Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Henry Demarest Lloyd and Jesse Brosse Lloyd

I fled New York City, to escape my deranged and violent husband, Lazare Wischnewetzky, with my three children, Nicholas, my beloved Margaret, and John. I borrowed money for the train fare from a young woman who worked as a governess, and escaped in the middle of the night secretly, on my way to Chicago, where I became a new person, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Henry Demarest Lloyd and his wife, the beautiful Jesse Brosse Lloyd said: Of course we will take the children. The children will live with us. And I went to Hull House. Just like that, a spontaneous act of generosity. That was the kind of people they were. Jesse Brosse Lloyd was disowned by her own father when her husband wrote a letter in support of the Haymarket anarchists. Haymarket was the symbol of rebellion, too soon after the Civil War to be forgotten.

When Henry Demarest Lloyd came to Chicago, he was a recent graduate of Columbia University, a lawyer, a poet, and he took the town by storm with his brilliance, his erudition, and his passion for justice. Before long he was the literary editor and then the very well respected financial editor of The Chicago Tribune. [Source: Puublic domain. H29628 U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress]


Tuesday, September 10, 2024

40 percent died before the age of 3

My mother, a remarkable woman. She had three daughters. I was the only one who survived. My beloved sister Anna died at the age of 12, an age where children had usually escaped the diseases.  Our hearts were broken. Vaccines made a difference. Of all children born in Chicago in the 1890’s, forty percent died before the age of three. People expected children to die, which didn’t make it right.

Group of children on street; Chicago, IL. [Source: ICHi-24067. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photograph, photographer unknown. Date: ca. 1905.]


Monday, September 9, 2024

Pig Iron Kelley

I had a remarkable mother, and aunt. And father. Every year my father, Congressman Kelley, Pig Iron Kelley, would introduce legislation in the US Congress for universal women’s suffrage. He was called Pig Iron Kelley because he was from the Iron country in Pennsylvania. I remember him taking me to a smelting plant when I was a young girl. He wanted me to see how people worked in front of the giant furnace. And I never forgot it.

William D. Kelley was an abolitionist, a friend of Abraham Lincoln and one of the founders of the Republican Party in 1854. He advocated for the recruitment of black troops in the American Civil War, and the extension of voting rights to them afterwards.   [Credit: Mathew Benjamin Brady / Levin Corbin Handy - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpbh.03661]


Sunday, September 8, 2024

To pick up a pen is an act of hope

Every day the sun is shining is a good day, a good day to be alive. Remember that, to be alive! To pick up a pen is an act of hope. Write something. Of course if you write it down, you hope someone will read it.

In December of 1897, Florence Kelley found herself working as a part time librarian for the John Crerar Library, a special reference collection established by the estate of John Crerar, after being unexpectedly fired as Chief Factory Inspector in August of 1897.
[Photo: 1925. Source: Unknown. Creative Commons License]


Wednesday, September 4, 2024

The law is a maze

The law is a conundrum, the law is a maze, a sea of contradictions, a wall, a labyrinth, but at the end we are better off with it than without it.

Crowds standing on a street corner across from a courthouse during the Leopold and Loeb murder trial. [Source: DN-0078046, Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum, 1924]


Friday, August 30, 2024

Shame the man who is doing the bad thing

You don’t have to scare anyone, or everyone. Just stare a man down, shame the man who is doing the bad thing, who is saying: No, you can’t do this, this good thing. And at the end of the day, we don’t have trouble recognizing what that is.

Playing in an empty lot at 45th and Laflin. Description: Playing in an empty lot at 45th and Laflin; Chicago, IL.
[Source: ICHi-31535. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photographic print, photographer unknown]


Monday, August 26, 2024

Open your eyes!

Every day you open your eyes, and see the world around you, a miracle has happened. And if the sun is shining, that is two miracles that have happened. In a minute.

Looking south, Administration Building from Wooded Isle Bridge; World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, IL.
[Source: ICHi-25087. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photographic print, photographer ?. Date: 1893.]


Thursday, August 22, 2024

Try to imagine a better world

You must try. Try to imagine a better world. Six impossible things before breakfast, then take one small step towards making one happen.

Whiskey Row, near Union Stockyards. Description: Whiskey Row, near Union Stockyards; Chicago, IL.  
[Source: ICHi-13188. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of postcard, printer - V O Hammon Publishing Company.]


Sunday, August 18, 2024

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]


Wednesday, August 14, 2024

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]


Sunday, August 11, 2024

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]


Thursday, August 8, 2024

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]


Monday, August 5, 2024

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)]


Thursday, August 1, 2024

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]

Sunday, July 28, 2024

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]


Wednesday, July 24, 2024

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) ]


Saturday, July 20, 2024

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]


Saturday, July 6, 2024

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]

 

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

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]

 

Thursday, June 27, 2024

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]

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

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.


Saturday, June 22, 2024

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]


Wednesday, June 19, 2024

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.


Sunday, June 16, 2024

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

 

Thursday, June 13, 2024

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.

 

Monday, June 10, 2024

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



Friday, June 7, 2024

Don’t think tomorrow!

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: Don’t think tomorrow. Don’t even think this afternoonToday 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]

Tuesday, June 4, 2024

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


Saturday, June 1, 2024

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.


Tuesday, May 28, 2024

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