Addams, Jane
Addams, Jane (1860–1935), American social reformer, settlement house founder, pacifist, and writer.Addams was born 6 September 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. Heir to her father's political sensibilities, Jane Addams's early heroes were Abraham Lincoln and Giuseppe Mazzini. A member of the first generation of college women, she found a way to put her social gospel and piety directly to work with the founding (with Ellen Gates Starr) of Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago's immigrant ghetto. In 1889, Addams claimed that democratic political governance was, in fact, a form of civic housekeeping: she became a leading social reformer of the era and a founder of modern social work.
Jane Addams's world was turned upside down with the outbreak of World War I. Her defense of radicals and anarchists, her brave and often lonely devotion to pacifism and opposition to “the idea of...
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