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The Education of Jane Addams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

J. O. C. Phillips
J. O. C. Phillips*
Affiliation:
History Department, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
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Extract

PERHAPS as a final tribute to a nineteenth century individualism soon to be extinguished by the New Deal, Americans of the late twenties and early thirties frequently amused themselves in endless polls and competitions to find America's greatest men and women. The definitive order of greatness was never discovered, but in every poll Jane Addams did well. Included in Mark Howe's list of six outstanding Americans, she received Good Housekeeping's seal of approval as the greatest living American woman. But in 1933 the National Council of Women failed her. They declared her the second greatest American woman. First was Mary Baker Eddy. (1) Jane Addams, who treasured such symbols of fame, may well have felt considerable pique at being so linked with the founding mother of Christian Science. The two women certainly appear very different types. Where Mrs. Eddy achieved power through establishing a church, Jane Addams, except for one brief episode, was never involved in organised religion; where Mrs. Eddy exploited the world of the spirit, Jane Addams consciously entered the grubby world of the slum; where Mrs. Eddy sought to cure bodies through faith, Jane Addams' solution was better housing, higher wages, and better garbage disposal. Later historians have reinforced the contrast. Some have viewed Jane Addams as an energetic feminist, which Mrs. Eddy decidedly was not; Christopher Lasch, in the most widely accepted interpretation, has seen Jane Addams as the first of a new class, the intellectuals, whose animus was a revolt against middle class gentility and particularly against the constrictive atmosphere of the 19th century family. (2) Mrs. Eddy for all her interest in the mind, was no modern intellectual, nor did she reject the family.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 1974 , pp. 49 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Linn, James Webber, Jane Addams, a Biography (New York, 1937), pp. 382, 399.Google Scholar

2. e.g. Glazer, Penina Migdal, “Organizing for Freedom,” The Massachusetts Review, 13 (Winter-Spring 1972): 29–44; Lasch, Christopher, The New Radicalism in America (New York, 1965), pp. 3–37. Google Scholar

3. Information on Sill, Anna from G[oodwin], H.M., “Biographical” in Memorials of Anna P. Sill, (Rockford, 1889), pp. 5–20; Linn p. 44; Farrell, John C., Beloved Lady (Baltimore, 1967), p. 30. On the later careers of Jane Addams' friends, Wise, Winifred E., Jane Addams of Hull-House (New York, 1935), p. 76. Google Scholar

4. Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York, 1910), p. 25; Addams, Jane, My Friend, Julia Lathrop (New York, 1935), p. vi; Twenty Years p. 38. Google Scholar

5. Ibid., p. 19.Google Scholar

6. Addams, Jane to Starr, Ellen Gates, Rockford, January 29, 1880; Addams, Jane to Starr, Ellen Gates, Cedarville, Illinois, August 11, 1879; Addams, Jane to Starr, Ellen Gates, Rockford, November 22, 1879 (all in Starr Ms., Box 1, Sophia Smith Collection, Northampton, Mass.). Google Scholar

7. On this theme see especially Rousmaniere, John P., “Cultural Hybrid in the Slums: The College Woman and the Settlement House 1889–1904,” American Quarterly, 22 (Spring 1970): 45–66.Google Scholar

8. Twenty Years pp. 52, 57–8.Google Scholar

9. Quoted in Wise p. 77.Google Scholar

10. Addams, Jane, “Breadgivers,” Rockford Register April 21, 1880.Google Scholar

11. Twenty Years p. 64. See also Addams, Jane to Starr, Ellen Gates, Cedarville, Illinois, September 3, 1881, in Starr Ms., Box 1. Google Scholar

12. Starr, Ellen Gates to Blaisdell, Mary, February 23, 1889, in Starr Ms., Box 1.Google Scholar

13. Twenty Years pp. 74, 87.Google Scholar

14. Addams, Jane, “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” in Adams, Henry C. (ed.), Philanthropy and Social Progress (New York, 1893), p. 10.Google Scholar

15. Addams, Jane, “Appendix” in Hull-House Maps and Papers (New York, 1895), p. 210; Addams, Jane, “Art-Work Done by Hull-House”, Forum 19 (July 1895): 615; Hull-House Maps and Papers, p. 211. Google Scholar

16. This felicitous phrase is Conway's, Jill in “Jane Addams: an American Heroine,” Daedalus 43 (Spring 1964): 761–780.Google Scholar

17. Addams, Jane, “Objective Value of a Social Settlement,” Philanthropy and Social Progress p. 56.Google Scholar

18. “Subjective Necessity,” p. 17.Google Scholar

19. The books are: Democracy and Social Ethics (New York, 1902); Newer Ideals of Peace (New York, 1907); The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York, 1909); A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (New York, 1912).Google Scholar

20. Addams, Jane, “A Modern Lear,” Survey (November 2, 1912): 131–7 (partially included in Democracy and Social Ethics pp. 137–177).Google Scholar

21. Newer Ideals p. 22; Democracy and Social Ethics p. 26.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., pp. 148, 20.Google Scholar

23. Newer Ideals passim; A New Conscience, passim.Google Scholar

24. Democracy and Social Ethics pp. 31, 154.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., pp. 102–136; A New Conscience, passim.Google Scholar

26. e.g. Twenty Years pp. 171–2.Google Scholar

27. Addams, Jane, “The Settlement as a Factor in the Labor Movement,” Hull-House Maps and Papers p. 186.Google Scholar

28. Democracy and Social Ethics pp. 76–9.Google Scholar

29. Newer Ideals p. 182.Google Scholar

30. Addams, Jane, The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York, 1930), p. 33.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 35.Google Scholar

32. Addams, Jane, Peace and Bread in Time of War (New York, 1922), p. 153.Google Scholar

33. Addams, Jane, The Long Road of Woman's Memory (New York, 1916), p. 127; Peace and Bread p. 83.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., p. 81.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., p. 77.Google Scholar

36. Twenty Years p. 25; Peace and Bread p. 76.Google Scholar

37. “Breadgivers,” Rockford Register April 21, 1880.Google Scholar

38. Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order (New York, 1967).Google Scholar