Why Jane Addams In Janice Metzger's 'What Would Jane Say?'

The effect of the question in this title is to make the audience think - what would Jane Addams say? Jane Addams, a woman with outstanding ethos, is said to be the first public intellectual - “a social thinker who wanted to communicate with a mass audience” (The Jane Addams Reader). In What Would Jane Say?, author Janice Metzger initially grasps you to the concept that the upbringing of ideas proposed by women were, in essence, muted and dismissed. However, in chapter two, it becomes apparent by the power of Jane Addams’ intellect, the voices of women were able to be heard. Metzger excels in her claims of women’s rights as well as identifying that Burnham’s Plan was “unable to comprehend the lives of immigrants, factory workers, and their hardpressed families” (Metzger 19). However, by the economical understanding of others, women were competent enough to confront the urban problems created by industrialization, and better schools, housing, and medicare; women wanted to create a better quality of life.
Metzger excels in pointing out the poor treatment of women in the early 1900’s. The Plan of Chicago was a bold plan to establish a new Chicago metropolitan region. Daniel Burnham, crafted this plan to benefit the business world, he did not consider Jane’s suggestions - that being “when focused on infrastructure it was to investigate or publicize the human cost of poor sanitation, overcrowded classrooms, corrupt inspections, or any of the host of other problems at the time” (Metzger 3). Ideas like women’s suffrage was a turning point in American history and the historical context of this time is beneficial to Metzger’s