Search results for ""Author Jane Addams""

"We may either smother the divine fire in youth or we may feed it," Jane Addams writes. Suffused with Addams's abiding compassion, tempered with her pragmatism and humor, and shot through with anecdotes of her own experiences with young people, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets is a level-headed assessment of the challenges facing urban youth and the most effective ways to meet them. When this book was first published in 1909, Addams was the most famous woman in America. A celebrity and a spiritual leader, she was widely regarded as practical, realistic, and endowed with a special insight into the problems of urban America. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets--her favorite of her own books--establishes Addams as an accomplished writer as well as a reformer. In this compact volume she examines the causes for the discontent of youth in the city, chiding educators for their "persistent blindness to youth's most obvious needs." Addams argues for the importance of providing direction and focus--for example, through public recreation, practical education, and experiences in the arts--for the pent-up energies of young men and women. She takes a realistic view of their basic social and sexual drives and their disaffection and alienation in an industrial world. At the same time, she rejects the hereditary explanations for delinquency that prevailed in her day. Allen F. Davis's introduction provides a biographical profile of Addams and a commentary on her importance as a writer and a social activist.

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As one of the four members of the inner circle at Hull-House, Julia Lathrop played an instrumental role in the field of social reform for more than fifty years. Working tirelessly for women, children, immigrants and workers, she was the first head of the federal Children's Bureau, an ardent advocate of woman suffrage, and a cultural leader. She was also one of Jane Addams's best friends. My Friend, Julia Lathrop is Addams' lovingly rendered biography of a memorable colleague and confidant. The memoir reveals a great deal about the influence of Hull-House on the social and political history of the early twentieth century. An introduction by long-time Addams scholar Anne Firor Scott provides a broader account of women's work in voluntary associations.

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Nearly a century before the advent of "multiculturalism," Jane Addams put forward her conception of the moral significance of diversity. Each member of a democracy, Addams believed, is under a moral obligation to seek out diverse experiences, making a daily effort to confront others' perspectives. Morality must be seen as a social rather than an individual endeavor, and democracy as a way of life rather than merely a basis for laws. Failing this, both democracy and ethics remain sterile, empty concepts. In this, Addams's earliest book on ethics--presented here with a substantial introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried--she reflects on the factors that hinder the ability of all members of society to determine their own well-being. Observing relationships between charitable workers and their clients, between factory owners and their employers, and between household employers and their servants, she identifies sources of friction and shows how conceiving of democracy as a social obligation can lead to new, mutually beneficial lines of conduct. She also considers the proper education of workers, struggles between parents and their adult daughters over conflicting family and social claims, and the merging of politics with the daily lives of constituents. "The sphere of morals is the sphere of action," Addams proclaims. It is not enough to believe passively in the innate dignity of all human beings. Rather, one must work daily to root out racial, gender, class, and other prejudices from personal relationships.

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Published in 1910, this was Addams's most successful book; 80,000 copies were sold before her death in 1935. This annotated edition was issued on the occasion of the Hull-House centennial. "Twenty Years at Hull-House is an indispensable classic of American intellectual and social history, and remains a rich source of provocative social theory. Jane Addams was both an activist of courage and 'a thinker of originality and daring.' Her life and writings exemplify the integration of social thought and action. Addams and her associates at Hull-House had wide-ranging influence not only on the key reform movements of their time but also on major currents of philosophical, sociological, and political thought. Filled with careful empirical observations, reflections on everyday life, accounts of practical action, and prescriptions for public policy, this small volume also embodies such important theoretical contributions as 'The Necessity of Social Settlement,' 'A Decade of Economic Discussion,' 'Tolstoyism,' and 'Problems of Poverty.' Long acclaimed for its autobiographical and historical value, Twenty Years at Hull-House should be read today as much for its enduring insights, critical analyses, and persuasive vision."--Bernice A. Carroll, editor of Liberating Women's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays

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In 1889 an unknown but determined Jane Addams arrived in the immigrant-burdened, politically corrupt, and environmentally challenged Chicago with a vision for achieving a more secure, satisfying, and hopeful life for all. Eleven years later, her “scheme,” as she called it, had become Hull-House and stood as the template for the creation of the American settlement house movement while Addams’s writings and speeches attracted a growing audience to her ideas and work. The third volume in this acclaimed series documents Addams’s creation of Hull-House and her rise to worldwide fame as the acknowledged female leader of progressive reform. It also provides evidence of her growing commitment to pacifism. Here we see Addams, a force of thought, action, and commitment, forming lasting relationships with her Hull-House neighbors and the Chicago community of civic, political, and social leaders, even as she matured as an organizer, leader, and fund-raiser, and as a sought-after speaker, and writer. The papers reveal her positions on reform challenges while illuminating her strategies, successes, and responses to failures. At the same time, the collection brings to light Addams’s private life. Letters and other documents trace how many of her Hull-House and reform alliances evolved into deep, lasting friendships and also explore the challenges she faced as her role in her own family life became more complex.Fully annotated and packed with illustrations, The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, Volume 3 is a portrait of a woman as she changed—and as she changed history.

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Venturing into Usefulness, the second volume of The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, documents the experience of this major American historical figure, intellectual, social activist, and author between June 1881, when at twenty-one she had just graduated from Rockford Female Seminary, and early 1889, when she was on the verge of founding the Hull-House settlement with Ellen Gates Starr. During these years she was developing into the social reformer and advocate of women's rights, socioeconomic justice, and world peace she would eventually become. She evolved from a high-minded but inexperienced graduate of a women's seminary into an educated woman and seasoned traveler well-exposed to elite culture and circles of philanthropy. Artfully annotated, The Selected Papers of Jane Addams offers an evocative choice of correspondence, photographs, and other primary documents, presenting a multi-layered narrative of Addams's personal and emerging professional life. Themes inaugurated in the previous volume are expanded here, including dilemmas of family relations and gender roles; the history of education; the dynamics of female friendship; religious belief and ethical development; changes in opportunities for women; and the evolution of philanthropy, social welfare, and reform ideas.

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Inspired by their Progressive Era faith in social science solutions to society’s problems, the residents of Hull-House collaborated on this work of sociology based on their experiences as residents of Chicago’s Near West Side. The contributors to this book believed that an enlightened citizenry could be mobilized for reform, and that by publishing maps with explicit information about the wages and conditions of the working poor in Chicago’s Nineteenth Ward they would educate the public and inspire reforms. In addition to Jane Addams’s own prefatory note and paper on the role of social settlements in the labor movement, contributors provided detailed, real-world analyses of the Chicago Jewish ghetto, garment workers and the sweatshops, child labor, immigrant neighborhoods in the vicinity of Hull-House, and local charities. This edition also contains eight color reproductions of the original Hull-House neighborhood maps. The year 2006 marks the one hundred and eleventh anniversary of the publication of Hull-House Maps and Papers, and the volume remains a dramatic statement about the residents’ shared values as well as a major influence on subsequent social surveys.

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