Jane Addams

c. 1906

Their wordsThe following pages present the claims of the newer, more aggressive ideals of peace, as over against the older dovelike ideal. These newer ideals are active and dynamic, and it is believed that if their forces were made really operative upon society, they would, in the end, quite as a natural process, do away with war.

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c. 1906

Their wordsCertainly no theory could be devised which is more cumbersome, more roundabout, more extravagant, than the reductio ad absurdum of the peace-secured-by-the-preparation-for-war theory.

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c. 1906

war

Their wordsIt is possible that we shall be saved from warfare by the “fighting rabble” itself, by the “quarrelsome mob” turned into kindly citizens of the world through the pressure of a cosmopolitan neighborhood.

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c. 1906

Their wordsThere arises the hope that when this newer patriotism becomes large enough, it will overcome arbitrary boundaries and soak up the notion of nationalism. We may then give up war, because we shall find it as difficult to make war upon a nation at the other side of the globe as upon our next-door neighbor.

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c. 1906

war

Their wordsWe care less each day for the heroism connected with warfare and destruction, and constantly admire more that which pertains to labor and the nourishing of human life.

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c. 1906

Americawardemocracy

Their wordsThey depended upon penalties, coercion, compulsion, remnants of military codes, to hold the community together; and it may be possible to trace much of the maladministration of our cities to these survivals, to the fact that our early democracy was a moral romanticism, rather than a well-grounded belief in social capacity and in the efficiency of the popular will.

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c. 1906

immigration

Their wordsWe also assume in our formal attempts to teach patriotism to him and to his children, that experience and traditions have no value, and that a new sentiment must be put into aliens by some external process.

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c. 1906

immigrationgovernment

Their wordsThis devotion, this comradeship, and this fine esprit de corps should have been won by the Government itself from these newly arrived, scared, and untrained citizens.

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c. 1906

Their wordsUnless we subordinate class interests and class feeling to a broader conception of social progress, unless we take pains to come in contact with the surging and diverse peoples who make up the nation, we cannot hope to attain a sane social development.

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c. 1906

Their wordsIn all fairness, these difficulties should be distributed and should not be allowed to fall completely upon the group of working-people whose labor is displaced as a result of the changes and who are obliged to learn anew their method of work and mode of life.

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c. 1906

Their wordsClass and group divisions with their divergent moralities become most dangerous when their members believe that the inferior group or class cannot be appealed to by reason and fair dealing, but must be treated upon a lower plane.

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c. 1906

Their wordsWe may gradually discover that in the interests of this industrial society of ours it becomes a distinct loss to put large numbers of producers prematurely at work, not only because the community inevitably loses their mature working power, but also because their “free labor quality,” which is so valuable, is permanently destroyed.

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c. 1906

Their wordsWe may at last discover that we are imperiling our civilization at the moment of its marked materialism, by wantonly sacrificing to that materialism the eternal spirit of youth, the power of variation, which alone is able to prevent it from degenerating into a mere mechanism.

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c. 1906

government

Their wordsBut rival cities have long since ceased to settle their claims by force of arms, and we shall have to admit, I think, that this early test of the elector is no longer fitted to the modern city, whatever may be true, in the last analysis, of the basis for the Federal Government.

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c. 1906

Their wordsShe will bear her share of civic responsibility because she is essential to the normal development of the city of the future, and because the definition of the loyal citizen as one who is ready to shed his blood for his country, has become inadequate and obsolete.

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c. 1906

Their wordsWe have come to realize that the great task of pushing forward social justice could be enormously accelerated if primitive methods as well as primitive weapons were once for all abolished.

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c. 1906

Their wordsThe task that is really before us is first to see to it, that the old virtues bequeathed by war are not retained after they have become a social deterrent and that social progress is not checked by a certain contempt for human nature which is but the inherited result of conquest.

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c. 1906

war

Their wordsIt is the military idea, resting content as it does with the passive results of order and discipline, which confesses a totally inadequate conception of the value and power of human life.

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c. 1902

Their wordsTo attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation.

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c. 1902

Their wordsWe are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another's burdens.

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c. 1902

Their wordsWe have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.

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c. 1902

democracy

Their wordsNo attempt is made to reach a conclusion, nor to offer advice beyond the assumption that the cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy, but the quite unlooked-for result of the studies would seem to indicate that while the strain and perplexity of the situation is felt most keenly by the educated and self-conscious members of the community, the tentative and actual attempts at adjustment are largely coming through those who are simpler and less analytical.

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c. 1902

Their wordsThe most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree.

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c. 1902

Their wordsWe sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would doubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not scientific enough.

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c. 1902

Their wordsBut in our charitable efforts we think much more of what a man ought to be than of what he is or of what he may become; and we ruthlessly force our conventions and standards upon him, with a sternness which we would consider stupid indeed did an educator use it in forcing his mature intellectual convictions upon an undeveloped mind.

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c. 1902

Their wordsBut just as we have learned to adjust the personal and family claims, and to find an orderly development impossible without recognition of both, so perhaps we are called upon now to make a second adjustment between the family and the social claim, in which neither shall lose and both be ennobled.

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c. 1902

Their wordsThe failure to recognize the social claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the suspicion constantly remains that woman's public efforts are merely selfish and captious, and are not directed to the general good. This suspicion will never be dissipated until parents, as well as daughters, feel the democratic impulse and recognize the social claim.

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c. 1902

Their wordsThe domestic employee is retained in the household largely because her "mistress" fatuously believes that she is thus maintaining the sanctity of family life.

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c. 1902

Their wordsTo perform too many good deeds may be to lose the power of recognizing good in others; to be too absorbed in carrying out a personal plan of improvement may be to fail to catch the great moral lesson which our times offer.

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