Edith
Abbott,
the sister of Grace
Abbott,
was born
in Grand Island, Nebraska on 26th September, 1876. Both sisters were
influenced by their mother's passionate belief in equal rights for
women. After graduating from college she worked as a school teacher
in Grand Island while continuing her studies at the University of
Nebraska.
Abbott moved to Chicago where she became a resident of Hull
House and
joined other women interested in social reformer such as Jane
Addams, Ellen
Gates Starr, Mary
Kenney,
Grace
Abbott,
Mary
McDowell,
Alzina Stevens, Florence
Kelley, Julia Lathrop, Alice
Hamilton and Sophonisba
Breckinridge.
In 1906 Abbott moved to London where she studied at University College
and at the
London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE) where she was influenced by the socialist
ideas of Sidney Webb andBeatrice
Webb.
After returning to the United States Abbott rejoined Sophonisba
Breckinridge
and over the next few years she become involved in the struggle for
women's suffrage and achieving legislation that would protect immigrants,
working women and children.
Abbott also worked with Sophonisba
Breckinridge
at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. In 1920 it was moved
to the University of Chicago and Abbott helped establish it as the
country's first university-based school of social work. Four years
later she became dean of the school, a post she held for the next
eighteen years.
In 1927 Abbott and Sophonisba
Breckinridge
established the Social Service Review
and was its editor for many years. Edith Abbott
died at Grand Island, Nebraska, on 28th July, 1957.
(1)
Edith
Abbott,
Social Service Review (September, 1950)
Hull House and the old West side
were full of newly arrived immigrants when Grace and I went to live
there in 1908; we seemed to be surrounded by great tenement areas
which have now given way to the factories and stores that have come
with the business invasion. Chicago at that time was the rushing,
growing metropolis of the West, but the crowded streets about Hull
House with their strange foreign signs and foreign-looking shops that
were often very shabby and untidy seemed strangely unrelated to the
great, prosperous city that was called the 'Queen of the West'.
The foreign colonies were well established, and there were Italians
in front of us and to the right of us; and to the left a large Greek
colony. There was a Bulgarian colony a few blocks west of Halsted
Street and along to the north that had almost no women; but large
numbers of fine Bulgarian men seemed to have emigrated - and they
were pitiful when they were unemployed.
Then you came to the old Ghetto as you followed Hull House a few blocks
to the south, where the Maxwell Street Market with its competing pushcarts
heaped with shoes, stockings, potatoes, onions, old clothes, new clothes,
dishes, pots and pans, and food for the Sunday trade was as picturesque
as it was insanitary.
The Greeks were our nearest neighbours, and many of them came to Hull
House for classes and clubs. The Greek immigrants at that time were
mostly young men working for money to bring over their relatives.
The Hull House residents and club leaders organized Greek clubs of
various kinds and Greek dances, when there were so few Greek women
that the women residents, young and old, were called in to "help
the Greeks dance."
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