Twenty
Years at
By Jane Addams
"I told him of the opportunity for work
on the drainage canal and intimated that if any employment were obtainable, he
ought to exhaust that possibility before asking for help. The man replied that
he had always worked indoors and that he could not endure outside work in
winter. He did not come again for relief, but worked for two days digging on
the canal, where he contracted pneumonia and died a week later. I have never
lost trace of the two little children he left behind him, although I cannot see
them without a bitter consciousness that it was at their expense I learned that
life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to
deal with a man's difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life
and habits as a whole; and that to treat an isolated episode is almost sure to
invite blundering."
Ladies
Home Journal ( January, 1910 )
"Women who
live in the country sweep their own dooryards and may either feed the refuse of
the table to a flock of chickens or allow it innocently to decay in the open
air and sunshine. In a crowded city quarter, however, if the street is not
cleaned by the city authorities no amount of private sweeping will keep the
tenement free from grime; if the garbage is not properly collected and
destroyed a tenement house may see her children sicken and die of diseases from
which she alone is powerless to shield them, although her tenderness and
devotion are unbounded. In short, if women would keep on with her old business
of caring for her house and rearing her children she will have to have some conscience
in regard to public affairs lying quite outside of her immediate household. The
individual conscience and devotion are no longer effective. The statement is
sometimes made that the franchise for women would be valuable only so far as
the educated women exercised it. This statement totally disregards the fact
those those matters in which women's judgement is most needed are far too
primitive and basic to be largely influenced by what we call education."