Jane Addams and Florence Kelley were humanitarians of the early 20th century, whose activism was shaped by their unique ideals and cultural values from the world around them. Because of their different experiences early in life, their humanitarian efforts differed in nature, feminism, and the career paths they chose. Based on their writings, one can infer the level of feminism in their activist behaviors as well as the values that shaped heir activism. Whereas Florence Kelley was an active feminist whose focus centered on her values of gender equality, women’s rights, the possibility of social change, belief in the existence of gender consciousness, and children’s rights, Jane Addams humanitarian efforts were gender neutral as reflected in her efforts to help immigrants, children, women, men, and the socio-economically underprivileged.
Throughout Jane Addams Twenty Years at Hull House, Addams expresses her views regarding poverty, socialized education, and social clubs in response to the influences of her experiences in adolescence. Her views regarding the aforementioned issues faced by Hull House have apparent ties to her childhood experiences surrounding her relationship and interactions with her father. The values of humanitarianism and Christian morality extended to her career in the social sciences through her in depth involvement with Hull House. Her efforts were gender neutral, and focused on helping those in the lowest socio-economic rankings of society to help themselves gain access to education, employment, and life skills. Her focus bore no emphasis on securing women’s rights or advancing women’s place in society and nowhere in her writings in Twenty Years at Hull House can be found an opinion even slightly suggesting Addams had a belief in gender consciousness or gender equality[1].
Although she was not a feminist in her voiced opinions and didn’t explicitly address the need of women to seek a voice in a society of male social hierarchies, her activism implies her feminist tendencies. She stepped out of the realm of the traditional women’s role of the separate spheres ideology theory to take on a more powerful and societal challenging role. Her activism in the social sciences to improve the lives of the people of
Jane Addams’ humanitarian values influenced her activism in response to socially imposed hardships upon her Hull House patrons regardless of gender. Just as her father taught her to live up to the standards of Christian values, Jane Addams wished to use social clubs to help their participants to improve their lives based on building virtuous temperaments. Whether through meeting people of both genders from other neighborhoods and ethnicities to break racial stereotypes, breaking up the monotony of a working child’s day and providing them with the strength and perseverance to carry on, or providing a temporary escape for people who live in vile conditions, social clubs were the epitome of Jane Addams mission; educating, protecting, improving, character building and entertaining those in poverty from various levels of education. Her gender neutral humanitarian focus was a far cry from Florence Kelley’s feminist female-focused activism unlike Kelley; Addams never voiced her opinions regarding women’s suffrage. She never stood in picket lines advocating women’s rights. Her activism encompassed a broader spectrum of people through her Hull House programs, allowing her to remain under the shadow of humanitarianism and gain further support for her purposes from supporters who may not have supported blatantly feminist activism that to this day has negative connotations in many reaches of society.
Florence Kelley was an active Feminist interested in securing rights to protect women’s interests in politics, education, the workplace, and life in general. Her belief in the need for social change to combat the problems caused by the rapid urbanization and industrialization in the early 20th century reflected her feminist values. Kelley deeply valued women’s access to higher education, women’s prominence in early social science, political autonomy of women’s separate institutions, and challenging the traditions of limited government[3]. Her strong persuasions to reject limited government are reflected in her desire to project legislation to establish a minimum wage, limit work hours for women and youths, ban child labor, allow workers to unionize, and improve labor conditions. As the Secretary Advocate of the National Consumers League, Kelley was considered by many to be a “leading promoter of protective legislation for women and children in the nation”[4].
Like Jane Addams, her humanitarian activism was not limited to women, as shown through her ardent appeals for improved quality of life for the working class through her political involvement by such means as the White Label Campaign. It was Kelley’s aim to advance the position of women in the workplace to lessen their plight through educating women of the middle and upper class as to the inexcusable conditions of industrial working environments. She did so through an advertising campaign in which she proposed easily identifiable white labels to be placed on products made under acceptable working conditions as advocated by the National Consumers League[5]. However the vast majority of her activist participation was centered on improving women’s rights. Her doubtless approval of the ruling of the Muller V. Oregon ruling in support of limiting the hours women can work shows her willingness to improve the quality of life for women, as she failed to comprehend the possible detriment of what such a ruling could do to force women back into the stereotype of delicacy and inadequacy.
Her advocation of the ten hour working day laws for women likely arose from the common notion at the time that women need to be treated more gently than men because their health as affected by their participation in the workforce could be detrimental to the health of their children[6]. Kelley’s awareness of the health of children was very likely influenced by the fact that infant mortality was high in the early 20th century, and Kelley witnessed the loss of children by her own mother[7]. Although Kelley didn’t “reject marriage and family for a women centered existence” in her personal life as Jane Addams did[8], Kelley’s personal life reflected the values that governed her activism. Her socialist party participation reflected her desire for women to gain more power in the political sphere. It is clear that the value she placed on women’s access to political power was in her mindset in her participation in the Minimum Wage Campaign. Also reflecting her humanitarian moral structure, Kelley believed that “low wages produce more poverty than all other causes together”[9]. By fighting the cause of poverty (in her view the lack of minimum wage legislation that lead to exploitation of laborers), Kelley was both satisfying her compassionate principles as well as her thirst for political authority.
Like Jane Addams, Kelley’s activism played a role in the obliteration of the poverty caused by rapid urbanization, industrialization, and immigration by combating the exploitation of the people in the lowest socio-economic standings in society. Although Kelley’s activism focused predominantly on the female ratio of the aforementioned demographic thus displaying her blatant feminism, Jane Addams used the feminist view that women can and should have political influence through her humanitarian efforts to help people of both genders. While Kelley and Addams can both be considered feminists, their means of conveying the level of their feminist activism reflected their values and was reverberated through their choice of career paths.
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