Jane Addams
Born September 6, 1860
Cedarville, Illinois
Died May 21, 1935
Chicago, Illinois
Founder of Hull-House and of modern social work
"Teaching in a Settlement requires distinct methods, for it is true of people who have been allowed to remain undeveloped and whose facilities are inert and sterile, that they cannot take their learning heavily."
Chicago, Illinois, 1890. "Hog Butcher for the World," poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) called it, in his 1916 poem, "Chicago." "Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, / Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; / Stormy, husky, brawling, / City of the Big Shoulders." In 1890, Chicago was all these things, and more. It was the new home of thousands of Italians and Lithuanians, Poles and Bohemians, Germans and Greeks, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe recently arrived in America with pockets full of dreams and little else. Chicago was also the new home of a well-educated, sophisticated, and independent young woman. Despite her uncertain health, she did not feel like settling for the conventional life of a housewife in her all-American hometown of Cedarville, Illinois. Her dreams were about compassion and social justice, about helping to save struggling people whose lives were threatened by the mercilessness of industrial America at the turn of the twentieth century.
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