Remember you are only one person, and while one person can’t do everything, there is much she can do! Like working to get women the vote successfully in Illinois, in 1913! What will you fight for now?
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| Governor Edward F. Dunne signing the Illinois suffrage bill on June 26, 1913. From the Chicago Record Herald, June 27, 1913. [Credit: Chicago Herald Record, Chicago History Museum, ICHi-036849] |
Remember, Jane and I and the Hull House Women accomplished what we did, and it was amazing. And we didn’t even have the vote. You can do so much more!!!
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| Some of the picket line of Nov. 10, 1917. [Source: Library of Congress. Harris & Ewing, Washington, DC (Photographer). Public domain] |
My mother wrote the most marvelous letters. She wrote on both sides of the paper, across lines already written to save the paper. Still I could read them. She could barely let me out of her sight after Anna died, wouldn’t let me go to school. I can’t blame her.
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| [Source: The New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts division maintains a collection, Florence Kelley Papers, including her correspondence.] |
The Cook County Courthouse? I spent time there in my custody dispute. My husband, Lazare Wischnewetzky, the mad, abusive one, didn’t want me, but he did want the children. I had to hide the children away during all my time in Chicago. My son, Nicholas, remembered coming to Hull House as a boy and being a child of Hull House.
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| While studying in Zurich, Kelley met and married Lazare Wischnewetzky, a Russian-Polish medical student, with whom she had 3 children. [Source: Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Family portrait" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1870 - 1925.] |
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.
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| 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] |
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.
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| 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] |
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] |
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.
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| 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] |
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.
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| Sweatshop. circa 1900. [Source/permission: Kheel Center, Cornell University] |
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!
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| 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. |
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.
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| Troops camped by Court House, Railroad Strike of 1894, Chicago, IL. Source: ICHi-22888. Reproduction of photographic print, photographer unknown. Date: 1894. |
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.
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| 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 |
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.
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| 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. |
Our mood. Always in Chicago, our mood is the weather. Broody, bright, the sun winking at us through the clouds.
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| 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 |
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| "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 |
We knew cold winters in Chicago then. No 60 degrees in February. When I needed a coat, I borrowed one. When I went to court, or to the legislature, I borrowed a proper silk dress, which rustled when we marched, and when we entered into a silent room, a room where people were waiting for us. And a hat. I borrowed a hat to help keep the warmth inside, and to help me hold my head high.
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| Image of men walking on the partially frozen ice of Lake Michigan, with a steamship or tugboat in the background, in Chicago, Illinois. DN-0001833, Chicago Daily News negative collections, Chicago History Museum |
People still pouring into Chicago from all over the world, believing they can find something to do here, find food and shelter for their families here. They have always come here, to our City, a beacon of crazy hope.
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| View from Auditorium Tower. Description: View from Auditorium Tower, Chicago, IL. [Source: ICHi-52235. Chicago History Museum. Reproduction of photographic print. Photographer - J. W. Taylor. Date: 1890] |
“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
