ms, p.206).Jane Addams shrewdly reformed the woman’s place in society. Women were prohibited from participating in affairs dealing with social reform, but Addams figured out a way. She made Hull House a tolerable location for women’s social and political ideas to be discussed because she simply established a home that was aimed to help the less fortunate. Men did not see Addams as a threat to their ideals because it was perceived that she worked in a settlement house. Hull House however, was not considered to be entrapped and encircled by the private sphere woman in general were confined to; its members rebelled against the gender barrier, effectively reforming many injustices they witnessed. As Addams saw it, “The Settlement…is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life…” (Addams, p. 95) This new concept allowed women to participate in social reform because they saw their work as an improvement to society as a whole. They felt obligated to change what they saw unjust and unfair. With this new concept in mind, woman within Hull House went forth with a commanding reform movement, thus defying middle class standards of appropriate behavior for women. America responded to the terrible ills of industrial development: child labor, infant mortality, urban crowding and unsanitary conditions, unsafe workplaces, juvenile delinquency, unemployment, and poverty wages, largely because of Addam’s push to change their social construction. The transformations that proceeded in society consisted of the Immigrant’s Protective League, The Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the nation, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic. It continued with the Illinois legislature enacting protective legislation for women and children, and in 1903 passed a strong child labor law and an accompanying essent...
