Slavery has always been wrong

Slavery has always been wrong. Stop it wherever you see it. It has always been wrong. The gadgets, the weapons, the toys, the inventions, gone on don’t change anything. We are still all human beings, and we need to see that, respect that. Give life some dignity. That job is never over, recreated by every society, every civilization, every kingdom. Tie the hands of the brutes and the butchers.

Painting titled The American Slave Market by Taylor, 1852. Shows group of 13 white men, enslavers, in hats gathered at a slave auction, and a group of 7 enslaved people wait to be sold.
[No known copyright. Credit: Chicago History Museum, ICHi-053543]

Everywhere, the children need to be protected

It has all been said before, by a million of people over a million years. Love, death, just protect the children, who never asked for this. Everywhere, the children need to be protected.

Children sitting on a garbage box in a dirty alley in the 17th Ward, Chicago, Illinois, circa 1908. Advertising poster for Riverview Amusement Park behind them.  
[Credit: Chicago History Museum, ICHi-03808]

The carnage? How can anyone not be appalled by the carnage?!

The carnage? How can anyone not be appalled by the carnage?! By just wholescale, mad killing, soldiers drunk on the gore, on the thrill of seeing people running away screaming. Who could not be against that? 

Rue de Tirlemont in Louvain, Belgium following the burning and looting by the German army at the start of World War 1, August 1914. The photographer, John T. McCutcheon, was a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune at this time.
[Credit: Chicago Tribune on December 20, 1914]

Against ALL wars

 Of course Jane Addams, Gentle Jane with the backbone of steel, and I were against the war. Against all wars. Including wars long forgotten. The Spanish American War? Where did the name come from? I always fought for fair conditions for the workers making the uniforms, when the mania of war took over.

Ink drawing by John T. McCutcheon titled The Harvest Moon in Fodderland, depicting groups of deceased World War 1 soldiers made to look like haystacks in the moonlight. 60,000 dead in the Spanish American War.[1] WWI soldier casualties were ~15M, and the Spanish Influenza that followed claimed 17-25M lives.[2]
[Credit: Chicago Daily Tribune, July 8, 1916]

No Point giving up

No Point giving up. The nicest thing anyone ever said about me is: "Every one immediately felt hopeful when Florence Kelley walked into the room.”

Hull House was among the first settlement houses to be founded in the United States, but was soon joined by over 400 others across the country. As settlement pioneers, Hull,House residents were leaders in the national settlement movement. Here settlement leader from around the United States meet at Hull House to discuss reform efforts, programs, fundraising, and the settlement philosophy. (JAMC 1795)
[Credit: Twenty Years at Hull House: Jane Addams (1910)]

Always hold your head high

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: Always hold your head high. Especially when they—whoever the They is—are saying you can’t do something. And you know it is the right thing to do. And you are going to do it, not just to spite them.

[Credit: Voices from the Field Florence Kelley, Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University]

Open UP! It’s Florence Kelley! Factory Inspector!

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: My stockings had holes. I didn’t have the time or will to darn them. To busy rushing to bang on the door of the next illegal sweatshop. Open UP. It’s Florence Kelley. Factory Inspector. And her pals. You know they didn’t want to open that door.

April 24, 1894—Anton Horky, 665 Alport Street
[Credit: First Special Report on Small-Pox in the Tenement House Sweat-Shops of Chicago By Factory Inspectors of Illinois, 1894, pg. 10]

I was thick skinner, tough, but always smiling.

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: I was thick skinner, tough, but always smiling. I looked everyone right between the eyes. Then the others. Miracle workers: came out of those hellhole factories and laundries and joined us, marched with us, to the State Legislature! We said, together: Listen!

Florence Kelley, a socialist and committed anti-child labor advocate, became a resident at Hull-House in 1891. Jane Addams said of her arrival, "She galvanized us all into a more intelligent interest in the industrial conditions all about us." Unlike Addams, who favored conciliation and arbitration, resident Edith Abbott described Kelley's methods as "direct assault." (JAMC 40)
[Credit: Twenty Years at Hull House: Jane Addams (1910) ]

An eclipse!

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: An eclipse! We puny mortals foolishly believe we control the sky the sun the moon. If there are gods they are laughing at us.

Two women and two men watching a solar eclipse from a mountain in Michigan. 1926 [Credit: DN-0080760 Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection Chicago Historical Society]

I didn’t ask what was the right thing to do

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: I didn’t ask what was the right thing to do. Teach an illiterate girl, and her father, and her mother, the miracle of reading. And they taught the rest of the family, even the deaf grandmother. How could that be anything but a good?

In 1894, Ellen Gates Starr helped found the Chicago Public School Art Society to provide art to the public sclhools. Urban children with no exposure to nature, Starr argued, especially needed the solace of good artwork and its spur to the imagination. Starr hoped that exposure to beauty and heroism through art would stir the atnbitions and emotions of young chidren. ( ART) [Credit/source: Hull-House (IL) (Images of America), Peggy Glowacki]

 

Fail. Fail again. Fail Better. Fail differently.

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: Fail. Fail again. Fail Better. Fail differently. Let everyone see you are failing. Failing to get rid of the sweatshops and how wrong they are. How Godless.

Sweatshop. circa 1900. [Source/permission: Kheel Center, Cornell University]

 

In spite of our pride, our greed, our stupidity

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: And Yet, and yet. We must continue. In spite of our pride, our greed, our stupidity, our repeated mistakes. We must go on.

On 24 April 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building, collapsed in Savar, a sub-district in the Greater Dhaka Area, the capital of Bangladesh. The search for the dead ended on 13 May with a death toll of 1,129. Approximately 2,515 injured people were rescued from the building alive.
[Source: Wikimedia Creative Commons]

Do something that begins something!

Always better to get started. Do something that begins something. Look at what we did with our little Factory Inspection Reports!! We got people’s attention! Made some people mad. Sometimes that is all you can do!

Sewing Hall at D. B, Fisk & Co., Wholesale Millinery at 225 N. Wabash Ave. built in 1912. Description: Sewing Hall at D. B, Fisk & Co., Wholesale Millinery at 225 N. Wabash Ave. built in 1912, Chicago, IL. Source: ICHi-14489. Reproduction of film negative, photographer unknown. Date: ca. 1910.

Gentle Jane Addams had a strength of 10!

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: People will surprise you. In a good way. We were few at Hull House. Mostly women. But some like minded men. We just set out to do it. And we did it. Gentle Jane Addams had a strength of 10!

For residents including Jane Addams right the constant intrusion of visitors must have been disconcerting. Frances Hackett recalls one incident in which "one of the visitors caught a glimpse through the windowof Jane Addams sitting at a table…without waiting for an invitation or asking permission she opened the door to the dining room ... 'Oh girls,' she cried 'come here quickly. Here's one of them eating'." (JAMC 557)
[Credit/source: Hull-House (IL) (Images of America), Peggy Glowacki]

I never was afraid for myself

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: I never was afraid for myself. For my safety. Though sometimes people shouted at me, or shouted me down. They made way for me, as I walked past.

Troops camped by Court House, Railroad Strike of 1894, Chicago, IL. Source: ICHi-22888. Reproduction of photographic print, photographer unknown. Date: 1894.

Of course we remember those who came before us

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: Of course we remember those who came before us, a year, a decade, a century ago. They built the stage where we stand and live out our lives.

Image of a funeral procession for victims of the Eastland disaster in Chicago, Illinois. The Eastland was a steamship that capsized in the Chicago River, leaving over 800 people dead.  [Credit: DN-0064960, Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum] 1915

 

There is no love, if it can’t be shared

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: There is no love, if it can’t be shared. A smile, a touch, a look. In time, in space, love: what it is to be alive.

Large group of guests dressed as wait staff assembled on a Chicago Beach hotel porch during a Waiters strike. Image of guests dressed as wait staff assembled on a Chicago Beach hotel porch during a Waiters strike in Chicago Illinois. Some are holding trays with bread or bottles and glasses. Source: DN-0000637 Chicago Daily News negatives collection Chicago History Museum. Date: 1903 June 6.

 

Always in Chicago, our mood is the weather

Our mood. Always in Chicago, our mood is the weather. Broody, bright, the sun winking at us through the clouds.

Image of a boy with his mittened hands at his mouth, sitting in a wagon made from a crate, on a sidewalk in Chicago, Illinois. A baby carriage is visible behind him. Text on the image reads Cold Weather Scene. [Credit: DN-0065405, Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum] 1915

Don’t think tomorrow!

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: Don’t think tomorrow. Don’t even think this afternoon. Today is all we have. Today, no yesterday, to tomorrow. Today. Can I do one useful thing today?

The Law As Storyteller

[Source/credit: Photo by Rubenstein. Archives, Kheel Center, Cornell University]

What is the weather?

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: The weather. The weather is the first thing we experience, when we wake up in the morning. The weather, it envelopes us when we go outside. Of course people everywhere, for all time ,have always watched and wondered about the weather. Our glorious sun… 

Fireboat, the Swenie, docked on the Chicago River. [Credit/source: DN-0000485, Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum]. 1903

Bubbly Creek Branch

Whipped cream on hot chocolate after a day spent walking through the mud in streets of the slums where there were no sewers. Could construction of sewers ever be bad?

Big sewer entering Bubbly Creek Branch near Chicago stockyards. ICHi-15014. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photograph; photographer unknown. From Chicago Commons collections. Date: 1905.

When some bully with a stick says...

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago. When some bully with a stick says: "You can’t go here. You can’t do this," That is the reason to do it! To beat down the door. If we need a law, or an officer to come in. We’ll get that uniform.

"If you don't come in Sunday, don't come in Monday." Back cover image for Florence Kelley Factory Inspector in 1890s Chicago and the children

We knew cold winters in Chicago then

We knew cold winters in Chicago then. No 60 degrees in February. When I needed a coat, I borrowed one. When I went to court, or to the legislature, I borrowed a proper silk dress, which rustled when we marched, and when we entered into a silent room, a room where people were waiting for us. And a hat. I borrowed a hat to help keep the warmth inside, and to help me hold my head high.

Image of men walking on the partially frozen ice of Lake Michigan, with a steamship or tugboat in the background, in Chicago, Illinois. DN-0001833, Chicago Daily News negative collections, Chicago History Museum

Find Allies!

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: Find allies. When things look bleak, everywhere dreadful, there is someone who will help you.

Post-mastoiditis surgical patients (young children) at Cook County Contagion Hospital; Chicago, IL (G1986:484). Source: ICHi-26997. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photograph, photographer unknown. Date: 1912

Unchained

After the Law was passed we got one 12-year old girl, Rebecca, unchained from a sewing machine. We washed her face and her hair; and took her to learn how to read at the Jewish Training School. It was enough for one day.

Sewing class in 1892 at the Jewish Manual Training School in Chicago. Courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society

Don't give up

Don’t give up. You can’t give up. There has to be hope. That what you do. The little you can do will make even a little bit of a difference.

Large group of children standing under showers over the street. Image of a large group of children standing under showers over the street in Chicago, Illinois. Source: DN-0076144, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society. Date: 1923

A lifelong ‘radical’ indeed! Reform required bare-knuckles politics!

Today the Chicago Tribune published an article about me, Florence Kelley, a lifelong ‘radical’ who fought for worker and women’s rights, which includes mention that in a 1923 FBI report I'd been labeled “a radical all the sixty-four years of [my] life; and that 30 years later Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote that I had “the largest single share in shaping the social history of the United States during the first 30 years of this century.” 

Florence Kelley, circa 1925. (Underwood & Underwood)

An audience of one

Remember there is only an audience of one. You must first and last answer to yourself, as to what you want to do, to be. How to live. We have nothing else but our lives, at the beginning and the end of the day.

Florence Kelley was one of eight children, six girls and two boys, one set of twins. Five of the children died, including both twins, some as infants, some when they were older. She was the only girl to survive to adulthood, one of her sisters, Anna, living until the age of six before dying when Florence Kelley was 12. [Source: Florence Kelley as a child. From Sklar, Katherine 'Notes of Sixty Years: The Autobiography of Florence Kelley,' p. 22]

Jane Addams and I were pacifists

Yes, Jane Addams and I were pacifists. We didn’t  think the killings, the battles, solved anything. But we went into the new factories where some were getting rich manufacturing boots and uniforms, and we did our best to improve conditions for the urgent workers there.

Randolph Street Market, west of Desplaines Street on the Near West Side of Chicago. [Source: LOC-American-Memory-Collections with ID 13V0740]

Our City, a beacon of crazy hope.

People still pouring into Chicago from all over the world, believing they can find something to do here, find food and shelter for their families here. They have always come here, to our City, a beacon of crazy hope.

View from Auditorium Tower. Description: View from Auditorium Tower, Chicago, IL. [Source: ICHi-52235. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photographic print. Photographer - J. W. Taylor. Date: 1890]