Jane Addams asserts that she wrote this book for two reasons: 1) the “worthy” (xvii) motive of recording the difficulties (“the stress and storm”) of the early years of Hull-House to enable the subsequent Settlement Houses that were established in the United States to be viewed more favorably and 2) the “unworthy” (xviii) motive of preventing the publication of two biographies of her, one of which had been submitted to her in outline and falsely portrayed Settlement House life as easy and pleasant.

Addams explains that this book is primarily organized topically, rather than chronologically, in part because activities were more significant to her than specific dates during the early years at Hull-House. In the book’s initial chapters, Addams states that she describes influences and personal motives in detail only to “make clear the personality upon whom various social and industrial movements in Chicago reacted during a period of twenty years” (xviii). In the book’s later chapters, Addams makes no effort to separate her personal history from that of Hull-House during her 20 years of involvement there. Consequently, 50-year-old Addams found it difficult to write fully about the period after autumn 1889: there are people with whom she is still involved and causes with which she is still identified.