Addams, Jane (1860–1935)

Jane Addams was a social reformer and educator, whose life and work coincided with the Reconstruction era following the Civil War and the turbulence created by World War I. Massive industrial development and immigration from Europe created new concerns about societal fragmentation and stratification, especially in cities where many of the new immigrants lived. Industrial growth brought with it labor unrest, crowded and unhealthy living conditions, and political problems. Addams sought to address these problems. In leading the settlement house movement in the United States, she helped bring educational opportunities to urban immigrant adults and children to enrich their lives. Her reform efforts created a new approach to social work. She believed that the urban working classes could take an active role in improving their lives rather than being passive recipients of charity from more affluent classes.

Born in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, Addams developed an interest in social reform gradually. Although she wanted to attend Smith College, one of the recently opened colleges for women, her father insisted that she attend Rockford Female Seminary for 4 years. Addams revered and sought to please her affluent father, a local businessman and leader.

After her father's sudden death in 1881, her substantial inheritance meant that she would never have to work or marry. As one of a new generation of well-educated middle-class women, Addams needed a purpose for her life. Rockford Seminary had educated young women like her with the knowledge and skills to function as wives and mothers or as missionaries and teachers, but these roles did not appeal to Addams. Although interested in spiritual questions, she did not find answers in religion or religious institutions. In her years of searching for a role for herself as an affluent, well-educated woman, Addams briefly attended medical school, suffered and overcame her serious health problems, and traveled in Europe.

Her European travels had a profound effect on her. In the cities, she witnessed the desperate living and working conditions experienced by the poor. After visiting Toynbee Hall, the London settlement house located in the slums but lived in and run by male university graduates, Addams began to see a life of secular service as a direction for herself and other women like her. She and her friend Ellen Starr decided to establish a settlement house (Hull House) in a poor area of Chicago in 1888. The [Page 25]classes, lectures, conversation, and activities offered by the settlement house residents and visitors were meant to provide immigrant families in the settlement house neighborhood with opportunities to enhance and enrich their lives. Together with other educated women, Addams chose to live at Hull House in order to share the values of their middle-class culture, such as education and appreciation of the arts, with poor European immigrants while simultaneously learning more about working-class immigrants' lives and needs.

As Addams and the other residents of Hull House worked to establish a community founded on reciprocity, they were also creating the field of social work. By improving living conditions for the poor and providing opportunities for personal development through a range of activities including lectures, classes, and clubs, Hull House residents sought to improve society, starting with Chicago. This innovative approach to social reform and education became part of a national settlement house movement.

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