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Jane Addams attended the village school, and later, at seventeen years of age, entered Rockford Seminary, at Rockford, Illinois. Soon after she was graduated from this school it was declared a college, and she received the degree of B. A.

She had intended after her graduation to study medicine and to help the poor, but she was urged to go abroad because she was in poor health. While in London and elsewhere, she was greatly distressed by the wretched condition of the poor. Now she was more determined than ever to go about the work of helping others.

Miss Addams believed that it is better to show people how to help themselves than to give them gifts of money. “It is hard to help people one does not know,” she reasoned, “and how can one really know people without seeing them very often?” True to the decision she had made as a child, she resolved to live among the poor and be a real neighbor to them.

With the help of some friends, Miss Addams opened Hull-House, which is located in a tenement section of Chicago. Here, she established a day nursery where mothers who had to go out to work could leave their babies in good care. A kindergarten was organized for the young children in the neighborhood.