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A Belated Industry: Jane Addams' Groundbreaking Exposé of Working Conditions for Women in Industrial Chicago
At the turn of the 20th century, social reformer Jane Addams provides a thought-provoking look at the economic vulnerabilities facing young working women in America's industrial centers. Addams' account draws on her groundbreaking work at Chicago's Hull House settlement, casting an empathetic yet unflinching eye on the harsh realities of poverty and gender inequality.Through piercing observation and insightful analysis, Addams documents the poor working and living conditions plaguing female garment and domestic workers. She exposes their low wages, long hours, unsafe work spaces, and lack of bargaining power or legal protections. Addams' examination reveals complex links between socioeconomic forces and these women's susceptibility to exploitation.Arguing for societal remedies over superficial charity, Addams proposes novel solutions to uplift working women through education, community organization, and labor reforms. Her examination of women's economic independence speaks strikingly to ongoing relevance today. Addams' blend of steadfast idealism with unsentimental pragmatism provides an thought-provoking portrait of belated justice for working women.A Belated Industry brings Addams' progressive vision to life through empathetic portraits of young women struggling to retain dignity and hope in the churning Industrial-era economy. This compelling snapshot illuminates the beginnings of Addams' iconic career advocating for society's most vulnerable.
38 pages, Paperback
First published February 13, 2014
About the author
Jane Addams
228 books87 followersAmerican social reformer and pacifist Jane Addams in 1889 founded Hull house, a care and education center for the poor of Chicago, and in 1931 shared the Nobel Prize for peace.
Her mother died when she was two years old in 1862, and her father and later a stepmother reared her. She graduated from Rockford female seminary in 1881, among the first students to take a course of study equivalent to that of men at other institutions. Her father, whom she admired tremendously, died in that same year, 1881.
Jane Addams attended medical college of woman in Pennsylvania but, probably due to her ill health and chronic back pain, left. She toured Europe from 1883 to 1885 and then lived in Baltimore until 1887 but figure out not what she wanted with her education and skills.
In 1888, on a visit to England with her Rockford classmate Ellen Gates Starr, Jane Addams visited Toynbee Settlement Hall and London's East End. Jane Addams and Ellen Starr planned to start an American equivalent of that settlement house. After their return they chose Hull mansion, a building which had, though originally built at the edge of the city, become surrounded by an immigrant neighborhood and had been used as a warehouse.
Using an experimental model of reform -- trying solutions to see what would work -- and committed to full- and part-time residents to keep in touch with the neighborhood's real needs, Jane Addams built Hull-House into an institution known worldwide. Addams wrote articles, lectured widely and did most of the fund-raising personally and served on many social work, social welfare and settlement house boards and commissions.
Jane Addams also became involved in wider efforts for social reform, including housing and sanitation issues, factory inspection, rights of immigrants, women and children, pacifism and the 8-hour day. She served as a Vice President of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1911-1914.
In 1912, Jane Addams campaigned for the Progressive Party and its presidential candidate, Teddy Roosevelt. She worked with the Peace Party, helped found and served as president (1919-1935) of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In 1931 Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Nicholas Murray Butler, but her health was too fragile to attend the European ceremonies to accept the prize. She was the second woman to be awarded that honor.
By Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com
Her mother died when she was two years old in 1862, and her father and later a stepmother reared her. She graduated from Rockford female seminary in 1881, among the first students to take a course of study equivalent to that of men at other institutions. Her father, whom she admired tremendously, died in that same year, 1881.
Jane Addams attended medical college of woman in Pennsylvania but, probably due to her ill health and chronic back pain, left. She toured Europe from 1883 to 1885 and then lived in Baltimore until 1887 but figure out not what she wanted with her education and skills.
In 1888, on a visit to England with her Rockford classmate Ellen Gates Starr, Jane Addams visited Toynbee Settlement Hall and London's East End. Jane Addams and Ellen Starr planned to start an American equivalent of that settlement house. After their return they chose Hull mansion, a building which had, though originally built at the edge of the city, become surrounded by an immigrant neighborhood and had been used as a warehouse.
Using an experimental model of reform -- trying solutions to see what would work -- and committed to full- and part-time residents to keep in touch with the neighborhood's real needs, Jane Addams built Hull-House into an institution known worldwide. Addams wrote articles, lectured widely and did most of the fund-raising personally and served on many social work, social welfare and settlement house boards and commissions.
Jane Addams also became involved in wider efforts for social reform, including housing and sanitation issues, factory inspection, rights of immigrants, women and children, pacifism and the 8-hour day. She served as a Vice President of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1911-1914.
In 1912, Jane Addams campaigned for the Progressive Party and its presidential candidate, Teddy Roosevelt. She worked with the Peace Party, helped found and served as president (1919-1935) of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In 1931 Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Nicholas Murray Butler, but her health was too fragile to attend the European ceremonies to accept the prize. She was the second woman to be awarded that honor.
By Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com
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