To pick up a pen is an act of hope

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.

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]

Always hold your head high

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]

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) ]

Fail. Fail again. Fail Better. Fail differently.

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.

Sweatshop. circa 1900. [Source/permission: Kheel Center, Cornell University]

 

Do something that begins something!

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!

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.

When some bully with a stick says...

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago. When some bully with a stick says: "You can’t go here. You can’t do this," That is the reason to do it! To beat down the door. If we need a law, or an officer to come in. We’ll get that uniform.

"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

Unchained

After the Law was passed we got one 12-year old girl, Rebecca, unchained from a sewing machine. We washed her face and her hair; and took her to learn how to read at the Jewish Training School. It was enough for one day.

Sewing class in 1892 at the Jewish Manual Training School in Chicago. Courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society

We couldn’t even vote, but we were fierce!

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!

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]

 

Time Travelers! This is Florence Kelley, Factory Inspector, live from 1890s Chicago!

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.

Florence Kelley and the Children: Factory Inspector in 1890s Chicago

“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