Remember you are only one person, but...

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?

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]

 

You must laugh at human stupidity

 You must laugh at human stupidity, greed, incompetence—even as you thwart it whenever possible.

View of William Deneau, a diver in the Eastland disaster recovery efforts, in the water near a tugboat in the Chicago River, Chicago, Illinois, circa August 28, 1915. They were searching for objects in the river from the overturned Eastland steamer. The Reid Murdoch Building and the Clark Street Bridge are visible in the background.
[Credit: DN-0065012, Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum 1915 Aug]

Politics has always been a mess!

Politics has always been a mess, and dominated by the greedy, the corrupt, the incompetent.

On December 30, 1903 in the afternoon 575 people – hundreds of young children and their mothers who had come to see Eddie Foy in a holiday matinee – died when flames, fumes, smoke and explosions rocketed from the stage of the Iroquois Theatre. Then a thin blue mist and great volumes of grey cloud engulfed the audience. Many died in their seats, others were trampled on their way to the exits.  

The Mayor, the second Carter Harrison elected in 1897, was arrested and held to answer when it was discovered that the City Commissioner of Buildings had not inspected the building or enforced regulations regarding the fire escapes and extinguishers. The Commission had the authority to direct the Fire Department to tear down a dangerous and defective building.

Firemen spraying water at the Iroquois Theater building during the fire. View of firemen spraying water up at the Iroquois Theater building in Chicago, Illinois, during the fire. Other firemen are standing nearby.
[Source: Date: DN-0001584, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum. 1903 Dec. 30]

It’s always darkest before the dawn

Two old adages seem especially relevant right now: "It’s always darkest before the dawn," and "When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

[Credit: © 2024 Mark Edwin Swindle]

Do something with it!!

We marched onto the floor of the Illinois State Legislature for a Reason: So that you would have more power than we did. Do something with it!!

Suffragette Parade, 23 October 1915.  [Source: Wikimedia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.]

Cherish the vote!

Cherish the vote. Now that you have it. Too many places women still cannot vote.

In 1916, Alice Paul formed the National Woman's Party (NWP), a group focused on the passage of a national suffrage amendment. Over 200 NWP supporters, the Silent Sentinels, were arrested in 1917 while picketing the White House, some of whom went on hunger strike and endured forced feeding after being sent to prison. Under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt, the two-million-member NAWSA also made a national suffrage amendment its top priority. After a hard-fought series of votes in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures, the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920. It states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." [Source: Women's Suffrage in the United States. Wikipedia]

Women's suffragists parade in New York City in 1917, carrying placards with the signatures of more than a million women.
[Source: New York Times. Created October 1, 1917]

Elections? Voting? You would rather have it than not, even with all the problems

Elections? Voting? You would rather have it than not, even with all the problems. Democracy? We can’t give up on democracy, even if we are tearing our hair out.

Portrait of Jane Addams (1860-1935), sitting in an automobile in Chicago, Illinois. A policeman on horseback is visible in the background. [Source: Chicago Daily News DN-0064813. No Copyright. July 22, 1915]

A law in your way? Change it!

A law in your way? Change it! Get a court or a legislature to change it. Get yourself out there to make it happen. Remember it is all about getting to the authority. Who has the authority to accomplish what you want to do? Many places to hide with in the law’s obscurity.

Amid rain, a large crowd of demonstrators gathers in front of the county courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama where Martin Luther King Jr. meets with city and county officials regarding police brutality during the previous day's peaceful march, March 17, 1965.
[Credit: Chicago History Museum, ICHi-075006; Declan Haun, photographer]

 

Henry Demarest Lloyd and Jesse Brosse Lloyd

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.

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]

Pig Iron Kelley

I had a remarkable mother, and aunt. And father. Every year my father, Congressman Kelley, Pig Iron Kelley, would introduce legislation in the US Congress for universal women’s suffrage. He was called Pig Iron Kelley because he was from the Iron country in Pennsylvania. I remember him taking me to a smelting plant when I was a young girl. He wanted me to see how people worked in front of the giant furnace. And I never forgot it.

William D. Kelley was an abolitionist, a friend of Abraham Lincoln and one of the founders of the Republican Party in 1854. He advocated for the recruitment of black troops in the American Civil War, and the extension of voting rights to them afterwards.   [Credit: Mathew Benjamin Brady / Levin Corbin Handy - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpbh.03661]

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]

The carnage? How can anyone not be appalled by the carnage?!

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? 

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]

In spite of our pride, our greed, our stupidity

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: And Yet, and yet. We must continue. In spite of our pride, our greed, our stupidity, our repeated mistakes. We must go on.

On 24 April 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building, collapsed in Savar, a sub-district in the Greater Dhaka Area, the capital of Bangladesh. The search for the dead ended on 13 May with a death toll of 1,129. Approximately 2,515 injured people were rescued from the building alive.
[Source: Wikimedia Creative Commons]

I never was afraid for myself

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.

Troops camped by Court House, Railroad Strike of 1894, Chicago, IL. Source: ICHi-22888. Reproduction of photographic print, photographer unknown. Date: 1894.

Don’t think tomorrow!

Florence Kelley Live from 1890s Chicago: Don’t think tomorrow. Don’t even think this afternoon. Today is all we have. Today, no yesterday, to tomorrow. Today. Can I do one useful thing today?

The Law As Storyteller

[Source/credit: Photo by Rubenstein. Archives, Kheel Center, Cornell University]

A lifelong ‘radical’ indeed! Reform required bare-knuckles politics!

Today the Chicago Tribune published an article about me, Florence Kelley, a lifelong ‘radical’ who fought for worker and women’s rights, which includes mention that in a 1923 FBI report I'd been labeled “a radical all the sixty-four years of [my] life; and that 30 years later Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote that I had “the largest single share in shaping the social history of the United States during the first 30 years of this century.” 

Florence Kelley, circa 1925. (Underwood & Underwood)

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]

Get your hands (and boots) dirty!

If there is nothing new under the sun, that is no call to cynicism. The opposite. 

Get your hands (and boots) dirty! Get working! 

I did.

Two women carrying wooden planks in a lot outside a railroad depot in Chicago, Illinois. [Source: DN-0000501, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum. Date: ca. 1903]

They called us names

Florence Kelley speaking, live from 1890s Chicago  

They called us names, because we were against The War, all wars. 

But who was out there inspecting the factories where the soldiers uniforms were made, making sure those workers were paid enough, making sure the garments put on the backs of our boys were properly stitched? We were! Not the people who were taking in the fat checks for speedy delivery.

American soldiers leaving England for the front. [National Archives Identifier: 16577256]