TWENTY YEARS AT HULL-HOUSE

BY JANE ADDAMS

HULL-HOUSE, CHICAGO

TO

THE MEMORY OF

MY FATHER

PREFACE

Every preface is, I imagine, written after the book has been completed and now that I have finished this volume I will state several difficulties which may put the reader upon his guard unless he too postpones the preface to the very last. Many times during the writing of these reminiscences, I have become convinced that the task was undertaken all too soon.One\'s fiftieth year is indeed an impressive milestone at which one may well pause to take an accounting, but the people with whom I have so long journeyed have become so intimate a part of my lot that they cannot be written of either in praise or blame;the public movements and causes with which I am still identified have become so endeared, some of them through their very struggles and failures, that it is difficult to discuss them.It has also been hard to determine what incidents and experiences should be selected for recital, and I have found that I might give an accurate report of each isolated event and yet give a totally misleading impression of the whole, solely by the selection of the incidents.  For these reasons and many others I have found it difficult to make a [Page viii]  faithful record of the years since the autumn of 1889 when without any preconceived social theories or economic views, I came to live in an industrial district of Chicago.