Jane Addams

Founder of Hull-House in Chicago

Social Activist

In an era of political, legal and social reform in the years after the American Civil War, when she created Chicago’s community center Hull-House, Jane Addams was unique because she not only advocated social reforms but actually put her ideas into practice.

Jane Addams was born in 1860 in Cedarville , Illinois , the daughter of a wealthy businessman/state legislator and a mother who died when she was quite young. Though her father remarried, she remained extremely close to him and grew to share his beliefs in the society’s ideal of “community stewardship by a virtuous elite” as one observer put it.

Jane attended Rockford Seminary for Young Ladies, and excelled at her lessons, as well as demonstrating the leadership skills that would later drive her activism. Her father died in 1881 just a short time after her graduation, forcing her to cancel her plans to eventually study medicine, and at the same time to become a companion and support to her stepmother. They traveled and studied in Europe from 1883 to 1885 but a back ailment, plus the demands of stepmother and siblings brought her frustration and depression about her career goals. She was concerned about what she saw as inequities between the rich and the poor but unlike many of her social class she felt she wanted to do more besides making donations. An 1888 return to Europe with a friend revealed some answers.

While touring Britain , they visited Toynbee Hall, a “settlement house” in London , where the founders provided the immediate needs of those in poverty as well as offered various programs that would help them improve their lives. This was not just philanthropy but active involvement. Inspired by what she had seen, Jane and her friend Ellen Starr returned to the U.S. with the intention of establishing a similar facility in Chicago .

Both women were from socially and politically prominent and influential families and they used their wealth and contacts to attract interest to their cause. In the fall of 1889, Jane and Ellen leased the run-down Hull mansion in their target area. Believing they could best understand the problems of the neighborhood by living at Hull-House, Jane and her associates established programs that best served the residents of one of the worst slums in Chicago . They offered hot lunches, childcare, tutoring in English, and social events as they attempted to develop a neighborhood spirit, at the same time encouraging the immigrants to become involved in their community. By 1895, they were offering learning and social opportunities such as classes in arithmetic, chemistry, and English, as well as a Cloak Maker’s Union for women, lectures, dancing, gymnastics for men and women, an Italo-American Club, a Social Science Club and a Mandolin Club. There were other similar facilities established in other cities, but Hull-House remained as the prominent example of its type.

By 1893, Hull-House was serving 2000 people a week and Jane had begun to direct her attention to reforming what she saw as the causes and origins of poverty. She established friendships with many other reformers and Hull-House was soon the gathering place of other prominent intellects and reformers. They joined Jane in investigating the causes and origins of poverty, and then they began to seek legal and economic solutions. In the years between 1900 and 1915, as Jane and her Hull-House associates grew more involved in seeking local and national efforts to regulate in the area of economic issues and social services. Jane herself served on various national committees supporting factory regulations, child labor laws, and public health. In addition, her lecture tours and many published articles and books brought notice not just to Hull-House but also to the reforms she was seeking. Her 1910 book Twenty Years at Hull-House , which served as her autobiography, brought wide interest and support and in 1911 she became the first president of a national organization for community centers. She was also instrumental in the organization of the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP, this last because she felt equal access to all programs and causes was vital in an American society.

As the international situation deteriorated in the early years of the 1900s and World War I seemed inevitable, Jane was one of the first to see that international hostility would prove harmful to attainment of the reforms she sought. “No matter how worthy the cause for which people may be fighting,” she said, “the pain and bitterness resulting from the fight would render meaningless any victory.” In 1915 she organized the Women’s Peace Party and the International Congress of Women, a group that later met at The Hague and sought diplomatic solutions to the impending hostilities. Yet it was this effort for peace that altered her public image. For many years, she had been an admired reformer, but once she opposed the war, she was labeled by some as a “traitor”, a socialist, anarchist and a communist. However, she remained true to her cause and in 1919, she was elected first president of the WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom). She spent her final years deeply involved with the cause of peace and it was this devotion that brought her the Nobel Peace Price in 1931, the first American woman to receive it.

However, by that time public opinion had mellowed and instead of the former criticism, there was international acclaim at the prize announcement. However, the messages of congratulation that poured in found the recipient in the hospital recovering from surgery. Three years later, after a heart attack and under orders to slow down, she did adjust her schedule, but she never really retired. President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and many others sought her advice on the troubling issues that derived from the Depression and the rise of Nazism in Europe .

In May 1935, Jane had just submitted the manuscript of what would be her last book and had just returned from a Washington D.C. celebratory dinner of her career and her presidency of the WIPLF when she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She died three days later.

Though born to wealth and privilege, Addams was able to see beyond that world to where people struggled in poverty, injustice, and inequality, and then proceed to seek solutions. Hull-House continues to be a monument to all that she accomplished. One observer put it like this: “Jane Addams towers over Chicago history like a mythical Amazon of social reform,” but she stands tall not just in Chicago , but over the nation and the world beyond.