“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us.” — Jane Addams
Elizabeth, the child, passed the night and went straight into her Heavenly Father’s arms. She died of malnutrition in the tenements of New York City, 1910. She left four brothers and sisters, all hungry, all wearing rags, all hot and crowded.
By 1890 the slums of New York City were intolerable, diseased-ridden and desperate. The best-known reformer was a woman. Jane Addams worked with poor immigrants in Chicago and sparked a national movement.
Similar to many women who were graduated from college in the Gilded Age, Addams became a well-educated woman without a job. When Addams was 27, she visited a settlement house in London and that visit transformed her life. At Toynbee Hall, upper-class people and poor Londoners came together to work for social reform.
In 1890 she and her friend, Ellen Starr, bought an old mansion and named it Hull House. They moved in and opened the doors to their immigrant neighbors. Addams recruited college women to help her and within that year 2,000 poor people came to Hull House.
Hull House was in Chicago’s 19th Ward, a population of a mix of Belgians, blacks, Chinese, Danes, French, English, Irish, Italians, Mexican, Poles, Scots, Swedes, Swiss, and diverse odds and ends.
Hull House had a kindergarten, kids’ clubs, and night school for the adults to learn English. It had a library, swimming pool, drama club, and job center. She taught cooking and home health care. Jane pleaded with the wealthy to provide money to run Hull House.
Laura Jane Addams was born September 6, 1860 and passed this life May 21, 1935. She won worldwide recognition as a pioneer social worker, as a feminist, and as an internationalist. She received the Nobel Peace Prize December 10, 1931.
Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Ill., just north of Freeport, the eighth of nine children. Her father was a prosperous miller and served 16 years as a State senator (1855-70) and was an officer in the Civil War. When her father passed, she inherited the equivalent of $1.34 million. Her father was a founding member of the Illinois Republican Party and supported his friend, Abraham Lincoln in his candidacies for senator (1854) and for president (1860 and 1864).She spent her childhood playing outdoors, reading, and attending Sunday school. She contracted tuberculosis when she was four which caused a curvature in her spine and lifelong health issues.
In 1910 Jane was awarded an honorary master of arts degree from Yale University, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Yale. In 1920 she was a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In her essay, “Utilization of Women in City Government,” Addams said that women needed the vote to help make communities better places to live.
Addams went on a two-year tour of Europe with her step-mother in 1883 and when she returned home, she was still filled with vague ambition, sank into depression and unsure of her future. She felt useless leading the conventional life expected of a well-to-do young woman.
This restlessness led her to establish Hull House and take care of thousands of Chicago’s poorest. She created her life worth living and her name became synonymous with charity and benevolence.