reviewed by Lynn Gordon

Did Jane Addams Have Any Real Jobs To Make Money
Did Jane Addams Have Any Real Jobs To Make Money At Home
Did Jane Addams Have Any Real Jobs To Make Money Now
Did Jane Addams Have Any Real Jobs To Make Money Online
Jane Addams Written Works

Addams' childhood conversation with her father about religion elucidates the way she was brought up - her dad was the focal role model, but he did not push his faith onto her. The first settlement house started in 1889 in Michigan and was named Hull home. Jane Addams intended Hull House to serve as the model for different village families. By 1900 there were almost 100 village families in the country’s cities. Jane Addams was considered the father of the new job social service. In that more general sense, the answer is an equally certain no. To better illuminate this distinction and the immeasurably valuable contributions of Jane Addams’ work, let’s first review her story. Raised by Philanthropists. Jane Addams was born to a fairly wealthy family in 1860.

Title: American Heroine: Life and Legend of Jane Addams
Author(s): Allen F. Davis
Publisher: John Wiley, New York
ISBN: , Pages: , Year:
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In the 1930s, a group of schoolgirls went to the Henry Street Settlement in New York City to interview Lillian Wald, explaining that their teacher had assigned them to 'do' her. Wald found out that the girls had 'done' Jane Addams the year before, and she asked if they had ever seen Miss Addams. 'Oh sure,' one of them replied. 'We saw her in 'Peter Pan.' ' Such, according .to Allen F. Davis, is the price of fame—public figures are never seen as their true selves. American Heroine, his biography of Jane Addams, deals with her changing and distorted public image over the course of a forty-five year career. Davis maintains that the public thought of Addams as a saintly (Protestant) Madonna; a shining example of moral courage, forthrightness, self-sacrifice, and love of humanity; the essence of true womanhood (although for a fifteen year hiatus, 1915-1930, people called her a traitor... (preview truncated at 150 words.)

Davis maintains that the public thought of Addams as a saintly (Protestant) Madonna; a shining example of moral courage, forthrightness, self-sacrifice, and love of humanity; the essence of true womanhood (although for a fifteen year hiatus, 1915-1930, people called her a traitor and Bolshevik because of her pacifism and concern for civil liberties.)

He further claims that she herself carefully nurtured and protected this 'saintly' reputation, thus contributing to a major distortion of her significance. Addams was not at all a spiritual, self-sacrificing 'lady,' but a shrewd, capable, aggressive businesswoman and propagandist. Rather than adhering to well-defined principles, she functioned primarily as a conciliator, a compromiser, and an administrator. Instead of being a disinterested, selfless public servant, she acted from a need for adulation and affection.

This new biography of Jane Addams makes an important contribution to the history of the social justice movement and Progressivism in the early 20th century. Davis uses Addams' voluminous correspondence, the papers of her correspondents, contemporary newspapers (especially her clippings), and the new writings on women's history and education to give us the first complete and detailed account of her life. (The picture of her college days at Rockford Seminary is particularly interesting.) In the end, though, Davis' own evidence does not support the contention that Addams and her public conspired to deceive us about her.

Historians often need to penetrate 'images' to understand the real persons beneath, yet they sometimes downplay the importance of the myth-making process itself. The public creates heroes and heroines to serve socio-psychological needs which, if explored, tell us a great deal about the period. In Jane Addams' case, Davis makes only one comment as to why the public worshipped her: She soothed the guilt of people in her own class by working to alleviate poverty and suffering. There was much more involved, however, in the public's creation of 'Saint Jane.' Other philanthropists, other champions of the poor and needy, even other settlement workers and reformers worked as hard and wrote as widely as she did. Why Jane Addams as saint? Why weren't those schoolgirls 'doing' Florence Kelley? Grace Abbott? Alice Hamilton?

The answer to Addams' popularity lies in her social philosophy. For her the conflicts of the late nineteenth century resolved themselves into one question: What could be done for the large numbers of the lost and alienated in contemporary society? How could people help the confused and estranged children of immigrants, disabled workingmen, those living in neighborhoods neglected by the city, youth with no education or place for wholesome recreation, overworked mothers forced to be breadwinners, workers with obsolete job skills or none at all? Unlike philanthropists, radicals, or her fellow reformers, she did not try to solve those problems by giving her money away, or through promoting sweeping socio-economic changes, or with violent social revolution.

Jane Addams believed that democracy meant associated living; warring groups in society must know and understand each other in order to work out mutually agreeable and beneficial solutions to social problems. She provided a place (Hull House) and a presence (her own) which facilitated such discussion. She attempted, quite successfully, to draw together different classes of women—the Louise Bowens worked with the Mary Kenny O'Sullivans. Yet businessmen and male labor leaders also met and talked at Hull House. She joined civic organizations and women's clubs, encouraging them to set up industrial committees, discuss social evils, and encourage dialogue with members of the working classes. This knack for helping people work together impressed and relieved a public terrified by the prospect of violent social upheaval. In an era of partisanship and class conflict, her name lent an aura of community, justice, and calm to any cause. In helping the lion and the lamb learn to live together, Jane Addams earned her 'sainthood.'

Addams' image suffered in the years 1915-1930, as Davis rightly notes. But the causes involved more than the public's disdain for her highly publicized pacifism during World War I. For the public had actually begun to show impatience with Progressive social reform before 1914. Many of the attacks on Addams after 1915 came from a general weariness with reform and the spirit of slow, careful negotiation and compromise which she represented. The war required quick decisions, instant acceptance of authority, unquestioning loyalty—the antitheses of Jane Addams' method of solving human problems. She never believed in the 'bad guy' as a group, whether German or communist. Instead she confined her anger to individuals who betrayed the public trust.

Although he does not fully explore the making of 'Saint Jane,' Davis' analysis of her changing public image is convincing. But he is on much shakier ground when he accuses her of complicity, charging that she contrived to have people think of her as a saint, with a religious cause; she posed as a traditional woman, though acting very differently; she failed to take firm moral stands; and, finally, that she did all this to satisfy an insatiable need for adulation and affection. In the introduction to American Heroine, Davis says that he concentrated on Addams' correspondence and clippings rather than her books, because 'she was more important as propagandist and publicist than as an original thinker.' This statement, correct in assessing the nature of her influence on s

Did Jane Addams Have Any Real Jobs To Make Money