‘Women adrift’: How single women lived independently in early Chicago

‘Women adrift’: How single women lived independently in early Chicago

Picture Chicago in the year 1900: The trains are packed, department stores glitter on State Street and thousands of young women are pouring in from all over the country and world. They’re looking for work and seeking freedom and autonomy.Reformers and society at large at the time named these women “adrift” — it meant if they were without a husband or family they were lonely, unprotected and vulnerable.“The notion at the time was that a woman wit…