We discuss a famous speech by Jane Addams, titled "A Modern Lear," her reflections on the events leading to and during the infamous Pullman Railway Strike of 1894. Using ideas drawn from the emergence of classic pragmatism and Shakespeare’s King Lear as an analogy, Addams took both the ownership and workers to task for the violence and provides a way to avoid a recurrence of such a tragedy. In Part 1, we discuss the reasons for the strike and how Addams’ reactions to it contributed to the speech’s content.