"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life." Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)

In the first of our two episodes on the life of Jane Addams, we learn about her formative years in a small farming village outside of Chicago, her education, and her relationship with her progressive Republican father, from whom she developed some guiding principles for her life, namely the ideas of Christian stewardship and community engagement.

We also learn about her first visits to Europe, where she began to develop her conviction that human beings are not helpless and subject to the unfathomable forces of history, but that we have agency and can change the world in positive ways.

Lastly, we explore the origins of her belief in mediation and dialogue, the idea that we can never solve the problems facing society without understanding one another and speaking to one another.

All of these ideas coalesced with the founding of the first settlement house in Chicago by Addams in 1889, Hull House, a place where immigrants and Americans, rich and poor, black and white, young and old, men and women could come together in order to address the problems facing the fastest-growing city on the planet.

Our two expert guests are Rima Lunin Schultz and Ann Durkin Keating.

Rima is a Jane Addams scholar. She co-edited "Women Building Chicago: A Biographical Dictionary” and most recently co-authored "Eleanor Smith's Hull-House Songs: Music of Protest and Hope in Jane Addams Chicago".

Ann is professor of history at North Central College in Naperville, IL, and the co-editor of the "Encyclopedia of Chicago".