Trail Blazers - Jane Addams: A new impulse to an old gospel

Remembering the Trail Blazers series is a series of pieces remembering and honoring those who have played an important part in "securing the blessings of liberty" for all Americans.

With more than 100 years between today and the days prior to universal public education and the many fields of social sciences, its easy to forget that a free public education and the study of social sciences required a protracted struggle to make them realities.

Jane Addams (B. September 6, 1860 – D. May 21, 1935) was a founder of the U.S. Settlement House movement, and one of the first women to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She was a leading figure in the Progressive era. Born into wealth and tempered by tragedy (three of her siblings died in infancy and her mother died from tuberculosis during pregnancy when Jane was just two years old.) Jane used her considerable empathy and skills to exert her influence on a world where a thirst for leaders offered opportunity and a willing public.

Originally published as 'A new impulse to an old gospel' Forum 14 (1892) pp342-356 and later in Philanthropy and Social Progress, Henry C. Adams, Editor (1893) New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell. This version is taken from Addams 1910 book: Twenty Years at Hull House, New York: Macmillan. Today this lecture is referred to by the title "The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements"

"In a thousand voices singing the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel's "Messiah," it is possible to distinguish the leading voices, but the differences of training and cultivation between them and the voices in the chorus, are lost in the unity of purpose and in the fact that they are all human voices lifted by a high motive. This is a weak illustration of what a Settlement attempts to do. It aims, in a measure, to develop whatever of social life its neighborhood may afford, to focus and give form to that life, to bring to bear upon it the results of cultivation and training; but it receives in exchange for the music of isolated voices the volume and strength of the chorus. It is quite impossible for me to say in what proportion or degree the subjective necessity which led to the opening of Hull-House combined the three trends: first, the desire to interpret democracy in social terms; secondly, the impulse beating at the very source of our lives, urging us to aid in the race progress; and, thirdly, the Christian movement toward humanitarianism. It is difficult to analyze a living thing; the analysis is at best imperfect. Many more motives may blend with the three trends; possibly the desire for a new form of social success due to the nicety of imagination, which refuses worldly pleasures unmixed with the joys of self-sacrifice; possibly a love of approbation, so vast that it is not content with the treble clapping of delicate hands, but wishes also to hear the bass notes from toughened palms, may mingle with these."

Read this lecture in its entirety

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