SOURCE: "Jane Addams," in Social Work Pioneers, Nelson-Hall, 1986, pp. 2-28, 281.

In the following excerpt, Stroup presents Addams as a pioneer in developing the framework of social welfare in America.

Jane Addams, the founder of famed Hull House, a pioneer in the settlement house movement in the United States, and the Nobel Prize recipient for peace in 1931, was born in a red brick house in Cedarville, Illinois, in the fall of 1860. Within the house lived busy people who knew moderate worldly success and who were secure in their homey integrity and virtue. The Addamses were a successful family.

Jane Addams claimed that her father was one of the most important influences on her life. Certainly he did make an incisive impression upon her. He came from English stock that had settled in Pennsylvania under the leadership of William Penn. He was born in Sinking Springs, Pennsylvania, in 1822, and while...