It was 75 years ago that Jane Addams was the co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize – the first American woman to win the prize – and coming up on the 100th anniversary of the publishing of her book, Newer Ideals of Peace. She shared the Nobel with Nicholas Murray Butler for her courageous, outspoken promotion of peace during World War I – a particularly unpopular stance at the time.
She’s also known as the Mother of Modern Social Work. She is a fascinating woman worthy of reading more about. I offer a few quotes from her below.
I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.
For ten years I have lived in a neighborhood which is by no means criminal, and yet during last October and November we were startled by seven murders within a radius of ten blocks. A little investigation of details and motives, the accident of a personal acquaintance with two of the criminals, made it not in the least difficult to trace the murders back to the influence of war. Simple people who read of carnage and bloodshed easily receive its suggestions. Habits of self-control which have been but slowly and imperfectly acquired quickly break down under the stress.
Hundreds of poor laboring men and women are being thrown into jails and police stations because of their political beliefs. In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party.
And, this one is a favorite of mine, one that I think resounds loudly these days.
The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.
I encourage anyone to look up more information on this inspiring lady. You could begin with the Nobel site:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/addams-bio.html
(Has anyone read her book on peacemaking?)
4 comments:
In fact, an attempt is being made to deport an entire political party.
And that political party? It was the American Communist Party
During Addams time there was an active American Communist Party and an American Socialist Party. They did not have the stigma that they have today and were just other minor political parties that no one was much concerned over. Scott Nearing of homesteading fame ran for Mayor of New York City and also for Governor of New Jersey on the Communist party ticket.
All that changed with the first world war and the revolution in Russia which engendered the "Red Scare". Between 1920 and the '50's socialism and communism became more and more vilified.
However the one honorable aspect of Ms. Addams work was that she did not wrap it in an ill fitting cloak of religion. The sharpest criticism in her time was that the charitable institution of the Hull House did not offer religious instruction.
And my Grandfather shipped out to the Pacific on a Liberty Ship, Hull #635, named the Jane Addams!
I've read Addams' work. It was ironic that she was awarded a SHARED Nobel with Nicholas Murray Butler. Butler denounced her and all pacifists as traitors during WWI. By the time the Nobel was awarded Addams was hospitalized with her final illness and unable to attend.
Jane Addams helped to found the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) during WWI and U.S. Peace Party.
As eleutheros says, she was circumspect about her own faith. She was raised a Quaker (even though her father fought in the Civil War and was a personal friend of Lincoln) and baptized as a Presbyterian as an adult. But, toward the end of her life, when so many churches, including the Presbyterians, blessed WWI, she began attending a Unitarian congregation, though it is uncertain whether or not she ever became a Unitarian herself (like her friend and fellow WILPF founder Emily Green Balch).
Addams may have been a Socialist. I can't find any indication that she was a Communist Party member, although she did defend their civil liberties--as did such a conservative patriot as Teddy Roosevelt.
Michael:"Addams may have been a Socialist. I can't find any indication that she was a Communist Party member"
She was neither a member of the Communist party nor the Socialist party. Her sympathies seem to have been solidly socialist ... yet ... Hull House and virtually all other of her works were strictly privately funded.
It seems she was just as circumspect and reserved about expressing her personal politics as she was about her personal religion.
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