Addams, Jane

When Addams returned to Chicago in 1889, she and her companion, Ellen Gates Starr, established Hull-House in a needy area.  With the help of many distinguished artists and educators, she was able to institute many social programs, such as a music school, a labor museum, and the Hull-House Players.  By 1905, Hull-House was considered to be the greatest organization devoted to working-class recreation and education in the country.
Her interest in reform soon brought her into the woman suffrage, labor, and pacifist movements.  She sought to improve social and welfare services, and aided Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive party campaign in 1912.
She was the chairman of the 1915 International Congress of Women, and president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.  The next two decades saw her opposition to war take root, and in 1931 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, sharing it with Nicholas Murray Butler.  Her autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull House, published in 1910, became a classic piece of social reform literature.
—O. Webster in Fifty Famous Americans