Janet Ayer Fairbank to Jane Addams, August 28, 1920

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1244 NORTH STATE STREET

My dear Miss Addams:

I have your letter in regard to Governor Cox. It is a disappointment to me and I know it will be to him, as he is most anxious to have your support. I agree with you entirely that it would have been a most heartening and encouraging thing if the Democratic Convention had repudiated Mr. Palmer and all his works, but I have come to the conclusion that it is naive to think that great bodies of people, where every point of view is represented, will take extreme action, and I am very glad to know at least that there was never a possibility of the Democratic Party nominating Mr. Palmer for the presidency.

Governor Cox's own record on freedom of speech and ↑right↓ of assembly is very fine, as you undoubtedly know. I am writing for a pamphlet which covers this to be sent you. I believe that if he is elected he will be fair, generous and sane, and that a great deal of the radical and natural discontent in the country today will be done away with. and As you say, his program for labor legislation and his general attitude toward social questions is extraordinarily fine.

I did not get back to Chicago until the Third Party Convention was over, for which I am very sorry, as I should liked to have an opportunity of seeing what I really think of it. I cannot seem to make myself [page 2] believe the Farmer Labor Party is, at any rate at the present moment, of importance in politics. The Farmer end of it seems to me to be very weak, and the Labor end of it entirely an attempt at a control of organized labor. I feel that it is a great pity that the apparent result of their Convention was not a real amalgamation of "hand and brain" labor, as I believe an active radical minority would have had a splendid effect on both parties, and might, in time, have grown into something important. Of course this may do that, but at the present time I seem to have no desire to join it.

Please telephone me when you come back to Chicago and let me come in to talk to you. I am taking Janet east to college on the twenty-second, and expect to go into Connecticut to speak for Homer Cummings, and into New Hampshire to speak for Ray [Stevens], so I shall probably not get home again until sometime in the early part of October. I hope you ↑will↓ come back from the west before I start for the east. Thank you very much for your congratulations on my articles in the Chicago Evening Post. They were very light, I thought, but it was great fun doing them. I think journalism is probably where I belong.

Faithfully yours,

Janet A Fairbank [signed]

Miss Jane Addams,
The Broadmoor,
Colorado Springs, Colorado.

August Twenty-eight,
Nineteen Twenty.