Jane Addams and Hull House Essay

The antebellum period was full of social reform movements based on the urge to eradicate evil and improve human conditions in society. Despite the attempt to deal with a wide variety of reforms to provide positive changes to society these reform movements were met with varying degrees of success. This essay will focus on five of the major social reform movements of that era discussing their accomplishments, failures and impacts on America as a whole. They are the reforms of abolition, women’s suffrage, temperance, institutional and educational reforms. The reform movements of the 1830’s and 1840’s were largely due to humanitarian reasons because of a period of Enlightenment in the previous century which emphasized rational over

College was an exception rather than a rule for women in the 1870s, but John Addams approved of higher education for women, and Jane wanted to go. In 1877, seventeen years old, Jane boarded a train at Cedarville station, and set off for Rockford Seminary, a “female college” in Rockford, Illinois. Like the twenty-two other women in her freshman class, Addams felt singled out for special opportunity, and she was determined to make the most of it. A few years later, after organizing a chess club, a debating society, an amateur theatrical group and editing/writing for the Rockford Seminary Magazine, Jane graduated and returned home to Cedarville. Jane Addams intended to carry out her plan of attending the Women’s Medical College in the fall of 1881 largely because she had to her father she would. Jane soon realized that medical school was not for her as she found she was incapable of concentrating on her classes, an “utter failure” and “unable to work at the best of myself.” In February of 1882, she dropped out and entered a hospital, suffering from severe back pain as well as depression. That April, Jane underwent an operation to straighten her spine caused by an earlier childhood diagnosis, tuberculosis of the spine.

The United States of America experienced several reform movements from 1825 to 1850. The reformers sought to improve religion, rehabilitation of criminals and mental patients, education, slavery, and women’s rights. Each demonstrated democratic ideals to the extent that the reformers sought to incorporate the values of liberty and equality into their reform movements to improve the quality of life but did so at the expense and dismay of others.

Susan's work for women's rights began when she met a mother of young children by the name of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1851. The two women worked on reforming New York state laws discriminating women. Susan organized state campaigns for legal reforms and delivered speeches written by Stanton.

Jane went to Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia in the fall of 1882. Later in the 1880’s Jane traveled to Europe where she visited a settlement house by the name of Toynbee Hall. Settlement houses were the country’s way of providing community services to the poor. Addams and her friend, Ellen Gates Starr, the Hull House in the lower income section of Chicago in 1889. Most of the residents who lived there were from countries such as Italy, Russia, Poland, Germany, Ireland, and Greece. Hull House provided a day care center for children of working mothers, a community kitchen, and visiting nurses. Addams and her staff gave classes in English literacy, art, and other subjects. Hull House also became a meeting place for clubs and labor unions. Most of the people who worked with Addams in Hull House were well educated, middle-class women. Hull House gave them an opportunity to use their education and it provided a training ground for careers in social work.

Although Addams has done many impeccable things, one of her most distinguishable actions was co-founding Hull House with her friend Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. Hull House is a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, inspired by the Toynbee Hall she visited in England. Opening Hull House, Addams expected the settlement to be a place where the poor could attend cultural programs, such as art, however her ideas changed as she explored the city and got to know her neighbors. While walking down the streets of Chicago, the reformer noticed all the poor immigrants residing in the cramped and dirty tenements, which led to her newfound passion to help

Margaret Floy Washburn was born on July 25, 1871 in New York City to parents Reverend Francis and Elizabeth Floy Washburn. She was born in a time when women were not allowed to display any type of power, higher reasoning, or desire for higher education. At the age of seven, she began her educational journey in the home of a retired Presbyterian minister who lived next door to her family. In 1886, she graduated from high school at the young age of 15 years old. Upon completion of high school, she attended Vassar College where she studied Chemistry and French. However, by the time she had graduated her educational interests had changed to philosophy and science, which

Jane Addams and her colleague, Ellen Gates Starr, founded the most successful settlement house in the United States otherwise known as the Hull-House (“Settlement” 1). It was located in a city overrun by poverty, filth and gangsters, and it could not have come at a better time (Lundblad 663). The main purpose of settlement houses was to ease the transition into the American culture and labor force, and The Hull-House offered its residents an opportunity to help the community, was a safe haven for the city, and led the way through social reform for women and children.

While some citizens of the United States, between 1825 and 1850, believed that reform was foolish and that the nation should stick to its old conduct, reformists in this time period still sought to make the United States a more ideally democratic nation. This was an age of nationalism and pride, and where there was pride in one’s country, there was the aspiration to improve one’s country even further. Many new reformist and abolitionist groups began to form, all attempting to change aspects of the United States that the respective groups thought to be unfair or unjust. Some groups, such as lower and middle class women and immigrants, sought to improve rights within the county, while other reformers aspired to change the American education

Throughout history, political, social, and economical issues have erupted and caused society to reform. These reform movements are created in order for the people of America to have the ability to resolve the issues they see in their communities. Some of the movements that have been most prominent in the united States during the early 19th century are the Women’s Reform Movement, the Prison Reform and the Education reform. All of these developments allowed awareness to be created about the problems that everyday citizens were experiencing and how they were going those change problems into resolutions.

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 (Bio.com). She studied at a Quaker school near Philadelphia and found work as a teacher (Bio.com). The article “Susan B. Anthony” states that Susan was paid less than men. Susan and her family became involved in the fight to end slavery (Bio.com). The article “Susan Brownell Anthony” states that she devoted more of her time to social issues. Sochen states that Susan B. Anthony became close friends with Elizabeth Stanton

On February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts, a woman by the name of Susan Brownell Anthony was born to parents Daniel and Lucy (Read) Anthony. She was the second born of a strongly rooted Quaker family of eight (Hist.Bio.-1). Because they lived in a Quaker neighborhood, Susan was not heavily exposed to slavery. The family made anti-slavery talks an almost daily conversation over the dinner table. She also saw men and women on the same level (Stoddard 36). “A hard working father, who was not only a cotton manufacturer, but a Quaker Abolitionist also, prevented his children from what he called childish things such as toys, games and music. He felt that they would distract his children from reaching their peak of

An American pragmatist and feminist, Hull-House founder Jane Addams (1860-1935) came of age in time of increasing tensions and division between segments of the American society, a division that was reflected in debates about educational reform. In the midst of this diversity, Addams saw the profoundly interdependent nature of all social and political interaction, and she aligned her efforts to support, emphasize and increase this interdependence. Education was one of the ways she relied on to overcome class disparity, as well as to increase interaction between classes. Her theories about the interdependent nature of living in a democracy provided a backdrop for her educational theory. Education, she thought, needed to produce people who

Two Works Cited    Victoria Bissell Brown's introduction to Twenty Years at Hull-House explains the life of Jane Addams and her commitment to insight social change to problems that existed during the turn of the 20th century.  As a reaction to the hardships of a changing industrial society, Addams decided to establish a settlement house in the West side of Chicago to help individuals who had suffered from the cruelties of industrialization.  Rejecting the philosophies that stemmed from the Gilded Age, such as social Darwinism and the belief that human affairs were determined by natural law, Addams was a progressive who wanted government to be more responsive to the people.

Cities are generators of economic life and source of changes in the world. Thereby, Jane Jacobs in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities puts into relief the role of cities on the social and economic levels, while denouncing the disastrous consequences of urban renewal programs. To that extent, in chapters 2 and 3, she discusses "The Uses of Sidewalks”, arguing that over all people need safety and trust in their city. Therefore, first she claims the necessity of keeping streets and sidewalks safe because they are the “vital organs” of cities (29). Secondly, she argues that the functioning of cities should be organized in order to foster human interaction in which “casual public