"Some of Us Who Deal with the Social Fabric":
Jane Addams Blends Peace and Social Justice,
1907-1919

Kathryn Kish Sklar
State University of New York, Binghamton

Have you ever wondered about the origin of the phrase: "If you want peace, work for justice?" I recently saw it on a bumper sticker that attributed the slogan to Pope Paul VI, and if you go to the Vatican sites for his annual peace messages between 1967 and 1969, you will find the general sentiment there. But the origin of the idea that peace requires social justice—not just the absence of warfareÑis much older. In the twentieth century United States this idea originated in Jane Addams' book, Newer Ideals of Peace, published in 1907.1	1
Newer Ideals was Jane Addams' second book. It combined ideas from her first book, Democracy and Social Ethics, published in 1902, with ideas that she first published in 1899, as part of the anti-imperialist movement that accompanied the Spanish-American War. In Newer Ideals she tried to build a bridge between two heretofore distinct discourses: those related to peace, arbitration, and anti-militarism on the one hand, and those related to democracy, social ethics, and government on the other.	2
Newer Ideals offers a fine beginning point for analyzing how Jane Addams reshaped peace movements in the United States and internationally to embrace social justice. Toward that end this essay has three parts. First it looks at the main argument of her book. Then it notes the similarity between the ideas in the book and the goals expressed by the International Congress of Women at The Hague, Holland, in 1915 and the first meeting of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1919, both meetings where Jane Addams presided. Finally, it addresses the question: how did Jane Addams succeed in promoting her 1907 ideals at those meetings? Put another way, how did Addams reshape peace movements after the onset of World War I to reflect the goals she articulated in her 1907 book?	3
This essay argues that Addams' success at launching a peace movement that embraced peace and social justice hinged on her ability to recruit social justice reformers like Alice Hamilton, Lillian Wald, Florence Kelley, and Emily Balch to join her in the new international women's peace movement after 1914. Although these reformers did not all respond immediately to her appeal, many eventually did so, reinforcing her leadership of a new international movement of women that entwined peace with social justice. Joining reformers in England and Europe, their movement was noticeably different from the older male-dominated movement based on a philosophical commitment to non-violence or non-resistance.2 This new movement was female, international, and committed to social justice. In many ways it all began in 1907.	. . .