Jane Addams and Social Ethics Considering immigration at the turn of the century

Jane Addams’s Life (1860-1935)

Jane Addams was born September 6, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, the youngest of 20 children. Her mother died when she was just two years old, and her father John, to whom Jane was very close, was a politically active man, serving as Illinois State Senator for 15 years.

In 1931, Addams became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She is associated with pragmatist philosophy.

Function of Settlement Houses

The first settlement house was Toynbee Hall in an East London slum, established in 1884. The purpose of these houses was for people of various social classes to live together and share their knowledge and cultural experiences, especially with impoverished and poorly-educated working class folks.

Settlement houses were particularly appealing to young people who wanted to bridge class barriers, help the poor, and implement ‘social Christianity.’

Turn of the Century Immigration

Between 1850 and 1930, over 30 million Europeans immigrated to the United States, fleeing either religious persecution or political and economic hardships in their home countries.

For many immigrants, the American experience was hardly a welcoming one. Most took dangerous industrial jobs for low wages and had to live in cramped tenement-style apartments of two rooms for a whole family. Because of low wages, the children of immigrants often had to work in similarly dangerous jobs under poor conditions. The unsanitary conditions in tenement buildings and neighborhoods resulted in the spread of diseases like cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, and smallpox.

Anti-Immigrant Reactions

Founding Hull House

Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House in Chicago in 1889, the first settlement house in the U.S. Addams at first paid for all of the expenses of upgrading and opening the house as well as the operating costs, but Hull House was eventually able to function by donations alone.

Eventually, 25 women lived in the house, and at the height of its popularity and success, Hull House was visited by around 2000 people per week!

"Hull House 2" by Zagalejo - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hull_House_2.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Hull_House_2.JPG

Addams’s Successes

Hull House became a center for research, study, and debate as well as a center of culture in Chicago. It included a night school for adult students, a public kitchen, art gallery, gym, music school, theater, library, meeting rooms for discussion, and an employment bureau.

In addition to making social services and cultural events available to the largely immigrant population of the neighborhood, Hull House also trained young people in the field of social work.

Excerpt from Democracy and Social Ethics

“[W]e all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have "arrived" when in reality we have not yet started.”

“All about us are men and women who have become unhappy in regard to their attitude toward the social order itself […] all are increasingly anxious concerning their actual relations to the basic organization of society. The test which they would apply to their conduct is a social test. They fail to be content with the fulfilment of their family and personal obligations, and find themselves striving to respond to a new demand involving a social obligation.”

Democracy and Social Ethics (cont.)

Addams argues that “the contribution they would make is toward a code of social ethics” because there is “a sense of divergence between their consciences and their conduct.”

What does she mean by this?

According to Addams, many of these unsatisfied men and women possess an “eagerness for a wider acquaintance with and participation in the life about them.”

How might this sentiment relate to development of settlement houses?

Democracy and Social Ethics (cont.)

“We slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from selfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith.”

What is Addams’s understanding of democracy? How does it differ from how we might typically think of democracy?

Democracy and Social Ethics (cont.)

Concerning people who are selfish, Addams writes that they share a common quality: “the conviction that they are different from other men and women, that they need peculiar consideration.”

However, rather than criticizing the selfish person’s inherently selfish nature, Addams instead argues that we should blame them “not for the will which chooses to be selfish, but for a narrowness of interest which deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere, and we say that they illustrate the danger of concentrating the mind on narrow and unprogressive issues.”

Is Addams’s assessment of selfishness convincing? Why or why not?

Addams’s conclusions about democracy and ethics

Addams concludes that “the identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics.” She adds that rather than offering advice about the problems she outlines in the book, she can only be sure that “the cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy,” suggesting that democracy is a process.

What do you think it means to think of democracy as a process rather than an end result that is achieved?