Jane Addams (1860–1935) was an activist, community organizer, international peace advocate, and social philosopher in the United States during the late 19th century and early 20th century. However, the dynamics of canon formation resulted in her philosophical work being largely ignored until the 1990s.Addams is best known for her pioneering activism in the social settlement movement—the radical arm of the progressive movement whose adherents so embraced the ideals of progressivism that they chose to live as neighbors in oppressed communities to learn from and help the marginalized members of society. Although her contemporaries widely lauded her activism and accomplishments, commentators typically mapped Addams’ work onto conventional gender understandings: male philosophers such as John Dewey, William James, and George Herbert Mead were regarded as providing original progressive thought, while Addams was seen as brilliantly administering their theories. Recent work by feminist philosophers and historians has revealed that Addams was far more than a competent practitioner. Her dozen published books, and over 500 articles display a robust intellectual interplay between experience and reflection in the American pragmatist tradition. The near half-century that she lived and worked as the leader of the Chicago social settlement, Hull House, allowed her to bring her commitment to social improvement, feminism, diversity, and peace into reflective practice. These experiences provided the foundation for an engaging philosophical perspective. Addams viewed her settlement work as a grand epistemological endeavor, but in the process, she never forgot her neighbors’ humanity. Addams was a public philosopher who was not afraid to get her hands dirty.
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Jane Addams Life
Compared to the many biographical accounts of Addams’ life, relatively few comprehensively consider her philosophy. However, her philosophical insights are closely tied to her life experiences which are briefly recounted below.
Laura Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois, on September 6, 1860. She grew up in the shadow of the Civil War and during a time when Darwin’s Origin of the Species achieved widespread influence. Her childhood reflected the material advantage of being the daughter of a politician and successful mill owner, John Addams. When Jane was two years old, her mother, Mary, died giving birth to her ninth child. Subsequently, the precocious Addams doted upon her father and benefited emotionally and intellectually from his attention. Although John Addams was no advocate of feminism, he desired higher education for his daughter. Therefore, he sent her to the all-women’s institution, Rockford Seminary (renamed later Rockford College) in Rockford, Illinois. As a result, Addams became part of a generation of women that were among the first in their families to attend college. At Rockford, she experienced the empowerment of living in a women-centered environment, and she blossomed as an intellectual and a social leader. Her classmates and teachers acknowledged this leadership. Ultimately, Addams spearheaded an effort to bring baccalaureate degrees to the school and, after serving as class valedictorian, received the first one.
Like many women of her time, Addams’ prospects after college were limited. She made a failed attempt at medical school and then, precipitated by her father’s death, slipped into a nearly decade-long malaise over the direction of her life. At first, the energy and spirit of her undergraduate college experience did not translate into any clear career path, given that she had rejected both marriage and religious life. Moreover, Addams’ malady was somewhat analogous to the unidentified illness that her later acquaintance, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (as described in The Yellow Wallpaper), suffered. As a member of the privileged class, her soul searching included a trek to Europe, which Addams made twice during this period. On the second trip, she visited Toynbee Hall, a pioneering Christian settlement house in London, which was to inspire her in a direction that propelled her toward international prominence (TYH 53).
Toynbee Hall was a community of young men committed to helping the poor of London by living among them. After engaging the leaders of Toynbee Hall, Addams was rejuvenated by the idea of replicating the settlement in the United States. She enlisted a college friend, Ellen Gates Starr, in the plan. However, identifying their vague idea as a “plan” is a bit of hyperbole. There were very few specific blueprints for what the settlement would be other than a good neighbor to oppressed peoples. Nevertheless, Addams found a suitable location in a devastatingly poor Chicago immigrant neighborhood, and on September 18, 1889, Hull House opened its doors. Working amidst one of the most significant influxes of immigrants the United States has ever known, Hull House got off to a slow start as neighbors did not know what to make of the residents and their intentions. However, Addams and Starr built trust, and in a short time, Hull House became an incubator for new social programs and a magnet for progressives wanting to make society a better place. Without formal ideological or political constraints, the settlement workers responded to the neighborhood’s needs by starting project after project. The list of projects created at Hull House is astounding, including the first little theatre and juvenile court in the United States and the first playground, gymnasium, public swimming pool, and public kitchen in Chicago. In addition, the work of Hull House residents would result in numerous labor union organizations, a labor museum, tenement codes, factory laws, child labor laws, adult education courses, cultural exchange groups, and the collection of neighborhood demographic data. Hull House was a dynamo of progressive initiatives, all of which Addams oversaw.
The reputation of the settlement rapidly grew, and women, primarily college-educated, came from all over the country to live and work at Hull House. Although Hull House was co-educational, it was a woman-identified space. There were male residents at Hull House, some of whom later became prominent leaders. However, the policies, projects, decision-making, and methodologies of the Hull House community were gynocentric—foregrounding women’s experience, analysis, and concerns. Furthermore, although a few residents were married, most were single, and some were in committed relationships with other women. Given the drastic shifts in sexual mores in the twentieth century, the contemporary understanding of what it means to be lesbian cannot straightforwardly be mapped onto the late and post-Victorian eras. Still, it can be argued that Hull House was a lesbian-friendly space. Addams set the tone for this identification with her own long-term intimate relationships with women, first with Starr and then with Mary Rozet Smith (Brown, 2004).
From the outset of its operation, Addams theorized about the nature and function of Hull House. The language she used reflected her philosophical approach. For example, in one published essay, Addams describes the application and reorganization of knowledge as the fundamental problem of modern life and then claims that settlements are like applied universities: “The ideal and developed settlement would attempt to test the value of human knowledge by action, and realization, quite as the complete and ideal university would concern itself with the discovery of knowledge in all branches” (FSS 187). This kind of reflective analysis and wider thematization of her work and the social settlement work was a hallmark of Addams’ writing. Because of her insightful reflections on the Hull House community, Addams became a popular author and sought-after public speaker. Eventually, she extended her cosmopolitan analysis to race, education, and world peace issues. For Addams, local experiences were always a springboard for political theorizing.
Addams became one of the most respected and recognized individuals in the nation. She played a crucial role in numerous progressive campaigns. Addams was a founding figure in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Her popularity was such that when Theodore Roosevelt sought the presidential nomination of the Progressive Party in 1912, he asked Jane Addams to second the nomination, the first time a woman had participated in such an act. There was a gendered dimension to this popularity, however. Addams had challenged the borders of the public and private spheres through her work at Hull House. Still, her forays into masculine domains were masked by the “social housekeeping” characterization of the settlement activism. After World War I broke out in Europe, her outspoken pacifism and refusal to endorse the war or the U.S. entry into it was more gender role transgression than the public could tolerate from a woman. Addams’ popularity fell, and she became the victim of vicious gender-specific criticism. Biographer Allen Davis reports that one writer indicated that what Addams needed to disabuse her of her pacifism was “a strong, forceful husband who would lift the burden of fate from her shoulders and get her intensely interested in fancy work and other things dear to the heart of women who have homes and plenty of time on their hands” (240). A reporter for the Los Angeles Times quipped,
If Miss Addams and her peace mission are a sample of women in world affairs, I want to take it all back. I am sincerely sorry I voted for suffrage. (Davis, 253)
Her new role as social outcast and critic allowed the public philosopher in Addams to reflect on the nature of citizenship and patriotism in her many books and articles—some of which had difficulty getting into print because she was perceived as anti-American. Although she had written on peace early in her public career (NIP), from 1914 through the end of her life, Addams’ publications became decidedly more focused on issues of peace and war, including two books exclusively dedicated to the topic (WH, PBT) and several books with sections devoted to the nature and politics of war (LRW, STY, MFJ). Although initially criticized, Addams’ pacifist tenacity was ultimately lauded with the Nobel Peace Price (1931). In the last years of her life, she spent less time at Hull House and more time working for world peace and an end to racism. Addams died of cancer on May 21, 1935, leaving a tremendous intellectual legacy that has yet to be fully explored.
Addams’ philosophy combined feminist sensibilities with an unwavering commitment to social improvement through cooperative efforts. Although she sympathized with feminists, socialists, and pacifists, Addams refused to be labeled. This refusal was pragmatic rather than ideological. Addams’ commitment to social cohesion and cooperation prompted her to eschew what she perceived as divisive distinctions. Active democratic social progress was so essential to Addams that she did not want to alienate any group of people from the conversation or the participation necessary for effective inclusive deliberation. Addams carefully varied her rhetorical approach to engaging a variety of constituencies, which makes identifying her social philosophy challenging. Accordingly, Addams did not intend to engage in philosophical narratives removed from social improvement, nor did she intend to pursue social activism without theorizing about the broader implications of her work. In this respect, through her integration of theory and action, Addams carried pragmatism to its logical conclusion through her integration of theory and action, developing an applied philosophy immersed in social action. Thus Addams’ writing is replete with examples from her Hull House experience addressing atypical topics for philosophic discourse, such as garbage collection, immigrant folk stories, and prostitution. It is easy for those steeped in traditional philosophy to dismiss Addams’ writings as non-philosophical if the full sweep of her projects and subsequent analysis is not considered. For those who persevere, Addams offers a rich social and political philosophy built on respect and understanding that is refreshing in its faith in the potential for collective progress.
Identifying Jane Addams as a philosopher requires appreciating the dynamic between theory and action reflected in her writing. Furthermore, Addams was a voracious reader and purveyor of the intellectual ideas of her time, such as evolutionary theory. Therefore, her writing is nuanced, with references that require a contextual understanding of pertinent ideas of the time. Reading Addams, one finds a wellspring of nascent feminist philosophical insight. Addams’ ethical philosophy was guided by the notion of sympathetic knowledge that she described as “the only way of approach to any human problem” (NCA 7). Sympathetic knowledge is a mingling of epistemology and ethics: knowing one another better reinforces the common connection of people such that the potential for caring and empathetic moral actions increases. Addams not only theorized about this idea, but she lived it. Sympathetic knowledge underwrote Addams’ approach to the diversity and staggering poverty (HHM) that she confronted in the immigrant neighborhood surrounding Hull House and allowed her to develop a precursor to contemporary feminist standpoint epistemology. Addams’ leadership among the American pragmatists in understanding the poor and oppressed resulted in a more radical form of pragmatism than Dewey and James, a social philosophy imbued with a class and gender consciousness.
Hull House
In 1889 Addams and her college friend and paramour Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago. The run-down mansion had been built by Charles Hull in 1856 and needed repairs and upgrading. Addams at first paid for all of the capital expenses (repairing the roof of the porch, repainting the rooms, buying furniture) and most of the operating costs. However gifts from individuals supported the House beginning in its first year and Addams was able to reduce the proportion of her contributions, although the annual budget grew rapidly. Some wealthy women became long-term donors to the House, including Helen Culver, who managed her first cousin Charles Hull’s estate, and who eventually allowed the contributors to use the house rent-free. Other contributors were Louise DeKoven Bowen, Mary Rozet Smith, Mary Wilmarth, and others.
Addams and Starr were the first two occupants of the house, which would later become the residence of about 25 women. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by some 2,000 people. Hull House was a center for research, empirical analysis, study, and debate, as well as a pragmatic center for living in and establishing good relations with the neighborhood. Among the aims of Hull House was to give privileged, educated young people contact with the real life of the majority of the population. Residents of Hull House conducted investigations on housing, midwifery, fatigue, tuberculosis, typhoid, garbage collection, cocaine, and truancy. The core Hull House residents were well-educated women bound together by their commitment to labour unions, the National Consumers League and the suffrage movement. Harriett Alleyne Rice joined Hull House to provide medical treatment for poor families. Its facilities included a night school for adults, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a gym, a girls’ club, a bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group and a theater, apartments, a library, meeting rooms for discussion, clubs, an employment bureau, and a lunchroom. Her adult night school was a forerunner of the continuing education classes offered by many universities today. In addition to making available social services and cultural events for the largely immigrant population of the neighborhood, Hull House afforded an opportunity for young social workers to acquire training. Eventually, Hull House became a 13-building settlement complex, which included a playground and a summer camp (known as Bowen Country Club).
Ethics
Starr and Addams developed three “ethical principles” for social settlements: “to teach by example, to practice cooperation, and to practice social democracy, that is, egalitarian, or democratic, social relations across class lines.” Thus Hull House offered a comprehensive program of civic, cultural, recreational, and educational activities and attracted admiring visitors from all over the world, including William Lyon Mackenzie King, a graduate student from Harvard University who later became prime minister of Canada. In the 1890s Julia Lathrop, Florence Kelley, and other residents of the house made it a world center of social reform activity. Hull House used the latest methodology (pioneering in statistical mapping) to study overcrowding, truancy, typhoid fever, cocaine, children’s reading, newsboys, infant mortality, and midwifery. Starting with efforts to improve the immediate neighborhood, the Hull House group became involved in city and statewide campaigns for better housing, improvements in public welfare, stricter child-labor laws, and protection of working women. Addams brought in prominent visitors from around the world and had close links with leading Chicago intellectuals and philanthropists. In 1912, she helped start the new Progressive Party and supported the presidential campaign of Theodore Roosevelt.
Addams’ Standpoint Epistemology
Although writing long before the term “standpoint epistemology” was named by feminist philosophers, Addams can be considered a forerunner of standpoint epistemology, given her commitment to sympathetic knowledge. Feminist philosophers have attended to the impact of context on theory more than mainstream philosophers. Although there are lively debates within feminist philosophical circles regarding the nature of objectivity, many, including Dorothy Smith, Nancy Hartsock, Hilary Rose, Alison Jaggar, and Sandra Harding, have developed the notion that knowledge is indeed situated. In particular, feminist standpoint theorists valorize the perspectives and theories derived from oppressed societal positions, such as women’s experiences. Harding describes a feminist standpoint as something to achieve rather than a passive perspective. All women have lived experience in a woman’s body and therefore have a woman’s perspective. Still, a feminist standpoint requires an effort at stepping back to gain a holistic picture of power struggles. Through the understanding of the perspectival aspect of knowledge claims, standpoint epistemology can create libratory knowledge that can be leveraged to subvert oppressive systems. One of the challenges of standpoint theory is how to give voice to multiple positions without falling back on hierarchies that favor certain standpoints over others.
Jane Addams demonstrates an appreciation for the spirit of standpoint theory through her work and writing at Hull-House. Despite the privileged social position she was born into, her settlement avocation immersed her in disempowered communities. Addams poetically describes her moral mandate to meet, know, and understand others: “We know at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the identification with the common lot that is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as though we thirsted at the great wells of human experience because we know that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and jostle of the crowd” (DSE 9). One might object that although these are admirable sentiments, they are still spoken by an outsider. What constitutes an outsider? Addams lived the better part of a half-century in the diverse immigrant neighborhood of Hull House in Chicago. She didn’t return home to the suburbs or return to a university office with her data. She lived and worked amongst the crime, civic corruption, prostitution, sweatshops, and other community ills. When they started Hull House, Addams and Starr were involved outsiders—an oddity that neighbors looked upon suspiciously. However, time, proximity, and an earnest desire to learn and help won the trust and respect of the neighborhood. The outsiders became insiders. When Addams wrote or spoke about single women laborers, child laborers, prostitutes, or first and second-generation immigrants, she employed first-hand knowledge gained from her social interactions. Addams leveraged her Hull House experiences to give voice to standpoints marginalized in society. Simultaneously, she worked to provide the oppressed their own voice through college extension courses, English language courses, and social clubs that fostered political and social debate. Addams was self-conscious about speaking for others: “I never addressed a Chicago audience on the subject of the Settlement and its vicinity without inviting a neighbor to go with me, that I might curb my hasty generalization by the consciousness that I had an auditor who knew the conditions more intimately than I could hope to do” (TYH 80). Addams did not try to arrive at universal moral truths but recognized that the standpoint of Hull House neighbors mattered.
Radical Meliorism
Meliorism is a hallmark of pragmatist philosophy, which we can see in Addams’ work with a more radical character than among other American pragmatists. If “radical” is defined as challenging existing power structures, Jane Addams was the least elitist and the most radical of the American philosophers of her era. Addams consistently took and eloquently supported inclusive positions that sought the benefit of society. While pragmatists typically advocated for social progress, Addams radicalized the extent of that social progress. Rather than defining progress by the best and brightest achievements, Addams advocates the betterment of all in what she calls “lateral progress.” For Addams, lateral progress meant that social advancement could not be declared through the breakthroughs or peak performances of a few but could only authentically be found in social gains held in common. Addams employs metaphor to explain the concept:
The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to consult the feasible right as well as the absolute right. He is often obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln’s “best possible,” and often have the sickening sense of compromising with his best convictions. He has to move along with those whom he rules toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people really want, and then “provide the channels in which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow.” What he does attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain climber beyond the sight of the valley multitude, but it is underpinned and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral.
He has not taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet higher. (AML 175)
Whether one refers to them as “robber barons” or “captains of industry,” the rise of commerce in the United States was defined by the winners of the game: those who amassed wealth. The wealthy enjoyed tremendous progress in healthcare, education, and material well-being. Addams was not satisfied with narrow social development and redefined progress according to the common person’s experience. This redefinition continues to elude us today as class disparity in the United States grows. Ironically, Addams is often chastised for expounding middle-class values, which was her point of reference as she started Hull House. Still, Addams’ experiences pushed her to understand and appreciate the immigrant poor in the neighborhood more fully.
Teaching
Addams kept up her heavy schedule of public lectures around the country, especially at college campuses. In addition, she offered college courses through the Extension Division of the University of Chicago. She declined offers from the university to become directly affiliated with it, including an offer from Albion Small, chair of the Department of Sociology, of a graduate faculty position. She declined in order to maintain her independent role outside of academia. Her goal was to teach adults not enrolled in formal academic institutions, because of their poverty and/or lack of credentials. Furthermore, she wanted no university controls over her political activism.
Addams was appointed to serve on the Chicago Board of Education. Addams was a charter member of the American Sociological Society, founded in 1905. She gave papers to it in 1912, 1915, and 1919. She was the most prominent woman member during her lifetime.
Relationships
Generally, Addams was close to a wide set of other women and was very good at eliciting their involvement from different classes in Hull House’s programs. Nevertheless, throughout her life Addams did have romantic relationships with a few of these women, including Mary Rozet Smith and Ellen Starr. Her relationships offered her the time and energy to pursue her social work while being supported emotionally and romantically. From her exclusively romantic relationships with women, she would most likely be described as a lesbian in contemporary terms, similar to many leading figures in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom of the time.
Her first romantic partner was Ellen Starr, with whom she founded Hull House, who she met when both were students at Rockford Female Seminary. In 1889, the two visited Toynbee Hall together and started their settlement house project, purchasing a house in Chicago.
Her second romantic partner was Mary Rozet Smith, who was wealthy and supported Addams’s work at Hull House, and with whom she shared a house. Historian Lilian Faderman wrote that Jane was in love and she addressed Mary as “My Ever Dear”, “Darling” and “Dearest One”, and concluded that they shared the intimacy of a married couple. They remained together until 1934, when Mary died of pneumonia, after 40 years together. It was said that, “Mary Smith became and always remained the highest and clearest note in the music that was Jane Addams’ personal life”. Together they owned a summer house in Bar Harbor, Maine. When apart, they would write to each other at least once a day – sometimes twice. Addams would write to Smith, “I miss you dreadfully and am yours ’til death”.The letters also show that the women saw themselves as a married couple: “There is reason in the habit of married folks keeping together”, Addams wrote to Smith.
Politics
In 1898, Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League, in opposition to the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. A staunch supporter of the Progressive Party, she nominated Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency during the Party Convention, held in Chicago in August 1912.She signed up on the party platform, even though it called for building more battleships. She went on to speak and campaign extensively for Roosevelt’s 1912 presidential campaign.
In January 1915, she became involved in the Woman’s Peace Party and was elected national chairman. Addams was invited by European women peace activists to preside over the International Congress of Women in The Hague, April 28–30, 1915,and was chosen to head the commission to find an end to the war. This included meeting ten leaders in neutral countries as well as those at war to discuss mediation. This was the first significant international effort against the war. Addams, along with co-delegates Emily Balch and Alice Hamilton, documented their experiences of this venture, published as a book, Women at The Hague (University of Illinois).
In her journal, Balch recorded her impression of Jane Addams (April 1915):
Miss Addams shines, so respectful of everyone’s views, so eager to understand and sympathize, so patient of anarchy and even ego, yet always there, strong, wise and in the lead. No ‘managing’, no keeping dark and bringing things subtly to pass, just a radiating wisdom and power of judgement.
Addams was elected president of the International Committee of Women for a Permanent Peace, established to continue the work of the Hague Congress, at a conference in 1919 in Zürich, Switzerland. The International Committee developed into the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).Addams continued as president, a position that entailed frequent travel to Europe and Asia.
Socializing Care
An analysis of Addams’ moral philosophy suggests at least three claims about her relationship to feminist care ethics Avant la letter. One, Addams’ approach to the important social issues of her day reflected the relationality and contextualization that are important to what is called care ethics today. Two, although Addams employed caring in response to the needs of others, she contributes an active, even assertive, dimension to care ethics not commonly found in feminist theory. Third, Addams advocates what might be called “socializing care”: systemically instantiating the habits and practices of care in social institutions.
Although care is a simple and widely invoked word, many feminist theorists have invested it with a particular meaning as it applies to ethics. The original motivation for developing care ethics was an acknowledgment that traditional forms of morality, in particular principle-based and consequence-based ethics, did not adequately address the richness of the human condition. These approaches bracket out emotions, relationships, temporal considerations, reciprocity, and creativity to focus on immediate adjudication of moral conflicts. Accordingly, the use of rules or consequences can become a reductionist and formulaic response resulting in shortsighted answers to complex and systemic issues. For care ethicists, principles can be useful, but a concern for interpersonal connection tempers them. Principles and consequences can be important in moral deliberation, but care theorists seek a more robust and complex sense of morality that cannot ignore the context and people involved. For example, the claim that people who spray-paint graffiti on a building ought to be punished because they have damaged someone else’s property (rule/principle violation) will likely receive widespread assent. Care ethicists do not necessarily deny such an assertion, but they want to know more. The person doing the spray-painting is a human being whose motivations and circumstances may reveal other variables not sufficiently addressed by the mere recognition of rule violations. Systemic issues involving social opportunities, discrimination, or lack of voice may have contributed to this behavior. Care ethicists shift the moral focus from abstract individuals and their actions to concrete, situated people with feelings, friends, and dreams—persons who can be cared about. Care ethics demands effort, experience, knowledge, imagination, and empathy to effectively understand the totality of the moral context. The result is not an exoneration of personal responsibility but a richer understanding of the human condition where we are all actors and acted upon.
Addams consistently moves beyond formulaic moral accounts of principles or consequences to apply a kind of care ethics to her experiences in the Hull House neighborhood. Proximity is once again crucial as she has direct experience with individuals, providing the resources for a caring response. However, as a philosopher, Addams extrapolates her experiences to theorize about others of similar circumstances. For example, in The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets Addams addresses juvenile delinquency. She recounts charges against young men who were brought before the Juvenile Court in Chicago (which Hull House had helped establish). These charges were categorized by type, such as stealing, which included the pilfering of pigeons, blankets, and a bicycle. Another category was disorderly conduct which included picking up coal from railroad tracks, throwing stones at railroad employees, and breaking down a fence. There was also vagrancy, which included loafing, sleeping on the streets all night, and wandering (SYC 56–57).
Addams does not deny the seriousness of some of these infractions, but she does not rush to judgment, instead choosing to investigate the context further. She talks to the young men and asks them about their motivations. She identifies a listlessness, a desire for adventure not quieted by what the city has to offer: “their very demand for excitement is a protest against the dullness of life, to which we ourselves instinctively respond” (SYC 71). Addams views the city as built around the possibility of factory production but ignores the needs of future workers. Among “juvenile delinquents,” Adams finds many young people who simply seek adventure and excitement because their lives have little of it. Had Addams merely abstracted youth as a category of individuals who seem prone to break the law, she could have easily found principles to judge them negatively. However, Addams saw them as humans, many of whom she witnessed growing up in the neighborhood, and she cared for them beyond the alienating label of “troubled youth.”
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