CHICAGO, Aug. 7. -- "Well, I'm thankful we're standing for something at last," was the way that Jane Addams of Hull House, "Chicago's first citizen," as they love to call her here, summed up the work of the Progressive Party's first national convention.
Miss Addams had had a long day's work as a delegate and the tremendous welcome she received from the convention when she seconded Col. Roosevelt's nomination might well have brought enervating reaction, but she is used to hard work and stirring applause. She seemed neither tired nor elated at her personal triumph when she sat down to give her impressions of the new party to a SUN reporter.
"What attracted me very much to the new party," she continued, "was the social and economic [program] -- that with the woman suffrage plank I don't know that the economic [program] alone would have been enough to win me. Suffrage means a great deal to me, you know."
Miss Addams smiled over her suffrage ardor and then went on in her quiet even voice:
"Then I feel strongly that there ought to be more mobility of parties in this country -- that groups ought to form, dissolve and reform in our national life more as they do in England."
Then, harking back to her favorite theme, Miss Addams continued:
"I am glad that Col. Roosevelt has come out so unequivocally for woman suffrage. Perhaps he has been a little slow about it, but there are whole groups of the party leaders, men like Gov. Johnson, who are enthusiastic over the suffrage question. I have felt for a long time that suffrage was out of the propaganda stage. I felt that the time had come not to say things, but to do them, and this party has given us a chance to do them by inviting the women from the non-suffrage States to take part.
"The platform we adopted [today] is wonderful. It's like a Lloyd George [program], and, as I said, at last we are really standing for something. What strikes me most is the vitality of that platform. The promise of what to be has already attracted a notable group of real workers who are now identified with the new party movement."
It has been suggested that Miss Addams should make a speaking campaign for the Progressive ticket, but she said tonight that while she might possibly make a few speeches she could not take a very active part in the party campaign on account of her suffrage campaign duties.
"First of all I am going at once for a six weeks vacation on the Maine coast," she said. "That's a very long vacation for me. Then I have promised to make a number of suffrage speeches in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. No, I don't think it would be quite fair for me to preach the Progressive Party to the suffragists. I believe that women may come to play a big part in this party -- you see, we were invited into it at the very beginning -- but I also believe that there will be a great many women whose families are Republican or Democratic who will seek the vote in the old parties."
The serious way in which the delegates went about their business here had pleased her greatly, Miss Addams said.
"It has been a very different convention from others I have attended," she said. "There has been much less drinking, less roughness, less bunco, if I may put it that way, and more seriousness. It was a wonderful gathering of men and women."
Miss Addams said that the part she played in affairs did not place her in a position to judge of the possibilities of the Progressive Party's chances for success at the polls. The movement was not dependent on success at the election this year, she thought, and she added: "No matter what happens the other parties cannot ignore the events that have taken place here this week."
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