Jane Addams

Jane Adams was born September 6, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. She died May 21 1935. She was the eighth of nine children. Her father was a prosperous miller and local political leader who served for sixteen years as a state senator and fought as an officer in the civil war. She had a congenital spinal defect, because of it she was not physically vigorous when young. In 1881 she graduated from the Rockford Female Seminary, the valedictorian of a class of seventeen, but was granted the bachelors degree only after the school became accredited the next year. The next six years she began the study of medicine but left because of poor health, she was hospitalized intermittently. Miss Addams and Miss Starr made speeches about the needs of the neighborhood, raised money, convinced young women of well-to-do families to help, took care of children, nursed the sick, listened to outpourings from troubled people. In its second year Hull-House was host to two thousand people every week. As her reputation grew Miss Adams was drawn into larger fields of civic responsibility. In 1905 she was appointed to Chicago's Board of education and subsequently made chairman of the School Management Committee.In her own area of Chicago she led investigations on midwifery, narcotics consumption, milk supplies, and sanitary conditions, even going so far as to accept the official post of garbage inspector of the Nineteenth Ward, at an annual salary of a thousand dollars. In 1910 she received the first honorary degree ever awarded to a women by Yale University. Jane Adams was an ardent feminist by philosophy, In those days before women's suffrage she believed that women should make their voices heard in legislation and therefore should have the right to vote, but more comprehensively, she thought that women should generate aspirations and search out opportunities to realize them.In January, 1915, she accepted the chairmanship of the Women's Peace Party, an American organization, and four months later the presidency of the International Congress of Women convened at The Hague largely upon the initiative of Dr. Aletta Jacobs, a Dutch suffragist leader of many and varied talents. When this congress later found ed the organization called the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, She served as president until 1929. After sustaining a heart attack in 1926 Miss Adams never fully regained her health.

Sources janeadams.com

Hiring Workers

Hiring workers, there was labor shortage in 1865. In early 1865 the central Pacific had work for 4,000 men. But Charles Crocker barely manged to hold onto 800 laborers at any given time. Most of the early workers were Irish immigrants. Central Pacific officials believed Irishmen were inclined to spend their wages on liquor, and that Chinese were unreliable. Due to the shortage of men Crocker suggested that reconsideration be given to Chinese workers. He encountered strong prejudice from foreman James Harvey Strobridge. Strobridge attitude changed when a group of Irish laborers haggled over wages. Crocker said to recruit some Chinese in there place, instantly the Irishmen abandoned their dispute. Strobridge hired fifty Chinese workers to at least motivate his men with competition, their work ethic impressed him so he hired more workers for more difficult task. Crocker hired advertisement in China. The Chinese workers were punctual, willing and well behaved. The Chinese teams were organized into groups of 20 under one foreman. Chinese employees received wages of $27 and then $30 a month, minus the cost of food and board. The Irishmen were paid $35 per month, with board provided. Workers lived in canvas camps alongside the grade. Each gang had a cook who purchased dried food from the Chinese districts of Sacramento and San Francisco to prepare on site. Toward the end of the line, Crocker was so convinced of the skill of his Irish and Chinese workers that he decided to try for a record by laying 10 miles of track in one day. April 28, 1868 was the appointed day, and Crocker had prepared well. As work crews approached the summit, Strobridge continued to doubt the suitability of Chinese to certain tasks. When a group of Irish masons struck for higher wages, Crocker suggested using Chinese men in their place. The foreman objected. Famously, Crocker replied, "Did they not build the Chinese Wall, the biggest piece of masonry in the world?" Strobridge acquiesced, and Chinese crews were soon laying stone.

The Impact of the Transcontinental Rail Road

The impacts of the transcontinental rail road where, the world grew smaller, a competing canal, surging interstate trade, improved public discourse,a disaster for Native Americans, and a web of rails. The world grew smaller because it linked the east coast and the west coast, and people and cargo didn't have to take the treacherous routes across the ocean and panama canal, also you could make a trip across North America in a week. Competing canal, workers halfway across the world consummated their own monumental feat of engineering Egypt's Suez canal that linked Asia and India to Europe. Surging interstate trade, within 10 years of completion, the rail road shipped 50 million worth of freight coast to coast every year,just as it opened shipping in Asia it brought product of eastern industry past the Mississippi. Improved public discourse, Americans could travel the country in matter of days see the country from the windows of the train, conversations begun in the east and ended in the west, books written in San Francisco found home on New York shelves in a matter of days. Disaster for Native Americans, encroaching white society the unstoppable force which would force Indians into reservations within decades. Web of rails, the transcontinental railroad did not long remain the sole venue of travel through America's center, lines spider webbed outward from its branch points conveying north and south.