Marxist Influence On Jane Addams

In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr bought a mansion from George Hull and founded a settlement house in his name. The Hull House worked until 1961, providing health services, education, and childcare to its lower class Chicago neighborhood. While the home greatly benefited the immigrant community, it also created a society of strong, educated residents, elite women, who theorized and fought for even broader change outside the Hull House’s immediate reach, focusing on the worker’s rights and child labor laws movement. No woman better exemplified this studiousness than Jane Addams, herself. Although history remembers Addams as only a motherly upper-class aid to the poor, she was a socialist-leaning philosopher, convinced that if everyone

For example, when describing her response to Marxism, she criticizes “the organization of society into huge battalions with syndicates and corporations on the side of capital, and trades-unions and federations on the side of labor, [dividing] the world into two hostile camps” (Addams, The Settlement). As a woman who dedicated her life to the Hull House, she saw first hand the benefit and unification of lower class neighbors with her wealthy, educated residents. Hull House raised everyone up. The immigrants had vital services and goods, and the unmarried residents found a community that fostered their learning and gave them a vocal platform. Addams even sees this as the “the duty of the settlement…no part of society can afford to get along without the others” (Addams, The Settlement). Society can only progress if everyone progresses, so isolating people into their own groups will only decrease empathy and create more violence. This is a powerful philosophy, years before its time, alluding to modern day feminism. As a historian at Stanford university says, “although she sympathized with feminists, socialists, and pacifists, Addams refused to be labeled…active democratic social progress was so essential to Addams that she did not want to alienate any group of people from the conversation” (Hamington). She never took on the name of any organization or party. Although this makes it hard to pin down her beliefs, it is exactly why she did not define herself. Addams wanted others to listen to her ideas not the name of her views. Some might thus ignore her ideology or dismiss her lack of classification as cowardly, but this deliberate choice should not lessen her contribution in the scholarly community or dampen her