Democracy and Social Ethics

by Jane Addams

Hull House founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams spent twenty years working with the poverty-stricken immigrant poor in Chicago. In 'Democracy and Social Ethics,' she writes with understated passion and unqualified empathy for their plight. Anyone who wants to know the reasons for the forty hour work should read this book. Addams writes about the desirablity of factory work over household work for young women, due both to the lack of isolation and the relatively short working hours, "only" from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days a week. The reasons for minimum wage laws, social security disability laws, age discrimination laws, social security laws, welfare laws, etc. are also explained in this book. Addams writes about people earning pennies an hour, having their peak earning years in their twenties, being disabled in their thirties, and being dependent on children for financial support. The children, in turn had their education stop before high school so they can support their families. Anyone who wants to know why governments spend so much money on education should read this book. Addams writes about children having their choices limited to factory employment or household service, with the more intellectually oriented being doomed to spend a lifetime haunting public libraries and public lectures, but having virtually no chance of escaping the circumstance of their birth. Anyone who wants to know why poverty-stricken people are suspicious of political reform movements should read this book. Addams writes about the major efforts Chicago's political powerhouses made to help individual poverty-stricken people, and the irrelevance of wisdom advocating personal savings to people who could not pay for food for their family, or of wisdom urging them to stay out of taverns when they were a great source of personal help and friendship. A century after Addams wrote this book, the United States is a far better place to live than it was then. But our country's improvements, urged by great progressive leaders like Addams, are under relentless assaults today. This book is extremely relevant to America's future, if that future is going to continue to better than the past. Addams saw democracy as a way of life, not just a series of electoral choices. She sought a major expansion of municipal services, to both improve the living standards of the desperately poor and to wean them away from dependence on corrupt political machines. She advocated the existence of "A reformer who really knew the people and their great human needs, who believed it was the business of government to serve them, and who further recognized the educative power of a sense of responsibility...." Addams addresses this book to the philanthropic community which provided the base of her financial support. She clearly saw them as providing seed money for demonstration projects to create greater governmental and societal commitment.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Academic, Social Work, Social Justice

82 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1902

About the author

American social reformer and pacifist Jane Addams in 1889 founded Hull house, a care and education center for the poor of Chicago, and in 1931 shared the Nobel Prize for peace.

Her mother died when she was two years old in 1862, and her father and later a stepmother reared her. She graduated from Rockford female seminary in 1881, among the first students to take a course of study equivalent to that of men at other institutions. Her father, whom she admired tremendously, died in that same year, 1881.

Jane Addams attended medical college of woman in Pennsylvania but, probably due to her ill health and chronic back pain, left. She toured Europe from 1883 to 1885 and then lived in Baltimore until 1887 but figure out not what she wanted with her education and skills.

In 1888, on a visit to England with her Rockford classmate Ellen Gates Starr, Jane Addams visited Toynbee Settlement Hall and London's East End. Jane Addams and Ellen Starr planned to start an American equivalent of that settlement house. After their return they chose Hull mansion, a building which had, though originally built at the edge of the city, become surrounded by an immigrant neighborhood and had been used as a warehouse.

Using an experimental model of reform -- trying solutions to see what would work -- and committed to full- and part-time residents to keep in touch with the neighborhood's real needs, Jane Addams built Hull-House into an institution known worldwide. Addams wrote articles, lectured widely and did most of the fund-raising personally and served on many social work, social welfare and settlement house boards and commissions.

Jane Addams also became involved in wider efforts for social reform, including housing and sanitation issues, factory inspection, rights of immigrants, women and children, pacifism and the 8-hour day. She served as a Vice President of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1911-1914.

In 1912, Jane Addams campaigned for the Progressive Party and its presidential candidate, Teddy Roosevelt. She worked with the Peace Party, helped found and served as president (1919-1935) of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

In 1931 Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Nicholas Murray Butler, but her health was too fragile to attend the European ceremonies to accept the prize. She was the second woman to be awarded that honor.

By Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com

Reviews

[Nick Klagge · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine book (pamphlet, almost), which touches on many of the themes Addams addresses in "Twenty Years at Hull-House." But without the focus on specific individuals and stories, the arguments lose some of their timeless quality. I can see why this book is not as widely read today as TYHH.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it hard to put myself into the mind of a brilliant woman in 1902, a woman who was well aware of social issues and inequity. I will try to read her book 20 years at Hull house to see if I can get a better sense of her work and life.

[Pink · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting ideas of democracy and more especially a look at social conditions of the time. A lot to like, especially if you enjoy this era of early 20th century America.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's fascinating to read Addams' arrival at core Pragmatic conclusions through lived experience of trying to help immigrants and working people survive and thrive in the rough and tumble world of late 19th century Chicago. Like her contemporary American theorists—Dewey, James, DuBois, Cooper, etc.—this is not a systematic theory or philosophy, but rather a roundabout description of "things as they are" combined with a normative argument for "things as they ought to be."

From a 21st century perspective, Addams often violates many of our expectations for "correct" interactions with inequality and social stratification (e.g., referring to immigrant Italians as "peasants"), so you can get hung up on your own positions if you're not careful. And it's worth it to read carefully and meet Addams where she is (in the late 19th century) and follow her argument through to the end. In the education chapter, for example, if you don't read through the whole thing, you'll completely misunderstand what she sees as the humanity and capability of all people, including immigrants, and what American society owes them.

Two things struck me as vitally important in her theory of democracy, especially given the current state of decline:
1) She argues that our day to day lived experience as Americans in a polyglot and plural cultural environment demands (she uses the Christian phrase, "calls us") to a different understanding of democracy, one that obligates us to see ourselves in our individual lives as they really are and to really see and understand our fellow citizens as they are. There is both a moral and a practical [not to be confused with Pragmatic] claim here. Morally, the actual conditions of democracy are those of radical constant encounter with what we might today call the cultural "other". Practically, if you want to either solve social problems or alleviate your fellows' suffering, you must actually see them with clear eyes. Fascinatingly, in the second chapter about "charity visitors" (roughly what today we might call a "social worker") she includes a rigorous critique of how the "helpers" misperceive those they help, which then leads them to misevaluate them (misapprehending moral behavior for "laziness" or "backwardness", etc.), which in turn leads to actions that do not in fact help. This recalls many of the current arguments about the role of "allies" in justice movements today.

2) In addition to insisting that knowledge and perspectives are built over lifetimes of experience and are inextricable from a person's actual life, Addams also makes the classic American Pragmatic move of insisting that knowledge detached from conscious action is ultimately both useless and, quite possibly, immoral. In a nutshell, the core of Addams' critique of unitedstatesian democracy is that it is not enough merely to believe in freedom, equality, justice, etc. Our lived experiences of inequality and suffering within the United States should make evident and, again, "call" us to action. It is only through action, to actually making a society that lives up to its ideals, that we are actually democratic. Note that she is not calling for prefection—indeed, she thinks that the enactment of democratic values will always have a slippery connection to lived conditions, and so must always be carefully watched. Rather, I think the conclusions we draw from her thinking is that democracy must always be thought of as something that we do, an action connected to values.

And that, ultimately, is what she means by Social Ethics.

[Scott Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best known as the founder of Hull House, a community center in Chicago for immigrants and other marginalized people, Jane Addams was also a forceful thinker about social issues. This slender volume, first published in 1902, gathers a series of her lectures, all guided by a belief that American society was shifting from an individualistic ethic to a social one—as exemplified by the formation of trade unions, the settlement house movement, and socialist politics. Alas, her hopeful call for the evolution of a genuinely democratic ethic, one that emphasizes the common good over personal greed, makes for melancholy reading in 2020. Advertising, social media, global capitalism, and rule by plutocrats have combined to reinforce a self-centered ethic, elevating private wealth over public good, and undermining any sense that we all bear a responsibility to care for one another and for our shared world.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a snapshot of poor people’s lives in the early 1900s, this may be a worthwhile look into. Jane Addams book is very descriptive, more so than educational. From time to time she does give us an analysis that is spot on, and sometimes she proposed solutions that are not that spot on. Sometimes she generalize and other time she looks into specific cases. It is good to remember though that this is at a time where there were a lot of poor people, lot of factory work, and still even home work, and even if the pathways were slim for many, a societal solution would only be speculation and experimental, more so than a real end solutions. She were proposing a start, kind of, if the book was more about that.

[Albert Alarcon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice bit of incite. A

This book was written in 1909 and I found it very modern. I think the last chapter reflexes all what is going on with politics now. Why are we always repeating history? But in reality I think the first sentence of the book says it all. Ethics is to do what is right. Some parts were dated but still relevant, this book was made before women could vote. Altogether it is well worth reading and is in the public domain, so either free or dirt cheap, but the knowledge is priceless.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot of wisdom in this small pamphlet but it is written in such a way as to seem academic in the extreme. That said, if someone were planning to work in a charitable field, I would highly recommend this as it is full of truths not found elsewhere and still quite relevant today. Jane Addams was not a believer in self-righteousness and she definitely put her money where her mouth was, so to speak.

[Matt]

I underestimated how dense this was. I would have been better served to have read it than listened to it. It was still interesting though. She is clearly an intelligent woman who cares about the poor.

[Nora Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though it’s been years since who I consider the mother of social work wrote her notes and publications. I really find 90% if not more still extremely relevant today.

[Kate]

This is a really fascinating read in contrast to the current context in the USA. Would love to have read it with others. I read snippets of this in grad school, was good to revisit more thoroughly.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is kind of a difficult book to really appreciate, because so much of what Addams discusses is the specific socio-cultural and political economic conditions of the early 1900s, so much of it has changed by 2022 (though a depressing amount of this is still relevant--like the issues of economic inequality, political corruption, a lack of women's rights). However, I really like the central contention that underlies all of the stories Addams tells about family life, charity, politics, etc. which is that democracy relies on a social ethics of compassion, empathy, and willingness to see other people's perspectives. Essentially, this is a kind of cosmopolitan ethos based on recognizing the value of other people as a key underlying factor in a successful democracy--that is, a successful social system built on the fundamental premise of equality and social unity.
https://youtu.be/PaK49VI3Ul0

[Pete Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this because I'm trying to read everything by American superhero Jane Addams. But, this book was quite dated: a few gems, but mostly a bunch of keen analyses of the intricacies of turn-of-the-century social reform that were not always transferable to today.

[Alison Zipper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this audio book really interesting! I have studied Jane Addams and taught about her to students before but always through secondary sources. I really enjoyed hearing her ideas through a primary source.

[Ally McCulloch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've learned that it's hard for people to accept that a woman's place is anywhere other than the home.

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading more about Jane Addams in Amy Kittelstrom's The Religion of Democracy, I was determined to read her writing. She's a good and perceptive writer. I'm puzzled why this work is not more seriously part of the canon.

Though the contemporary issues she grapples with are dated (aren't they in most of the great ethical works?) they contain universal ideas applicable to current problems.

And what I most admired was her vision of democracy requiring a social ethic (instead of an individual one) in which we must honor the perspectives of a diverse people.

A sample line, "As democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the value and function of each member of the community, however humble he may be."

I also think her work might be crucial in the progressive movement reconnecting with the working class.