran, Thomas C., and Miller, William. The Age of Enterprise.

Revised ed. New York: The Macmillan Co. , 1951.
Commager, Henry Steele. The American Mind. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1950.
Curti, Merle. Probing Our Past. New York: Harper & Bros.,
1955.
Curti, Merle (ed.). American Scholarship in the Twentieth

Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1953.
Devine, Edward T. Social Forces. New York: Survey Associates,

1914.
Faulkner, Harold U. The Decline of Laissez Faire, 1897-1917.

Vol. VII of The Economic History of the united S t ates.
Edited by H. David et aJL. New York: Rinehart & Co. ,
1951.
Filler, Louis. Crusaders for American Liberalism. New York:

Harcourt Brace and Co- , 1939.
Fremantle, Anne. This Little Band of Prophets, The British

Fabians. New York: New American Library, 1960.
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Alfred A. Knopf, I960.
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Realities. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co. , 1958.
294
_______ • The Bending Cross, A Biography of Eugene Victor

D e b s . New Brunswick, N. J . : Rutgers University
Press, 1949.
Goldman, Eric F. Rendezvous with Destiny. New York: Alfred

A. Knopf, 1952.
Goldmark, Josephine. Impatient Crusader. Florence Kelley1s

Life Story. Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois
Press, 1953.
Handlin, Oscar (ed.). Readings in American History. New York:

Alfred A- Knopf, 1957.
Hayes, Samuel P. The Response to Industrialism, 1885-1914.

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957.
Henderson, Charles R. Social Settlements. New York:

Lentilhorn and Co., 1899.
_. The Social Spirit in America. Chicago: Scott,

_
Foresman and Co. , 1901.
Hockett, Homer Carey. The Critical Method in Historical

Research and Writing. New York: The Macmillan Co. ,
1955.
Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform, from Bryan to F.D.R.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955.
. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston:

_
The Beacon Press, 1955. (Paperback e d . )
Kahn, Alfred J. (ed.). Issues in American Social Work.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1959.
Kasius, Cora (ed.). New Directions in Social Work. New York:

Harper and Bros., 1954.
Linn, James Weber. Jane Addams. New York: D. Appleton-

Century C o . , 1935.
May, Henry F. The End of American Innocence, A Study of the

First Years of Our Own Time, 1912-1917. New York:
Alfred A- Knopf, 1959.
295
Muller, Herbert J. Issues of Freedom. Vol. XXIII; World

Perspectives. Edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen. New York:
Harper & Bros., 1960.
Noble, David W. The Paradox of Progressive Thought.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958.
Persons, Stow. American Minds, A History of ideas. New York:

Henry Holt & Co. , 1958.
Philanthropy and Social Progress. New York: Thomas Y.

Crowell & Co., 1893. (Contains two papers by
Jane Addams. )
Pierce, Bessie L. A History of Chicago. Vol. Ill: The Rise

of a. Modern City, 1871-1893. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1957.
Reason, Will (ed. ). University and Social Settlements.

London: Methuen & Co., 1898.
Rich, Margaret. A Belief in People, A History of Family

Social Work. New York: Family Service Association
of America, 1956.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. The American as Reformer. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950.
Stead, William T- £f Christ Came to Chicago! London: Review

of Reviews, 1894.
Tims, Margaret. Jane Addams of Hull House 1860-1935. London:

George Allen & Unwin Ltd. , 1961.
Weaver, W. Wallace (ed.). Frontiers for Social Work.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960.
Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1947.
White, Morton G. Social Thought in America, The Revolt Against

Formalism. New York: The Viking Press, 1952.
Wilson, Edmund. frhe American Earthguake. New York: Doubleday

& Co., 1958.
296
Wise, Winifred E. Jane Addams of Hull House. New York:

Harcourt Brace & Co., 1935.
Woods, Robert, and Kennedy, Albert j. The Settlement Horizon

A National Estimate. New York: Russell sage
Foundation, 1922.
Articles, Papers, and Published Speeches

by Jane Addams
"Bread Giving," Rockford Register, Rockford, 111., April 21,

1880.
"Memorials of Anna P. Sill, Alumnae Essay by Miss Jane Addams,"

Rockford Register, Rockford, 111. , 1889.
"A New Impulse to an Old Gospel," The Forum, XIV., No. 3

(1892), 345-58.
"A Belated Industry: or Domestic Service," American Journal

of Sociology, I, No. 5 (March, 1896), 536-50.
"Ethical Survivals in Municipal Corruption," International

Journal of Ethics (April, 1898).
"The College Woman and the Family Claim,"The Commons, III,

No. 5 (September, 1898), 3-7.
"Significance of Organized Labor," Machinist1s Monthly

Journal (September, 1898).
"Women's Work for Chicago," Municipal Affairs, II, No. 3

(September, 1898), 502-08.
"Christmas Fellowship," Unity (December 22, 1898).
"Trade Unions and Public Duty," American Journal of Sociology,

IV, No. 4 (January, 1899), 448-62.
"The Subtle Problem of Charity," Atlantic Monthly, LXXXII,

No. CCCCXC VI (February, 1899), 163-78.
"A Function of the Social Settlement," Annals of the American

Academy of Political and Social Science, XIII, No. 3
(May, 1899), 33-55.
297
"Commercialism Disguised as Patriotism and Duty, " Post-

Dispatch, St. Louis, M o . , February 18, 1900.
"Respect for Law," The Independent, January 3, 1901.
"One Menace to the Century's Progress," Unity, April 3, 1901.

(Address given before the Sunset Club, Palmer House,
Chicago, February 14, 1901.)
"College Women and Christianity," The Independent. August 8 ,

1901.
"The Newer Ideals of Peace," Chautauqua Assembly Herald,

XXVII, No. 3 (July 8 , 1902). (First lecture on this
general subject, Monday, July 7, 1902.)
"The Newer Ideals of Peace," Chautauqua Assembly Herald,

XXVII, No. 5 (July 10, 1902). (Second lecture,
Wednesday, July 9, 1902.)
"Count Tolstoy," Chautauqua Assembly Herald, XXVII, No. 3

(July 11, 1902). (Address at Chautauqua given
July 10, 1902.)
"Housing Problem in Chicago," Annals of the American Academy

of Political and Social Science, XX, No. 1 (July,
1902), 97-107.
"The Servant Problem," Good Housekeeping (September, 1903).
"Child Labor and Pauperism," Charities (October 3, 1903).
"Henry Demarest Lloyd, His Passion for the Better Social

Order," Chicago Teachers' Federation Bulletin, III,
No. 9 (January 29, 1904), 1-3. (Memorial address
given at the Auditorium, Chicago, on November 29,
1903.)
"Hull House and Its Neighbors," Charities (May 7, 1904).
"The Present Crisis in Trades-Union Morals," North American

Review, CLXXIX, No. 2 (August, 1904).
"The Responsibilities and Duties of Women toward the Peace

Movement," Woman's Journal, Boston, Mass. (October 22,
1904). (Address at a public meeting of women in
Boston, October 5, 1904.)
298
"Address at the Peace Congress Banquet at Horticultural Hall,

October 7, 1904," Universal Peace Congress, Official
Report of the Thirteenth Congress, Boston, October
3-8, 1904.
"Problems of Municipal Administration," American Journal of

Sociology, X, No. 4 (January, 1905) , 425-44.
"Recent Immigration: A Field Neglected by the Scholar,"

University Record of the University of Chicago, IX,
No. 9 (January, 1905), 274-84. (Address at the
fifty-third convocation of the University of Chicago,
December 20, 1904.)
"Child Labor Legislation, A Request for Industrial Efficiency,"

Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, XXV, No. 3 (May, 1905). (Address at
first annual meeting of the National Child Labor
Committee, New York, February 14-16, 1905.)
"Child Labor," Journal of Education, LXI, No. 11 (March 16,

1905), 289.
"The Day Nursery Discussed by Miss Addams," Charities, XV,

No. 13 (December 30, 1905), 44-412. (Speech given
at the Chicago social Service club, December 15,
1905.)
"The Operation of the IllinoisChild Labor Law," Annals of

the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
XXVII, No. 2 (March, 1906), reprint 4 pp. (Address
at the Chicago session of the second annual meeting
of the National Child Labor Committee, Chicago,
December 16, 1905.)
"Memorial Address for Murray Floyd Tuley," Unity, January 18,

1906.
"Probation Work Under Civil Service," Charities and The Commons,

XV, No. 24 (March 17, 1906), 881-82.
"Jane Addams' Own Story of her Work— Fifteen Years at Hull

House," Ladies Home Journal (May, 1906).
299
"How Shall We Approach Industrial Education?" Reprint from

the Educational Bi-Monthly (February, 1907), 8 pp.
(Address at the National Society for the Promotion
of Industrial Education, November 16, 1906.)
"Newer Ideals of Peace," Charities and The Commons, XVII,

No. 14 (January 5, 1907), 599-606. (First chap.
of forthcoming book of same name. )
"Address at Mt. Holyoke Graduation," Springfield Daily

Republican, June 20, 1907.
"Public Recreation and Social Morality," Charities and The

Commons. XVIII, No. 18 (August 3, 1907), 492.
"Class Conflict in America," Proceedings of the second Annual

Meeting of the American Sociological Society. Vol.
XI. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1907. 152-55. (Address at the second annual meeting
held at Madison, Wis., December 28-31, 1907. )
"Address at the Meeting of the National Society for the

Promotion of Industrial Education," Chicago, January
23-25, Journal of Education, (February 13, 1908),
175-76.
"Address at the Banquet to Mrs. Humphrey Ward," Waldorf-

Astoria, New York, March 31, 1908, Playground, No.13
(April, 1908), 25-28.
"Address at Smith College," Woman's Journal, Boston, Mass.

(April 4, 1908).
"The Working Woman and The Ballot," Woman1s Home Companion

(April, 1908).
"The Chicago Settlements and Social Unrest," Charities and

The Commons, XX, No. 5 (May 2, 1908), 155-66.
"Advantages and Disadvantages of a Broken Inheritance,"

The Bulletin, Atlanta University, No. 183 (June,
1908), 1-3. (Address at Thirteenth Annual Conference
on "The Negro Family" at Atlanta University. )
"The Reaction of Moral Instruction Upon Social Form," The

Survey, XXII, No. 1 (April 3, 1909), 17-19.
300
"Immigrants," The Survey, XXII, No. 13 (June,26, 1909),

453-54. (A report on papers given at the National
Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1909 on
immigration.)
"When Youth Seeks a Mate," Ladies Home Journal (November,

1909).
"Why Women Should Vote," Ladies Home Journal (January, 1910).
"Charity and Social Justice," The Survey, XXIX, No. 11 (June 11,
1910), 441-49. (Address at the National Conference
of Charities and Corrections, May 19, 1910.)
"Stage Children," The Survey, XXV, No. 10 (December 3, 1910),

342-43.
"Recreation as a Public Function in Urban Communities,"

Reprint from the publications of the American
Sociological Society , VI (1911), 35-39.
"Social Control," The Crisis, I, No. 3 (January, 1911), 22-23.
"Ten Years Legislation in Child Labor Legislation in

Illinois," National Child Labor Committee Proceedings,
1911, pp. 144-48. (Address at the child Labor
Committee's Seventh Annual Conference, Birmingham,
Ala., March 9-12, 1911.)
"Character and Social Justice;The Social Situation,"

Religious Education, VI, No. 2 (June, 1911), 145-52.
"Americanization." Reprinted for private circulation from

the publications of the American Sociological Society,
XIV (1919), 206-14.
"A Pioneer Philanthropist," lale Review (July, 1920), 867.

(Review of book Canon Barnett. His Life, Work and
Friends, by H. O. Barnett.)
"The Spirit of Social Service," Proceedings, National

Conference of Social Work, 1920, pp. 41-43.
301
"A Book that Changed my Life," The Christian Century

(October 13, 1927), 1194-98. (Preface to a new
edition of Tolstoy's "What to Do Then.")
"Graham Taylor— Pioneer in Sociology," Chicago Theological

Seminary Register, XVIII, No. 4 (November, 1928),
17-22.
"A Toast to John Dewey," The Survey, November 15, 1929,

203-04. (Address at luncheon given in New York by
the National Committee to honor John Dewey on his
seventieth birthday.)
"Pioneering in Social Work," Federation News, I, No. 8

(November, 1933), 1-2. (Address at banquet of the
American Federation of Organizations for the Hard
of Hearing, Chicago, June 1933.)
Articles and Periodicals
Commager, Henry,Steele. "Jane Addams: 1860-1960," Saturday

Review, XLIII, No. 52 (December 24, 1960), 26-27.
Curti, Merle. "Jane A.ddams on Human Nature," Journal of the

History of Ideas, XXII, No, 2 (April-June, 1961),
240-53.
________ . "Tradition and Innovation in American Philanthropy,"

(Read November 11, 1960 in the Symposium on the
History and Role of Philanthropy in American Society.
Copy loaned by author.)
Davis, Allen F. "Jane Addams vs. The Ward Boss," Journal of

the Illinois State Historical Society, LIII, No. 3
(Autumn, 1960).
Dilliard, Irving. "The Centennial Year of Two Great

Illinoisans: Jane Addams and William Jennings
Bryan," Journal of the Illinois State Historical
Society, LIII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1960).
"'Johnny' Powers Turns His Back on Chicago," unsigned article.

Sunday Record-Herald, Chicago, May 5, 1901.
302
Kelley, Florence. "My Philadelphia," The Survey, LVII, No.

1 (October 1, 1926), 7-11, 50-57.
_______ . "When Co-education Was Young," The Survey, LVII,

No. 9 (February 1, 1927), 600-02.
_______ . "My Novitiate," The Survey, LVIII, No. 1 (April 1,

1927), 31-35.
________. "I Go To Work," The Survey, LVIII, No. 5 (June 1,

1927), 271-74, 301.
Kelley, Nicholas. "Early Days at Hull House," Social Service

Review, XXVIII, No. 4 (December, 1954), 424-29.
Parker, Franklin. "Jane Addams of Hull House," The Chicago

Jewish Forum, XIX, No. 1 (Fall, 1960), 13-17.
Unpublished Material by Jane Addams
(Manuscripts in the Jane Addams Collection,

Swarthmore, College)
"Unknown Quantities," School theme, 1878.
"Ethical Survivals in City Immorality," n.d., JAC.
"Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall., " Unpublished speech, delivered

before Chicago Womaris Club in 1890.
"Woman's Conscience and Social Amelioration," n. d.
"A Modern Tragedy," Speech delivered before Chicago

Woman's Club, c. 1894.
"Democracy and Social Ethics," a syllabus of a course of

twelve lectures.
"Care of Dependent Children.,"- Address given at unidentified

meeting.
"Speech at the wedding of Gerard and Mary Swope," August,20,

1901.
303
"The Civic Value of Higher Education for Women. " speech

at Bryn Mawr, 1912.
Bulletins, Studies, Pamphlets
Addams, Jane. "Dedication of the Hull House Organ."

Memorial address in memory of Sarah Rozet Smith,
Memorial pamphlet, JAC.
_______ . Memorial Address to Jessie Bross Lloyd." Memorial

Bulletin, December 30, 1904, JAC.
_______ . "The Modern City and Municipal Franchise for

Women." Address at annual meeting of National
American women Suffrage Association, February 1906.
Leaflet, 7 pp, JAC.
_______ . "National Protection for Children. 11 National

Child Labor Committee. Pamphlet No. 47, JAC.
"A Study of the Milk Supply of Chicago." Circular No. 13,

University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment
Station, Urbana"^ 111. , December, 1898, JAC.
"First Report of the Labor Museum at Hull House, Chicago."

Pamphlet, dated 1901-1902, JAC.
Hull-House Bulletins beginning with Vol. I, No. 6, October 15,

1896, and continuing through 1910, JAC.
"Hull-House, 1889^1909," Twentieth Anniversary program

booklet, JAC.
"An Intensive Study of the Causes of Truancy in Eight

Chicago Public Schools including a Home Investigation
of Eight Hundred Truant Children." Study done by
Gertrude Howe Britton of Hull House, and several
others, JAC.
Hutchins, Robert M. "The Nurture of Human Life." Bulletin.

Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions,
New York, March, 1961. (From an address by R. M.
Hutchins, November 22, 1960, in honor of the
hundredth birthday of jane Addams. )
304
Letters
Correspondence, Jane Addams Collection, Peace Collection,

Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
Approximately five hundred letters on microfilm were
read, covering the period of her early college years
through 1912. In addition a selected number of
letters between Jane Addams and Anita McCormick
Blaine, microfilmed from the McCormick Collection at
the University of Wisconsin, and included in the
Jane Addams Collection, were also examined. These
numbered over one hundred letters.
Correspondence and related material, Ellen Gates Starr Papers,

Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton,
Mass. - period covered , in the main, 1880-1900.
Correspondence and related material, such as account books,

records of minutes, etc., examined at Hull House,
Chicago, 111. Little material of the period 1889-
1910 remained, much of it having gone to the Jane
Addams Collection or destroyed.

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JANE ADDAMS AS SOCIAL WORKER

THE EARLY YEARS AT HULL HOUSE

Lionel Charles Lane

Presented to the Faculty of the School of Social Work of

Jane Addams, born into a comfortable middle class

family and reared in a small, rural community, devoted her

adult life to securing help and protection for the weak,

the defenseless and the exploited. Learning of the program

at London's Toynbee Hall, she traveled there to see how this

first of all settlement houses operated. She was immediately

captivated by the prospect of establishing a similar enter­

prise in America, and characteristically proceeded to realize

this idea, using her own financial resources and her

indomitable will. Accompanied by her friend, Ellen Gates

Starr, a loved companion, Jane Addams moved into one of

Chicago's foulest slums in 1889, challenging in this one

practice that woman's place was in the home. She quickly

attracted to herself a group of able, intelligent and capable

women, such as Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop, and Dr. Alice

Hamilton, as well as a host of effective and devoted volun­

teers whose contribution to the Hull House program had much

to do with its success.

to feeling, Jane Addams was also strong-willed, a hard

turesque and symbolic quality of her career brought her

immediately to public attention. She soon was surrounded

by an admiring corps of like-minded women and some men, who

saw in her the charismatic qualities of the leader who could

organize the efforts needed to correct the social evils and

economic exploitation of industrializing America. Miss

Addams was particularly appalled by the growing chasm between

home town of Cedarville, Illinois. The threat of class

cleavage, possibly ultimately class warfare, threatened to

reproduce in the democracy of America the intolerable

injustices of feudal Europe. Her beliefs in democratic

process, taught her by her noble and upright father— a

representative of pre-Civil War America at its best— were

outraged, and she embarked on her remarkable career to

prevent the further separation of American society into

classes. Her solution was to urge the spread of democratic

rights from the political arena to the sphere of economic

life, and to charge the government with responsibility for

the welfare— political, social and economic— of all its

illustrious career for herself and an outstanding social

agency. Her success, established within a few, short years,

was compounded out of her heritage absorbed in early child­

hood from her revered father, a unique, magnetic personality,

and the knowledge she acquired on Halsted Street where Hull

House was located. She was an extremely effective orator,

who captivated her audiences, and a fluent writer from whose

pen poured articles, papers, and books. Her career coincided

with the emergence of social work as a profession, and when

used to describe her.

For us today she remains an historic figure whose

position as a great American woman is secure. Whether or

not she was a great social worker has remained throughout

the years a moot point. Opinions have been expressed on

both sides of this question, notably, for example, by her

nephew, J. Weber Linn, who, in his fine biography of his

beloved aunt, on the whole gives a negative answer. Never­

theless, she was and remains an inspiration for many social

workers who find in her career an example to emulate.

This dissertation is an attempt to throw some light

on Miss Addams' contributions to professional social work.

captivated by the prospect of establishing a similar enter

Hamilton, as well as a host of effective and devoted volun

was compounded out of her heritage absorbed in early child

beloved aunt, on the whole gives a negative answer. Never

whose interest and cooperation enabled me to begin and com

influence on the life of Jane Addams, there is no ques