Addams, Jane

Jane Addams began her public career in 1889 as the co-founder and leader of the Chicago social settlement Hull-House. Between 1890 and 1914, Addams and Hull-House led the settlement movement then at the forefront of progressive social reforms sweeping America, including the abolition of child labor and sweat shops, immigrant protection and education, and woman suffrage. During World War I, Jane Addams became an organizer and the principal advocate of the modern American woman's peace movement. From that position, both during and after World War I, she helped build and direct an international coalition of women peace advocates representing countries from most of the continents. For her efforts, she became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (1931).

Addams was educated in her small Cedarville, Illinois community, and at Rockford Female Seminary. Having grown to maturity in the aftermath of the American Civil War, Jane Addams was aware of the destructive power of war. During the Spanish-American War (1898), she made her first public speech as an antiwar advocate at a Chicago gathering. When World War I began in Europe, Addams worked to keep America neutral. She feared that U.S. entry into the war would stifle the momentum for reforms and social justice that she and her like-minded friends had achieved since the founding of Hull-House. Addams saw the settlement neighborhood as a microcosm for the world. There, people from Europe, whose national history had made them enemies, had learned to live together peacefully with mutual respect. Addams favored developing a focus on internationalism to replace what she called "war virtues" so often associated with nationalism. Addams believed that war was not an appropriate solution for disputes.

During late 1914, Addams served as chair of the Chicago Emergency Peace Federation and as a member of the Round Table Conference on War, which met in New York to propose mediation to end the conflict raging in Europe. Addams wanted to bring the nurturing powers she believed women possessed to stop that war. On January 10, 1915, Addams and women's suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt convened a group in Washington, D.C., which organized itself into the Woman's Peace Party with Addams as chair. It called for the

immediate end to the fighting and argued for a new international order that included nationalization of the manufacture of armaments, democratic control of foreign policy, and women's suffrage.

To develop the vital international element of the peace movement, in April 1915 Addams led an American delegation of women to the Hague for the International Congress of Women, composed of representatives from neutral and belligerent powers. With Addams as international president, the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace was formed at the Congress and charged with convening another congress at the cessation of hostilities. The women also appointed two delegations to meet with government leaders throughout Europe and promote the cause of continuous mediation as a means to end World War I.

Addams saw the destructiveness of war as she led the delegation to meet with statesmen from the belligerent governments. From the time she returned from Europe until America entered the war, she worked tirelessly to preserve America's neutrality and to seek a negotiated end to the conflict. Although she supported Henry Ford's peace ship idea, because of ill health she was unable to join the venture when the ship left in December 1915. Advocating American neutrality, she met with Woodrow Wilson and Edward House, Wilson's representative to European nations, testified against proposals for conscription and rearmament, fought calls for preparedness, and worked to rouse public opinion against entering the war.

When America did enter the war, many of Addams's friends abandoned her pacifist position to support American war efforts. Isolated and shunned, Addams remained steadfast to her pacifist ideals. During the war, she worked with Roger Baldwin and the National Civil Liberties Bureau to protest passage of the Espionage Act and state syndicalist laws, supported the position of conscientious objectors, and lectured tirelessly throughout the United States for food conservation on behalf of the U.S. Food Administration.

In July 1919, eight months after World War I ended, Addams presided over the second International Congress of Women in Zurich. There the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was formed with Addams as its international president. Following the meeting, she presented the new organization's resolutions to the American delegation in Paris. These included condemnation of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and a proposal for a League of Nations. Concerned about starving families in Europe, Addams and Alice Hamilton traveled throughout Europe for the American Friends Service Committee to investigate and draw attention to the deplorable conditions. From 1919 to 1929, Addams served as international president of the WILPF and then became honorary president until her death in 1935, in Chicago, following surgery for cancer.

Americanization; Disarmament and Arms Control; Feminism; Peace Movements; Women, World War I; Women's Suffrage Movement.

Addams, Jane. Newer Ideals of Peace. New York: Macmillan, 1907.

Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan, 1910.

Addams, Jane. Peace and Bread in Time of War. New York: Macmillan, 1922.

Addams, Jane. Second Twenty Years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan, 1930.

Addams, Jane. The Jane Addams Papers. Edited by Mary Lynn McCree Bryan et al. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1985–1986. Microfilm, 82 reels.

Davis, Allen F. American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Linn, James Weber. Jane Addams: A Biography. New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1935.