Play the long game. When knocked down, get up to fight another day. Maybe the same fight, maybe a different, better fight.
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| Women and children picking up spilled coal off the ground near a row of horse-drawn carts in a lot in Chicago, Illinois. [Source: DN-0000505, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum. Date: ca. 1903] |
The Ferris Wheel, from the World's Columbian Exposition still here, changed cars, changed locations. People still want to ride on high and see Chicago stretched out at their feet. Yes, you can. Come to Chicago and ride the Ferris Wheel, look at the sprawl, the dirt, the lights from 200 feet up. Then, go out, find your spot, and make a difference somewhere there.
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| Original Ferris Wheel at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. Although the original Ferris Wheel was demolished, a new wheel lives on in Chicago at Navy Pier in Chicago, with structural similarities and inspiration from Ferris's original wheel. [Source: Wikipedia, Chicago Tribune] |
All we have is our lives to live. Even the most powerful, the Governors, the Generals, the most beautiful, those walled up in their castles—they only have their one life to live.
If lucky, perhaps a few choices. And someone to help.
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| Governor John Peter Altgeld (1847–1902). Historically, Altgeld is remembered chiefly for pardoning the three surviving men convicted in the 1886 Haymarket bombing [Source: Wikipedia, Public Domain] |
Still, there was always laughter at Hull House. There was music, theatre, the food was always fresh, good, simple, prepared by people who loved us. We ate together at a big long table after our work. With the new government men from Labor, we sent to Washington all the information, where people came from, how much they earned, about our neighborhood: One of the Slums of the Great Cities in the United States in the 1890s.
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| Corner view of Hull House building showing Hull House directory, cafeteria signs, men working and standing about. [Source: ICHi-01542. Chicago History Museum] |
Smart people find each other; good people, people who want to do things, recognize each other, even when they meet as strangers. Even if the converse is also true, we still have one another.
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| Children at Milton Avenue, a shoeless boy holding the hand of a bigger girl and standing on the sidewalk of Cleveland Avenue (formerly Milton Avenue) in the Near North Side community area of Chicago, Illinois. This street was one of four, including West Chicago, Cambridge Avenue, and West Oak Street that were the boundaries of one of Chicago's most overpopulated areas. [Source: DN-0063682, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum] |
If there is nothing new under the sun, that is no call to cynicism. The opposite.
Get your hands (and boots) dirty! Get working!
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| Two women carrying wooden planks in a lot outside a railroad depot in Chicago, Illinois. [Source: DN-0000501, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum. Date: ca. 1903] |
In 1890s Chicago, we women workers marched onto the floor of the Illinois Legislature, loudly demanded: ‘Pass the Factory Inspection Law!’
And they did.
We couldn’t even vote, but we were fierce!
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| League of Women Voters members parade in Chicago in August 1920.LWV members parade in Chicago in August 1920 Left to right, Mrs. J.N. McGraw, Mrs. G.N. Payson, Mrs. Charles S. Eaton, Mrs. E.F. Bemins, Mrs. A.N. Schweizer, Ida Strawn Randall, Helen Hamilton (trumpeter), Billie Frees. [Credit: Wikipedia, Public domain] |
For us, alive together now, there is nothing that hasn’t happened before: greed, cannibalism, towering temples, serious buildings, a wide road full of dreams, love, selflessness, foolishness, corrupt government, slaughter on the battlefield.
Pick your century, the place, and find someone who wrote about it.”
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| Thornton Niven Wilder (1897—1975, Hamden , United States ) was an American playwright, writer, novelist and screenwriter, winner of three Pulitzer Prizes. |
Nothing happened quickly. So many opposed to everything we stood up for. Said:
They would have to shut down the biggest glass works in the State, if they couldn’t bring seven year old boys from the orphanage to be Blowers’ Dogs.
The name says it all.
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| Glass Blower and Mold Boy. Boy has 4 1/2 hours of this at a stretch, then an hour's rest and 4 1/2 more: cramped position. Day shift one week: night shift next. (see label on photo 162.) Grafton, West Virginia. Photographer: Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940 |
The Homeless?
100,000 homeless on the streets of Chicago in the Panic of 1893 after the closing of the World's Columbian Exposition, in the biggest depression in our history. The 100,000 was only the men!
The women and children were put on a train and shipped out to be unloaded and bartered off at each farmland RR station. Until there were none.
The men were claiming their places on the stairs of the Cook County Courthouse, to be inside during one of the coldest of Chicago winters on record. And yes, someone wrote about it.
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| Unemployed men at 563 West Madison Street; Chicago, IL. Source: ICHi-05598. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photograph, photographer unknown. Date: 1893 |
Florence Kelley speaking live from 1890s Chicago
Laughter, the laughter of children, of young girls, of men and women, as they look at one another is a cure, a cure for whatever ails us.
Be glad, smile, and get a smile back!
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| Girls at vacation school playing in the yard in Chicago, Illinois. Source: DN-0001456, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum. Date: 1903 Aug. 11. |
Florence Kelley speaking, live from 1890s Chicago
Homicide. Killing, for the sake of killing, making someone feel badly, ashamed, for no reason is never all right.
Nor can there be a reason which makes it all right.
Some things never change.
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| The killing of suspected anarchist, Lazarus Averbuch, by Chief of Police George Shippy in 1908. Source: ICHi-52216 |
Florence Kelley speaking, live from 1890s Chicago
They called us names, because we were against The War, all wars.
But who was out there inspecting the factories where the soldiers uniforms were made, making sure those workers were paid enough, making sure the garments put on the backs of our boys were properly stitched? We were! Not the people who were taking in the fat checks for speedy delivery.
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| American soldiers leaving England for the front. [National Archives Identifier: 16577256] |
Florence Kelley speaking, live from 1890s Chicago
How weary the sun must be of us, our whining, our complaining. The sky, the air, our Lake, our dreams. Look for joy. You will find it.
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| Union stockyards from 'Views of Chicago and Vicinity.' pic 1 Description: Union stockyards from 'Views of Chicago and Vicinity;' Chicago, IL. Source: ICHi-52216. Reproduction of photomechanical print, printer unknown. Date: 1890-1899. |
Florence Kelley speaking, live from 1890s Chicago
The children, we have to save the children, came into this world without asking to be born, not to work chained to a sewing machine. We understand: The parents aren’t bad people, they need the money, to survive themselves, to put bread on the table. Still, intervene. Put a stop to it, if you can. That evil to the child. Any time is all right to put a stop to it!
Funny, it doesn’t change that much, decade to decade, century to century.
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| Group portrait of seven boys kneeling, playing marbles on a playground in Chicago, Illinois. Two boys stand and look on, a girl is visible in the right on the image, swing sets are visible in the background. Text on negative reads: Spring Picture. Source: DN-0062448, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum. Date: ca. 1914 Mar. 30. |
Florence Kelley speaking, live from 1890s Chicago
When we hear of an unexpected, sudden death, the woman with the limp and the burgundy stained apron—we passed as she hurried down on the muddy street yesterday, we mutter under our breath now: sad, sad, so very sad, and every day we open our eyes to sunlight and put our two feet flat on the floor, is a day to celebrate! We are alive!
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| Source: DN-0000953. Chicago History Museum. |
Time Travelers! This is Florence Kelley, Factory Inspector, live from 1890s Chicago (That’s Illinois, USA). Hello from Hull House in 1890’s Chicago, where we never stopped working. History is Life after our lives. I am still working! If you can read, you can travel anywhere, to any place, time, backwards and forward, to the past, to the future. To be free then, Time Travelers.
Question: Why are you not talking to people, real live people who live when you do?!
We talked to everyone, Jane Addams and I, wherever we found them. In the alleys, in the streets of the slums, underground in the cellar sweatshops. Why aren’t you talking to real people, not boxes?
An epidemic? We had that in 1894 Chicago. Panic, deaths, quarantine, lockdown. Jane Addams and I, and the others, did our best to get rid of the incompetent, lazy man in charge of Public Health in Chicago. We failed. Went on anyway, doing our best. Which was a lot! Officials in charge? Foolish, wrong, recalcitrant, always, still, people died needlessly, children.
Always protect the children. In my life, I taught women, girls, and especially young girls, ten, twelve, trapped on the filthy factory floor, taught them to read, and to do numbers.
Two of Leigh Bienen's websites, Florence Kelley in Chicago, 1891-1899 and Homicide in Chicago 1870-1930, made extensive use of ~500 hand-selected print images from 55,000 images of urban life in or near Chicago, Illinois, captured on glass plate negatives between ~1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the Chicago Daily News, then one of Chicago's leading newspapers. The original images were part of the Chicago History Museum's permanent collection; and all 55,00 digitized versions are part of the Library of Congress' permanent collection, as well. The photo shown here is from the page Lives of Children, captioned:
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| Children digging with pick axes on a Chicago street Chicago IL. Source: ICHi-03889. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photographic print, photographer unknown. Date: 1898 |
After 20+ years of collaboration, we are delighted to announce the launch of Leigh Buchanan Bienen: Works, for one of Chicago's best-kept secrets, Leigh Buchanan Bienen—on par with Vivian Maier or Florence Kelley (who Leigh has, almost single-handedly, brought into the light of day via her website and book, "Florence Kelley, 1890s Factory Inspector, and the Children). Leigh is a writer, advocate, and teacher whose areas of expertise include capital punishment, sex crimes, and legal reform. Of luminous mind, unstoppable energy and passionate conviction, Leigh has tirelessly advocated for the rights of women, children and the wrongfully convicted (in 2011 she was instrumental in the effort that led to the repeal, in Illinois, of the death penalty). The website collects 50+ years of work. Please visit!
“This book documents and explores an important time in US history, and does so with a depth and intelligence that make it irresistibly compelling.”
—Scott Turow, author, Presumed Innocent
