Jane Addams, coming from a wealthy and politically active family, personified all the ideals of the Progressive Era working with social reform movements such as the settled home movement, workers' rights, children's rights, civil rights, and women's suffrage and constantly tries to make life better for those less fortunate than herself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay She was born Laura Jane Addams in Cedarville, Illinois, on September 6, 1860, the youngest of eight children. Her mother died when she was two years old. At the age of seven he asked his father, a Republican senator, why some people lived in slums. He explained that some people did not have as many privileges as others. He decided to dedicate his life to helping people (Kent 3). At Rockford College, Addams was class president from 1877 to 1881 and valedictorian. He attended medical school, but dropped out, deciding he could help people in better ways. But then she becomes depressed and her doctor sends her to Europe with a friend, Ellen Gates Starr. While there, he saw a poor market. On a subsequent trip to London he saw a Settlement Home, so called because richer people settled there to socialize with the poor, called Toynbee Hall. This inspired her to build a settlement house in the United States (Curtis). She and Starr rented "Hull House", a dilapidated mansion in a poor area of ​​Chicago inhabited primarily by immigrants. Eventually the entire house was donated to the cause. Addams wrote that “The Settlement, therefore, is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems generated by modern conditions of life in a large city” (Addams). His philosophy was that rich and poor could learn from each other and the world could improve through democratic reforms based on each party's understanding of the other (Curtis). It opened on September 18, 1889. By 1890, 2,000 people a week attended the House's child care, hot lunch, kindergarten, club meetings, parties, union meetings, and adult night school. Residents went on hikes, walked in the park and rode bikes together. Other reformers came to work for women's rights and against poverty and child labor in the thirteen new House buildings. Addams also served on the Chicago school board, was a co-founder of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, was the first woman president of the National Conference of Social Work, was a founding member of the NAACP, and became vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Administration. She became Chicago's garbage inspector in 1895 after complaining to City Hall that the garbage administration was leaving the streets too dirty. He pressured the Chicago government to build playgrounds, parks, day care centers, and public restrooms in poor neighborhoods. He helped found the School of Social Work at the University of Chicago. He wrote ten books, hundreds of articles and thousands of speeches, in which he argued that true democracy requires the political and economic power of all citizens, denounced war and advocated negotiated settlement of political problems. Addams, a pacifist, was extremely against the United States joining World War I in 1914. In 1917, she and Crystal Eastman founded the National Civil Liberties Bureau, which became the American Civil Liberties Union. He taught a peace studies course at the University of Wisconsin. In 1906 he wrote “The New Ideals of Peace” and held anti-war conferences. He served as chairman of the Party of.