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Part of the American
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Jane Addams 1860 ~ 1935
Jane Addams
Miss Addams was born at Cedarville,
Illinois, September, 1860. She is the daughter of the late Hon.
John H. and Sarah Weber Addams. Studied abroad for two years and
later in Philadelphia. Opened a social settlement department
known as Hull House, in Chicago, in 1889, in connection with
Miss Ellen Gates Star and of this she has since been the head.
Was inspector of streets and alleys for three years in the
neighborhood of Hull House. Has done a wonderful work in
sociology and is today recognized as one of the foremost women
in this country in her line of work. She has written and
lectured on social and political reform.
Miss Addams has been ranked the foremost living woman in America
today, as having done the most for womankind and, for that
matter, for human kind. This modest, unassuming little woman has
proven a power in Chicago, which political corruption and
vicious ignorance could not withstand. She has matched kindness
with kindness, craftiness with craftiness until ward bossism
fell before her, A lifelong sufferer from spinal trouble, she
has already accomplished a work in Chicago and sent forth a
worldwide influence for social and industrial betterment which
many a strong man might be proud to call his life work.
What Miss Addams has accomplished in
Chicago cannot be told briefly, but here are a few of the things
she has done: Through Hull House she has provided a place where
nine thousand men, women and children go to take sewing,
millinery and dancing lessons; drink coffee; paint pictures; to
mold clay; a place where they have free access to library, club
rooms, day nursery, kindergarten, children's playgrounds, labor
bureau, medical dispensary, ideal bakery, diet kitchen, visiting
nurses, social, educational and industrial clubs for all ages
and purposes.
She has cleaned up one of the filthiest
and most corrupt districts in Chicago. She has replaced in the
heart of this district an ill-kept and filthy stable with an art
gallery and a children's playground; she has done this for about
two thousand children whose only playground was the street. She
has made a long and vigorous fight against druggists who sold
cocaine to children; against the spread of typhoid fever by
personal inspection of four thousand tenements; against
tuberculosis among the rear-tenement dwellers; for new factory
laws, and in all of these cases she has won out. She has
co-operated with the Juvenile Courts. She has established public
baths, free reading rooms, better public and home sanitation and
cleaner streets. She has established a model apartment house
with twelve model apartments. She maintains a visiting
kindergarten by means of which children too crippled to attend
school are visited in their homes and instructed by trained
kindergarten teachers, and yet the half has not been told.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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