American Decades
Addams, Jane 1860-1935
REFORMER; PEACE ACTIVIST; FOUNDER OF
HULL HOUSE
Background.
Jane Addams was best known for her role as a leader of the settlement-house movement in the United States and as the founder of Hull House in Chicago. But she was also a prominent peace activist, an ardent campaigner for women's suffrage, and one of the intellectual leaders of the progressive movement. Born to a wealthy businessman and Illinois state senator and his wife, she graduated from Rockford (Illinois) Seminary in 1881. Addams then attended the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia, but after a year she had to drop out for health reasons. For seven years she searched for something meaningful to do with her life, and finally found it on a trip to Europe. For young women of Addams's background, a trip to Europe was intended as the cap-stone of their cultural education, the final preparation for lives as wives, mothers, and club women. But Addams, as...
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1900's Lifestyles and Social Trends
