Subsequently, she led over the board’s School Management Committee. In 1908, she participated in the founding of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. In 1910, she became the first woman president of the National Conference of Social Work. In 1911, Addams took on the task of establishing the National Federation of Settlements and held on to its top-most post for over two decades. (6) In 1912 she played an active part in the Progressive Party’s presidential campaign for Theodore Roosevelt. She also campaigned for better social conditions, and then she investigated into various areas of health and welfare.
She saw an education as the foundation for democracy. She also argued for women’s suffrage and for the peaceful resolution of the international conflicts. Addams worked with labor as well as other reform groups toward goals including the first juvenile-court law, tenement-house regulation, and an eight-hour working day for women, factory inspection, and workers’ compensation. She strove in addition for justice for immigrants and blacks; advocated research aimed at determining the causes of poverty and crime, and supported woman suffrage. Her pacifism let her to against American entry into the World War One.
With the beginning of the First World War, the social cum political activist was made the national chairman of the Women’s Peace Party. In 1915, she was also made president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and had to travel frequently to Europe and Asia. She joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation USA as member in 1917. Addams lectured at various college campuses, all over the country.
She offered college courses through the University of Chicago’s Extension Division. Her major work was offered night schools for adults in the Hull House. This inspired many universities that offer continuing education nowadays. She always advocated peace and spoke extensively on the subject of world peace. Jane Addams published a collection of her speeches on world peace prize in her book “Newer Ideals of Peace” in the year 1907. In 1910, the dedicated activist was elected as the first female president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections.
In her own area of Chicago she led investigations on midwifery, narcotics consumption, milk supplies, and sanitary conditions, even going so far as to accept the official post of garbage inspector of the Nineteenth Ward, at an annual salary of a thousand dollars. In 1910 she received the first honorary degree ever awarded to a woman by Yale University. She was also involved in the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. Her most achievement was jointly awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, for her efforts and contributions to bring out the role of women in peace-keeping. The staunch lover of peace donated her prize money to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Jane Addams was an ardent feminist by philosophy. In those days before women’s suffrage she believed that women should make their voices heard in legislation and therefore should have the right to vote, but more comprehensively, she thought that women should generate aspirations and search out opportunities to realize them.
