Volume 16 , Issue 29

Jane Addams of Hull House of 1893

In researching Jane Addams' Hull House history, we find that Jane's childhood experiences taught her the importance of helping those worse off than herself. Jane's mother died when Jane was two; later, a bout with tuberculosis left the young girl (Jane) with a deformed spine. As Jane grew up motherless and physically disabled, making her sympathetic to other disadvantaged people.

In 1877, Jane Addams entered the Rockford Seminary, as her three sisters had done before her. By that time, it was a generally accepted idea that women could benefit by going to college. Before, many people believed that college was too strenuous for women.

Rockford Seminary had been a finishing school, where women studied religion and how to become graceful and efficient homemakers. The curriculum changed while Addams was there, though. Jane and her classmates studied regular college subjects, including mathematics, philosophy, Latin and Greek. Jane graduated in 1881 with full ambitions but with nowhere to go.

It was William O'Neill that wrote, "Graduation was often a traumatic experience for young women who had been educated to fill a place that did not yet exist." Their education did not give them an entrance to the men's world of politics and business. A woman's choices after college remained essentially the same as before. Either marry and raise a family, or stay single and become a schoolteacher.

None of the above choices interested Jane Addams. Her family was not helpful, either. If Jane did not marry, her family expected her to settle down and help care for relatives. But Jane wanted to put to work what she had learned in school.

Jane drifted for the next eight years trying to decide on a career. She entered a woman's medical college, but dropped out after one term. Her crooked spine caused her such pain that she was bedridden for six months. Surgeons finally repaired her spine, but she was frail for the rest of her life. When Jane's father died, the inheritance left her with enough money to live on. Addams traveled to Europe, and during one of these trips, Jane decided what she wanted to do with her life.

It was in 1888, Jane visited Toynbee Hall in London, England. It was operated by Oxford University students, and Toynbee Hall served one of London's poorest neighborhoods. It offered recreation and educational programs to the poor. Jane left England determined to set up a similar "settlement house" (community center) in America.

It was in 1889, Jane Addams and a friend, Ellen Gates Starr, rented a rundown mansion that once had belonged to a man named Charles Hull. The house stood in one of Chicago's industrial areas. Many European immigrants who had come to the America seeking a better life, lived in the neighborhood. They spoke little English and lived in crowded, dirty tenements. Most worked in nearby factories, earning barely enough money to feed their families.

Addams and Starr hoped that Hull House would bring some light into these people's lives. One of the first things they did was set up a daycare center for small children. Mothers who worked all day had no way to care for their children, and they would tie their young children to a table leg and leave them in the tenement while they went off to work. Older children worked or roamed the streets. The daycare center provided children a safe environment and a least one meal a day.

The Hull House also began a kindergarten and a boys' club for older youths, and later opened a coffee shop where adults met and socialized.

Addams and Starr alone could not do all this work alone. Others came to Hull House, offering their help. Many were women from middle-class families. Like Jane, they wanted to experience the real world, but had no existing outlet to do so. Hull House offered them a way to serve the community.

It (Hull House) was more than just a meeting place, though. A resident named Florence Kelly convinced Addams that improving immigrants' lives meant more than just providing them with a place to socialize.

The conditions in Chicago's slums were dreadful at that time. Garbage, sewage littered the streets. Youths even as young as 14 worked in the factories. Younger children worked at home, helping their parents sew clothing that would later be sold in stores. These tenement workplaces were called "Sweatshops" because of their overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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