Lyndon Johnson VS Jane Addams

1599 Words7 Pages
Lyndon B. Johnson and Jane Addams are both great reformers during their time, dedicating the majority of the lives to helping people. As such, the methods and ideology that drove them to help people were sometimes similar, and at other times quite different. A strong factor as to how they developed such strong motivation to helping others, as well as why they struggled hard to pass their reforms can be traced from their past. Both of their fathers were both dedicated to helping the community. Their fathers both helped out the community, believing that it was their duty to do so. However, Johnson’s father worked for the government, and believed in the sort of government that helps the people. However, politicians at that time in Texas did not make much money, and so LBJ was raised in poverty. This later gave raise to his strong conviction of war against poverty throughout his life as well as believing in education would allow a person to escape poverty. Jane Addams came about in a different way to helping the poor. As a child from an upper class family, she had a background of high education. She eventually came to see during young adulthood that both the rich females and the poor females had restraints caused by society that would not allow a person to reach their potential. As such she came to a conclusion to escape those restraints, “that idle, overeducated daughters like her could escape the strictures of sexism and elitism by devoting themselves to the needs of the poor (Brown, 9).” Both of them were quite keen on poverty which lead to other issues such as education, immigration, work conditions, and so forth. Their attempts to meet these problems were extremely different. LBJ strove for political power and passed more reforms and programs during his political career than any other politician. His attempts at reforming the nation to his plan of a Great
Open Document