The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-09-05
JANE ADDANIs. 52 TOMORROW,
 GREATEST AMERICAN WOMAN

If the women of the United States should succeed in throwing off the take the affairs of government in their own fair and lovely hands, relegat1ng mere males to that position of in- feriority to which they obviously be- long. there isn't much doubt as to who would be the first feminine Pres ident. That honor would. almost to a certainty, fall upon Miss Jane Ad, worker and founder and head of Hull House. Miss Addams. who has lately come into prominence through her ceive the congratulations of her host of admirers on the occasion of her fifty-second birthday.
 Miss Addams has reached her posi- ton as 'the most useful woman in the world" only after many struggles, passing through a period of what seemed almost hopeless 1nXaiidism, I1s @ 6, 1S60- Her father, the Hon. John H. Addans, was well to dos and his cation. She graduated from Rock ford College in 1881, and then went to Philadelphia, where she spent a year as a student in the Woman s Medical College. Even then she had determined on giving her life to the welfare of the poor and the under dogs" of humanity. and she sought she might be better qualified to min ister to their needs. From childhood she had been frai1, and threatened with a spinal ailment, and she was soon forced to abandon study for the medical profession The following two years were spent in European travel, and she inXestigated social settlement work in all the great cities of England and the continent. What she learned in the course of her in- vestigations abroad was perhaps of education could have been. Miss Addarns was still semi-invalid when. with Miss Ellen Gates Starr, she opened the Hull House social settle ment in Chicago. For years, with in- dornitable will, she fought for the mastery of disease, and at last was House she has carried on a work that has been of vital assistance to tens of thousands, and through her books and lectures sine has carried the doc trines of social regeneration to the ends of the earth. Progressive and a deep thinker, she is broadly toler- creeds. and on occasions has been criticised for furnishing a platform for Socialists and free-thinkers, as well as for the more orthodox among those who would improve the com mon lot of humanity. While from her youth she was a believer in suf- frage for women. it is only of recent worker in the movement.
 sister of Miss Addams, Mrs. S. Alice Haldeman, became one of the
  ca upon the death of her husband some six years ago. Dr.. Haldeman, in his last hours, urged his wife to continue the anagement of the State Bank of Girard, Kan.,H of which he was the principal stockho1der. Mrs. Haldeman speedily demonstrated her ability to look after all the details of the financial institution and made the bank the leading one of the little Kansas town famed as center of Socialist propa ganda.
 In an interview published in a St. Louis paper some time ago, Mrs. Haldeman said of her distinguished sister: Jane was the greatest nttie bunch of enthusiast as a child, that you ever saw. She was always ask ing people to forgive her for the naughty things she fancied she had done Her nature was intensely sympathetic. and her compassion ex- tended to all living things. Looking back to those old days in Cedarv1lle, I can see that even as a mere child she was preparing herself for the great work she is accomplishing.