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.
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| 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] |
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.
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| 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.] |
You must try. Try to imagine a better world. Six impossible things before breakfast, then take one small step towards making one happen.
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| 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.] |
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.
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| 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] |
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.
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| 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?! 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?
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| 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] |
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.
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| 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. The nicest thing anyone ever said about me is: "Every one immediately felt hopeful when Florence Kelley walked into the room.”
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| 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)] |
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]