If lucky, perhaps a few choices. And someone to help.

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.

I wasn’t always Factory Inspector. There had to be a Governor John Peter Altgeld to appoint me. And I would not have met him, without Henry Demarest Lloyd and Jesse Brosse who opened their home to the world, and where I met John Peter Altgeld. 

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]

Who was Florence Kelley?

Florence Kelley was the first woman factory inspector in the United States, appointed in Illinois by Governor John Peter Altgeld in 1893. A resident of Hull House, and a reformer – who refused to be associated with any political party–Florence Kelley lived in Chicago from 1891 until 1899, leading and participating in a variety of projects. These included: a wage and ethnicity census of the slums and tenements in Chicago; the reporting of cases and contagion in the smallpox epidemic of 1893; the enforcement of the universal primary education laws, and, most importantly, enforcing the provisions of the Illinois Factory Inspections Law of 1893.

Visit The Life and Times of Florence Kelley

Children digging with pick axes on a Chicago street; Chicago, IL. Source: ICHi-52108. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photographic print, photographer unknown. Date: 1898