About This Book

     "... I recall an incident which must have occurred before I was seven years old, for the mill in which my father transacted his business that day was closed in 1867. The mill stood in the neighboring town adjacent to its poorest quarter. Before then I had always seen the little city of ten thousand people with the admiring eyes of a country child, and it had never occurred to me that all its streets were not as bewilderingly attractive as the one which contained the glittering toyshop and the confectioner. On that day I had my first sight of the poverty which implies squalor, and felt the curious distinction between the ruddy poverty of the country and that which even a small city presents in its shabbiest streets."

About Jane Addams

Illinois native Jane Addams was the daughter of a prosperous Quaker businessman. She was the founder and the backbone of Hull House, and from its base, together with labor and other reform groups, she worked tirelessly for social reform. She was involved in the passage of many early labor laws, including the abolition of child labor, the establishiment of juvenile court law, tenement house regulation, an eight-hour working day for women, factory inspection, and workmen's compensation. A well-known pacifist, she was a tireless worker for social justice, upholding the rights of immigrants, Blacks, and labor, and she supported many women's and children's causes. In 1931, she received the Nobel Prize in recognition of her pioneering social work.