The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

While doing research on the evolution of immigration law and the diminishing optimism about assimilation as the sources of immigration change, I found that most of the literature is described in terms of  men. Women, when mentioned, are mentioned in general terms as “women and children”.  However, I found an interesting passage about Jane Addams, a pro-woman who united and organized immigrant women to face the daily hostility from the anti-immigrant environment in a self empowering way. Jane Addams was author of “Twenty years at Hull-House”, and of “Newer ideals of Peace”.  After this, I also found out the she was the second woman to receive a Nobel Peace prize!

In the early 1900s the ever present anti immigrant and nativist groups created an atmosphere in which they “demanded rapid Americanization” from eastern European groups, which they considered inferior to the Anglo-Saxon/Northeastern European origins.  This created an environment in which the children of these immigrants felt alienated and wanted to create distance with their parents, thus undermining the family’s cohesiveness and their parent’s authority.

“Were not their parents ignorant and uneducated “Hunkies”, “Sheenies”, or “Dagoes”?…Ethnic “self-hatred with its debilitating psychological consequences, family disorganization, and juvenile delinquency were not unusual results. Furthermore, the immigrants were…[target] of incessant attacks on their culture, their language, their institutions, the very conception of themselves…all that they were was despised or scoffed in America…And their own children and begun to adopt the contemptuous attitude of the “Americans”. Milton Gordon –Assimilation in American Life.

This environment greatly affected immigrant women. They were the stronghold of the family, bearing the brunt of the work within the family, and yet would get no respect from her children or society.  As Milton Gordon describes,  Jane Adams, in her book “Twenty Years at Hull-House” discusses how she was moved by the plight and the diminishing of those hard working immigrant women, and organized in Chicago the “Labor Museum” where immigrant women of all backgrounds congregated to show and share with other women from every nationality “their familiar native methods of spinning and weaving, and the relation of these earlier techniques to contemporary factory methods could be graphically shown”.

“For the first time these peasant women were made to feel by some part of their American environment that they were possessed of valuable and interesting skills –that they too had something to offer – and for the first time the daughters of these women who, after a long day’s work at their dank  “needle trade” sweatshops, came to Hull-House to observe, could begin to appreciate the fact that their mothers, too, had a “culture” that this culture possessed its own merit, and that it was related to their own contemporary lives. Jane Addams concluded her chapter with the hope that “our American citizenship might be built without disturbing these foundations which were laid of old time”.

What a novel idea!! Women have something to do with the useful things we produce and enjoy! Perhaps we should follow on Jane Addams footsteps and find more ways to relate our achievements not only to outstanding women, but to the hard and unrecognized work of every woman who bring comfort and support to our families (whether it is with children or  not).

I already ordered Jane Addams “Twenty years in Huddle House”, and ”Newer Ideals of Peace” to get to know this pro-woman better.