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.They assured her, That is why we came toAmerica, and I don t want to spoil his start, even.though his father is dead. Mothers also needed protection from hard work, Addams believed, and sheadvocated limiting women s work to eight hours a day, six days a week.Thiswas important, she thought, for while men were willing to ignore householdwork in favor of rest, a conscientious girl finds it hard to sleep with hermother washing and scrubbing within a few feet of her bed. Women alsoneeded government protection for their daughters.Addams told the story of a peasant woman straight from the fields of Germany who earned themoney to buy her own country home by working as a laundress at thirty-fivecents a day.When her daughters fell victims to the vice of the city, though,she needed government help, not for charity, for she had an immense capac-ity for hard work, but she sadly needed the service of the State s attorney oH"ce,enforcing the laws designed for the protection of.her daughters. "ÀMost of the men Addams described simply wanted a chance to work.Immigrants were at the mercy of the bosses, who fleeced them unmercifully,both in securing a place to work and then in supplying them with food, and ofthe employment agencies, private businesses that charged them a commis-sion for finding them work.Addams told of a group of Bulgarians who had towalk back to Chicago after an employment agency sent them to Arkansas,where there was no work.The agency promptly sent them o" to Oklahoma,costing them both the train fare and another commission to the agency.Evenstrikers, she insisted, were eager workers who struck only from need.Nothingbroke their hearts more than being blacklisted, unable to find employment."+"As she described them, Addams s neighbors simply wanted the chance tobecome middle-class Americans. I remember one family in which the fatherhad been out of work for this same winter, most of the furniture had beenpawned, and as the worn-out shoes could not be replaced the children couldnot go to school.The mother was ill and barely able to come for the suppliesand medicines, she recalled.Two years later Addams was invited back to the d""" 1886 1892house, which had been completely restored because the wife could not bearfor Addams to believe that they had stayed in their downtrodden condition. She said that it was as if she had met me, not as I am ordinarily, but as Ishould appear misshapen with rheumatism or with a face distorted by neural-gic pain; that it was not fair to judge poor people that way. Addams methead-on Carnegie s charge that the working poor wasted their money onfrivolities because they didn t share mainstream values; rather, she said, theirshowy clothes and trinkets were their attempt to mimic mainstream life asclosely as they could with what means they had."©The movement that Addams articulated so clearly reached throughoutAmerican society as women banded together to improve their communities,whether Hispanic communities in Texas, African American communities inFlorida or Chicago, or white communities in rural New Hampshire.Munici-pal housekeeping was a movement in which women could participate natu-rally from their homes, as well as through more formal associations like Hull-House.As Addams said, As society grows more complicated it is necessarythat woman shall extend her sense of responsibility to many things outside herown home if she would continue to preserve the home in its entirety. Womenestablished libraries and schools, demanded clean streets, raised money tobuild playgrounds, and provided aid to the destitute.Always, though, theirworks reflected their values.They privileged those who shared their ownfamily values of hard work, marriage, religion, and uplift.A church-goingwidow with children could expect help from a local women s club, but a youngunemployed drunkard could go to hell on his own.À`"Support for women s rights and social legislation on domestic groundsoverrode the principle of universal rights that had justified black su"rage andwomen s su"rage in the immediate postwar years.In 1890, the two estrangedwomen s su"rage associations merged to become the National AmericanWoman Su"rage Association, and two years later its first president, ElizabethCady Stanton, resigned when members complained that she was too radical.Su"rage was no longer about individual self-determination; it was now tiedinto mainstream concerns about good government.Municipal reform wasn tsu"rage, but it was good government, which is about the same thing, JuliaWard Howe commented. Imposition of taxes, laws concerning public health,order, and morality, a"ect me precisely as they a"ect the male members of myfamily, and I am bound equally with them to look to the maintenance of aworthy and proper standard and status in all of these departments. À " The Struggle Renewed d""ÀIn 1890, Julia Ward Howe and others like her organized the GeneralFederation of Women s Clubs, giving the women s club movement nationalorganization.By 1900, it had more than 155,000 members in 2,675 clubs.In1891, Howe wrote the introduction for Woman s Work in America, a book thatreviewed the many reforms and professions in which women were participat-ing.As a writer in Harper s Weekly commented, The variety of occupations inwhich women are now engaged, and the ability and earnestness of theirservice, will be surprising to those who have a feeling of impatience with anysuggestion of such activity, as if it must necessarily involve some sacrificeof womanly character and refinement. The book reviewer for the AtlanticMonthly noted the significance of women s postwar activity
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