Twenty Years at Hull House

John Addams (1822-1881) was the father of Settlement House leader Jane Addams. He was a self-made man who had started as a miller’s apprentice. Eventually, Addams’s milling enterprise became one of the largest businesses in northern Illinois. He served as president of the Second National Bank in Freeport, Illinois from 1864 to 1881. He also served as the director of two railroad companies and founded the Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Addams was elected to the Illinois state senate, serving from 1854 to 1870. He was a friend of President Abraham Lincoln and an abolitionist, known for voting his conscience and refusing to accept bribes. He was a Hicksite Quaker whose ancestors became established in Pennsylvania after receiving a land grant from William Penn in the 17th century.

Addams describes her father as the dominant influence in her youth; especially since her mother had died when Addams was two years old. Her father stimulated Addams’s interest in moral concerns, making her aware of human economic inequalities and the bond of idealistic goals that could transcend people’s differences in nationality, language, and religion. John Addams served as a Rockford Seminary trustee, taught Sunday school, and engaged in civic responsibilities, inspiring his daughter with his exemplary character. After  John Addams’s sudden death of acute appendicitis at age 59, Addams’ struggled with depression for a period of time.

Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940) was an American social reformer and co-founder of Hull-House. Starr was a classmate and close friend of Jane Addams at Rockford Female Seminary. On Addams’s trip to Europe in 1888, Addams confided to Starr her idea of starting a Settlement House in Chicago. Starr encouraged Addams’s plan, and the two women searched for a suitable place in Chicago in 1889, publicizing their intention to start the Settlement House with their own limited financial resources. Addams and Starr moved into Hull-House in September 1889. Within the first weeks of their residence, Starr led a group of young neighborhood women in reading George Eliot’s historical novel, Romola. Later, Starr held classes on Dante and Browning for the laborers.

Along with Addams and the other Hull-House residents, Starr tried to help immigrants achieve better working conditions and prohibit child labor. Starr felt that exposure to the arts and crafts would provide an antidote to the mindless repetition of factory work. Starr created a collection of photographed art that she used for Hull-House students and lent to public schools. She served as the first president of the Public School Art Society. Starr also studied bookbinding in England and established a bindery at Hull-House, teaching design and workmanship to apprentices.

Julia Lathrop (1858-1932) was an American social reformer who was the first woman to be appointed the head of a United States federal bureau, serving as the director of the Children’s Bureau from 1912 to 1922. Her father was a lawyer who served in the Illinois state legislature and U.S. Congress and her mother was a suffragist. Lathrop attended Rockford Female Seminary where she was a classmate of Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr before Lathrop transferred to Vassar College. In 1890, she moved to Chicago and became a Hull-House resident.

Addams and Lathrop were among the representatives of the Settlement Movement at the Ethical Cultural Societies summer school at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1892 where they discussed philanthropy and social progress. Lathrop organized a Plato Club at Hull-House where neighborhood people could have intellectual discussions. Lathrop also investigated the poorest people in the area as a Cook County-appointed visitor, documenting needy cases for relief. In 1893, the governor selected Lathrop as the first female member of the Illinois State Board of Charities. Addams points out that Lathrop’s long residence among the poor enabled her to understand the state’s charitable institutions from the viewpoint of the beneficiaries.

Florence Kelley (1859-1932) was an American social reformer whose investigation into Chicago sweatshop conditions significantly contributed to the passage of the first legislation in Illinois prohibiting child labor, limiting women’s working hours, and regulating the sweating system. A Cornell University graduate, Kelley was greatly influenced by her abolitionist father who had served as a U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania from 1861 to 1890.

After separating from her abusive husband, Kelley resided at Hull-House from 1891 to 1899. Addams mentions in her book that there was no statistical information on Chicago’s industrial conditions prior to Kelley’s suggestion to the Illinois State Bureau of Labor that an investigation be undertaken into the city’s sweatshop system. The Bureau appointed Kelley to undertake that task; her report prompted the Illinois Legislature to create a committee that eventually recommended the provisions that led to the 1893 Illinois factory law. The Illinois governor then selected Kelley to be the state’s chief factory inspector. Kelley graduated from Northwestern University Law School in 1894, granting her the ability to prosecute violators of the protective legislation. In 1899, Kelley relocated to the Henry Street Settlement in order to serve as the general secretary of the new National Consumers’ League, where she worked to prevent harsh, unregulated conditions for women and child laborers. Under Kelley’s leadership, the Consumers’ League recruited litigator Louis Brandeis to present a case before the Supreme Court for the limitation of women’s workday to ten hours. Brandeis’ argument primarily rested on data gathered by the Consumers’ League regarding the negative effects of long working hours on women’s health and family responsibilities. The 1908 Supreme Court’s Muller v. Oregon decision upheld an Oregon law for women’s ten-hour workdays. In 1909, Kelley co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Alzina Stevens (1849-1900) was an American social reformer, labor leader, and journalist. One of the few Hull-House residents from a working-class background, Stevens was personally familiar with the harsh factory conditions that she sought to ameliorate for women and children. Stevens had labored in a New England cotton mill at the age of 13 and suffered the loss of her right index finger in an industrial accident. Stevens moved to Chicago in 1871 and worked as a typesetter. In 1872, Stevens became a trade-unionist and “one of the first women in America to become a member of the typographical union” (227). When the Working Women’s Union No. 1 was founded in 1878, Stevens served as its president. She also organized a woman’s division of the Knights of Labor national organization and contributed numerous articles to the labor press.

In 1893, Stevens was appointed assistant factory inspector, serving with another Hull-House resident, Florence Kelley, who was the first Illinois factory inspector. Stevens assisted with the passage and enforcement of the new factory legislation regulating sweatshop conditions and child labor (with the new minimum age set at 14). In 1899, Stevens and other Hull-House residents lobbied for the passage of an Illinois juvenile court law that established the first juvenile court in the United States. Stevens was appointed the first probation officer of the Cook County Juvenile Court.