This article will begin to synthesize and extend the historical literature involving women's political culture and women teachers. Through the lens of a select group of women in Chicago, the author argues that, while higher education provided the skills women needed to enter political spaces, teaching led them to act in those political spaces. Through their teaching, women gained insight and expertise into what they perceived to be the nation's ills. Through their voluntarism, they gained access to a public and political world. And in both worlds, they changed the role of government.