How Did Jane Addams An American Progressivist?

Jane Addams Jane Addams was an American reformer who provided aid for both the financial and social needs of the urban poor in large cities. Throughout her life, Jane sought out a purpose for her life and found all the ways she could to help others. She gave aid to immigrants and children, as well as improving society as a whole. Addams was a progressivist who pushed for change in the economy, education, and public safety. She wanted equality for all people, once saying, “perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable difficulties of understanding.” Jane was one of only three of the nine children her parents had that lived past childhood. Her mother died when she
“In 1889, inspired by the British settlement movement, Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr bought the rundown Charles Hull mansion in Chicago” (Cayton). This house became known as the Hull House, the first settlement home. The two women visited Toynbee Hall and used it as a model for their settlement house (Whitman).The Hull house became a community hub of many types of family activities. Neighbors were not only given help with their financial situations so jobs could be found, but also social issues. At first, only neighbors were helped, but soon immigrants from all around came to the house (Cayton). In the words of Addams herself, “hospitality still survives among foreigners although it is buried under false pride among the poorest Americans.” The Hull House began to provide services for at least two thousand people each week (Whitman).The ideas of the settlement houses spread, and hundreds of educated people began working in settlement houses (Cayton). Most of the workers were educated women who, as Addams did, felt that helping others was just as beneficial for the helper as the helped