The spirit of youth and the city streets / by Jane Addams.

  • Jane Addams
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The spirit of youth and the city streets / by Jane Addams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    even through a lighted window, save as these lurid places provide it. Apparently the mod- ern city sees in these girls only two possibili- ties, both of them commercial: first, a chance to utilize by day their new and tender labor power in its factories and shops, and then an- other chance in the evening to extract from them their petty wages by pandering to their love of pleasure. As these overworked girls stream along the street, the rest of us see only the self-conscious walk, the giggling speech, the preposterous clothing. And yet through the huge hat, with its wilderness of bedraggled feathers, the girl announces to the world that she is here. She demands attention to the fact of her existence, she states that she is ready to live, to take her place in the world. The most precious moment in human development is the young creature’s assertion that he is unlike any other human being, and has an individual contribution to make to the world. The variation from the established type is at the root of all change, the only possible basis for progress, all that
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