Jane Addams
2010
Women's Peace Party Co-Founder· Social Worker
Jane Addams was a feminist, pioneer, humanitarian, and social scientist. Born with a congenital spinal defect, she spent much of her childhood reading and listening to her father, who was a state senator and close friend to Abraham Lincoln. Not one to let physical problems get in her way, Jane went on to become the valedictorian of her seminary, briefly studied medicine.
Is it not Abraham Lincoln who has cleared the title to our democracy? He made plain, once for all, that democratic government, associated as it is with all the mistakes and shortcomings of the common people, still remains the most valuable contribution America has made to the moral life of the world.
At the age of 27, Jane founded Hull-House, a place in one of Chicago’s lower socioeconomic communities that brought in upper-class university students to provide cultural resources, education, and after school programs to the poor. By her second year at Hull-House, Jane was helping over 2,000 people each week. She became a spokeswoman for change, realizing as an active member of the community that she could learn just as much from her neighbors as they could from her. She also rallied other social scientists, telling them they had a responsibility to bring about positive change in society, to improve the lives of their neighbors.
To love mercy’ and at the same time ‘to do justly’ is the difficult task; to fulfill the first requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving with all its disastrous results; to fulfill the second solely is to obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is impossible. It may be that the combination of the two can never be attained save as we fulfill still the third requirement—‘to walk humbly with God,’ which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the lowliest of His creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the company of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with the pangs and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected whenever it attempts to comprehend the meaning of life.
Jane advocated for workers’ rights, human rights, and socioeconomic equality. She fought against the culture of capitalism, using storytelling to show others the human perspective and teaching them to value human life over selfish gain.
In 1915, Jane founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Using her platform, she spoke out against war and worked to create lasting peace through disarmament and peace agreements. As recognition for these efforts, Jane became the second woman in history to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
There is no doubt that the great difficulty we experience in reducing to action our imperfect code of social ethics arises from the fact that we have not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to fuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement.