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Jane Addams and the Presidential Campaign of 1924

Des Moines (IA) Register, Oct. 26, 1924, p. 11.

On behalf of the Democratic Party, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to Jane Addams on May 20, 1924. As chair of the party’s committee for platform planks of interest to women, she hoped to secure the action and support of the nation’s best-known woman. Jane Addams, however, had likely already decided to support her old friend, Progressive Robert La Follette, former governor and sitting U.S. senator from Wisconsin. Twenty days after Roosevelt penned her letter, Addams joined the Progressive Party’s national campaign for La Follette, whom she described as a strong and wonderful man, “the real leader of the Progressive Party.”

Theodore Roosevelt would have argued with Addams about that final assertion. But he was dead. And as far a Progressive Era leaders go, Robert M. La Follette Sr., known popularly as “Fighting Bob,” was an important one. As a Republican, La Follette, a lawyer, served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1885-1891), as Governor of Wisconsin (1901-1906), and in the U.S. Senate (1906-1925). He began his political career as a loyal Republican, but he emerged as a leader of the new progressive reform movement in the mid-1890s. Biographer David Thelen described La Follette as “perhaps the most popular and respected radical in modern American history.”

La Follette appealed to Jane Addams for a number of reasons, but perhaps none more obvious than his intellectual capacity. La Follette thoughtfully considered the social and economic problems facing Americans and the ways in which government could be deployed to address those problems. As a politician, he embraced the idea of utilizing academic expertise in the drafting of legislation, coming under the influence of economists and sociologists at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. Men like Professor Richard Ely, Jane Addams’s book editor and close friend, inspired La Follette’s critical thinking and evolution over time. The philosophical world views of Addams and La Follette overlapped and their paths began to cross in 1905, their relationship deepening in 1906 through Addams’s lobbying efforts in Washington on an immigration bill and her full entry into the woman suffrage movement in which she became a close colleague of La Follett’s wife, suffragist Belle Case La Follette.

Addams would not be as fully engaged in the 1924 Presidential Campaign as she had been in 1912 for Theodore Roosevelt. She did not attend the Progressive Party convention in Cleveland in July and she did not write a large body of campaign literature to disseminate the party’s platform as she had done for Roosevelt. However, when she returned in September to Chicago from her summer vacation in Maine, she jumped into the campaign. She raised campaign funds in Illinois (her partner Mary Rozet Smith made a $25 donation), she did a little campaign writing and a few interviews; and in October and November she delivered speeches across the Midwest.

Robert M. La Follette, 1924 (Library of Congress)

When Robert La Follette campaigned in Chicago, Jane Addams presided at a rally of 11,000 supporters. When she introduced the candidate, she said:

Thousands of women in Chicago bid him welcome and assure him of their convinced and unwavering adherence. They remember him as a pioneer advocate of woman suffrage, as the author of the extension of the eight hour law to governmental employees of which so large a portion are women, and of many another far reaching provision to protect women both in industry and in the home, and to make possible their fuller participation in governmental affairs. … It is for his courage in such matters, for his unblemished record of public service, for his rousing patriotism, and for his devotion to the interests of the common people that we gladly welcome him to this group of his enthusiastic followers, and pledge him our cooperation.

Addams delivered additional speeches for La Follette in Chicago, and she traveled to Grand Rapids and Detroit, Michigan; Des Moines, Iowa; and Cincinnati, Ohio. She believed in La Follette’s political approach to reform, she supported his Progressive Party’s platform, which included a plank for “Peace on Earth,” and she also favored a third-party presence in American political campaigns. Addams seems to have enjoyed her campaign work for La Follette. He was not as big a character as Theodore Roosevelt had been, but he was a charismatic fellow, especially in comparison to the Republican candidate Calvin Coolidge who was well-liked but terribly boring. Coolidge, who had been President since August 1923 when Warren Harding died of a heart attack, was the comfortable incumbent. His campaign slogan “Keep Cool with Coolidge” did not mean cool as in swell (or hip, in more modern parlance) but rather it conveyed calm and conservative and conventional.

Jane Addams reserved her political energy for politicians who wanted to shake things up and enact change, despite their poor chances to win the presidency. Politicians like Theodore Roosevelt and “Fighting Bob” La Follette. Not “Silent Cal” or the Democratic candidate nominated on the 103rd ballot whom nobody now remembers, John W. Davis, a New York lawyer whom nobody in 1924 knew, either, a man who did not have a snowball’s chance in hell to beat Coolidge. As for Robert La Follette, he was no Theodore Roosevelt—who had beaten the Republican candidate and come in respectable second place in 1912. Like Davis, La Follette had very little chance of winning the presidency.

In Bob La Follette, however, Jane Addams saw a principled man and a dedicated reform politician who was easy to support. Real change required bold leaders. Jane Addams respected innovate thinkers and courageous politicians. It is also clear that Addams believed that La Follette represented the type of modern leader necessary in an increasingly global world. Local and national reform was important, but an informed international outlook was equally critical in the modern world. In a New Republic article, published on September 10, 1924, Addams explained her reasons for supporting La Follette:

All America is familiar with Senator La Follette’s career … It was quite logical that the voters of Wisconsin should by an overwhelming majority send their Governor to the United States Senate, if only because so many of his policies required federal action for their consummation. Personally, I believe in time he will find the same necessity for action through an international body, both because of his sound political philosophy and because of his understanding of the far-flung problems of modern life. I once attended the meetings of a commission held in Geneva under the auspices of the International Labor Bureau connected with the League of Nations, when the matter under prolonged discussion was the protection of the seamen, who for many weeks every year find themselves remote from consular offices and courts of justice. The most successful protection ever offered to these men, the one achievement constantly quoted, was embodied in the La Follette Seamen’s Act, which because of its intrinsic worth, and because of the eloquent speeches made by its author when urging its passage on the floor of the United States Senate, has made the name of Robert La Follette beloved literally around the world.

Some of us who recall almost with a lump in the throat, the precious planks so enthusiastically put into a Progressive platform in 1912—many of these propositions are actually operative as laws at the present moment—rejoice in an opportunity to work for “progressive political action” under a leader who has, since 1898, successfully led a progressive moment inevitably expanding through a quarter of a century. At this moment under his trained leadership, is taking place for the first time in the United States … a welding together of the forward-looking voters, whether they have called themselves Socialists or liberals, proletarians or agriculturists. They all have many experiences to report with reasons for success or failure. They hope under the leadership of this wise man—who combines so remarkably the abilities of the expert with those of the statesman—to integrate their cooperating experiences into a progressively efficient political activity.

Addams did her part in the campaign, but she lost another election. And so did Robert La Follette, coming in a disappointing third. Coolidge earned more popular votes than both of his opponents combined. It was an easy, breezy reelection for Coolidge, and America roared onward.

Four days after the election, Addams wrote Belle La Follette:

You and Senator La Follette have been in my mind so constantly during the past months that I feel as if I must write to tell you what a pleasure and inspiration it has been and to send to both of you an assurance of my unwavering devotion and affectionate regard. Hoping to see you next winter in Washington, I am always devotedly yours Jane Addams.

Jane Addams had already dusted off her hems from the campaign trail and gotten back to work.

Stacy Lynn
Associate Editor

Presidential Election: November 4, 1924

Calvin Coolidge (Republican)
Popular Vote: 15.7 million
Electoral College: 382

John W. Davis
(Democrat)
Popular Vote: 8.4 million
Electoral College: 136

Robert M. La Follette
(Progressive)
Popular Vote: 4.8 million
Electoral College: 13

Sources: Robert Marion La Follette (1855-1925), Richard Theodore Ely (1854-1943), Belle Case La Follette (1859-1931), all in American National Biography; Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 218-22; David P. Thelen, Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 184-85; “La Follette to 11,000 People; Stirs Campaign,” Chicago Tribune, Oct. 12, 1924, p. 1; Progressive Party Platform of 1924, The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara; Jane Addams Calendar, Oct. 11-Nov. 2, 1924, Jane Addams Papers Microfilm, Reel 30:730-31; Jane Addams to George Platt Brett Sr., December 12, 1906; Belle Case La Follette to Jane Addams, June 26, 1911; Eleanor Roosevelt to Jane Addams, May 20, 1924; Jane Addams to Ada Lois James, June 11, 1924, Jane Addams to Emily Greene Balch, June 21, 1924; Comments in Toronto on International Affairs, June 23, 1924; Why I Shall Vote for La Follette, September 10, 1924; Jane Addams to Belle Case La Follette, September 18, 1924; Illinois La Follette-Wheeler Campaign Committee to Jane Addams, et. al., October 8, 1924; Introduction for Robert M. La Follette, October 11, 1924; Address on La Follette Campaign, October 20, 1924; Declaration of Support for Robert La Follette, ca. October 24, 1924; Herman Louis Ekern to Mary Rozet Smith, October 25, 1924; Interview with the Newspaper Enterprise Association, November 1, 1924; Speech to La Follette-Wheeler Meeting, November 2, 1924; all in Jane Addams Digital Edition.

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Jane Addams and the Presidential Campaign of 1920

Spoiler alert: Jane Addams was not impressed with the Presidential Election of 1920, and neither am I.

Jane Addams, ca. 1920-1923 (Swarthmore College Peace Collection)

With the summer passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, all American women had the right to vote in the Presidential Election of 1920. This historic moment for women after a seventy-two-year fight for equal citizenship, which had begun at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, was the one bright side of a rather lackluster campaign season.

President Woodrow Wilson, whom Jane Addams had supported in 1916, had suffered a stroke in October 1919 and was not well enough to seek a third term. Just as well, probably, because a lot of Americans (and a big chunk of Congress) were sick of him and angry about his foreign policy to make the United States a force for democracy across the globe. Addams had agreed with Wilson’s support of the League of Nations, but she was disappointed with some domestic policies, particularly racial segregation in his administration. It is unclear if she would have supported his candidacy in 1920.

Jane Addams worked to get women to the polls in 1920, but she was underwhelmed by the candidates and refused to publicly support any of them. I wonder why. Let’s see:

The Democratic ticket of James M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1920 (Library of Congress)

To replace Wilson, the Democratic Party considered fifteen candidates at their convention in San Francisco and selected James M. Cox, the sitting governor of Ohio, on the forty-fourth ballot. Cox was a likable chap, supported woman suffrage, and had been a reformer-ish governor. He was a smart enough fellow and campaigned hard, covering some 22,000 miles, but he failed to garner much enthusiasm in the party or with the electorate. The most interesting fact of his candidacy was his selection of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as his running mate (but, of course, no one then knew what we know now about FDR). In the summer, Cox wrote to Addams seeking her advice on a speech. She wrote back from Colorado Springs where she was vacationing with Mary Smith:

“Your letter of July 21st was forwarded several times and finally reached me here ↑unfortunately↓ so late that it was impossible to avail myself of the suggestion which you so kindly made. May I thank you for your courtesy and will you permit me to express every good wish for a successful campaign.”

Republican candidate Warren G. Harding (Library of Congress)

At its convention, the Republican Party nominated Warren Harding on the tenth ballot. Harding, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, was a compromise candidate of the Progressive and conservative wings of the party. Harding was a cigar-chomping, hard drinking (this was Prohibition times, remember), and a notorious womanizer. Even some of his supporters called him a party hack, and he basically refused to campaign, assuming he had the election in the bag, which it turned out he did. He would win in a landslide.

Eugene Debs was running again on the Socialist ticket, from prison, where he was serving a ten-year sentence for sedition (giving socialist speeches).

The remaining candidates were:

Parley P. Christensen of the Farmer-Labor Party, a former Illinois Progressive.

Aaron S. Watkins of the Prohibition Party. He would get 188,709 votes, which I suspect represented the only people left in America who didn’t need a drink.

James E. Ferguson of the American Party (his own little racist party) was a former Texas governor, former because after he was indicted (and later found guilty) for the misappropriation of funds and impeached in 1917 he resigned. Interestingly, he served as the first First Gentleman of Texas when his wife Miriam “Ma” Ferguson served as governor (1925-1927, 1933-1935).

William Wesley Cox of the Socialist-Labor Party, who received 30,594 votes.

Robert Colvin Macauley, the one-issue, single-tax candidate, who received only 5,750 votes.

Too bad Theodore Roosevelt was dead.

It was an uninspiring slate of candidates and an uninspiring campaign.

In 1920, the United States was a little bit of a lost soul. Americans helped win a war, and then the country retreated into itself. They were still processing the horrific Flu Pandemic of 1918-1920. The population was politically divided. America was, as one presidential historian describes it, “seething with discontents.” Isolationists clashed with internationalists. Working people raged against the high cost of living and high unemployment. Industrialists and business people raged against government regulation. Progressives were frustrated by stalled reforms. Conservatives were mad about too much reform. All American women were now voting , and not everyone was happy about it. Racism was rampant in the north as well as the south, and immigrants from almost everywhere and Irish Americans, too, were blamed for America’s problems. People were, basically, at each other’s throats. Given the environment, the presidential campaign was mostly dull, although at one point opponents falsely accused Harding of having “Negro blood.” He brushed it off, probably with a shot of whiskey, and it didn’t make a difference at the polls. Harding suggested a return to normality (whatever that meant), and he gave some speeches in which he talked about normality, but he pronounced it normalty, which reporters changed to normalcy, so the campaign adopted the slogan “Back to Normalcy.” Some of the other campaign slogans that year were: “Down with Wilson,” “Convict No. 9653 for President,” and “America First.”

Some of this seems worlds away from now, and some of it sounds a bit too familiar. But no wonder Jane Addams kept her distance from the campaign. She had a settlement house and an international women’s peace organization to run. She decided that the best use of her power was to get women to exercise their right to vote. When asked about immigrant women and the vote, she offered this retort:

“There has been enough stirring up of political societies and prominent organizations interested in civic life. Stirring up more enthusiasm among these women leaders is not going to solve the problem of getting Chicago’s 600,000 eligible woman voters to the polls. The greatest number of Chicago women ever registered were 306,920 in the 1919 mayoralty election. We want the other 300,000 to show up at the polls.”

Jane Addams did not endorse a candidate in 1920. She did not campaign. But she made a plan to vote, and she voted (I’m guessing for Cox). And she helped get out the woman vote, too. We don’t always get the candidates we want. Sometimes the choices are lackluster. Sometimes distasteful. Sometimes the choice is crystal clear. ALWAYS, however, it matters that we exercise our right to vote in EVERY election.

Jane Addams’s Calendar

By Stacy Lynn
Associate Editor

Presidential Election: November 2, 1920

Warren G. Harding
(Republican)
Popular Vote: 16.2 million
Electoral College: 404

 James M. Cox
(Democrat)
Popular Vote: 9.1 million
Electoral College: 127		 Eugene V. Debs
(Socialist)
Popular Vote: 914,191
Electoral College: 0

Sources: Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 212-17; Allen F. Davis, American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 279; American National Biography; Harding and Cox, both in Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; James Middleton Cox to Jane Addams, July 21, 1920; Statement on the Foreign Women’s Vote, May 24, 1920; Jane Addams to James Middleton Cox, August 22, 1920, both in Jane Addams Digital Edition.

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Jane Addams and the Presidential Election of 1916

What a difference four years and a world war made in the political opinions of Jane Addams.

In the Presidential Election of 1912, Jane Addams had supported Theodore Roosevelt and the new Progressive Party, in part because Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Republican William Howard Taft refused to add a plank for woman suffrage to their platforms as the Progressives had done. Jane Addams was also a member of the Progressive Party because it was pledged to social and industrial reform. When Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated on March 4, 1913, Addams was chair of the Department of Social and Industrial Justice of the Progressive National Service, an organization established to further the reform planks of the Party’s 1912 platform.

President Woodrow Wilson’s policies almost immediately rankled progressive reformers. For example, federal departments instigated segregationist policies that threatened the established civil service system which had employed Black Americans since reconstruction. Racial justice activists, organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and social justice advocates like Jane Addams were watching. Just five months into Wilson’s administration, Addams headlined a small group of Chicago NAACP members protesting “against the adoption or extension of a segregation policy in the treatment of United States civil service appointees.”

Jane Addams (with Lillian Wald to her right) speaking with journalists in Washington, D.C., in 1916. (Image courtesy Library of Congress).

During the next four years, Addams would frequently challenge the policies of the Wilson Administration. She protested the deportation of famed British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, took Wilson to task for his refusal to support woman suffrage, and urged him to meet with striking workers. Jane Addams had earned a national reputation as a leading thinker in America, her opinions held widespread sway, and she had impressive power to influence politicians. Her role in the Progressive Party presidential campaign of 1912 had enhanced that influence, particularly in American politics, and Wilson was wise to keep his door open to Addams, through correspondence and face-to-face meetings.

In January 1915, Addams praised Wilson for his veto of a harsh immigration bill. She commended his early commitment to maintain U.S. neutrality, at one point calling him “a splendid man.” As the war in Europe escalated, Addams continue to urge the President to keep the United States out of the conflict and to negotiate for peace. Her establishment of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the spring of 1915 at The Hague gave her an international platform for her ideas about democracy, humanitarianism, war, and peace. And she used that pulpit to press her claims. When she requested a meeting with the President in March 1915, Wilson wrote:

“I need not tell you how glad I shall be to consider any suggestion with regard to a peace that you may care to submit to me, but I literally dare not seek an interview such as you suggest because I think I do not exaggerate when I say that requests of a similar sort come from different quarters at least every week and I should have to draw some distinctions which would become invidious before I get through with them, unless I granted interviews to all who applied for them in this matter. You will understand the delicacy this situation places me in. I should welcome a memorandum from you with all my heart.”

Laws of the State of Illinois (1912), 333.

In the spring and summer of 1916, as Republicans and Progressives considered strategies to defeat Wilson in the upcoming President Election, Jane Addams was convalescing (from an operation to remove a kidney) in Chicago and later in Bar Harbor, Maine. There would be no Progressive Party candidate for president, which likely dampened her appetite for the extensive campaigning she had done in 1912. But Addams would cast her first vote for president in the November election, as Illinois had granted women suffrage rights in June 1913. She would have to choose between Wilson, with whom she disagreed on a variety of issues, and Charles Evans Hughes, the compromise candidate of the progressive and conservative members of the Republican Party. Hughes was a former New York Governor (1907-1910), and President Taft appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1910. He was a moderate and would make few of the social reform promises Theodore Roosevelt had made in the 1912 presidential campaign.

Many progressive reformers and friends of Addams, including Louise de Koven Bowen whose home in which Addams was recuperating, planned to vote for Hughes. Theodore Roosevelt also supported Hughes, although his endorsement was decidedly lukewarm. President Wilson had supported some progressive measures and had sent Addams sixty long-stemmed American Beauty roses and get-well greetings. Still, Addams was always guided by her own conscience (and not a woman to be bribed by flowers, not even roses!). Jane Addams was a pragmatist. She carefully considered the two candidates. Like we often have in our modern elections, there were two imperfect options. Like we often have to do in our modern elections, Addams had to chose the lesser of two evils or the best of the middling.

On October 4, 1915, she made a public statement: “I am ill and not able to do any political work. I do not think I shall make any statement formally declaring myself. When I am asked the direct question about my vote I reply that I shall vote for Wilson.” Upon hearing of her support, Wilson sent Addams another impressive bouquet of flowers!

In the end, Jane Addams answered public pressure for a more verbose statement. And on the eve of the election, she explained herself in an article published in newspapers across the country. Introducing her declaration for Wilson, the Cincinnati Post wrote: “Jane Addams, Hull House, Chicago, is one of the world’s greatest women. In 1912 she was one of the most enthusiastic delegates to the Progressive Convention that nominated Roosevelt, and she supported him with all her ardor. That Jane Addams, whose sincerity and disinterestedness in the cause of the plain people are beyond question, gives her approval of the progressive laws enacted during the Wilson administration is of great significance.”

In her typical, clear-headed fashion, Addams explained herself:

“In 1912 many of us became members of the Progressive Party, not only because we believed that the correction of abuses inevitably developed by an uncontrolled industrialism should become a vital issue in federal politics, but also because we were convinced this modern type of remedial legislation could be accomplished only [through] a new party.

“Because of this belief I, at least, was quite unprepared for the distinctive period in American politics developed under the brilliant party leadership of President Wilson, when important federal measures were constantly passed for the national adjustment of nationwide problems.

“The present administration comes before the country with a social program that carries assurance because of a record of pledges fulfilled and a series of legislative achievements not equaled by any other administration. Prominent among its contributions to social and industrial justice are these:

“It has been established as a matter of law that labor is not to be considered a mere commodity or article of commerce.

“The seamen have been made free men and have been given the right, previously denied, to leave their employment when conditions become intolerable.

“The products of child labor have been excluded from interstate commerce.

“The most liberal workmen’s compensation law in the world has been enacted, affecting 400,000 federal [employees].

“The principle of the eight-hour day has been recognized.

“The rural credits bill and the Federal Reserve Act are contributions to the welfare of the entire country.

“This administration has made certain distinct advances toward more rational international relations:

“(a) Treaties with 30 nations have been signed which provide for a year’s delay and investigation of matters at issue before diplomatic relations are severed.

“(b) The repeal of the toll exemptions for American ships in the Panama Canal was a recognition of the principle of fair dealing among nations, which may be a first tentative step toward the internationalization of such highways of the sea as the Dardanelles, the Panama, Suez and Kiel canals.

“(c) Determination, in spite of almost insuperable difficulties and obvious blunders, to permit the Mexicans to work their way to self-government without recourse to the old imperialistic method of sending soldiers into a weaker nation, first to police property and then to become an army of occupation.

“(d) During the past four years the Pan-American Union has been strengthened and made more genuine. The importance of this is not merely local, for this union has seemed to distressed and bewildered students of internationalism in Europe to offer an example of the kind of machinery for international action which is not inconsistent with a sound nationalism.”

After the election, Wilson wrote Addams: “I wish I felt more worthy of the great trust imposed in me.”

Addams would stay the Wilson course, at least for a while. In just five months the United States would enter the war in Europe and test her support. On April 10, 1917, ten days after the United States declared war on Germany, she signed a petition to the President to demand his promise to uphold free speech and democratic values for all Americans during the war:

“We are deeply concerned lest America, having declared a state of war, should sacrifice certain safeguards fundamental to the life of her democracy.

“Several bills are now before Congress, or may come before it, seeking to punish those who designedly use military information for the benefit of foreign governments.

“With this purpose we, of course, are entirely sympathetic, but the administration of such laws, purposely made comprehensive, so as to include a wide range of possible offenders, may easily lend itself to the suppression of free speech, free assemblage, popular discussion and criticism.

“We believe that you would deem it essential, perhaps more at this time than at any other, that the truth should not be withheld, or concealed from the American people whose interests after all are the most vital consideration.

“Even by this time, we have seen evidence of the breaking down of immemorial rights and privileges. Halls have been refused for public discussion; meetings have been broken up; speakers have been arrested and censorship exercised, not to prevent the transmission of information to enemy countries, but to prevent the free discussion by American citizens of our own problems and policies. As we go on, the inevitable psychology of war will manifest itself with increasing danger, not only to individuals but to our cherished institutions. It is possible that the moral damage to our democracy in this war may become more serious than the physical or national losses incurred.

“What we ask of you, Mr. President, whose utterances at this time must command the earnest attention of the country, is to make an impressive statement that will reach, not only the officials of the federal government scattered throughout the union, but the officials of the several states and of the cities, towns and villages of the country, reminding them of the peculiar obligation devolving upon all Americans in this war to uphold in every way our constitutional rights and liberties. This will give assurance that in attempting to administer war-time laws, the spirit of democracy will not be broken. Such a statement sent throughout the country would reinforce your declaration that this is a war for democracy and liberty. It is only because this matter seems of paramount public importance that we venture to bring it to you at this time for your attention.”

Jane Addams was still watching, and she would keep on watching. She did not vote and forget about it. She stayed informed. She held her leaders accountable. She did not take her vote nor her political power for granted.

Presidential Election: November 7, 1916

Woodrow Wilson (Democrat)
Popular Vote: 9.1 million
Electoral College: 277

Charles Evans Hughes (Republican)
Popular Vote: 8.5 million
Electoral College: 254
Jeannette Rankin, 1916

One resounding victory for women in 1916 was the election of Jane Addams’s friend Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) of Montana to be the first woman to serve in the U. S. Congress.

Addams sent this telegram to Rankin: “Heartiest congratulations on your election and appreciation of what it means to all American women.” Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress; Congratulatory Telegram for Jeannette Rankin, November 12, 1916, Jane Addams Digital Edition.

Sources: Louise W. Knight, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 189-223; Neil Lanctot, The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams and Their Clash over America’s Future (New York: Riverhead Books, 2021), 206-10, 243-46, 485-87, 562-63; American National Biography. Jane Addams et al. to Woodrow Wilson, August 26, 1913; Jane Addams et al. to Woodrow Wilson, October 18, 1913; Summary of Jane Addams et al. to Woodrow Wilson, October 19, 1913; Statements on Wilson Administration, December 16, 1913; Jane Addams to Woodrow Wilson, May 20, 1914; Jane Addams to Woodrow Wilson, January 29, 1915; Jane Addams and John A. Aylward to Woodrow Wilson, March 4, 1915; Frances Alice Kellor to Jane Addams, February 5, 1913; Woodrow Wilson to Jane Addams, March 8, 1915; Report of Department of Social Service and Industrial Justice, Progressive Service Committee, April 23, 1913; Comments on President Wilson, May 12, 1915; Statement on Addams’s Tuberculosis Diagnosis, April 6, 1916; Harriet Park Thomas to Jane Addams, August 8, 1916; Woodrow Wilson is Good Enough for Jane Addams, October 4, 1916; Manifesto Issued by International Congress of Women Envoys, October 15, 1915; Jane Addams to Woodrow Wilson, October 26, 1915; Jane Addams Sees Progressive Aims Attained Thru President, November 3, 1916; Woodrow Wilson to Jane Addams, November 23, 1916; Jane Addams et al. to Woodrow Wilson, April 16, 1917, all in Jane Addams Digital Edition.

For an in depth analysis of Jane Addams’s ideas about peace in juxtaposition with those of Roosevelt and Wilson, see Neil Lanctot, The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Class over America’s Future and his Jane Addams Papers Project blog post, “Jane Addams and the Great War.”

Note: This post is the second in a six-part series discussing Jane Addams’s political alliances and engagement in presidential elections from 1912 to 1932.

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Jane Addams and the Presidential Election of 1912

TR and JA Enlisted for the Great Battle. Philadelphia Times, Aug. 8, 1912.

One of the most fascinating decisions Jane Addams ever made was to enter the fray of partisan politics and back Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party bid for the Presidency in 1912. She had endorsed political candidates before, but her participation as a delegate to the Progressive Party Convention in Chicago, her role in seconding Roosevelt’s nomination, and her stumping for and writing of a series of articles in support of the Progressive Party ticket and its platform was historic. It was a bold move for Addams. It raised many eyebrows. And although there is no evidence that it jeopardized Hull-House’s patronage, it went decidedly against the general philosophy of reform and charitable organizations whose livelihoods depended upon support from across the political spectrum.

When she stood on the stage of the Coliseum in Chicago at the Progressive Party Convention on August 7, 1912, Jane Addams explained to the cheering crowd why she supported Roosevelt and the Progressive Party:

I rise to second the nomination, stirred by the splendid platform adopted by this convention.

Pensacola (FL) News Journal, Aug. 13, 1912.

“Measures of industrial amelioration, demands for social justice, long discussed by small groups in charity conferences and economic associations, have here been considered in a great national convention and are at last thrust into the stern arena of political action.

A great party has pledged itself to the protection of children, to the care of the aged, to the relief of overworked girls, to the safeguarding of burdened men. Committed to these humane undertakings, it is inevitable that such a party should appeal to women, should seek to draw upon the great reservoir of their moral energy so long undesired and unutilized in practical politics—one the corollary of the other; a program of human welfare, the necessity for women’s participation.

We ratify this platform not only because it represents our earnest convictions and formulates our high hopes, but because it pulls upon our faculties and calls us to definite action. We find it a prophecy that democracy shall not be actually realized until no group of our people—certainly not 10,000,000 so sadly in need of reassurance—shall fail to bear the responsibilities of self-government and that no class of evils shall lie beyond redress.

The new party has become the American exponent of a world-wide movement toward juster social conditions, a movement which the United States, lagging behind other great nations, has been unaccountably slow to embody in political action.

I second the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt because he is one of the few men in our public life who has been responsive to the social appeal and who has caught the significance of the modern movement. Because of that, because the program will require a leader of invincible courage, of open mind, of democratic sympathies, one endowed with power to interpret the common man and to identify himself with the common lot, I heartily second the nomination.”

The following day, Roosevelt sent a long telegram to Addams:

“I wished to see you in person to thank you for seconding me. I do it now instead. I prized your action not only because of what you are and stand for, but because of what it symbolized for the new movement. In this great national convention starting the new party women have thereby been shown to have their place to fill precisely as men have, and on an absolute equality. It is idle now to argue whether women can play their part in politics, because in this convention we saw the accomplished fact and more-over the women who have actively participated in this work of launching the new party represent all that we are most proud to associate with American womanhood. …”

The week was a whirlwind, but Addams was, perhaps surprisingly, enjoying herself. She was all in on the campaign, writing her sister Alice Haldeman on August 9:

“You may have seen by the papers that I have become a full fledged ‘bull moose’ and this morning accepted a place on the National Committee. I am sending you a copy of speech of acceptance which really explains my attitude better than anything else does.”

On the surface, Jane Addams’s quick jump into partisan politics made a great deal of sense. The Progressive Party’s Platform was in alignment with her reform work and her values. In a series of syndicated articles she published in the fall campaign, she explained in great detail to the American public why the Progressive Party was right for women, workers, immigrants, and Black Americans. In one of those articles, Addams attempted to explain her conversion to partisan politics:

“When I try to write down the steps by which I became a Progressive, I am inclined to trace them first to the gradual discovery that philanthropic effort everywhere, is merging into civic effort. In fact the line between philanthropy and politics is so constantly changing that it is very difficult to know when the given step has been taken, which carried one from the first field into the second.”

Addams had come to understand that philanthropic work was, indeed, political work. By necessity, real reform required legislative force. Her alliance with the Progressive Party was rooted in that belief and, in her eyes, this new national political party stood soundly upon a foundation of reform. However, could Addams have supported the Progressive Party’s platform without jumping in with both feet? What made her go all in on Roosevelt, a man she had just two months prior called “wabbly” on woman suffrage? She had never before been involved in a presidential campaign. What was different in August 1912?

I cannot get into Jane Addams’s head, but I believe that the extensive woman suffrage campaigning Addams had done all spring in Kansas and Wisconsin inspired her decision to become a “Bull Moose.” She was frustrated and losing patience. As she wrote in an article in The Survey on June 1, 1912:

“The comfortable citizen possessing a vote won for him in a previous generation, who is so often profoundly disturbed by the cry of ‘Votes for Women,’ seldom connects the present attempt to extend the franchise with those former efforts, as the results of which, he himself became a member of the enfranchised class. Still less does the average voter reflect that in order to make self-government a great instrument in the hands of those who crave social justice, it must ever be built up anew in relation to changing experiences, and that unless this readjustment constantly takes place self-government itself is placed in jeopardy.”

It is true that when Theodore Roosevelt agreed to support an equal suffrage plank in the Progressive Party Platform and to personally support woman suffrage, Addams was willing to lend her reputation, her writing talent, and her valuable time to the presidential campaign. She recognized this historic opportunity to be part of a new reformed-minded national party that had a chance to win the election. Behind a seasoned politician like Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party would put the issues she cared about most deeply on the national stage. The party platform included fifteen distinct social justice issues that Addams had championed, from the prohibition of child labor to support for the eight-hour workday to the favor of labor organization. Most critically, however, was the Progressive Party’s pledge: “to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike.” For Addams, the plank of equal suffrage was more than icing on the cake, it was the imperative to ensure all the rest of the party’s aims. And so, even as she could not vote, she became a political animal, a dedicated Bull Moose for the presidential campaign of 1912.

Progressive Party Suffrage Plank, 1912

It is also true that Addams surprised herself by the excitement the campaign roused for her.  A day at Progressive Party headquarters in New York City in late September, making campaign telephone calls, was particularly fun for her. To put ala Teddy, Addams was deee-lighted to be a Bull Moose. En route to Indianapolis for a campaign speech, she wrote her sister on October 14: “I am quite enjoying my campaigning and especially my trip [to] N.Y.”

New-York Tribune, Sep. 26, 1912.

In addition to spending her summer vacation in Maine writing campaign articles, Addams served as chair of a Progressive party women’s committee in Chicago and as a member of the Cook County Progressive Committee.  She delivered speeches and attended campaign rallies in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin. She wrapped up a western campaign swing in Kansas City on November 4 and was back home at Hull-House for election day.

On the night of the election, when the results were in, Roosevelt wrote Addams from Oyster Bay:

“Now, my dear Miss Addams, I wish to tell you how very much your support in this campaign has meant to me personally. We have fought a good fight; we have kept the faith; we have gone down in disaster. Yet I certainly feel that it would have been wrong for us not to have fought exactly as we did. At any rate, you may be sure of one thing: I shall conscientiously do my best so to act in the future that you shall not feel regret that you supported me in this campaign.”

Jane Addams had no regrets. She wrote Roosevelt on November 20 that she hoped to see him the following week at a Progressive Party Meeting in New York City:

“Perhaps I may have an opportunity to tell you then the tremendous impulse the campaign has given to social reform measures in which I have been interested for many years, but which have never before seemed to become so possible of fulfilment as at the present moment. I had never dared hope that within my lifetime thousands of people would so eagerly participate in their discussion. I am sure you have been in a large measure responsible for this outcome, and I shall hope to have a moment to discuss the subject with you in New York.”

Theodore Roosevelt had lost the election, but Jane Addams had had one hell of a ride.

Results of the Presidential Election: November 5, 1912

Woodrow Wilson
(Democrat)
Popular Vote: 6.3 million
Electoral College: 435

Theodore Roosevelt
(Progressive)
Popular Vote: 4.1 million
Electoral College: 88

William Howard Taft
(Republican)
Popular Vote: 3.5 million
Electoral College: 8

Eugene V. Debs
(Socialist)
Popular Vote: 901,551
Electoral College: 0

Progressive Party Campaign Articles by Jane Addams (all available in the Jane Addams Digital Edition):

The Progressive Party and Safeguards for Working Girls, August-September, 1912

The Progressive Party and the Protection of Immigrants, August-September 1912

The Progressive Party and Woman Suffrage, September 1912

The Progressive Party and Organized Labor, September 1912

The Progressive Party and the Disinherited, August-September, 1912

The Progressive Party and the Negro, November 1912

The Steps by Which I Became a Progressive, September-October 1912

My Experiences as a Progressive Delegate, November 1912

Be like Jane Addams, phonebank for your candidate. Get informed. Get involved. And don’t miss out on the opportunity Jane Addams did not have in 1912, VOTE!

Other Sources: Lewis L. Gould, Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008); Sidney M. Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009); “‘Lady Moose’ Ready for Real Campaign,” The Inter Ocean (Chicago), Aug. 13, 1912, p. 4; “Progressive Women Campaigners in Town; Miss Jane Addams at Bull Moose Headquarters,” New-York Tribune, Sep. 26, 1912, 7; Jane Addams Diary,  Statement on Theodore Roosevelt, May 11, 1912; Votes for Women and Other Votes, June 1, 1912; Progressive Party Pamphlet, ca. August 5, 1912; Nominating Speech for Theodore Roosevelt, August 7, 1912 (version published in the Congressional Record, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. (Appendix), vol. 48, pt. 12, 564-65); Theodore Roosevelt to Jane Addams, August 8, 1912; Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, August 9, 1912; Theodore Roosevelt to Jane Addams, August 9, 1912; Jane Addams to Harold LeClair Ickes, September 27, 1912; Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt to Jane Addams, November 5, 1912; all in Jane Addams Digital Edition.

Note: This post is the first in a six-part series discussing Jane Addams’s political alliances and engagement in presidential elections from 1912 to 1932.

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Assistant Editor for the Jane Addams Papers Project Job Listing

We are hiring! The Project seeks a full-time, grant-funded Assistant Editor to join our work on the Project’s digital edition and on the Selected Papers of Jane Addams. Please share this opportunity with potential candidates in your networks.

The successful candidate will work in-person at Ramapo College of New Jersey, in Mahwah, NJ. This position is not eligible for remote work. The assistant editor’s responsibilities will primarily support work on the Jane Addams Digital Edition. Under the supervision of the Project Director, the Assistant Editor verifies transcriptions and metadata, supervises and trains student employees, conducts research, and assists in all phases of implementing editorial practice at the project. The Assistant Editor also assists with grants and project promotion.

For more information about the position see the posting linked below or email Cathy Moran Hajo chajo@ramapo.edu.

Application information: https://www.schooljobs.com/careers/ramapo/jobs/4583980/assistant-editor-jane-addams-papers-project?pagetype=jobOpportunitiesJobs

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Hull House and Benny Goodman

 

Benny Goodman featured in the Billboard 1943 Music Yearbook [Billboard, 1943]
Because of Hull-House’s strong association with social and political causes, it can be easy for many to overlook the settlement house’s invaluable contributions to the arts. In bustling early 20th century Chicago, Hull-House served as a prime location for artistic expression and development. The experimental art classes of Dorothy Loeb at the settlement allowed students to express themselves in free and abstract ways. Enella Benedict provided nearly fifty years of service for Hull-House’s Art School, which served as an educational beacon. The Hull-House Boys’ Band, as it turns out, would have a hand in producing some of Chicago’s greatest musicians, the great Benny Goodman chiefly among them.

While most know Benny Goodman for defining an entire era of American music and helping to popularize jazz for mass audiences, his story begins like that of many other Chicagoans born during Hull-House’s heyday. “The King of Swing” was just one of twelve children born to Jewish immigrant parents. The family was defined by severe poverty, living in a slum neighborhood not too far from Hull-House. Goodman would later say “Judging from the neighborhood where I lived, if it hadn’t been for the clarinet, I might just as easily have been a gangster.”

This escape through music was exactly what Goodman’s father sought to provide. He enrolled ten year old Benny and his brothers Harry and Freddy in the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue’s music lessons, but this quickly fell through. Luckily for the Goodmans, the Hull-House Boys’ Band, returning after a hiatus during WWI, had just reopened its doors. 

Hull-House Boys’ Band
[Hull-House Year Book, 1925]
Excitedly playing in his new uniform, Goodman developed his musical skills under the direction of James Sylvester, the Boys’ Band’s leader and educator. Despite the band’s repertoire being far from the sounds of jazz that would soon envelop Goodman, he received additional lessons from Franz Schoepp, a well-respected Chicago clarinet teacher. Goodman quickly reached the advanced classes of Hull-House’s music program, and was subsequently chosen by Sylvester to play in his 124th Regiment Field Artillery band. This  marked a pivotal point in Goodman’s musical journey, as it allowed him to play with professional musicians and make money in the process.

As his musical abilities exponentially improved, Goodman also relished in Hull-House’s other activities. He was an enthusiastic member of the settlement’s summer camp at the Joseph Tilton Bowen Country Club, gladly taking part in the two-week retreat every summer with his brothers. The woodlands of Waukegan, Illinois were in stark contrast to the dingy conditions of the Chicago ghetto which the boys were exposed to for most of the year.

Goodman went on to work with the likes of Bix Beiderbecke and Ben Pollack, as his music career reached even greater heights. The “King of Swing” never forgot his experiences at Hull-House, however, even returning to the settlement in 1940 to perform a free concert despite grueling sciatica pain in his leg.

Ultimately, it’s clear that Hull-House provided an invaluable service to Benny Goodman’s life, supplying him with music, education and socialization at a time when the difficult social and economic conditions of Chicago may have led him on a much different path. It’s crucially important to remember that Goodman was just one of countless individuals who benefited from the settlement’s services, and that organizations like Hull-House continue to have a hand in producing some of the world’s most distinguished artists and leaders.

Sources: Benny Goodman – The Official Website of the King of Swing. “Biography.” Estate of Benny Goodman. Accessed April 17, 2024; Firestone, Ross. “Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman.” Norton, 1993; Wilson, John S. “BENNY GOODMAN, KING OF SWING, IS DEAD.” New York Times, June 14, 1986. p. 1; 

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Reconsidering Jane Addams: A Portrait of Anti-Imperialism?

Jane Addams (1906) Oil on canvas, by George de Forest Brush. National Portrait Gallery.

Last July marked another passing of the Association for Documentary Editing’s yearly conference, this time taking place in Washington, D.C. Our nation’s capital has endless museums, attractions, and performances to explore, but there was only one woman I wanted to meet: Jane Addams, of course. The National Portrait Gallery houses the only known full-color image of Addams, painted by George de Forest Brush in 1906, the process of which was detailed in many letters that can be found within the digital edition. It took some work getting to her – the front desk claimed Addams’s portrait was not currently on display even though I had pulled up a location on the Gallery’s website. Not one to be told “no,” I scoured the nooks and crannies of the museum, looking for Jane nestled among peace activists, child or immigrant welfare reformers, or suffrage protesters. Instead, I found her with what I believed to be a sort of motley crew in a section titled “Republic or Empire?” that detailed America’s thoughts on Spain’s involvement in the destruction of the USS Maine. Her fellow portrait sitters included Samuel Clemens, W.E.B. Du Bois, Benjamin Tillman, Moorfield Storey, Queen Lili’uokalani, and Theophilus Gould Steward, gathered together under the roof of “anti-imperialism.” Since visiting the Gallery, I’ve been wondering: Does Jane Addams truly belong among these figures, or would she be better represented elsewhere?

Queen Lili‘uokalani (c. 1892) Oil on canvas, by William F. Cogswell. Hawai’i State Archives.

Imperialism was a weighted topic during the early Progressive Era. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 was convened specifically to regulate European colonization and trade in Africa, and to which the United States sent three diplomats to represent the American colonial empire. In 1887, the US renewed the Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, further increasing American economic influence in Hawaii. This renewal set the stage for the overthrowing of Queen Lili’uokalani, the last reigning sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in 1893. In the 1890s, the “Scramble for Africa” continued, with Egypt overtaken by the British in 1882, and Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda subjugated in the 90’s and early 20th century. These global events culminate in the Gallery section’s primary focus, the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine, then stationed in Havana Harbor, Cuba to protect American interests during the Cuban War of Independence.

Admittedly, I am not an expert in Progressive Era imperialism, but I like to think I know Jane Addams quite well. During the events discussed above, Addams was dutifully creating and strengthening Hull-House, a settlement house in Chicago modeled after Toynbee Hall of London. While she would go on to become active in global circles like peace and disarmament, Addams began her reform work locally, ensuring that marginalized citizens of the Nineteenth Ward were given uplifting amenities and a space to gather and learn. By our records, in the 1890s Addams wrote speeches and articles primarily about Hull-House, working women, and labor strikes – issues that stopped at the state level. Her interest in international affairs wouldn’t manifest fully until the onset of the first World War. Yet, despite all of this, Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1899.

It was in this same year that Addams gave her first signs of anti-imperial sentiments, with an article for the Central Anti-Imperialist League titled “Democracy or Militarism.” In it, she shows contempt toward countries with “an increased standing army, the soldiers of which are non-producers and must be fed by the workers.” She goes on to scorn the idea of “protecting the weak” as the excuse of a ruler to invade and subjugate outside nations, and shows disapproval toward the recent Spanish-American War. Even so, the last three paragraphs relate the then current state of Spain to events going on in Chicago rather than referencing any national affairs. After this, Addams didn’t discuss imperialism, anti or pro, much, if at all. The next time it was brought up in any meaningful way was a letter from Erving Winslow, Secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League, dated August 12, 1912 in which he chided Addams for supporting Theodore Roosevelt, a known imperialist, in the 1912 Presidential election.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1907) Gelatin silver print, by James E. Purdy. National Portrait Gallery.

The men Addams was grouped with were, from all accounts, more entrenched in the anti-imperialist scene than Addams ever was. Samuel Clemens was shown to be in favor of imperialism until about 1900. From then until his death in 1910, Clemens spoke and wrote often about his thoughts on the Treaty of Paris and the burgeoning Philippine-American War, and he was vocally critical of foreign countries’ imperialism as well. Du Bois extensively advocated for anti-imperialism, especially in Africa where, he argued, the Scramble for Africa was the foundation for World War I. Tillman was a staunch anti-imperialist, though his sentiments stemmed from the belief that white American lives were being wasted in the pursuit of militaristically subduing Filipino natives after the Spanish-American War. Moorfield Story was the Anti-Imperialist League’s second and last president from 1905-1920, and believed in a connection between America’s imperialistic endeavors and the country’s persecution of minority races. Queen Lili’uokalani had the most direct impact of the Age of Imperialism, deposed in 1893 by a group of sugar and pineapple businessmen. If Lili’uokalani was the most directly impacted, Steward was the least involved. Theophilus Gould Steward was primarily a clergyman, author, and educator, serving as a chaplain in the 25th Infantry Regiment, a racially segregated regiment, from 1891-1907, including serving in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and later in the Philippines. Steward wrote about the experience of the African American soldier, which did touch on their struggle for freedom and citizenship, but he did not directly compare their strife to Filipinos resisting American colonial rule.

Alice Hamilton (1947) Charcoal and chalk on paper, by Samuel Johnson Woolf. National Portrait Gallery.

If not here, then where would Jane Addams belong? The National Portrait Gallery holds over 20,000 pieces in their various collections – certainly some of those could fit better with Addams’s narrative. To represent women building Chicago, they own a portrait of Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve on a cabinet of a US President and a Hull-House volunteer, Alice Hamilton, a Chicago doctor and Hull-House volunteer, or Nettie Fowler McCormick, a Chicago philanthropist. In a wider perspective, outside her Chicago colleagues, there is Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, Martha Carey Thomas, second president of Bryn Mawr College, and Julius Rosenwald, co-owner of Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and philanthropist.

At the end of the day, Jane Addams’s portrait is no longer on display. Neither Clemens’s, Du Bois’s, Tillman’s, Storey’s, Lili’uokalani’s, or Steward’s portraits are currently available to view in person. I suppose that is the nature of a large collection of works with limited space to display them. Even so, this also means that Addams could be displayed along with any number of her peers at any point in time, perhaps to help tell an entirely different story about America’s elaborate history.

 

Victoria Sciancalepore

Assistant Editor

 

Other Sources: “Berlin West Africa Conference.” Encyclopædia Britannica, February 19, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-West-Africa-Conference; Hixson, William B. Moorfield Storey and the Abolitionist Tradition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1972; Jane Addams. “Democracy or Militarism.” Liberty Tracts, no. 1 (1899): 35–39; “Joint Resolution to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (1898).” National Archives and Records Administration, February 8, 2022. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/joint-resolution-for-annexing-the-hawaiian-islands; Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois. New York: H. Holt, 1993; “Maine Blown Up at Havana.” New York Tribune. February 16, 1898; Steward, Theophilus Gould. The Colored Regulars. Philadelphia, PA: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1904; Tillman, Benjamin. “Policy Regarding the Philippine Islands.” Congressional Record 32, no. 2 (February 21, 1899): 1529–33; Twain, Mark. “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” The North American Review 172, no. 531 (February 1901): 161–76.

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The Persona of Jane Addams

In 1908 when Jane Addams was speaking at a dinner in Chicago, she expressed her frustration with women who ridicule suffragists:

There are women who will laugh at us for our interest in the ballot, and who will then give absorbed hours, in the privacy of their rooms, to great electrical massage machines, face-steaming engines, curious masks and huge flesh-reducing mechanisms. An elderly woman of this type, after an afternoon’s struggle with all sorts of beautifying devices, dyed her hair a bright gold. “Do you think it makes me look younger?” she asked me. “Yes,” said I. “About three weeks.” —  Jane Addams’s Retort, June 7, 1908, Jane Addams Digital Edition (JADE).

Jane Addams and other serious suffragists in fabulous hats, 1912. Image courtesy of Swarthmore College.

Jane Addams had a sense of humor, but she rarely made such public jibes as she did in telling this story, which was reported in newspapers across the country. It is understandable, however, that the frivolous, gold-haired woman mocking the suffrage movement would annoy her. Jane Addams was a serious woman who devoted her time to making the world a better place; she had no time to worry that her hair was turning gray and that lines were forming on her face. In fact, it was her assertion that as the social health of the nation was concerned “gray-haired women” needed to “become a part of it.”

By personality in 1908 Jane Addams wanted to appear to the world as a well-groomed, modest, serious woman in sensible shoes. Yet it is also true that Jane Addams likely curated a persona designed to make her a credible witness to the social ills she sought to remedy, to make the public feel at ease with her, and to convince people in power to be more open to her ideas. She struck a brilliant balance that allowed her to be approachable to her working-class Hull-House neighbors and to fit in among her middle-class peers and wealthy patrons. She dressed to blend in, not to stand out; she presented a gentle, serious, thoughtful demeanor in order to convey authority.

She was simply dressed. Her attire was a soft gray in deep harmony with the woman. Her hair was combed straight back from her high forehead, and made into a knot on the back of her head. Her eyes are large and soft, and continually there is a little light flickering in them, which seems to bid children welcome to her side. She radiates kindness and a big heart’s offerings would inspire any child to do better. — Dedication of Bomberger Park, June 30, 1908 (The Dayton Herald), JADE.

What this large and visibly impressed crowd saw was a woman of medium height, with hair well streaked with gray, and dressed in a plain dark dress relieved only by a white lace collar. In a clear, well-modulated voice that carried to every corner of the room she started in, without preliminaries, to tell the story of the condition of the starving children of the European countries. — Feed the World and Have a League of Nations, February 19, 1921 (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle), JADE.

Recently, I read a 1915 Washington Times interview with Jane Addams, which at first made me start and then made me consider this idea that Jane Addams wore a mask she designed for the successful female Progressive reformer she became. Florence Yoder, the young journalist conducting the interview, who was perhaps wearing her own mask as a woman in a newspaper world of men, described Addams this way:

Unlike any other person in the world whom we have ever seen, Miss Addams regulates her facial expressions by exactly the opposite method employed by the average person. When speaking of something in which she is very much interested, there is little or no animation, her face becomes a mask, she looks in one direction only, glancing occasionally full into the eyes of the listener. Her voice is pitched very low, almost a monotone, yet one never misses a word. Then when something trivial comes up, something of almost childish interest, her face brightens she relaxes into a smile, and the mask does not slip on again until the more serious subject is revived. It is almost as if she were trying to subjugate her own personality entirely, eliminate herself entirely from the discussion, and let only the ideas with which she wishes to impress her listener, register on the brain. — Interview with Florence E. Yoder, Jan. 8, 1915 (Washington Times), JADE.

Until I read that description of her, it had not occurred to me that Jane Addams might have subdued her own personality for effect. I have long understood her as a shrewd debater, a calm mediator, and a respectful listener, all skills she practiced in order to obtain her reform objectives. I have studied her ability to form coalitions and build networks, which required humility as well as strength. But did Jane Addams regulate her demeanor and her appearance to strike an expected pose for the public?

Jane Addams, c. 1896. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Yes, I suppose she did. I missed it before, for reasons (or gendered perceptions of my own) I may need to explore later. But now the truth of Jane Addams as a public persona seems clear. The more I have thought about the idea, the more I think I understand the woman behind the persona. It is always rewarding for a historian to pinpoint moments in the lives of their subjects that suggest a shifting perspective, particularly exciting when it reveals a blooming of wisdom. I think it is possible Jane Addams learned the power of appearance in July 1896 when she met Leo Tolstoy. Although the thirty-five-year-old Addams was already a serious woman with seven years of leading Hull-House and a social settlement movement in America to her credit, it was her fashionable 1890s frock that Tolstoy noticed. Addams remembered the meeting in a 1911 article:

Tolstoy, standing by clad in peasant garb, listened gravely, but, glancing distrustfully at the sleeves of my traveling gown, which, unfortunately, at that season were monstrous in size, took hold of an edge and, pulling out one sleeve to an interminable breadth, said that there was enough stuff on one arm to make a frock for a little girl, and asked me directly if I did not find “such a dress a barrier to the people.” — A Visit to Tolstoy, Jan. 1911, JADE.

Jane Addams probably did not return to Hull-House after her trip to Russia and immediately begin constructing a persona more in keeping with her humanitarian work than those voluptuous sleeves. However, Tolstoy’s comments penetrated her psyche. That she told the story fifteen years after the meeting might be enough evidence to prove it. She admired Tolstoy and continued throughout her life to be inspired by his plain-clothes and calloused-hands example of living. Jane Addams was moved at that moment in time of her meeting with an idol to be mindful of the image she portrayed.

Jane Addams, 1914. Image courtesy of the Jane Addams Collection, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.

At the Jane Addams Papers, we are often frustrated by the quiet, guarded language Addams employed in her correspondence, which makes it hard to know her. Given the care she seems to have always taken with her language, it should not surprise me that by the time Jane Addams became a nationally known figure, a successful reformer and inspirational leader on the public stage, she would understand and make good use of a curated public persona. I had falsely assumed Jane Addams was naturally unassuming instead of shrewdly navigating public expectations about what a female reformer could be and should be and what a credible female reformer must look like. Today, the physical appearance and demeanor of public women is still fraught with gendered assumptions, therefore imagine the dilemma for educated, working women of Jane Addams’s generation. Given the success Jane Addams enjoyed as a reformer, particularly her ability to bridge gaps as wide as the difference between rural clubwomen and American presidents, of course she crafted a persona that paid the proverbial bills.

That there was a Jane Addams persona is not to say that Jane Addams the woman was not a genuine human being. Far from it. Jane Addams was, indeed, motivated by true empathy and real intentions to save the world. That she crafted a public persona simply means that Addams had a private self and a public self, and as a woman the divide between her two selves required special caretaking, especially as success in her line of work required the open hearts and wallets of others. In order to take her compassionate heart and radical ideas out into the world, she had to package that heart and those ideas for public consumption.

So how did the public view Jane Addams? Reformers and scholars and philosophers of her day respected her humanitarian experience, her intellect, and her ideas. Publishers clamored to sell her words and philosophy of reform. Politicians sought her support. Women’s and men’s organizations of all types across the country and around the globe wanted her to speak to their memberships. But how did people see her? What was it about the visage Jane Addams presented to the world that drew people in close enough to hear the important messages she wanted to convey?

After spending some time searching through the documents in the Jane Addams Digital Edition looking for descriptions of Jane Addams’s physical appearance, I was struck not only by the similarity of gendered language to describe her over the years but also by the ways in which those descriptions reflected what the observers themselves defined as appropriate for a woman like Jane Addams in the twentieth century’s first three decades.

Often the descriptions evaluated the womanliness of Jane Addams. As this Washington Herald noted:

These words were spoken in a singularly soft yet vibrantly earnest voice—the voice of a woman dressed in gray, with a face softened by the beauty of tenderness and hair becoming silvered by time. From the face glowed eyes magnetic and prophetic. — We Must Go Man Hunting, Apr. 26, 1908, JADE.

The Birmingham News in 1914 described Addams’s meeting with national suffrage leaders in Alabama as “very human and feminine,” and wrote of Addams:

Simply attired and her graying hair gathered into a loose coil at the back of her neck, this venerable woman was distinctly one of the plain people whom she champions, and the essence of American naturalness. — Speech on Woman Suffrage, Mar. 9, 1914 (The Birmingham News), JADE.

Last night at the Santa Fe railway station, any one observing the passengers who arrived from the west, might have failed entirely to see a motherly looking woman of medium height, with iron gray hair, descending from a Pullman, but once one saw the woman one knew that there was an individual who has been and is, the center of many big things. That person is Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago.  — Speech to the Shawnee County League of Women Voters, Jan. 13, 1922 (Topeka State Journal), JADE.

Jane Addams, 1926. Image courtesy of Swarthmore College.

Jane Addams is gray but she is not masculine nor is she old. Certainly she is not hard. She smiled when the strange thought was told her. “I don’t get enough physical exercise to be hard. No, I’m afraid I’m rather much too soft.” — Interview with Jane Addams, Jan. 30, 1925 (New York Times Magazine), JADE.

Warmth, understanding, keen judgment, shine from her blue eyes; warmth, motherliness, sympathy, strength, mark the face of this American woman who has been a pioneer in social service work and in work for International Peace. The thing which amazes a stranger who meets her is that she, while so many human problems are brought to her, can be so calm, so very calm. — Interview with Jane Addams for the Public Ledger Sunday Magazine, Dec. 1933.

Descriptions of Addams often reduced her, even while praising her:

Miss Addams is not a lecturer, but she is a very interesting talker. While she seemed perfectly at home on the platform her hands were busy all the time toying with her watch and the chain by which it was suspended from her neck. When she spoke she was forceful and energetic but her voice was almost lost in the bigness of the Auditorium. — Speech on Hull-House Work, Dec. 8, 1905 (Topeka Daily Capital, Dec. 9, 1905), JADE.

They offered convoluted or backhanded complements:

 A woman so completely wrapped in her work that her other side of life is forgotten, a trifle hardened by the nature of her work, which has brought her in contact with every kind of suffering, are the first impressions gained of Miss Addams, but as talk progresses the softness coming from a big heart creeps into her eyes, about her mouth and a charming elderly woman is revealed. — Interview with Baltimore Evening Sun, Apr. 21, 1922, JADE.

Or they shamelessly judged her physical appearance:

She is a most satisfying person, even in appearance. She has a wonderfully strong face, square as a man’s, and her hair, parted simply and combed back into a low knot, does not conceal a line of the finely modelled head. Her eyes, gray and set wide apart, meet one with an impassive directness even when her straight, firm lips are smiling. Her mouth belongs to a compassionate woman, her eyes to one who is not readily deceived. As for her chin, it is [chiseled] determination. — Interview with Jane Addams, Jan. 30, 1911; (Washington Evening World), JADE. 

She is a medium-sized, rather stout, but quick-moving woman. Her manner is brusque but kindly. The blue eyes which have looked upon so much of want and misery, wretchedness and desolation, are sweet in expression and win you to the woman as she talks in her quick, direct manner. Her hair, the style of wearing which she never has changed since she began to coil it up from girlhood’s braids, is parted, and drawn back loosely from a finely shaped forehead. She smiles easily with her eyes, but not with her mouth. Her mouth is grave and rather sad. — Interview with Jane Addams, Sept. 24, 1913 (Pittsburgh Press), JADE.

It is no wonder Jane Addams shunned the camera, relied on a couple of profile pictures for promotional images, and worked so hard to remain in character. No wonder either that observers were so keen to define her and to understand the extraordinary success of this incomparable woman. The St. Louis reporter who wrote this description in 1910, when Addams was serving her historic presidency of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, leaned toward the poetic:

Miss Addams has a strong personality, that makes itself felt at once through her vital intellectuality and her warm, genial manner. She is of medium stature with bright, luminous penetrating eyes of a blue-gray shade, which are keen and searching. An intense love of mankind pervades Miss Addams’ every word and look. Her prominent cast of features are accentuated by the soft gray with which her hair is just beginning to be sprinkled, and there is a certain nobility and distinction about her carriage which would mark her a central figure in any assemblage, even though her name and fame had not preceded her. It is easy to be led by such a woman, and in the great work to which she has dedicated her life, there is a special field for the qualities with which she is so richly endowed, in the uplifting and betterment of her fellow-beings. — Interview at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, May 22, 1910 (St. Louis Star & Times), JADE.

In 1928, Jane Addams wrote to an old friend: “I am sending you two pictures, one taken in Rockford in 1881 and one during the first years at Hull-House in 1891. You see I have always worn my hair the same way. A great lack of imagination.”

There was no lack of imagination about it.

Stacy Lynn
Associate Editor

Other Sources: Need a Woman Over Fifty Feel Old?, October 1914; Interview with Donna Risher, Jan. 12, 1920 (Des Moines Tribune); Jane Addams to Margaret Drier Robins, Mar. 6, 1928, all in JADE.

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Jane Addams and the Roosevelts

Eleanor Roosevelt, Elinor Morgenthau, and Jane Addams in Westport, Connecticut [Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, 1929]
Few families in the history of American politics have reached the acclaim and historical scrutiny bestowed upon the Roosevelts. From Theodore Roosevelt uttering the phrase “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose” after an assassination attempt at a speech — which has now been immortalized into American legend next to the likes of Washington crossing the Delaware — to the high-stakes World War II meetings between Franklin Roosevelt (FDR), Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, seemingly every detail from this prestigious family has been extensively documented and analyzed. 

The historical legacy of the Roosevelts is largely associated with progressive change and reform. Theodore Roosevelt’s administration marked the turn of the century with reforms such as the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, a new national park system, and support for labor unions. FDR’s new deal, though the subject of heavy debate among historians, ushered in Social Security for elderly Americans, provided direct federal relief for a struggling American public, and attempted to ensure labor rights through the Wagner Act. Eleanor Roosevelt, aside from her work as First Lady, would go on to serve an important role in the United Nations and assist in the creation of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Theodore Roosevelt on the campaign trail, 1912. Roosevelt’s candidacy brought out strong feelings, both for and against him. (Library of Congress).

Jane Addams’ relationship with Theodore Roosevelt, or “The Colonel” as he humbly preferred to be addressed, is well understood. Although Addams’ direct participation in politics was sparse, she supported and campaigned for Roosevelt’s Progressive Party bid for president in 1912. Addams didn’t shy away from disagreeing with The Colonel, however, such as over the treatment of African American delegates at the Progressive Party Convention. Despite these disputes, Addams greatly admired Theodore Roosevelt, declaring he “embodied the best things in American citizenship” upon his death.

But what about those other Roosevelts? One would infer that Addams would follow a similar path with Theodore’s distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), but the puzzle pieces are less clear. With her health on the decline by the 1930’s, Addams no longer embarked on the large speaking tours of previous decades, which makes some of her opinions difficult to dissect. Despite this fact, she did still offer a healthy handful of writings and statements on the issues of the day, such as the Great Depression and the Roosevelt Administration’s response.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1912 (Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery).

For starters, Addams and FDR knew of each other, at the very least, for many years. Way back in 1912, State Senator FDR invited Addams to speak in Albany about her social work, though it’s unclear if she ever took him up on the offer. FDR would climb the political ranks in the New York State Senate and the United States Department of the Navy before setting his eyes on New York Governorship in 1928. This same year, Addams would endorse Herbert Hoover for President — one of her few presidential endorsements throughout her lifetime. This was largely a result of Hoover’s relief work in Europe a decade prior. It’s unclear who Addams supported in 1932, but one can assume that the Democratic platform of repealing prohibition put Roosevelt in weaker standing in Addams’ esteem. To nobody’s surprise, Addams disapproved of this action from FDR once he assumed office, stating in July 1933 that the eighteenth amendment’s repeal would be “nothing short of a calamity.” 

She did, however, write to President-elect Roosevelt in December of 1932 endorsing Frances Perkins for Secretary of Labor. FDR’s appointment of Perkins would make her the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet and eventually one of the longest serving presidential cabinet members in US history. 

Jane Addams, at her desk. Miss Addams established the social settlement, Hull House, in Chicago in 1889 and founded the American Civil Liberties Union. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

Addams had positive things to say about the National Recovery Administration (NRA), one of the most noteworthy programs from FDR’s “New Deal.” She praised its efforts to end unemployment and ensure minimum wages, and spoke to the value of business practices being placed on a higher standard as a result of the NRA. Addams described the struggles of the average city workman during the Great Depression, and hailed “That the NRA has come to his rescue fills many of us with sincere gratitude.”

Despite this praise, Addams always maintained a critical eye. She asserted that the NRA “demands careful study” and that the issue of unemployment was complex, requiring greater effort than federal relief alone. While Addams generally supported government assistance, she was always quick to stress the additional importance of the work from community members, private citizens, and social workers. Addams described the importance of this supplementary social service in another writing from the same year, stating “The public relief work is concerned largely with food and clothing and, unhappily, not always with shelter. Our supplementary social services are, perhaps, more necessary simply because people’s lives have been saved by governmental funds and they are distressed about it.”

The New Deal also established the Social Security program, providing welfare and benefits to senior citizens as well as additional unemployment insurance. Addams wrote considerably in favor of old age security in the later years of her life and certainly would’ve had praise for the Social Security Act. Sadly, Addams died three months before the legislation was passed.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Addams and Eleanor Roosevelt had immense mutual respect for one another and offered the highest praise and flattery for each other. In January 1933, Addams introduced Eleanor before a speech at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, and sang endless praises for the incoming First Lady. Addams commended her work with the Women’s Trade Union League, the Foreign Policies Association of New York City, and the Woman’s City Club in New York. She also praised her work in education and her Hyde Park furniture and crafts shop, Val-Kill Industries. Addams aptly added in her remarks “I am sure that some of you listening to my even incomplete list of Mrs Roosevelt’s interests and activities must have been reminded of the abounding energy and unflagging concern for human affairs exhibited by another distinguished Roosevelt, and that you rejoice with me that such a spirit is once more to be domiciled within the White House.”

Eleanor Roosevelt would go on to have a pioneering and invaluable career in the White House and with the United Nations, breaking gender barriers and becoming one of the most influential women of her time. By helping to establish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in many ways she continued and honored the work which Addams devoted so many years of her life to. 

In the final month of her life, Addams was the guest of honor at a Washington D.C. dinner. Here, Eleanor Roosevelt labelled Addams “the greatest living woman.” She also reflected on Addams’ life years later, stating “Miss Addams served humanity so well she should never be forgotten. Anyone who knew her, will remember the inspiration of her presence, but her spirit went far beyond the individuals who knew her. It affected the thinking and living of people all over the world.”

While Addams and the Roosevelts played small roles in each other’s lives and history, they collectively played large roles in the ever-ongoing duty of creating a better world through progressive change.

Sources: Smithsonian Magazine. “The Speech That Saved Teddy Roosevelt’s Life“. Smithsonian Magazine. Accessed January 16, 2024; PBS. “Teddy Roosevelt and Progressivism.” PBS. Accessed January 16, 2024; Addams, Jane, “Statement on the Death of Theodore Roosevelt, January 6, 1919,” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed January 16, 2024; Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, “Papers As New York State Senator.” 1910-1913; Addams, Jane, “Statement Endorsing Herbert Hoover for President, October 1928,” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed January 16, 2024; Addams, Jane, “Statement on Prohibition, July 8, 1933,” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed January 16, 2024; Addams, Jane, “Statement Endorsing The Appointment of Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor, December 8, 1932,” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed January 16, 2024; Addams, Jane, “Second Draft of Address on the National Recovery Administration, September 1933,” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed January 16, 2024; Addams, Jane, “Women’s Part in Revealing Human Needs, October 30, 1933,” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed January 16, 2024; Addams, Jane, “Remarks Introducing Eleanor Roosevelt at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, January 20, 1933,” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed January 16, 2024; United For Human Rights. “CHAMPIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (1884 –1962)” accessed January 16, 2024; Barber, Elizabeth. “Jane Addams, world’s ‘best-loved woman,’ honored with Google doodle.” The Christian Science Monitor, September 6, 2013.

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Jane Addams on Television

During her lifetime, Jane Addams was famous throughout the United States and around the world. Known for Hull-House and as the leader of the American social settlement movement, respected for her wide-ranging reform activities, and beloved for her commitment to economic, political, and social justice for all, Addams became a household name. Reformers, educators, politicians, and the public looked to her for inspiration and for answers to the social and economic problems of the Progressive Era.

However, although she won the Nobel Peace Prize, published eleven books and hundreds of articles, and led consequential movements to restrict child labor, gain suffrage for women, improve the lives of immigrants, and change America ideas about poverty and the role of government in the protection of society’s most vulnerable people, she is grossly underappreciated today. I have stopped counting the number of people who ask me who Jane Addams was when I tell them I edit her papers and study her life. Although I take these opportunities to tell them about her or share a great story about her work, it makes me sad that Jane Addams is not a household name today. It is depressing that Americans can name the Kardashian sisters but have never heard of Jane Addams.

In our time of increasing inequality, rising hostility toward immigrants, and rampant civil discord, we need Jane Addams. We need inspirational figures who live or have lived in the service of others, not to themselves. Every day as I edit her papers, I am struck by how applicable the work and words of Jane Addams are today. Her dedication to equality and peace and her philosophical understanding of the connection of democracy and humanitarianism are still relevant, as is her talent to see need and suggest solutions, to mediate vast distances between cultures and ideas, and to inspire people to join her efforts to make a city, a country, or the world a better place. Her world view and ideas and her commitment to democracy are still imperative. As Charlene Haddock Seigfried writes: “The need to make democracy a vital way of life was a constant theme for Addams and one that challenges us yet again.”

The words of Jane Addams are still relevant:

Like what she wrote in defense of Russian Jews in Chicago in a 1908 article in Charities and the Commons: “In fact the more excited and irrational public opinion is, the more recklessly newspapers state mere surmises as facts and upon these surmises arouse unsubstantiated prejudices against certain immigrants, the more necessary it is that some body of people should be ready to put forward the spiritual and intellectual conditions of the foreign colony which is thus being made the subject of inaccurate surmises and unjust suspicion.”

Like the question she asked in 1913 of white Americans about what they had done or failed to do in pursuance of equality for Black Americans: “How far are we responsible that their civil rights are often rendered futile, their political action curtailed or frustrated, their equality before the law denied in fact, business and industrial opportunities withheld from them and, above all, that for twenty-five years they have been exposed to the black horrors of lynching?”

And the alarmed observation she shared in a speech at an American Sociological Society meeting in Chicago in 1919: “… for there is no doubt that at the present moment one finds in the United States the same manifestation of the world-wide tendency towards national dogmatism, the exaltation of blind patriotism above intelligent citizenship, as that evinced elsewhere.”

I do not meet historians of American history who are ignorant of her wide-ranging reform work. Illinois school children learn about Jane Addams when they study the state’s history; and Jane Addams is a popular subject for history students who participate in National History Day. The Jane Addams Papers Project is making her correspondence and writings freely available (Jane Addams Digital Edition) and has created Jane Addams lesson plans for high school teachers as well as AP history and National History Day resources (Jane Addams Exhibits). All of Jane Addams’s books are in print and/or available online. There is also a growing number of books about her life and her work, written from myriad perspectives, most notably Erik Schneiderhan’s The Size of Others’ Burdens: Barack Obama, Jane Addams, and the Politics of Helping Others (2015); Neil Lanctot’s The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams and Their Clash over America’s Future (2021); and The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams (2023).

There is no excuse to be ignorant of Jane Addams.

Especially now.

Because Jane Addams is now on television.

In October, WTTW, a PBS member television station in Chicago, premiered a Chicago Stories episode on Jane Addams. Jane Addams: Together We Rise examines the importance of Jane Addams in Chicago and of Hull-House as a laboratory for reform. It also chronicles the significance of Jane Addams as the leader of an incomparable group of women who became leaders in their own rights of a variety of Progressive Era organizations and activities to improve the lives of children, women, immigrants, and the working poor. When the producer Rachel Ruiz contacted the Jane Addams Papers Project about the documentary, we were thrilled and happy to assist. Our Project is based in New Jersey, but I live in Illinois and work remotely. It made sense for me to be the editor on camera for the film, although I was, at first, apprehensive.

Jane Addams was shy about having her picture taken, and I am shy about appearing on camera.

As an editor of historical documents, I spend much of my professional life in solitude, reading letters and speeches, straining over handwriting, solving the mysteries of vague references, and contextualizing the words of my subjects. I do not teach and have little interaction with students. And, since Jane Addams is under appreciated, there are few opportunities for me to interact with the general public. During the twenty years I edited Abraham Lincoln’s papers, I gave numerous public presentations every year, hosted a long parade of visiting scholars, attended untold Lincoln events, and appeared in several Lincoln documentaries. It was often a bit much, especially in February for Lincoln’s birthday. I cannot lie. I prefer the quiet and the anonymity of my life as an editor of the Jane Addams papers.

But because I cannot lie, I also have to admit it was pretty cool to have a film crew in my Jane-Addams-era bungalow and spend the day talking about Jane Addams. The novelty of the experience for me (and my two little dogs, one of whom made it into the film!) calmed my nerves about being under the blazing (unflattering) lights in front of a camera. Although it was terrifying a year later to preview the documentary the day before it aired, I am so proud and honored to have been part of it.

Jane Addams allowed photos of herself to be taken and dispersed for the good of her causes; and so, I was happy to participate in a documentary about her life for the good of our cause at the Jane Addams Papers Project: to make her work and her words accessible to a society that needs her now more than ever. Jane Addams’s life was consequential, her work was historically significant, and she still matters. Her extraordinary example of compassion, tolerance, civility, and the belief in the promise of democracy to lift up all people, is still relevant nearly eighty years after her death. We need American heroes right now, and few are more perfect for our troubled times than Jane Addams.

Therefore, dear readers who already know the worth of Jane Addams, go forth and spread the Jane Addams word. Watch the documentary, read her books, and tell your friends, family members, teachers, students, and community leaders to do the same.

Stacy Lynn, Associate Editor

 

 

 

Books by Jane Addams (with links to first and early editions of them online)

Democracy and Social Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1902); reprinted with introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

Newer Ideals of Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1907); reprinted with introduction by Berenice A. Carroll and Clinton F. Fink. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: Macmillan, 1909); reprinted with introduction by Allen F. Davis. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.

Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes (New York: Macmillan, 1910); reprinted with original illustrations by Norah Hamilton and introduction and notes by James Hurt. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1912); reprinted with introduction by Katherine Joslin.  Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

The Long Road of Woman’s Memory (New York: Macmillan, 1916); reprinted with introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

Peace and Bread in Time of War (New York: Macmillan), 1922); reprint with introduction by Katherine Joslin. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House. (New York: Macmillan, 1930).

The Excellent Becomes the Permanent (New York: Macmillan, 1932).

My Friend, Julia Lathrop (New York: Macmillan, 1935); reprinted with introduction by Anne Firor Scott. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Forty Years at Hull-House; being “Twenty Years at Hull-House” and “The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House.” (New York: Macmillan, 1935).

Sources: Charlene Haddock Seigfried, “Foreword,” in Patricia M. Sheilds, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), xvi; Neil Lanctot, “Jane Addams and the Great War,” Jane Addams Papers Blog, Dec. 21, 2021; from the Jane Addams Digital Edition: Jane Addams, “Chicago Settlements and Social Unrest,” Charities and the Commons, 20 (May 2, 1908): 155-66; Jane Addams, “Has the Emancipation Act Been Nullified by National Indifference,” The Survey, 29 (Feb. 1, 1913): 565-66; Jane Addams, “Americanization,” Dec. 29, 1919.