Books with title Democracy and Social Ethics: And Other Essays

In 1889, Jane Addams co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, the first settlement house in the United States. All of the initial funding came from the $50,000 estate she inherited after her father died. Jane was the first occupant of the house, which would later be the residence of about 25 women. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around 2000 people. Its facilities included a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gymnasium, a girls club, bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, a library, and labor-related divisions. Her adult night school was a forerunner of the continuing education classes offered by many universities today. In addition to making available services and cultural opportunities for the largely immigrant population of the neighborhood, Hull House afforded an opportunity for young social workers to acquire training. Eventually, the Hull House became a 13-building settlement, which included a playground and a summer camp. In this book, Jane Addams reflects on labor, discrimination, welfare, education, and the role of democracy and government in relation to improving the lives of society's less fortunate.

Nearly a century before the advent of "multiculturalism," Jane Addams put forward her conception of the moral significance of diversity. Each member of a democracy, Addams believed, is under a moral obligation to seek out diverse experiences, making a daily effort to confront others' perspectives. Morality must be seen as a social rather than an individual endeavor, and democracy as a way of life rather than merely a basis for laws. Failing this, both democracy and ethics remain sterile, empty concepts. In this, Addams's earliest book on ethics--presented here with a substantial introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried--she reflects on the factors that hinder the ability of all members of society to determine their own well-being. Observing relationships between charitable workers and their clients, between factory owners and their employers, and between household employers and their servants, she identifies sources of friction and shows how conceiving of democracy as a social obligation can lead to new, mutually beneficial lines of conduct. She also considers the proper education of workers, struggles between parents and their adult daughters over conflicting family and social claims, and the merging of politics with the daily lives of constituents. "The sphere of morals is the sphere of action," Addams proclaims. It is not enough to believe passively in the innate dignity of all human beings. Rather, one must work daily to root out racial, gender, class, and other prejudices from personal relationships.

"Democracy and Social Ethics" is Jane Addam's earliest book on ethics, in which she reflects on the factors that hinder the ability of all members of society to determine their own well-being. Observing relationships between charitable workers and their clients, between factory owners and their employers, and between household employers and their servants, Jane Addams identifies sources of friction and shows how conceiving of democracy as a social obligation can lead to new, mutually beneficial lines of conduct. In "Democracy and Social Ethics," Addams also considers the proper education of workers, struggles between parents and their adult daughters over conflicting family and social claims, and the merging of politics with the daily lives of constituents. Anyone who wants to know why we have a forty hour work, minimum wage laws, social security disability laws, age discrimination laws, social security laws, welfare laws, and large education budgets should read "Democracy and Social Ethics," where Addams tells 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.

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.

"We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by traveling 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." Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics "Miss Addams is clear. She has not been precipitate in the preparation of her book. She has reconsidered, corrected, and recorrected it, spoken with temperance and courtesy....As gentle, as patient, as sincere, and as astute as Jane Addams herself is the philosophy set forth in these pages....The process of Miss Addams' thought are interesting to thousands. The sense that none of us is living up to the best idea of democracy is upon each of us....Miss Addams is bound to receive a respectful hearing. As a leader who ever prays to lead aright, a sociologist who is willing to test her theories in a practical and personal way, a theorist who is not ashamed to own when she has been mistaken, a friend who will remain true to her friend no matter what may arise, and a person of leisure and power, who has the civic interest at heart, she has come to be prized as one of the chief of citizens." -Chicago Tribune "Its pages are remarkably - we were about to say refreshingly - free from the customary academic limitations....In fact, are the result of actual experience in hand to hand contact with social problems....No more truthful description, for example, of the political 'boss' as he thrives today in our great cities has ever been written than is contained in Miss Addams' chapter on 'Political Reform.' The whole chapter will be accepted as a realistic picture of conditions as they are today in the city of Chicago. The same thing may be said of the other chapters of the book in regard to their presentations of social and economic facts." -Review of Reviews "Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the efficiency and inspiration afforded by these essays. 'Charitable Effort,' 'Filial Affections,' 'Household Adjustment,' 'Industrial Amelioration,' 'Educational Methods,' 'Political Reform,' are the topics treated in a masterly and revolutionary style. Miss Addams shatters some of our most cherished illusions upon the relations which should exist between the helper and the helped, between parent and child, mistress and maid, the members of a family, between the 'boss' and the community. She takes the subject entirely out of the realms of sentimentality, puts it upon a solid moral basis, and by a close and logical train of reasoning brings her conclusions home to the conscience and common sense of every member of the social structure. The book is startling, stimulating and intelligent." -Philadelphia Ledger "Jane Addams, in her 'Democracy and Social Ethics,' remarks upon the paradox that is the workingman, the man who should apparently be most limited in his mental outlook, who, given a free hand, will always sketch out the largest program. This piece of acute social insight receives confirmation from a study of the labor movement at the antipodes. There as nowhere else has the workingman had a free hand." -New Outlook CONTENTS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION CHAPTER II CHARITABLE EFFORT CHAPTER III FILIAL RELATIONS CHAPTER IV HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT CHAPTER V INDUSTRIAL AMELIORATION CHAPTER VI EDUCATIONAL METHODS CHAPTER VII POLITICAL REFORM

Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace. Beside presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, she was the most prominent reformer of the Progressive Era and helped turn the nation to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, public health, and world peace. In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace. Beside presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, she was the most prominent reformer of the Progressive Era and helped turn the nation to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, public health, and world peace. In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace. Beside presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, she was the most prominent reformer of the Progressive Era and helped turn the nation to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, public health, and world peace. In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.