Question

Document 3a

... During the same winter of 1890 three boys from a Hull-House club were injured at one machine in
a neighboring factory for lack of a guard which would have cost but a few dollars. When the injury of
one of these boys resulted in his death, we felt quite sure that the owners of the factory would share
our horror and remorse, and that they would do everything possible to prevent the recurrence of such
a tragedy. To our surprise they did nothing whatever, and I made my first acquaintance then with
those pathetic documents signed by the parents of working children, that they will make no claim for
damages resulting from "carelessness." The visits we made in the neighborhood constantly
discovered women sewing upon sweatshop work, and often they were assisted by incredibly small
children. I remember a little girl of four who pulled out basting threads hour after hour, sitting on a
stool at the feet of her Bohemian mother, a little bunch of human misery. But even for that there was
no legal redress (remedy), for the only child-labor law in Illinois, with any provision for enforcement,
had been secured (achieved] by the coal miners' unions, and was confined to children employed in
mines. ... There was at that time no statistical information on Chicago industrial conditions, and Mrs.
Florence Kelley, an early resident of Hull-House, suggested to the Illinois State Bureau of Labor that
they investigate the sweating system (sweatshops) in Chicago with its attendant [use of child labor.
The head of the Bureau adopted this suggestion and engaged Mrs. Kelley to make the investigation...
Source: Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes, MacMillan, 1912
3a. Based on this document, identify one social problem Jane Addams wanted to reform.

Answer 1

Answer: The use of child labor.

Step-by-step explanation:

Jane Addams, along with Ellen Gates Starr, founded the Hull House on the Near West Side of Chicago on September 18, 1889. Hull House became a powerful settlement house that fought for child labor laws, at both the state level and the federal level. Furthermore, they wanted protective legislation for women, children, and immigrants, as well as women's suffrage, unemployment compensations, and several other reforms that were part of the Progressive ideas at the beginning of the 1900s.