A Chicago View of Jane Addams
(From the Chicago Evening Post.)
Unique in the annals of Chicago was the tribute paid last Thursday evening to one of its private citizens, Jane Addams of Hull House. And it was more than a local tribute. The President of the United States, the Governors of Massachusetts and New York, and men and women of prominence in every section of the country gladly responded to the opportunity which the occasion afforded for declaring their respectful admiration of this great woman.
Said the President, in concluding his letter of congratulation: "I trust that the testimonial which you are about to offer her may give her renewed strength and courage to carry on her work of peace and good will."
Many more Chicagoans than those who could find seats at the banquet tables, and thousands uncounted throughout the nation and in other lands, will echo that wish. Jane Addams has been one of the great, constructive forces for human welfare in the life of America and the world. Her beautiful spirit, so gentle and so generous; her alert mind, so broad in its interests and so clear in its vision; her courage and sympathy and tireless effort in behalf of those movements which seek the promotion of understanding and reconciliation, the development of the best that is in human life, the realization of its dearest hopes -- these qualities have endeared her to all who have come under the sway of her gracious influence.
It is inevitable that anyone who espouses the cause of the downtrodden, or who seeks to end age-old evils which have cursed the world, should be subjected to misinterpretation and to taunts and traducings. Jane Addams has met her share of these. She has me them with a quiet dignity. They have hurt, but she has taken the hurts as the wounds in a warfare from which no consideration of self-interest could swerve her.
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