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) ]