August 28, 2013 • 23 mins
Jane Addams was a leader and advocate, especially for the working poor - but her work really boiled down to a better quality of life for everyone. Part two covers her life beyond Hull House, controversial war stance, Nobel Prize and legacy.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tracy Wilson and Illy Crying. Today we're going
to continue on with part two of our episode on
Jane Adams. Jane Adams was just an astounding leader and advocate,
(00:25):
especially for the working cour but a lot of her
work really boiled down to building progress and a better
quality of life for everyone. And as we talked about
in the previous episode, she helped found Hull House, which
gradually added activism and advocacy to its overall mission of
helping to improve the lives of immigrants and the working
(00:47):
corps in Chicago. But Jane herself also held a number
of positions and spearheaded all kinds of social reforms during
her life. And while much of this work led to
her being one of America's most beloved progressive leaders, her
anti war work before and during World War One also
drew lots of scorn and ire. So in this episode,
(01:11):
we're going to talk about her achievements that weren't quite
so directly tied to Hull House, and some of the
more recent scholarship on Jane Adams has actually focused on
her work as a philosopher. Until the ninety nineties, most
of the writing about philosophy and the progressive era really
focused on John Dewey and William James and other men,
while Jane was viewed more as a practical arm of
(01:33):
their philosophical concepts. But more recent scholarship about her writings
has really approached her as a philosopher in her own right.
Hers was a pragmatist approach, combining feminism and social improvement
and always relying on a cooperative effort. When you look
at the overwhelming number of positions that she held, and
(01:54):
all the awards and recognitions that she received, and all
the work that she did, it can seem deceptively liked.
In order to do all of this, she would have
had to just take the bull by its horns and
strong arm people into agreeing with her. But in fact,
and virtually all of her dealings, Jane really worked as
a peacemaker. She was a mediator and an advocate. She
(02:17):
would speak stridently and sometimes aggressively about conditions that she
wanted to change, but when it came to actually working
to make those changes, she would really focus first on
the places where her views overlapped with her opponents. This
is the smartest way to approach conflict I have ever
heard of. It made her a hugely effective advocate for
(02:38):
incremental and gradual change that was acceptable for everyone involved,
and according to her theory, it really could make a
real lasting change. Key parts of this philosophy related to
people taking an active part in democracy and changing their
own circumstances. So it was while she she did make
some big changes in her life, this was not a
(03:00):
ace of like getting in someone's face and screaming at them.
It was a case of finding common ground and working
from there. It was kind of like slow burn reform.
She really felt like, if we are going to have
this change last, we have to take little steps that
we all agree on, that we all agree on, and
do it slowly. And the fact that she was able
(03:21):
to convince people to do as many things that they
did that just I find that to be remarkable. So,
apart from hull House and her founding of it, what
else did she work on Tracy, Well, let's start when
she became garbage inspector for the nineteenth ward in the
Near West Side. So she had been concerned about how
(03:41):
disgusting the neighborhood was I do not mean that to
be disparaging to the neighborhood. It was full of rats
and garbage. It literally had a trash problem. Yeah, And
and she had applied to be a trash remover, you know,
a garbage collector, and Hull House actually had its own
garbage incinerator installed. Has the trash problem in the neighborhood
(04:01):
was so bad um the city elected not to hire
her as a garbage collector, But she pursued this garbage
inspector post, and once she was in it, she took
big strides to make sure that the garbage was collected
regularly and safely and then disposed of properly. Then in
nineteen o two, Mary Kenny O'Sullivan, who had been at
(04:23):
Hull House resident, teamed up with William English Walling to
form the Women's Trade Union League. And at the time,
women could not join the American Federation of Labor, So
the Women's Trade Union League formed to fight for issues
like better pay and working conditions and women's suffrage, and
Jane Adams served as the first vice president of the organization.
In nineteen o five, she was appointed to Chicago's Board
(04:45):
of Education and became chair of the School Management Committee.
She served on the Board of Education for four years.
And this is actually a situation where her path of
finding a middle ground really put her at odds with
some of the people she was vocating for. Her position
on teacher pay was that they should find a compromise,
but teachers pay was already extremely low, so a lot
(05:09):
of teachers felt like she was not doing enough and
that her effort to reach a compromise was a cop out.
In nineteen o nine, the Double A CP was founded.
We mentioned that in the previous podcast Briefly UH, and
it was in part as a response to a race
ryant in Springfield, Illinois the year before UH. The n
A CPS founders and first members included an interracial mix
(05:32):
of leaders and activists, and their goal was to ensure
that all people actually had the rights that were spelled
out in the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments and to end
racial discrimination, and Jane Adams was one of the people
who helped found that organization. That same year, she became
the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities
and Corrections, which later became the National Conference of Social Work.
(05:56):
This was one of the many things that laid to
Jane Adams being thought of as the mother of social work.
And another part of it was that she worked with
the faculty at the University of Chicago to help found
a school of social work there. Hull House in Chicago
became known as sort of the birthplace for social work
as a profession in America, and the world of social
(06:16):
work was not just to study social conditions as sociology does,
but to actually work through or work toward better conditions
for people, either as an advocate or by working with
individual people to try to make their situation better. In
the Chicago garment workers went on strike to protest the
(06:37):
low wages and poor working conditions that they were living with,
and this followed the implementation of a new bonus system,
which was viewed as pretty arbitrary in uh prone to
favoritism and a drop in the quote peace rate. That
workers were paid for each item that they finished. At
the same time, the people who could sow the fastest
(06:58):
were made pacemakers, and that was the bar that everyone
else struggled to reach. This strike started with just sixteen women,
but in the end workers were on strike and Jane
was one of the mediators of the strike, along with
Ellen Gates Starr and several other residents of Hull House.
As a side note, while striking workers are often h
(07:20):
get get a lot of disparagement in the media, today
public sentiment was really on the side of these workers
and families, doctors, pharmacies, grocery stores, all kinds of people
in businesses were donating to the striking workers to make
sure they could keep going while they were not being
paid for work. In nineteen twelve, Theodore Roosevelt formed the
(07:41):
Progressive Party also known as the Bull Moose Party, and
ran for president on its ticket. The Progressive Party's platform
drew pretty heavily from the National Conference of Charities and
Corrections Social Standards for Industry, which outlined things like eight
hour work days, improvement of housing conditions, prohibition of child labor,
and a federal system of accident and unemployment insurance, among
(08:04):
other things, all of which are very familiar to us
today but did not really exist at the time. Now
it's hard to imagine that, yes, and how scary and
difficult it must have been as a laborer. Well, and
this is an episode of I know that there are
many people who are opposed to some of the things
that Jane was fighting for today. But when you look
(08:26):
at the world that exists today versus the world that
was existing around the turn of the century, like we
were going from zero protections to some protections. Yeah, context
is key there, ye Uh. And Jane actually seconded Roosevelt's
nomination at the Progressive Party convention. She hadn't really uh
(08:46):
allied herself politically with anybody before. She had focused on
individual issues instead of political campaigns. Uh. And she had
to do this even though she fundamentally disagreed with some
of Roosevelt's politics, like his love of big business us
in his um some explicitly racist comments. Uh. Woodrow Wilson
actually won the election though. Yeah, So even though he
(09:07):
ran and she seconded his nomination, he did not win
that election. And it's going to point out that even
though she opposed some of his positions, it kind of
really fundamentally goes back to her idea of finding some
overlap of common ground and belief compatibility. Yeah. It was
definitely a like an ethically difficult time for her. She
she was like she wanted to work toward the greater good,
(09:28):
but that meant that she had to kind of make
peace with some things that she did find really upsetting.
In nineteen twenty she helped found the A c l U.
She also worked really extensively for women's suffrage, serving as
the first vice president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association,
and in nineteen thirteen she spoke at the seventh Congress
(09:48):
of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship,
which took place in Budapest, Hungary. And uh, it's probably
no surprise when we say that Jane Adams was a pacifist.
When World War One started, she became an activist for peace.
The same approach she had taken to all of her
other social works, one of mediating and finding common ground
(10:11):
was part of the foundation of her pacifism. She wanted
the warring nations to negotiate and find common ground rather
than fighting with each other. But she also thought the
entire idea of war was regressive. It was going to
lower the quality of life around the world and effectively
put a stop to progress for years to come. She
helped found the Women's Peace Party in nineteen fifteen, and
(10:33):
she served as its first chair. She also presided over
the International Congress of Women at the Hague, Netherlands in
nineteen fifteen, also known as the Women's Peace Congress, This
brought together twelve hundred delegates from twelve countries to try
to encourage world peace and in World War One. It's
actually from today's I there's kind of a weirdly gendered
(10:57):
aspect to all this. Part of the idea was that
if all of these women came together, surely they would
have a civilizing influence on all of these men. But
at the same time there was also a lot of
actual practical discussion about ways for peace and ways to
have strategies to to end war. Following that, in nineteen nineteen,
(11:18):
she founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
and served as president from nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty nine.
She spoke extensively against the entry of the United States
into World War One. She tried very arduously to convince
President Woodrow Wilson to negotiate a peace agreement with the
other countries instead of going to war. This was vastly,
(11:40):
vastly unpopular. As a result of her anti war work,
she was expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution,
and she was branded as a dangerous radical in the
media and the government. This is when, as we referred
to in the introduction to the previous episode, j Edgar
Hoover called her one of the most dangerous women in
a America. She and Theodore Roosevelt, who had previously been
(12:04):
pretty much allies, became pretty bitterly opposed to each other,
with Roosevelt calling her a bull mouse that's an insult
to keep in your pocket. In nine in the words
of the Philadelphia North American, Jane was quote probably the
most widely beloved of her sex in all the world.
But by the time the war was underway, the media
(12:26):
really painted her as a foolish and idealistic radical, and
she who had once been so adored had become the
subject of derision, scorn, and even suspicion. And this really
went on until after the war was over. But in
spite of that, in spite of how much flak she
was taking, for an international peace really continued to be
a primary focus of her activism. She still ran the
(12:48):
Hull House, but she also traveled and lectured extensively on
the subject of international peace and cooperation. Then, gradually, as
the world started to recover from the war, the United
States started to soften toward her and be her favorably again,
and she received the Nobel Peace Prize in ninety one,
although she could not be present to receive it as
(13:10):
she was in the hospital. She was the first American
woman and the second woman ever to receive that prize.
This is from the Nobel Prize speech, which was given
by a Nobel Committee member. Hall have done cult twice
in my life, once more than twenty years ago, and
now again this year. I've had the pleasure of visiting
the institution where she has been carrying on her life
(13:31):
work and the poorest districts of Chicago. Among Polish, Italian,
Mexican and other immigrants. She's established and maintained the vast
social organization centered in Hull House. Here are young and
all to like. In fact, all who ask receive a
helping hand, whether they wish to educate themselves or to
find work. When you find Miss Adams here, be it
(13:52):
in meeting room and work room or dining room, you
immediately become poignantly aware that she has built a home
and in it is a mother to one and all.
She is not want to talk much, but her quiet,
great hearted personality inspires confidence and creates an atmosphere of
goodwill which instinctively brings out the best in everyone. From
(14:13):
the social work often carried on among people of different nationalities,
it was for her only a natural step to the
cause of peace. She has now been its faithful spokesman
for nearly a quarter of a century. Little by little,
through no attempt to draw attention by her work, but
simply through the patient self sacrifice and quiet ardor which
(14:33):
she devoted to it, she won an eminent place in
the love and esteem of her people. She became the
leading woman in the nation, one might say it's leading citizen. Consequently,
the fact that she took a stand for the ideal
of peace was of special significance. Since millions of men
and women looked up to her. She could give new
strength to that ideal among American people, and when the
(14:55):
need became more pressing than ever, she inspired American women
to work for peace on an int a national level.
We shall always remember as one of the finest and
most promising events during the Last Great War, the gathering
of women from all over the world, even from enemy countries,
who met to discuss and pursue common action for world peace.
(15:16):
It was a rather lengthy quote, but I could not
find any part of it that I wanted to leave out. Yeah,
I mean it's a really granted speeches about people are
supposed to be tributes in most cases, but it's a
really lovely one and it really points out the hard
work she did her entire life. Yes, in a really
beautiful way. Uh. And unfortunately Jane had a heart attack
(15:39):
in and after that she really never regained her health. Um.
She continued to kind of struggle with her health for
the rest of her life, and she gradually handed over
her duties at Hull House and other organizations to other people.
By the time the Great Depression started in she was
much less of a public social presence than she had
(16:00):
been during prior economic turmoil. She died on one ninety five,
following an operation she had had three days before which
revealed that she had cancer, and this was about a
year after the death of Mary Rosette Smith. At this point,
Mary and Jane had been companions for thirty years and
people had wondered how Jane was going to survive without Mary. Today,
(16:23):
there are schools, peace organizations, social work organizations, and neighborhood
centers that are named for Jane Adams. Part of I
ninety in Illinois was also named in her honor in
two thousand seven. In two thousand eight, Jane was inducted
into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, explaining
that it was quote time for Chicago's LGBT communities to
(16:46):
claim Adams is one of our own. I feel pretty
conflicted about that. Yeah, you and I have been discussing
as as preparing this podcast, how problematic the concept of
declaring someone to have a sicular sexual orientation after their
death can be. Yeah, I mean I understand the impulse
(17:06):
to you know, if you look at sort of the
circumstantial evidence, it is easy to make that logical step. Yes,
we definitely know that she had long and committed and
loving relationships, especially with Mary, and then also she and
Ellen gate Star travel and we're companions together for a while. Yeah,
(17:27):
and I understand it. But then if it was something
she never felt compelled to bring out publicly, and granted
there is the element of time and when things have
and have not been more and less acceptable, but it's
still tricky to to do that for her. It's not
something that she wrote about or that Ellen or Mary
(17:49):
wrote about in any of their journals. Yeah, so it's uh, like,
as you said, it's a little conflicting. I completely understand
the impulse to want to um include her in your group.
An amazing woman, um, but yeah, it's not something that
was ever part of her identity publicly that she shared.
So I it's tricky. Yeah, I am. I am reluctant
(18:12):
to posthumously assign someone a sexual orientation. Yeah, I think
I said that before. I love Jane Adams though, it's amazing.
You know, my mom was a social worker. I did
not know that. Yeah, she was a social worker and
also a teacher. I knew she had been a teacher.
She was a teacher for developmentally disabled adults. I think
(18:35):
your mom is probably quite remarkable because you have to
be to do. My mom had some jobs that were
simultaneously fulfilling and thankless. So I greatly admire respect her
and all other social workers. Thank you social workers for
what you do. That can be an emotionally exhausting and
(18:57):
low paying and difficult job, it can do a lot
of good. I get emotionally exhausted just talking about it.
I do like it, like choked up, Yeah, because it's
it's huge and really impactful. So thank you for all
of you that do that work. Thank you very much.
And do you also have listener mails I do. This
(19:18):
is from Margaret and Margaret wrote to us about our
episode on Salmon Walksman and the Tuberculosis Cure. So Margaret says,
Dear Tracy and Holly, I love your podcast and listen
all the time. I have one small correction from your
podcast on Sealman Walksman. While both Emily and and Bronte
died of tuberculosis, Charlotte Bronte is believed to have died
(19:39):
of Hyperamesis graviderum, which is excessive, persistent vomiting and nausea
which can linger for an entire pregnancy. And then she
links to a source She says this condition was recently
in the news when the Duchess of Cambridge was hospitalized
with related extreme quote morning sickness. I have a friend
who suffered this during her pregnancy and it is a
truly awful condition that can be life threatening to both
(20:00):
baby and mother. Thanks for the many hours of enjoyment,
keep up the great work. And then, knowing that we
are sticklers, I'm sure for details and things, she says,
they're also more reputable sources for this, but she didn't.
She didn't clearly have access to a scholarly article database,
So thank you, Margaret. And then I went searching for
scholarly articles because yeah, it was very intrigued by this idea. Um.
(20:24):
What I learned is that Charlotte Bronte's death certificate lists
or cause of death as bisis, which is another word
for tuberculnceis um, and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology
named Philip Rhodes in nineteen seventy two theorized that she
had died actually of hyperamesis gravityra um, so that the
(20:49):
long deceased person's theorizing of how they have died. Uh.
It is a common thing nowadays, well, especially because in
a lot of cases, TV got kind of blamed for
things that were hard to identify as any And she
was definitely pregnant when she passed away, and she had
definitely been writing in her journal about just how terribly
ill that she was um. At the same time, there
(21:12):
had been at least other than her sisters who had
died of tuberculosis, there had been someone in working in
her household recently who had also died of tuberculosis. So
it seems that there are several medical things that could
have been going on at the same time. So thank
you Margaret for writing to us, because it inspired me
to go look up all this more stuff about morning sipience.
(21:35):
Uh and Charlette Bronte, who I love, I love her,
I love or who doesn't. I don't know. I'm sure
there are people, there are tons of people. I do. Yes,
if you would like to write to us about social
work or morning sickness or maybe not morning sickness, but
I mean we might. We will empathize with you know
(21:58):
what's stopping it. But if we get an inbox full,
if we get as many morning signal stories as we
have cat pictures, I might be very distressed. Um. But
if you would like to write to us about anything,
you can. We write history podcasts at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash history
class Stuff, and on Twitter at missed in History, are
tumbler is at missed in History dot tumbler dot com,
(22:20):
and we're pitting many things about our episodes on Pinterest.
If you would like to learn more about some of
the things that Jane Adams advocated and fought for. There
are so many things you can search at our website.
Some examples are strikes for how strikes work, and unions
for how labor unions work. You can learn about all
(22:41):
of that and a whole lot more at our website,
which is how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
works dot com. M Audible dot com is the leading
(23:04):
provider of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment.
Audible has more than one thousand titles to choose from
to be downloaded to your iPod or MP three player.
Go to audible podcast dot com slash history to get
a free audio book download of your choice when you
sign up today.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I am Tracy Wilson and Illy Crying. Today we're going
to continue on with part two of our episode on
Jane Adams. Jane Adams was just an astounding leader and advocate,
(00:25):
especially for the working cour but a lot of her
work really boiled down to building progress and a better
quality of life for everyone. And as we talked about
in the previous episode, she helped found Hull House, which
gradually added activism and advocacy to its overall mission of
helping to improve the lives of immigrants and the working
(00:47):
corps in Chicago. But Jane herself also held a number
of positions and spearheaded all kinds of social reforms during
her life. And while much of this work led to
her being one of America's most beloved progressive leaders, her
anti war work before and during World War One also
drew lots of scorn and ire. So in this episode,
(01:11):
we're going to talk about her achievements that weren't quite
so directly tied to Hull House, and some of the
more recent scholarship on Jane Adams has actually focused on
her work as a philosopher. Until the ninety nineties, most
of the writing about philosophy and the progressive era really
focused on John Dewey and William James and other men,
while Jane was viewed more as a practical arm of
(01:33):
their philosophical concepts. But more recent scholarship about her writings
has really approached her as a philosopher in her own right.
Hers was a pragmatist approach, combining feminism and social improvement
and always relying on a cooperative effort. When you look
at the overwhelming number of positions that she held, and
(01:54):
all the awards and recognitions that she received, and all
the work that she did, it can seem deceptively liked.
In order to do all of this, she would have
had to just take the bull by its horns and
strong arm people into agreeing with her. But in fact,
and virtually all of her dealings, Jane really worked as
a peacemaker. She was a mediator and an advocate. She
(02:17):
would speak stridently and sometimes aggressively about conditions that she
wanted to change, but when it came to actually working
to make those changes, she would really focus first on
the places where her views overlapped with her opponents. This
is the smartest way to approach conflict I have ever
heard of. It made her a hugely effective advocate for
(02:38):
incremental and gradual change that was acceptable for everyone involved,
and according to her theory, it really could make a
real lasting change. Key parts of this philosophy related to
people taking an active part in democracy and changing their
own circumstances. So it was while she she did make
some big changes in her life, this was not a
(03:00):
ace of like getting in someone's face and screaming at them.
It was a case of finding common ground and working
from there. It was kind of like slow burn reform.
She really felt like, if we are going to have
this change last, we have to take little steps that
we all agree on, that we all agree on, and
do it slowly. And the fact that she was able
(03:21):
to convince people to do as many things that they
did that just I find that to be remarkable. So,
apart from hull House and her founding of it, what
else did she work on Tracy, Well, let's start when
she became garbage inspector for the nineteenth ward in the
Near West Side. So she had been concerned about how
(03:41):
disgusting the neighborhood was I do not mean that to
be disparaging to the neighborhood. It was full of rats
and garbage. It literally had a trash problem. Yeah, And
and she had applied to be a trash remover, you know,
a garbage collector, and Hull House actually had its own
garbage incinerator installed. Has the trash problem in the neighborhood
(04:01):
was so bad um the city elected not to hire
her as a garbage collector, But she pursued this garbage
inspector post, and once she was in it, she took
big strides to make sure that the garbage was collected
regularly and safely and then disposed of properly. Then in
nineteen o two, Mary Kenny O'Sullivan, who had been at
(04:23):
Hull House resident, teamed up with William English Walling to
form the Women's Trade Union League. And at the time,
women could not join the American Federation of Labor, So
the Women's Trade Union League formed to fight for issues
like better pay and working conditions and women's suffrage, and
Jane Adams served as the first vice president of the organization.
In nineteen o five, she was appointed to Chicago's Board
(04:45):
of Education and became chair of the School Management Committee.
She served on the Board of Education for four years.
And this is actually a situation where her path of
finding a middle ground really put her at odds with
some of the people she was vocating for. Her position
on teacher pay was that they should find a compromise,
but teachers pay was already extremely low, so a lot
(05:09):
of teachers felt like she was not doing enough and
that her effort to reach a compromise was a cop out.
In nineteen o nine, the Double A CP was founded.
We mentioned that in the previous podcast Briefly UH, and
it was in part as a response to a race
ryant in Springfield, Illinois the year before UH. The n
A CPS founders and first members included an interracial mix
(05:32):
of leaders and activists, and their goal was to ensure
that all people actually had the rights that were spelled
out in the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments and to end
racial discrimination, and Jane Adams was one of the people
who helped found that organization. That same year, she became
the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities
and Corrections, which later became the National Conference of Social Work.
(05:56):
This was one of the many things that laid to
Jane Adams being thought of as the mother of social work.
And another part of it was that she worked with
the faculty at the University of Chicago to help found
a school of social work there. Hull House in Chicago
became known as sort of the birthplace for social work
as a profession in America, and the world of social
(06:16):
work was not just to study social conditions as sociology does,
but to actually work through or work toward better conditions
for people, either as an advocate or by working with
individual people to try to make their situation better. In
the Chicago garment workers went on strike to protest the
(06:37):
low wages and poor working conditions that they were living with,
and this followed the implementation of a new bonus system,
which was viewed as pretty arbitrary in uh prone to
favoritism and a drop in the quote peace rate. That
workers were paid for each item that they finished. At
the same time, the people who could sow the fastest
(06:58):
were made pacemakers, and that was the bar that everyone
else struggled to reach. This strike started with just sixteen women,
but in the end workers were on strike and Jane
was one of the mediators of the strike, along with
Ellen Gates Starr and several other residents of Hull House.
As a side note, while striking workers are often h
(07:20):
get get a lot of disparagement in the media, today
public sentiment was really on the side of these workers
and families, doctors, pharmacies, grocery stores, all kinds of people
in businesses were donating to the striking workers to make
sure they could keep going while they were not being
paid for work. In nineteen twelve, Theodore Roosevelt formed the
(07:41):
Progressive Party also known as the Bull Moose Party, and
ran for president on its ticket. The Progressive Party's platform
drew pretty heavily from the National Conference of Charities and
Corrections Social Standards for Industry, which outlined things like eight
hour work days, improvement of housing conditions, prohibition of child labor,
and a federal system of accident and unemployment insurance, among
(08:04):
other things, all of which are very familiar to us
today but did not really exist at the time. Now
it's hard to imagine that, yes, and how scary and
difficult it must have been as a laborer. Well, and
this is an episode of I know that there are
many people who are opposed to some of the things
that Jane was fighting for today. But when you look
(08:26):
at the world that exists today versus the world that
was existing around the turn of the century, like we
were going from zero protections to some protections. Yeah, context
is key there, ye Uh. And Jane actually seconded Roosevelt's
nomination at the Progressive Party convention. She hadn't really uh
(08:46):
allied herself politically with anybody before. She had focused on
individual issues instead of political campaigns. Uh. And she had
to do this even though she fundamentally disagreed with some
of Roosevelt's politics, like his love of big business us
in his um some explicitly racist comments. Uh. Woodrow Wilson
actually won the election though. Yeah, So even though he
(09:07):
ran and she seconded his nomination, he did not win
that election. And it's going to point out that even
though she opposed some of his positions, it kind of
really fundamentally goes back to her idea of finding some
overlap of common ground and belief compatibility. Yeah. It was
definitely a like an ethically difficult time for her. She
she was like she wanted to work toward the greater good,
(09:28):
but that meant that she had to kind of make
peace with some things that she did find really upsetting.
In nineteen twenty she helped found the A c l U.
She also worked really extensively for women's suffrage, serving as
the first vice president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association,
and in nineteen thirteen she spoke at the seventh Congress
(09:48):
of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship,
which took place in Budapest, Hungary. And uh, it's probably
no surprise when we say that Jane Adams was a pacifist.
When World War One started, she became an activist for peace.
The same approach she had taken to all of her
other social works, one of mediating and finding common ground
(10:11):
was part of the foundation of her pacifism. She wanted
the warring nations to negotiate and find common ground rather
than fighting with each other. But she also thought the
entire idea of war was regressive. It was going to
lower the quality of life around the world and effectively
put a stop to progress for years to come. She
helped found the Women's Peace Party in nineteen fifteen, and
(10:33):
she served as its first chair. She also presided over
the International Congress of Women at the Hague, Netherlands in
nineteen fifteen, also known as the Women's Peace Congress, This
brought together twelve hundred delegates from twelve countries to try
to encourage world peace and in World War One. It's
actually from today's I there's kind of a weirdly gendered
(10:57):
aspect to all this. Part of the idea was that
if all of these women came together, surely they would
have a civilizing influence on all of these men. But
at the same time there was also a lot of
actual practical discussion about ways for peace and ways to
have strategies to to end war. Following that, in nineteen nineteen,
(11:18):
she founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
and served as president from nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty nine.
She spoke extensively against the entry of the United States
into World War One. She tried very arduously to convince
President Woodrow Wilson to negotiate a peace agreement with the
other countries instead of going to war. This was vastly,
(11:40):
vastly unpopular. As a result of her anti war work,
she was expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution,
and she was branded as a dangerous radical in the
media and the government. This is when, as we referred
to in the introduction to the previous episode, j Edgar
Hoover called her one of the most dangerous women in
a America. She and Theodore Roosevelt, who had previously been
(12:04):
pretty much allies, became pretty bitterly opposed to each other,
with Roosevelt calling her a bull mouse that's an insult
to keep in your pocket. In nine in the words
of the Philadelphia North American, Jane was quote probably the
most widely beloved of her sex in all the world.
But by the time the war was underway, the media
(12:26):
really painted her as a foolish and idealistic radical, and
she who had once been so adored had become the
subject of derision, scorn, and even suspicion. And this really
went on until after the war was over. But in
spite of that, in spite of how much flak she
was taking, for an international peace really continued to be
a primary focus of her activism. She still ran the
(12:48):
Hull House, but she also traveled and lectured extensively on
the subject of international peace and cooperation. Then, gradually, as
the world started to recover from the war, the United
States started to soften toward her and be her favorably again,
and she received the Nobel Peace Prize in ninety one,
although she could not be present to receive it as
(13:10):
she was in the hospital. She was the first American
woman and the second woman ever to receive that prize.
This is from the Nobel Prize speech, which was given
by a Nobel Committee member. Hall have done cult twice
in my life, once more than twenty years ago, and
now again this year. I've had the pleasure of visiting
the institution where she has been carrying on her life
(13:31):
work and the poorest districts of Chicago. Among Polish, Italian,
Mexican and other immigrants. She's established and maintained the vast
social organization centered in Hull House. Here are young and
all to like. In fact, all who ask receive a
helping hand, whether they wish to educate themselves or to
find work. When you find Miss Adams here, be it
(13:52):
in meeting room and work room or dining room, you
immediately become poignantly aware that she has built a home
and in it is a mother to one and all.
She is not want to talk much, but her quiet,
great hearted personality inspires confidence and creates an atmosphere of
goodwill which instinctively brings out the best in everyone. From
(14:13):
the social work often carried on among people of different nationalities,
it was for her only a natural step to the
cause of peace. She has now been its faithful spokesman
for nearly a quarter of a century. Little by little,
through no attempt to draw attention by her work, but
simply through the patient self sacrifice and quiet ardor which
(14:33):
she devoted to it, she won an eminent place in
the love and esteem of her people. She became the
leading woman in the nation, one might say it's leading citizen. Consequently,
the fact that she took a stand for the ideal
of peace was of special significance. Since millions of men
and women looked up to her. She could give new
strength to that ideal among American people, and when the
(14:55):
need became more pressing than ever, she inspired American women
to work for peace on an int a national level.
We shall always remember as one of the finest and
most promising events during the Last Great War, the gathering
of women from all over the world, even from enemy countries,
who met to discuss and pursue common action for world peace.
(15:16):
It was a rather lengthy quote, but I could not
find any part of it that I wanted to leave out. Yeah,
I mean it's a really granted speeches about people are
supposed to be tributes in most cases, but it's a
really lovely one and it really points out the hard
work she did her entire life. Yes, in a really
beautiful way. Uh. And unfortunately Jane had a heart attack
(15:39):
in and after that she really never regained her health. Um.
She continued to kind of struggle with her health for
the rest of her life, and she gradually handed over
her duties at Hull House and other organizations to other people.
By the time the Great Depression started in she was
much less of a public social presence than she had
(16:00):
been during prior economic turmoil. She died on one ninety five,
following an operation she had had three days before which
revealed that she had cancer, and this was about a
year after the death of Mary Rosette Smith. At this point,
Mary and Jane had been companions for thirty years and
people had wondered how Jane was going to survive without Mary. Today,
(16:23):
there are schools, peace organizations, social work organizations, and neighborhood
centers that are named for Jane Adams. Part of I
ninety in Illinois was also named in her honor in
two thousand seven. In two thousand eight, Jane was inducted
into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, explaining
that it was quote time for Chicago's LGBT communities to
(16:46):
claim Adams is one of our own. I feel pretty
conflicted about that. Yeah, you and I have been discussing
as as preparing this podcast, how problematic the concept of
declaring someone to have a sicular sexual orientation after their
death can be. Yeah, I mean I understand the impulse
(17:06):
to you know, if you look at sort of the
circumstantial evidence, it is easy to make that logical step. Yes,
we definitely know that she had long and committed and
loving relationships, especially with Mary, and then also she and
Ellen gate Star travel and we're companions together for a while. Yeah,
(17:27):
and I understand it. But then if it was something
she never felt compelled to bring out publicly, and granted
there is the element of time and when things have
and have not been more and less acceptable, but it's
still tricky to to do that for her. It's not
something that she wrote about or that Ellen or Mary
(17:49):
wrote about in any of their journals. Yeah, so it's uh, like,
as you said, it's a little conflicting. I completely understand
the impulse to want to um include her in your group.
An amazing woman, um, but yeah, it's not something that
was ever part of her identity publicly that she shared.
So I it's tricky. Yeah, I am. I am reluctant
(18:12):
to posthumously assign someone a sexual orientation. Yeah, I think
I said that before. I love Jane Adams though, it's amazing.
You know, my mom was a social worker. I did
not know that. Yeah, she was a social worker and
also a teacher. I knew she had been a teacher.
She was a teacher for developmentally disabled adults. I think
(18:35):
your mom is probably quite remarkable because you have to
be to do. My mom had some jobs that were
simultaneously fulfilling and thankless. So I greatly admire respect her
and all other social workers. Thank you social workers for
what you do. That can be an emotionally exhausting and
(18:57):
low paying and difficult job, it can do a lot
of good. I get emotionally exhausted just talking about it.
I do like it, like choked up, Yeah, because it's
it's huge and really impactful. So thank you for all
of you that do that work. Thank you very much.
And do you also have listener mails I do. This
(19:18):
is from Margaret and Margaret wrote to us about our
episode on Salmon Walksman and the Tuberculosis Cure. So Margaret says,
Dear Tracy and Holly, I love your podcast and listen
all the time. I have one small correction from your
podcast on Sealman Walksman. While both Emily and and Bronte
died of tuberculosis, Charlotte Bronte is believed to have died
(19:39):
of Hyperamesis graviderum, which is excessive, persistent vomiting and nausea
which can linger for an entire pregnancy. And then she
links to a source She says this condition was recently
in the news when the Duchess of Cambridge was hospitalized
with related extreme quote morning sickness. I have a friend
who suffered this during her pregnancy and it is a
truly awful condition that can be life threatening to both
(20:00):
baby and mother. Thanks for the many hours of enjoyment,
keep up the great work. And then, knowing that we
are sticklers, I'm sure for details and things, she says,
they're also more reputable sources for this, but she didn't.
She didn't clearly have access to a scholarly article database,
So thank you, Margaret. And then I went searching for
scholarly articles because yeah, it was very intrigued by this idea. Um.
(20:24):
What I learned is that Charlotte Bronte's death certificate lists
or cause of death as bisis, which is another word
for tuberculnceis um, and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology
named Philip Rhodes in nineteen seventy two theorized that she
had died actually of hyperamesis gravityra um, so that the
(20:49):
long deceased person's theorizing of how they have died. Uh.
It is a common thing nowadays, well, especially because in
a lot of cases, TV got kind of blamed for
things that were hard to identify as any And she
was definitely pregnant when she passed away, and she had
definitely been writing in her journal about just how terribly
ill that she was um. At the same time, there
(21:12):
had been at least other than her sisters who had
died of tuberculosis, there had been someone in working in
her household recently who had also died of tuberculosis. So
it seems that there are several medical things that could
have been going on at the same time. So thank
you Margaret for writing to us, because it inspired me
to go look up all this more stuff about morning sipience.
(21:35):
Uh and Charlette Bronte, who I love, I love her,
I love or who doesn't. I don't know. I'm sure
there are people, there are tons of people. I do. Yes,
if you would like to write to us about social
work or morning sickness or maybe not morning sickness, but
I mean we might. We will empathize with you know
(21:58):
what's stopping it. But if we get an inbox full,
if we get as many morning signal stories as we
have cat pictures, I might be very distressed. Um. But
if you would like to write to us about anything,
you can. We write history podcasts at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash history
class Stuff, and on Twitter at missed in History, are
tumbler is at missed in History dot tumbler dot com,
(22:20):
and we're pitting many things about our episodes on Pinterest.
If you would like to learn more about some of
the things that Jane Adams advocated and fought for. There
are so many things you can search at our website.
Some examples are strikes for how strikes work, and unions
for how labor unions work. You can learn about all
(22:41):
of that and a whole lot more at our website,
which is how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
works dot com. M Audible dot com is the leading
(23:04):
provider of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment.
Audible has more than one thousand titles to choose from
to be downloaded to your iPod or MP three player.
Go to audible podcast dot com slash history to get
a free audio book download of your choice when you
sign up today.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.