I have a few more candidates, just to keep things lively:
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JANE ADDAMS
Born in Cedarville, Illinois on September 6, 1860 and graduated from Rockford College in 1882, Jane Addams founded the world famous social settlement Hull-House on Chicago's Near West Side in 1889. From Hull House, where she lived and worked until her death in 1935, Jane Addams built her reputation as the country's most prominent woman through her writing, her settlement work, and her international efforts for world peace.
Around Hull-House, which was located at the corner of Polk and Halsted Streets, immigrants to Chicago crowded into a residential and industrial neighborhood. Italians, Russian and Polish Jews, Irish, Germans, Greeks and Bohemians predominated. Jane Addams and the other residents of the settlement provided services for the neighborhood, such as kindergarten and daycare facilities for children of working mothers, an employment bureau, an art gallery, libraries, and music and art classes. By 1900 Hull House activities had broadened to include the Jane Club (a cooperative residence for working women), the first Little Theater in America, a Labor Museum and a meeting place for trade union groups.
The residents of Hull-House formed an impressive group: Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Dr. Alice Hamilton, Julia Lathrop, Ellen Gates Starr, Sophonisba Breckinridge, and Grace and Edith Abbott among them. From their experiences in the Hull-House neighborhood, the Hull-House residents and their supporters forged a powerful reform movement. Among the projects that they launched were the Immigrants' Protective League, The Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the nation, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic (later called the Institute for Juvenile Research). Through their efforts, the Illinois legislature enacted protective legislation for women and children and in 1903 passed a strong child labor law and an accompanying compulsory education law. With the creation of the Federal Children's Bureau in 1912 and the passage of a federal child labor law in 1916, the Hull-House reformers saw their efforts expanded to the national level.
Jane Addams wrote prolifically on topics related to Hull-House activities, producing eleven books and numerous articles, as well as maintaining an active speaking schedule nationwide and throughout the world. She also played an important role in many local and national organizations. A founder of the Chicago Federation of Settlements in 1894, she also helped to establish the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers in 1911. She was a leader in the Consumers League and served as the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (later the National Conference of Social Work). She was chairman of the Labor Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, vice-president of the Campfire Girls, on the executive board of the National Playground Association, the National Child Labor Committee and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (founded 1909). In addition, she actively supported the campaign for woman suffrage and the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union (1920).
In the early years of the twentieth century Jane Addams became involved in the peace movement, becoming an important advocate of internationalism. This interest grew during the First World War, when she participated in the International Congress of Women at the Hague in 1915. She maintained her pacifist stance after the United States entered the war in 1917, working through the Women's Peace Party, which became the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919. She was the WILPF's first president. As a result of her work, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
Jane Addams died in Chicago on May 21, 1935. She was buried in Cedarville, her childhood home.
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Bertha Von Suttner
by Craig Johnson
"Strange how blind people are! They are horrified by the torture chambers of the Middle Ages, but their arsenals fill them with pride!"
Alfred Nobel, the man responsible for the Nobel Prizes, expressed in his will a desire for an award to be presented in honor of those who did their most to unify nations, work for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and who were champions for the creation of international peace congresses. Today the Nobel Peace Prize is one of the most prestigious awards, yet if it were not for the efforts of Bertha von Suttner, no such award might exist.
Baroness Bertha von Suttner, as her name implies, came from a very prestigious family. Nothing in her childhood or upbringing predicted she would later become an international peace hero. As the daughter of a distinguished Austrian Field Marshal, she grew up in 19th century Europe learning all the social graces that members of the aristocracy were expected to know. Her easy and care free life, however, would take a dramatic turn with the death of her father.
Financial difficulties soon followed and, it being necessary to support herself, Bertha decided to answer an advertisement for an "elderly man" seeking a confidential secretary. That man was Alfred Nobel. Although she only worked with Nobel for a week, the two established a lasting friendship. Nobel would later express his gratitude for their relationship by fulfilling her wish to see the creation of a Nobel Prize for Peace.
After leaving Nobel, Bertha and her husband went to live with friends in the Caucasus for nine years. While away, Bertha read extensively and began writing social commentaries for Austrian newspapers under the pseudonym B. Owlet. Inspired by the success of her writings, she returned to Europe in 1886 with the convictions of a social idealist, determined to use her literary talents to combat prejudices and make the world a more peaceful place to live.
Back in Europe she began her crusade against war. Bertha von Suttner became enthralled with the peace societies in London and chose to promote their ideas in her books. In 1896 she wrote one of the most influential anti-war novels of all time, Lay Down Your Arms! Having researched the many wars that plagued Europe over the past century, Lay Down Your Arms! confronts the reader with realistic descriptions of war's cruelty, suffering, and inhumanity. Since then, the book has been translated into 27 languages. Today it is considered the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the peace movement for its ability to challenge assumptions about war and militarism. Her name soon became synonymous with peace and protest against war by her attacks against militarism, condemning it as a horrific anachronism in the age of scientific and intellectual enlightenment.
Bertha von Suttner, however, did not limit her peace activities to writing. She became very influential in the international peace conferences being held throughout Europe. At the First Hague Convention of 1899, for example, she lead an entire lobby of peace activists. Despite being the only woman at the Convention, her voice and ideas were heard and the Convention ended with many successes: the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (later to become the International Court of Justice), a convention on war for the protection of civilian populations, and the establishment of rules of conduct for war.
Over the next fourteen years, Bertha von Suttner traveled the world lecturing extensively, writing, and attending peace conferences. In 1905 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. Not only was this the very award she had convinced Nobel to create, but she was the first woman to receive it. Although she failed to prevent the world from exploding into war, her struggles to achieve peace are to be viewed with the utmost admiration.
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ALVA MYRDAL
Alva Myrdal was born in Uppsala in 1902, graduated from University in 1924, and married Gunnar Myrdal the same year. Together with her husband she made a major contribution in the 1930s to the work of promoting social welfare. They were joint authors of a book entitled "The population problem in crisis", and she was also actively engaged in the discussion on housing and school problems. She was a prominent member of the Social Democrat Party in Sweden, and in 1943 was appointed to that party's committee with the task of drafting a post-war programme. Also in that year she was appointed to the Government Commission on International Post-War Aid and Reconstruction.
After the second world war she devoted more and more of her time and energy to international questions. In 1949 - 1950 she headed UNO's section dealing with welfare policy, and in 1950 - 1955 she was chairman of UNESCO's social science section. In 1955 she was appointed Swedish ambassador to India, and in 1962 was nominated Sweden's representative to the Geneva disarmament conference. In that year she became a member of Parliament and in 1967 a member of the Cabinet, entrusted with the special task of promoting disarmament. For a number of years she has represented her country in UNO's political committee, in which questions of disarmament have been dealt with.
During the negotiations in Geneva she played an extremely active role, emerging as the leader of the group of non-aligned nations which endeavoured to bring pressure to bear on the two super powers to show greater concern for concrete disarmament measures. Her experiences from the years spent in Geneva found an outlet in her book "The game of disarmament", in which she expresses her disappointment at the reluctance of the USA and the USSR to disarm.
In her work for disarmament Alva Myrdal has combined profound commitment with great professional insight. With the support of experts she has familiarised herself with the scientific and technical aspects of the arms race. Her understanding of the need to base the work of disarmament on professional insight also found an outlet in her active participation in the establishment of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI. Through her many articles and books Alva Myrdal has exercised a very significant influence on the current disarmament debate.
From Les Prix Nobel 1982.
Alva Myrdal died in 1986.
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