By Jean West Rudnicki
Moms – you’ve got to love ’em. After all, we wouldn’t be here without
’em. So, one day a year we appear on her doorstep (if we aren’t there
already), with flowers and cards in hand, to take Mom out for a special
dinner (one she doesn’t have to cook) – to show her, if we haven’t
already told her, how special she is and how much we love her.
This year, at Change, we’ve added a few more mothers to your list.
Incredible ladies for whom the virtues of motherhood extend beyond
the embrace of their own children. They are mothers to us all – women
who have taken up causes or movements that benefit many and who,
like our own moms, have made the world a brighter place to live.
Jane Addams – Mother of the World
Women like Jane Addams, born in 1860, worried that through education, women had
lost their capacity for empathy. But if that were so, she seems to
have more than made up for it.
Addams’ boundless compassion
earned her the affectionate title,
“Mother of the World,” not to
mention the first Nobel Peace
Prize (1931) given to a woman.
The youngest daughter of
a wealthy gristmill owner and
Illinois state senator, Addams
graduated as valedictorian from
Rockford Female Seminary
in 1881. Uncertain what to do
with her life, she toured Europe
taking in all the typical sites,
but included visits to the cities’ slums for an up–close look at poverty and the efforts being made to alleviate it.
Included among her stops was a visit to the newly opened Toynbee
Hall in London’s poverty-ridden east end. Its founders believed that
the only way to solve the poverty problem was to bring London’s most
privileged, and its future leaders, to live at Toynbee amongst the poor.
Through educating the future leaders and opinion formers, the Toynbee
Hall founders hoped to change society for the better. Addams decided
to start a similar project in Chicago. In 1889 she rented Hull House,
a large, abandoned mansion located in the heart of the rundown 19th
Ward. People living in the area were predominantly recently-arrived,
poor immigrants from Europe. By 1893, Hull House had become a
center for a wide variety of clubs, functions, classes and activities for
the neighborhood.
Over the next forty years, while Addams lived there, Hull
House assumed international
significance as Addams and
her associates championed a
multitude of causes including
the protection of immigrants,
child labor laws, and recreational
facilities for children, industrial
safety, the establishment of
juvenile courts, recognition of
labor unions, woman suffrage,
and world peace.
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