DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS
By JANE ADDAMS, Hull-House, Chicago. 9 + 281 pages, 12 mo., cloth, leather back, $1.25 net. Citizen’s Library.
“Miss Addams is clear. She has not been precipitate in the preparation of her book. She has reconsidered, corrected, and recorrected it, spoken with temperance and courtesy.... As gentle, as patient, as sincere, and as astute as Jane Addams herself is the philosophy set forth in these pages.... The processes of Miss Addams’ thought are interesting to thousands. The sense that none of us is living up to the best idea of democracy is upon each of us.... Miss Addams is bound to receive a respectful hearing. As a leader who ever prays to lead aright, a sociologist who is willing to test her theories in a practical and personal way, a theorist who is not ashamed to own when she has been mistaken, a friend who will remain true to her friend no matter what may arise, and a person of leisure and power, who has the civic interest at heart, she has come to be prized as one of the chief of citizens.”—Chicago Tribune.
“Its pages are remarkably—we were about to say refreshingly—free from the customary academic limitations.... In fact, are the result of actual experience in hand to hand contact with social problems.... No more truthful description, for example, of the political ‘boss’ as he thrives to-day in our great cities has ever been written than is contained in Miss Addams’ chapter on ‘Political Reform.’ The whole chapter will be accepted as a realistic picture of conditions as they are to-day in the city of Chicago. The same thing may be said of the other chapters of the book in regard to their presentation of social and economic facts.”—Review of Reviews.
“Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the efficiency and inspiration afforded by these essays. ‘Charitable Effort,’ ‘Filial Affections,’ ‘Household Adjustment,’ ‘Industrial Amelioration,’ ‘Educational Methods,’ ‘Political Reform,’ are the topics treated in a masterly and revolutionary style. Miss Addams shatters some of our most cherished illusions upon the relations which should exist between the helper and the helped, between parent and child, mistress and maid, the members of a family, between the ‘boss’ and the community. She takes the subject entirely out of the realms of sentimentality, puts it upon a solid moral basis, and by a close and logical train of reasoning brings her conclusions home to the conscience and common sense of every member of the social structure. The book is startling, stimulating and intelligent.”—Philadelphia Ledger.