How the social reformer's encounter with the canonical Russian author influenced her activism.
Jane Addams—philanthropist, activist, and community organizer—perhaps best remembered for co-founding Chicago’s Hull-House, led a busy and storied life. In addition to running one of the United States’ first settlement houses—which served simultaneously as daycare, school, Laundromat, employment office, cafeteria, and community center for some of Chicago’s poorest residents—she also arose as a leading voice in the women’s suffrage and the anti-imperialist movements. Her stance against World War I eventually earned her a Nobel Peace Prize, while her work at Hull-House gave her a voice of authority in shaping the profession of social work.
Addams’ exceptional spirit of activism arose out of a deep-seated need to connect with others.
Often, Addams is referred to as the discipline’s founder or “mother.” British MP John Burns went so far as to call her “America’s only saint.” Beyond her legacy of deeds, she left behind more than one hundred articles and ten books, including her autobiography—which is still required reading at any school of social work today. Perhaps her defining contribution to the field was the understanding that meaningful change began not with charity, but with direct community engagement 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.”
Addams’ particularly exceptional spirit of activism arose out of a deep-seated need to connect with others, paired with the shock and discomfort of witnessing abject poverty and squalor, from London’s East End to her own backyard—Chicago’s Nineteenth Ward, a neighborhood full of poor, working-class European immigrants who shouldered the bulk of the burden of capitalism’s explosion.
Her sense of empathy was cultivated not only by her father’s ecumenical faith, but also by years of reading and reflection, including, notably, Leo Tolstoy’s disquisition on the role of science in helping others. In this nonfiction work—What Then Must We Do?—Tolstoy describes the abysmal social conditions of 19th-century Russia, insisting that it is not enough to give money to remedy poverty; one must act and connect.
The thesis was an inspiration to Addams, who went on to co-found the iconic Hull-House—embedding herself directly into the community she sought to help. The settlement house was one of the first of its kind, inspiring the creation of hundreds of other institutions like it across the country in the decades to follow. When in 1896 she took a five-month furlough from managing the ever-expanding settlement house to travel through Europe, she hoped to meet the Russian writer she’d idolized and to plumb what she saw as a kindred intellect.
As fate would have it, Tolstoy’s translator offered to take Addams and her traveling companion to the writer’s estate outside of Moscow. Addams eagerly looked forward to the encounter: “The prospect of seeing Tolstoy filled me with the hope of finding a clue to the tangled affairs of city poverty,” she wrote.
On the occasion of the highly anticipated meeting, he did offer such a clue—by way of blunt, disarming observation that would shake Addams’ confidence to the core. Tolstoy’s translator introduced Addams and her traveling companion, explaining their work at Hull-House, by way of introduction. What happened next, Addams recounted in detail in her autobiography:
Tolstoy, standing by clad in his peasant garb, listened gravely but, glancing distrustfully at the sleeves of my traveling gown which unfortunately at that season were monstrous in size, he took hold of an edge and pulling out one sleeve to an interminable breadth, said quite simply that “there was enough stuff on one arm to make a frock for a little girl,” and asked me directly if I did not find “such a dress” a “barrier to the people.”
Addams was crushed, but Tolstoy was not finished. The conversation turned to her living arrangements.
I was asked who “fed” me, and how did I obtain “shelter”? Upon my reply that a farm a hundred miles from Chicago supplied me with the necessities of life, I fairly anticipated the next scathing question: “So you are an absentee landlord? Do you think you will help the people more by adding yourself to the crowded city than you would by tilling your own soil?”
Tolstoy’s cutting remarks left an impression, leading Addams to question more than just her wardrobe. His words, and her struggles to deal with the contradictory injunctions inherent in them, are emblematic of a dilemma that haunted Addams from adolescence onward: how to situate her privilege alongside the squalor in which most of her charges daily lived and breathed?
At the time, Addams was struggling to improve herself and maintain a voice as she rose higher through the echelons of city governance. Her work at Hull-House accorded her a legitimacy that had allowed her to become increasingly involved in politics—both electoral and backroom. The new vantage point allowed her to scale up her efforts, but occasionally at the expense of undermining the original principles behind those efforts.
For the sake of political convenience, Addams even supported other organizations whose practices were, at times, antithetical to those she championed at Hull-House; "charity organizations" who dispensed with the on-the-ground caring aspects of social work, operating primarily as hard-hearted suppliers of temporary aid. The distinction between the two was one Addams was keenly aware of: “Now, as I take it,” she wrote in her 1894 publication, “a settlement differs radically from a charitable enterprise in that it enters the neighborhood for social reasons; in order that it may effect the life of a neighborhood, and give it, if possible, a higher civic, social and political ideal.”
That she shared this conviction with Tolstoy, and that he could still find cause to deride her, left her feeling perplexed and unsure of her own moral compass. As her trip wound down and she prepared to return to Chicago, she resolved to try to act more in line with Tolstoy's ideas:
I read everything of Tolstoy's that had been translated into English, German, or French, there grew up in my mind a conviction that what I ought to do upon my return to Hull-House was to spend at least two hours every morning in the little bakery which we had recently added to the equipment of our coffeehouse. Two hours' work would be but a wretched compromise, but it was hard to see how I could take more time out of each day.
Upon her return, Addams tried to follow through. Her bakery exercise, however, may have been short-lived, owing to the increasing demands on her time and attention. Still, her attempt to go back to basics reveals not only how much she was inspired and challenged by Tolstoy, in equal measure, but also how important it was to her to be conscientious and to stay grounded.
Ironically, it was the privilege so disdained by Tolstoy that helped Addams to begin her trailblazing social work in the first place. Thanks to her inherited wealth and the cultivated ease with which she’d been reared, Addams was able to make the connections necessary to launch Hull-House. Socialized in the spirit of the Social Gospel, she felt the pull of inherited money and its responsibilities. She also had real health concerns and a love of travel, particularly in the company of good friends. All these individual needs tugged at her; at times they succeeded in pulling her out of orbit. Yet she hungered, even when she was uncertain how to move forward, to answer the call of a purpose greater than herself.
This post was adapted from The Size of Others’ Burdens: Barack Obama, Jane Addams, and the Politics of Helping Others.
Start reading The Size of Others’ Burdens »
Erik Schneiderhan, formerly a political activist, campaign worker, and policy analyst in New Hampshire, currently teaches sociology at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Size of Others’ Burdens.
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