Author: ADDAMS, Jane
Title: The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House. September 1909 to September 1929. With a Record of a Growing World Consciousness
Description: New York, The Macmillan Company, 1930. First Edition. Hardcover. Illustrated with drawings by Norah Hamilton and Morris Topchevsky. SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper: "'Compliments of the author'/Jane Addams/Hull-House/Chicago." Uncommon in dustwrapper. Slight offsetting to endpapers from dustwrapper. Bright, close to Fine in a lightly soiled, Very Good dustwrapper with some edgewear Jane Addams (1860-1935), American settlement house founder and social reformer, was born to a well-off family in Cedarsville, Illinois. Though she had hoped for a degree from Smith College, her father insisted she attend the Rockford Female Seminary. After graduation, she attended the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia but withdrew due to a chronic spinal illness. After a successful convalescence, she toured Europe in 1883 and 1887 where she was deeply affected by her experiences with the urban poor causing her to undertake a thorough study of the living conditions of the working poor. She vowed to create an American version of the settlement houses she had visited. In 1889, together with lifelong friend Helen Starr, she launched Hull House, a sanctuary offering physical, financial, medical, and legal protection to Chicago's urban underclass. By 1893 Addams had opened or inspired 40 other such local clubs, including nurseries, dispensaries and boarding houses, all based at Hull House and devoted to providing higher standards of care than had ever been offered to America's poor, predominantly female at this time. By the late 1890s Addams no longer had to self-fund her endeavors, but could depend on assistance from wealthy Chicago women. With such backing, Addams, along with Alice Hamilton, Julia Lathrop, and Edith and Grace Abbot, among others, effected not just change in their local community, but lobbied for legislative intervention. Due in large part to their efforts, Illinois passed its first factory inspection act in 1893 and Chicago established the first juvenile court in the United States in 1899; in addition, the succeeding years saw Hull House influence in political battles for child labor laws, limitation on working hours for women, improvement in welfare procedures, recognition of labor unions, protection of immigrants, compulsory school attendance, and industrial safety. Addams's battles occasioned opposition from conservative quarters, and her voluble opposition to the Great War won her no friends, but her local infamy was ultimately overwhelmed by her international reputation for pioneering good works. Addams's local community work led her into political activism on a national and even global scale: in 1909 she became the first female President of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections; in 1911, the first head of the National Federation of Settlements and Vice-President of the National American Women Suffrage Alliance (1922-14); and in 1912, a vocal member of the Roosevelt for President campaign. In 1915 Addams became Chairman of the Woman's Peace Party and President of the first Women's Peace Congress at the Hague; in 1919 she presided over the second Women's Peace Conference in Zurich, and remained its president until her death; and in 1920 she became a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. During the following decade she pursued many of these causes with vigor and a degree of success. In 1931 Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in forming the first Women's Peace Party, along with Nicholas Murray Butler. Today the most widely-read of her copious publications are her two memoirs, TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE, published in 1910 and her most successful book then as it is now; and its less optimistic sequel, THE SECOND TWENTY YEARS AT HULL HOUSE, published in 1930.

Keywords: Signed, Nobel Peace Prize, Social Reform, Women's Movement, Women's Suffrage Movement, Women's Literature Signed Nobel Peace Prize Social Reform Women's Suffrage Movement


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