WOMAN’S WORK IN AMERICA
EDITED BY
ANNIE NATHAN MEYER
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION_
BY
JULIA WARD HOWE
[Illustration: [Logo]]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1891
COPYRIGHT, 1891,
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.
EDITOR’S PREFACE.
To Mr. Theodore Stanton, the editor of “The Woman Question in Europe,” I
hasten to acknowledge my indebtedness. After reading that interesting
book it occurred to me that a volume on the work of women in America
could be made equally valuable and interesting.
In the spring of 1888, therefore, I began to collect the necessary
material. Naturally it was not possible, nor did it seem desirable, to
follow the exact lines of Mr. Stanton’s work. In his book, each chapter
is devoted to a different country, and the woman question therein is
treated by the author of the chapter in all of its aspects.[1] It seemed
best, on the contrary, to divide the American history as nearly as
possible into as many chapters as there are phases of woman’s work. The
task of selecting as collaborators eighteen women, where so many
brilliant women abound, was a very difficult one; I need say nothing in
defense or explanation of my choice, however, but am satisfied to let
the work done speak for itself.
But before the task of selecting the contributors came that of dividing
the whole great field of woman’s work. Here I can only bow my head
before the flood of criticism that is bound to bear down upon me. I
suppose it is inevitable that to many it will seem that undue importance
has been accorded to one subject, and too little to another. I can but
plead that in no case have I allowed myself to be influenced by
prejudice, but only by the best judgment I was capable of bringing to
bear. On mentioning this book to a well-known editor and poet (a man), I
was gravely asked why I had omitted a chapter on “Woman in Marriage,” as
it would make a very readable and certainly a very prolific subject. My
answer was that so far as I knew women had never been denied that
privilege, and so it could have no legitimate place in my book. In that
reply, although uttered lightly, lies the principle upon which I have
worked; the fields of labor described here contain evidences of woman’s
progress; they are those in which women, if entrance were not absolutely
denied them, were at least not welcomed, nor valued. Furthermore, they
are phases of woman’s work that have some direct bearing on the status
of woman in this country.
And now a word on the object of the book, for many will shrug their
shoulders and say: “Why separate _work_ into _man’s_ work and _woman’s_
work? What is gained by this division? Why not be content with the
simple word _work_? Is it not sufficient to be a factor in the world’s
growth, or must the ages keep a constant reckoning of _meum_ and
_tuum_?”
If the time has come when the word work is a neuter noun, I admit that
the value of this book would be reduced; but even then I think it might
justly claim a historical value, a value as a history of the struggle on
woman’s part to have her work accepted just as a “factor in the world’s
growth,” judged on its own merits, not
Mere woman’s work,
Expressing the comparative respect
Which means the absolute scorn.
But aside from the value of the book as a record, it claims a value as
an inspiration to greater effort; for in our eyes the time has not yet
come when all effort should cease. The arguments against the development
of woman have been many, and although centuries have passed, the
changing years merely ring different tones upon the same theme. We may
acknowledge that the day is past when it is necessary seriously to plead
the capacity of woman to accomplish certain things; that victory has
been won with tears of blood; but the fight still centers about the
propriety of it. The large band of ignorant and prejudiced objectors is
fast giving place to another of a more kindly, but more dangerous type.
More dangerous because instead of employing the weapons of disdain, they
use those of homage; instead of goading with scorn, they disarm with the
incense of a false and hollow sentimentality. This new wave of feeling
divides Life into Intellect and Emotion, the Mind and the Heart, Matter
and Soul, etc., the one man, woman the other. These sentimentalists, who
certainly include as many women as men, argue that every woman is the
natural companion of man, and so is upheld by some strong shoulder. When
faced by the awful statistics of unmarried females in the United States,
they fall back on some hypothetical father, brother, or cousin.
Therefore it is considered highly supererogatory that a woman should be
taught to stand upon her own feet, when the adjacent shoulder answers
the purpose as well. This belief holds its own with a peculiar tenacity,
because there is a certain heroic satisfaction in retaining your
sentiment notwithstanding all the arguments that can be brought forward
by the low materialists.
This book is nothing else than a history of woman’s slow, but sure,
training to stand balanced upon her own feet. She has looked about upon
the thousands of falling sisters, and has very reasonably reached the
conclusion that the only way to make sure of standing is to make use of
her own feet.
Women have many so-called champions of their “purity,” and “innocence;”
champions that are shocked at opening so many new fields of “man’s work”
to women; but they are strangely ignorant of the very real contamination
to which they expose their _protegés_ by crowding them into the few
already overcrowded channels, and refusing to let in fresh air and
sunshine. Men and women both are born into the world helpless and
unprotected; it may seem an ugly and bitter truth, but it is so, that in
this struggle for existence daily going on about us, men and women do
indeed stand “side by side,”—not, as with the poet,
Full summed in all their powers,
but each individually carrying on a struggle against suffering,
starvation, crime, and death,—forces that remorselessly attack women,
barren of the chivalrous regard of sex with which these sentimentalists
seem to grace them.
And if it is true that both sexes fight the same battle for existence,
who can honestly deny to women (at present physically the weaker), the
best possible equipment that education of all kinds can furnish? I shall
not even touch upon the other, and more poetic, argument of the divine
rights of genius, which is of no sex; but I am content to employ only
the prosaic one of the practical needs of life, an argument which here
in America is by far the most potent one.
My own labors on this book have been purely editorial; and after
selecting the chapters, and the authors, and laying down certain general
principles and suggestions, my responsibility ceased. The principles
laid down by me have been:
Facts and history rather than eloquence;
Truth before picturesqueness;
A total absence of railing against the opposite sex.[2]
The greatest care has been taken to assure accuracy; if mistakes do
creep in, notwithstanding this, I must beg the reader not to judge too
harshly, as the capacity for making mistakes in a book like this is
illimitable. However, I trust the leniency of the reader will not be too
severely taxed.
While being an ardent believer in the future progress of woman, it would
be impossible to subscribe myself to every theory that may be found in
these pages. To say one agrees in every detail with the opinions of
eighteen women, all of whom are well known to be “women with opinions,”
is to boast of a breadth of mind, a roundness of judgment to which I am
too modest to lay claim. But I can surely say that every one of the
writers has cordially joined hands in the making of the book; the long
hours spent in the writing of it, the many annoyances encountered in
collecting historical data, all is forgotten in the hope that this book
may serve:
1. To set certain plain facts, shorn of all sentiment, before the world
in accessible form;
2. To preserve the record of a great, brave, and essentially American
struggle;
3. To serve as a stimulus to many women who are working along a very
weary road;
4. To hold up before the entire sex in every sphere of life only the
highest standard of excellence.
In closing, I want to thank heartily, not only my collaborators, but
also those whose names do not appear, but who have, nevertheless, added
greatly to the interest and value of the book.
ANNIE NATHAN MEYER.
NEW YORK, _January, 1891_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
EDITOR’S PREFACE, iii
I. INTRODUCTION,
JULIA WARD HOWE, 1
II. THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN THE EASTERN STATES,
MARY F. EASTMAN, 3
III. THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN THE WESTERN STATES,
MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, 54
IV. THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN THE SOUTHERN STATES,
CHRISTINE LADD FRANKLIN, 89
V. WOMAN IN LITERATURE,
HELEN GREY CONE, 107
VI. WOMAN IN JOURNALISM,
SUSAN E. DICKINSON, 128
VII. WOMAN IN MEDICINE,
MARY PUTNAM JACOBI, M.D., 139
VIII. WOMAN IN THE MINISTRY,
REV. ADA C. BOWLES, 206
IX. WOMAN IN LAW,
ADA M. BITTENBENDER, 218
X. WOMAN IN THE STATE,
MARY A. LIVERMORE, 245
XI. WOMAN IN INDUSTRY,
ALICE HYNEMAN RHINE, 276
XII. WOMAN IN PHILANTHROPY—CHARITY,
JOSEPHINE SHAW LOWELL, 323
XIII. WOMAN IN PHILANTHROPY—CARE OF THE SICK,
EDNAH DOW CHENEY, 346
XIV. WOMAN IN PHILANTHROPY—CARE OF THE CRIMINAL,
SUSAN HAMMOND BARNEY, 359
XV. WOMAN IN PHILANTHROPY—CARE OF THE INDIAN,
AMELIA STONE QUINTON, 373
XVI. WOMAN IN PHILANTHROPY—WORK OF ANTI-SLAVERY WOMEN,
LILLIE B. CHACE WYMAN, 392
XVII. WOMAN IN PHILANTHROPY—WORK OF THE W. C. T. U.,
FRANCES E. WILLARD, 399
XVIII. WOMAN IN PHILANTHROPY—WORK OF THE RED CROSS SOCIETY,
CLARA BARTON, 411
APPENDIX A—ARTICLE VI., 424
„ B—ARTICLE III., 425
„ C—ARTICLE IV., 434
„ D—ARTICLE VII., 441
„ E—ARTICLE X., 446
„ F—BIBLIOGRAPHY. 449
INDEX, 451
I.
INTRODUCTION.
BY
JULIA WARD HOWE.
A comprehensive view of the attainments made by American women in this
century, and especially during the last fifteen years, cannot but be of
great importance and value. The cruel kindness of the old doctrine that
women should be worked for, and should not work, that their influence
should be felt, but not recognized, that they should hear and see, but
neither appear nor speak,—all this belongs now to the record of things
which, once measurably true, have become fabulous.
The theory that women should not be workers is a corruption of the old
aristocratic system. Slaves and servants, whether male or female, always
worked. Women of rank in the old world were not necessarily idle. The
eastern monarch who refused an army to a queen, sent her a golden
distaff. The extremes of despotism and of luxury, undermining society
and state, can alone have introduced the theory that it becomes the
highly born and bred to be idle. With this unnatural paralysis of
woman’s active nature came _ennui_, the bane of the so-called privileged
classes. From _ennui_ spring morbid passions, fostered by fantastic
imaginations. A respect for labor lies at the very foundation of a true
democracy.
The changes which our country has seen in this respect, and the great
uprising of industries among women, are then not important to women
alone, but of momentous import to society at large. The new activities
sap the foundation of vicious and degraded life. From the factory to the
palace the quickening impulse is felt, and the social level rises. To
the larger intellectual outlook is added the growing sympathy of women
with each other, which does more than anything else to make united
action possible among them. A growing good will and esteem of women
toward women makes itself happily felt and will do even more and more to
refine away what is harsh and unjust in social and class distinctions
and to render all alike heirs of truth, servants of justice.
The initiative is now largely taken by women in departments in which
they were formerly, if admitted at all, entirely and often unwillingly
under the dictation of men. Philanthropists of both sexes, indeed, work
harmoniously together, but in their joint undertakings the women now
have their say and, instead of waiting to be told what men would have
them think, feel obliged to think for themselves. The result is not
discord but a fuller and freer harmony of action and intention. In
industrial undertakings they still have far to go, but women will enter
more and more into them and with happy results. The professions indeed
supply the keystone to the arch of woman’s liberty. Not the intellectual
training alone which fits for them, but the practical, technical
knowledge which must accompany their exercise puts women in a position
of sure defense against fraud and imposition.
In the volume now given to the public the progress of women in all of
these departments is presented by persons who have made each of them a
special study, and who have done good and helpful work in them, with,
moreover, the outlook ahead which is the important element in all labor
and service. The world, even the American world, is not yet wholly
converted to the doctrine of the new womanhood. Men and women who prize
the ease of the _status quo_, and the imaginary importance conferred by
exemption from the necessities which prompt to active exertion, often
show great ignorance of all that this book is intended to teach. They
will aver, men and women of them, that women have never shown any but
secondary capacities and qualities. Women who take this ground often
secretly flatter themselves that what they thus say of other women does
not apply to themselves. A speaker representing this class lately asked
at a legislative hearing in Massachusetts why women did not enter the
professions? why they did not become healers of the sick, ministers,
lawyers? One might ask how he could escape, knowing that in all of these
fields, so lately opened to them, women are doing laborious work and
with excellent results? A book like the present will furnish chapter and
verse to substantiate what is claimed for the attainments of women. It
will not, indeed, put an end to foolish depreciative argument, based
upon erroneous suppositions, but it will furnish evidence to confute
calumny, to convince the doubtful.
II.
THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN THE EASTERN STATES.
BY
MARY F. EASTMAN.
The movement in behalf of the education of youth in America followed so
closely upon the landing of the colonists on an unsettled and forbidding
coast, and was continued so persistently and so successfully, under
stress of poverty and peril, that it seizes upon the imagination, and
justly stirs a profound sense of gratitude in succeeding generations.
That in its inception, and for a long period, it was but a partial, in
fact, but a half movement, after all, appears only in the light of a
later day; which, indeed, it had helped to kindle,—when the words,
“children,” “youth,” and “people” began to take a wider significance.
The men who gathered in the cabin of the “Mayflower” in 1620, and framed
a compact that every man in the colony should have an equal share in the
government, soon assembled to promote the general welfare by encouraging
industry in the young.
In 1642, the General Court of Mass. Bay Colony charged itself with
“taking account, from time to time, of all parents and masters
concerning the calling and employment of their children, especially of
their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the
capital laws of this country.”
In 1647, says the record, “It being one cheife piect of yt ould deluder
Satan to keepe men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures ... by psuading
them from ye use of tongues, that so at least ye true sense and meaning
of ye originall might be clouded ... and that learning may not be buried
in ye graves of our fathers.... It is therefore ordered tht evry
township in this jurisdiction, after ye Lord hath increased ym to ye
number of 50 householders, shall therforthwth appoint one to teach all
such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages
shall be paid eithr by ye parents or mastr, or by ye inhabitants in
generall.... It is ordered yt where any towns shall increase to ye
number of 100 familis or householders, they shall set up a gramer
schoole, ye mr thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may
be fitted for ye university.” A penalty of £5 was fixed for violation of
this order.
As early as in 1636, the Court “agreed to give £400 toward a school or
college,” to which, in 1638, John Harvard left, by will, half his
property and his library. In 1642, the Court gave to the college “the
revenue of the ferry from Charlestown to Boston.”
1644, “It is ordered vt ye deputies shall command it to ye severall
towns (and ye elders are to be desired to give their furtherance
hereto)” ... that “Evry family alow one peck of corne, or 12d. in money
or other commodity to be sent in to ye Treasurer, for the colledge at
Cambridge.”
1650, voted that, “Whereas, through the good hand of God, many have been
stirred to give for the advancement of all good literature, arts, and
sciences in Harvard Colledge—and for all other necessary pvsions that
may conduce to the education of ye English and Indian youth of this
country in knowledge and godlynes, ordered—tht a corporation be formed,
consisting of seauen psons.”
Revenues of the college and of the president to the extent of 500 were
exempt from taxation, while special exemptions from rates, and military
and civil duties, were made to officers, fellows, scholars, and even the
servants of the college.
This oldest college of the country was, as thus appears, the child of
the State, and while it was the recipient of private benefactions, drew
its sustenance, substantially, from the labors of the people.
1683, voted that, “Every towne consisting of more than five hundred
families shall set up and maintayne two grammar schools, and two
wrighting scholes to instruct youth as the law directs.”
So cordial was the interest felt in education among the colonists, that
many towns had established free schools before it was required.
Within a year of the founding of Boston, in 1635, the citizens in town
meeting assembled, voted to call a schoolmaster, and “Philemon Purmont
was engaged to teach the children.” Dorchester, Naumkeag (now Salem),
Cambridge, Roxbury, and other towns soon took the same course. Salem
established a grammar school as early as 1637. Thus, within twenty years
from the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the foundation of the
free-school system may be said to have been laid. It was frequently
stipulated in the action of town meetings, that the poor should be
provided for, and in Boston, at least, Indian children were freely
taught. But in the provisions for “free schools,” “schools for the
people,” and the “children,” it is not to be understood that girls were
included. The broad terms used in the acts of the colonies and the votes
of town meetings might mislead, in this respect, if history did not
record the periods, long subsequent, when girls were admitted even to
the “free schools” under restrictions, usually with great opposition.
This long hiatus, during which girls went, practically, without
free-school opportunities, picking up what they might at home, or by aid
of the parish minister, was about a century and a half long, though in
1771, Hartford, Conn., opened its common schools to every child, and
taught even the girls reading, writing, spelling, and the catechism,
and, rarely, how to add. The boys, meantime, studied the first four
rules of arithmetic.
The hiatus between the foundation for the college for boys and even the
seminary, or the academy, for girls, extended over a long century and a
half; and that between colleges for males and those for females was, in
Massachusetts, two hundred and thirty-two years long. A prime motive to
the encouragement of education in America was that the Scriptures might
be properly interpreted. This appears in the preamble to the vote of
1647 establishing schools, which were necessary as tributary to the
college, and in the motive which led to the foundation of Harvard and of
Yale, “the dread of having an illiterate ministry to the churches when
our ministers shall lie in dust.”
It has been noted by Charles Francis Adams that “the records of Harvard
University show that of all the presiding officers, during the century
and a half of colonial days, but two were laymen, and not ministers of
the prevailing denomination; and that of all who in the early times
availed themselves of such advantages as this institution could offer,
nearly half the number did so for the sake of devoting themselves to the
service of the gospel. But,” he continues, “the prevailing notion of the
purpose of education was attended with one remarkable consequence,—the
cultivation of the female mind was regarded with utter indifference; as
Mrs. Abigail Adams says in one of her letters, ‘it was fashionable to
ridicule female learning.’”
This discrimination between the intellectual needs of the two sexes
should not, perhaps, be matter of surprise, when we consider that the
English system of public schools for boys, extending from the
“Winchester School” to “Rugby,” had been in existence for two centuries,
and that of the six hundred who first landed on the coast of
Massachusetts, one in thirty was a graduate from the English University
of Cambridge, while both the men and the women were heirs to the
prevailing sentiment of disrespect for womanly intelligence and
education, which marked the demoralization of the reign of the Stuarts
in England.
The time of Queen Elizabeth has passed, in which the noble Lady Jane
Grey, being asked by Sir Roger Ascham why she lingered to read Plato in
Greek while the lords and ladies of the Court were pleasuring in the
park, replied, “I wist all their sport in the park is but a shadow to
the pleasure I find in Plato. Alas! good folk, they never felt what true
pleasure meaneth.”
Lady Mary Wortley Montague truly portrayed the time, when she wrote,
early in the eighteenth century: “We are permitted no books but such as
tend to the weakening and effeminating our minds. We are taught to place
all our art in adorning our persons, while our minds are entirely
neglected.”
It might have been expected that the religious zeal which brought these
earnest New England pilgrims to a strange, wild country, would hold in
check any tendency to undue display, especially when supplemented by the
severe restrictions of their domestic life, which were relieved only by
compulsory attendance on protracted services, held in unwarmed churches,
to listen to metaphysical sermons on foreordination, reprobation, and
infant damnation, and to prayers an hour long.
Yet it appears that while no provision was made for their instruction,
they were sometimes arraigned for wearing “wide sleeves, lace tiffany,
and such things,” while “those given to scolding were condemned to sit
publicly, with their tongues held in cleft sticks, or were thrice dipped
from a ducking-stool.”
It would have been better, perhaps, that their tongues had been trained
by instruction to becoming speech, or that they had been permitted to
drink at the fountain of learning.
Sentiment in favor of the practical skill of women seems not to have
been wanting. They cooked and washed, and the law required them to spin
and gather flax, and on one notable occasion women exhibited their skill
at the spinning wheel, publicly, on Boston Common. As soon as they could
get around to it they no doubt matched the skill of their English
kindred whom Hollingshed described a half century earlier. He says, “The
females knit or net the nets for sportsmen:
“‘Fine ferne stitch, finny stitch, new stitch, and chain stitch,
Brave broad stitch, fischer stitch, Irish stitch, and queen stitch,
The Spanish stitch, rosemary stitch and mowse stitch;
All these are good, and these we must allow,
And these are everywhere in practice now.’”
Aside from their belief in the primary importance of religious training,
it may be conceded that the men of colonial times did not lack the
sagacity which led Charlemagne in the eighth century to require that the
children of those who were to participate in the government should be
educated, “in order that intelligence might rule the Empire.” The
application of this principle in his limited empire opened education to
the ruling class; in America it opened it to the ruling sex.
How small were the opportunities for instruction, outside the free
schools, may be known from the fact that the committee for supervising
them enjoined upon the selectmen to take care that no person should open
a private school except upon their recommendation.
In 1656 a Mr. Jones having opened a private school was visited by the
magistrates, who exacted a promise from him to give up the school at the
close of the winter term. Apparently he was reluctant in so doing, for
it is recorded that the next spring Mr. Jones was sent for by the
selectmen “for keeping a Schoole, and required to perform his promise to
the Towne in the Winter, to remove himselfe and familye in the Springe,
and forbiden to keep Schoole any longer.”
The first opportunities for girls in the colonies were in the
“Dame-School,” in which some woman was hired to gather the little
children about her knee to teach them their letters from the New England
Primer. They were required to commit to memory the shorter catechism,
and sometimes were taught to read enough to decipher it for themselves,
from the last pages of their only book, the famous Primer. Training in
manners was made of prime importance.
In some cases, as is reported, old women who were a town charge were set
to this useful employment. Sometimes these “dames” were housewives, in
which case two frequently alternated in caring for the children. In this
way, according to the town records of Woburn, in 1635, “Joseph Wright’s
wife and Allen Converse’s wife were able to divide between them £0. 10s.
0d., for a year’s work.” It is to be inferred that the acquirements of
these mistresses were limited, as the next year, October, 1674, the town
“agreed with Jonathan Tomson to tech bigger children and Allen
Converse’s wife to teach leser children.”
In the old graveyard in Cambridge, opposite Harvard College, it is
recorded that Mrs. Murray died 1707, aged sixty-two years. The title
“Mrs.” was honorary, as she was unmarried. This betokens the esteem in
which she was held, as does the following inscription upon her
tombstone:
“This good school dame
No longer school must keep,
Which gives us cause
For children’s sake to weep.”
Later, especially in the old seaport towns, the children’s schools, for
girls as well as for boys, were frequently in the hands of women of much
refinement. Of such, Miss Hetty Higginson, of Salem, was famous as an
instructor about 1782. The record says that, “being asked what she
taught, she laughingly replied, ‘ethics,’ yet to a superficial observer
it might seem that she taught nothing. Her manners were courtly, and her
conversation was replete with dignity, kind feeling, and sound sense.”
Some improvement upon this state of education, or want of education
rather, gradually crept in; whether because of the need of teachers for
the boys, which had come to be felt, or because in the home there was
much early association of the child with the mother, and so some
education on her part might prove indirectly advantageous, or whether
there was some dawning consideration of her own personal needs, it is
impossible to determine. Perhaps there was difficulty in withholding
other books from the girl after she could read the catechism, or, later,
in drawing a sharp line between the acquisition of the first and the
second rule in arithmetic.
Suffice it that by the close of the eighteenth century, most towns in
New England had made some slight provisions for educating girls; how
slight, almost any early town history will show.
The rate of progress in a thriving Massachusetts town, Newburyport, is
given in Smith’s History, as follows: “... When speaking of schools we
must be understood as referring to boys’ schools only.” So far as
education of females by the town was concerned they were sadly
deficient. As late as 1790, a proposition to provide schools for girls
was put aside without action, by the town, and deferred for another
year, and when they did set about the work it is curious to note of how
little consequence they considered it as compared with the provision to
be made for boys.
At first three or four schools were suggested for girls between five and
nine years of age, which were “to be furnished with dames to learn them
good manners and proper decency of behavior.” These were the essentials,
but in addition they were to be taught “spelling and reading sufficient
to read the Bible, and, if the parents desired it, needlework and
knitting.”... The sessions of the school were to be from April to
October.... But a later petition being presented to the town, that some
arrangement might be made for the instruction of girls over nine years
of age, the town graciously voted, March, 1792, that “during the summer
months, when the boys in the school had diminished, the master shall
receive girls for instruction in grammar and reading, after the
dismission of the boys, for an hour and a half.”
Even to this poor privilege there were limitations. No person paying a
tax of over three hundred pounds was permitted to send his daughters to
these supplementary schools. But the scheme for the larger girls did not
work well for the boys, so the masters were directed “not to teach
females again.”
As late as 1804 we find the female children, over nine years of age, as
great a burden on the hands of the school committee of the town as ever.
In answer to another petition, of eleven persons, that this class of
girls might be taught, by the town, arithmetic and writing, four girls’
“schools were established, to be kept six months in the year, from six
to eight o’clock in the morning, and on Thursday afternoons.” So that,
in addition to their other accomplishments, they were in a fair way of
being taught early rising.
It was not until 1836 that the school committee decreed “that one female
grammar school be kept through the year.” This is probably the time of
which it is recorded “that, when a school was started for girls in
Newburyport, a taxpayer objected to it, and applied for an injunction,
bringing out Judge Shaw’s celebrated opinion on that point.” (Cushing
_vs._ Newburyport.)
In 1788 the town of Northampton voted “not to be at any expense for
schooling girls.” Upon an appeal to the courts the town was indicted and
fined for its neglect. In 1792 it voted “to admit girls, between eight
and fifteen, to the schools from May 1 to October 31.”
Within the memory of a recent resident of Hatfield, an influential
citizen, whose children were girls, appealed in townmeeting for the
privilege of sending them to the public school, which he helped by his
taxes to support. An indignant fellow townsman sprang to his feet and
exclaimed, “Hatfield school _shes_? Never!”
The gentleman who narrated this fact lived to witness, also, the
foundation and endowment of a college for girls at Northampton by Miss
Smith of Hatfield, one of the sex, and probably one of the girls
contemptuously forbidden a common-school education.
For a long time after summer schools were provided for girls, in many of
the New England towns they were not supported, by a general tax, as were
the winter schools for boys, but by tuition fees.
Josiah Quincy, in his “Municipal History of Boston,” says “After the
peace of 1783, a committee on schools ‘laments that so many children
should be found in the streets, playing and gaming in school hours.’”
There seems as yet to be no search for girls who are losing school
advantages.
In 1789 great educational advance was made in Boston. A system was
adopted which provided “a ‘Latin School’ for fitting boys of ten years
old and over, by a four years’ course, including Greek and Latin, for
the University; also three reading and writing schools.”
Boys had the right to attend these all the year round; girls from the
twentieth of April to the twentieth of October. This was the first
admission of girls to the “free schools.”
Provision was made this year that “arithmetic, orthography, and the
English language shall be taught, in addition to reading and writing.”
It is to be hoped that this applied to the summer sessions, open to
girls, as well as to the all-the-year-round sessions for boys.
When, however, early in the nineteenth century, arithmetic and geography
were generally added to the courses of studies in schools, it was only
for the winter months, such knowledge being thought quite unnecessary
for girls. “All a girl needs to know is enough to reckon how much she
will have to spin to buy a peck of potatoes, in case she becomes a
widow,” was the repulse of a too ambitious girl in the early part of
this century.
An old lady, sitting beside the present writer, well remembers that in
her youth, having outreached the prescribed limits of the girl’s class
in arithmetic, she grappled alone with the mysteries of “interest.”
Meeting some difficulty she appealed to her older brother, who had been
duly instructed. His scornful reply was, “I am ashamed of a girl who
wants to study ‘interest’!”
The need of more teachers led gradually to the employment of women in
“those schools where, besides morals, the only requirements were
reading, sewing, and writing if contracted for.”
In the law of 1789 the expression “master and mistress” makes
recognition of women as teachers for the first time. Hitherto women so
employed could not legally collect their wages; the receipt of their
dues depended upon the honor of their employers.
This act of justice may have been the more appreciated as the wages of
female teachers were evidently on a rising scale. Something less than a
half century after Mistresses Wright and Converse had shared their
year’s income of ten shillings, the following vote, passed in the town
meeting of Lexington, shows an increased estimate of women’s services:
“At a meeting of the inhabitants, July 21, 1717, they agreed that Clerk
Lawrence’s wife and Ephraim Winship’s wife keep school from ye day of ye
date hereof until ye last day of October next following; and if they
have not scholars sufficient as to numbers to amount to five shillings a
week, at three pence a scholar a week, then ye towne to make up what is
wanted of ye five shillings out of the treasury thereof; provided ye
selectmen do not see cause to demolish sd schole before sd term be
expired.”
Probably no deductions from the above specified wages were necessary for
living expenses, which these mistresses of households may be supposed to
have earned in their duties at home. When, in the course of the
succeeding century, wages increased to seventy-five cents or even to a
dollar a week, the teacher was expected to “board around,” though
sometimes her board in one place was paid for from public funds. In the
latter case, in many New England towns, the privilege of boarding the
teacher, like that of boarding town paupers, was put up for public
competition, and was struck off to the lowest bidder.
Up to 1828 girls did not go to the public schools in Rhode Island.
Antedating the earliest records here transcribed is the claim made that
the first free school in America was made in Virginia in 1621. If so it
struck no root, for, in 1671, Bishop Berkely, Governor of Virginia,
wrote, “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope
we shall not have them these hundred years.” It was one hundred and
seven years later, in 1778, that Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill in
the Virginia legislature, designed to establish a system of public
schools in that State, arguing that “the greatest sacrifice the people
of the republic can make will fail to secure civil liberty to their
posterity unless they provide for the education of youth.”
In the Dutch settlement of Manhattan a movement for schools was made
which proved more successful than in Virginia, as befitted its source in
the Netherlands, where, since the sixteenth century, “the fruitfulness
of a wise and state-administered system of universal education” had been
illustrated.
In 1630, the States-General of Holland issued orders to the Dutch East
India Company in Manhattan to maintain a clergyman and a schoolmaster,
and in 1633 arrived Adam Roelandsen, and the first school-tax ever
levied in America was imposed on each householder and inhabitant. So
Brooklyn had the first free public school in the United States. Until
1808, this school was in charge of the local congregation of the Dutch
Reformed church; then a board of trustees was appointed. This school
still continues.
In 1658, the Burgomasters petitioned for a fit person as Latin
schoolmaster. This was granted, and so the first classical school was
instituted.
Since it is time that the day of jubilation and self-gratulation should
be over in America, and that the day of sober, earnest study of
educational work should come in, it is not the part of wisdom to forget
that the free school system did not originate in America. In an address
to magistrates, in 1524, Luther urged that they should “at least provide
the poor suffering youth with a schoolmaster”: and what “youth” meant to
Luther appears in his plea that “solely with a view to the present, it
would be sufficient reason for the best schools, both for boys and
girls, that the world, merely to maintain outward prosperity, has need
of shrewd and accomplished men and women.”
In Manhattan, the successor of Adam Roelandsen found time, outside his
duties as teacher, to act as “gravedigger, bellringer, and precentor”;
but if in place of these extra-official duties, the colonists had so
profited by the wisdom of Luther as to cause him to take time for the
instruction of girls, we may well believe that it would have changed the
history of education in America.
Mr. Richard G. Boone reminds us, in his valuable work on “Education in
the United States,” that “Charles and Gustavus Adolphus did for Sweden
and their generations what America, with all her achievements, has
failed to do since; they made education so common that in the year 1637,
the year of the founding of Harvard, not a single peasant child was
unable to read and write.”
There is pathetic contrast too, if it be fair to draw it, in the fact
that while the colonial fathers were barricading the doors of the little
schoolhouses against girls, so that a large part of the wills which
women made in that period were signed with a cross, and even many wives
of distinguished men could not sign their names, as appears by the
registered deeds of the time, an Italian woman, Elena Lucrezia Coronaro,
“poet, musician, astronomer, mathematician, and linguist,” received a
Dr.’s degree at the university of Padua, and Novela d’Andrea, who was
both learned and beautiful, occasionally lectured for her father, who
was a law professor in the University of Bologna. To be sure, this was
in line with a tradition in Italy for which England herself could
furnish no parallel.
In that ancient seat of learning, Bologna University, which produced the
most famous jurisconsults of the middle ages, women had been for
centuries both students and professors.
Bettisia Gozzidina, LL.D., filled the juridical chair from 1239 till her
death in 1249; Catalina and Novella Calderini lectured on law a century
later; and in succeeding centuries other women became renowned in
various departments, including mathematics and anatomical research.
To fill the pages of two centuries, blank, in America, as to female
education beyond the merest rudiments of learning, let Abigail, wife of
President John Adams, who was descended from the most illustrious
colonial families, the Shepards, Nortons, and Quincys, sketch for us the
intellectual opportunities for girls of her own rank in her time. Born
in 1744, she wrote, in 1817, when past threescore and ten:
“The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex was
to be found in the families of the educated class, and in occasional
intercourse with the learned of the day. Whatever of useful instruction
was received in the practical conduct of life came from maternal lips:
and what of farther mental development, depended more upon the eagerness
with which the casual teachings of daily conversation were treasured up,
than upon any labor expended purposely to promote it. Female education
in the best families went no farther than writing and arithmetic, and,
in some few and rare instances, music and dancing.”
Although at this time the number of post-offices in the country probably
did not exceed half a hundred, Mrs. Adams notes a great letter-writing
propensity in her circle. “These letters deserve notice,” says her
biographer, “only as they furnish a general idea of the tastes and
pursuits of the day, and show the evident influence upon the writers
which study of “The Spectator” and of the poets had exerted.” This
appears in the train of thought and structure of language, as in trifles
of taste for quotation, and for fictitious signatures. “Calliope” and
“Myra,” “Aspasia” and “Aurelia,” have effectually disguised their true
names from the eyes of younger generations. Miss Smith’s signature
appears to have been “Diana,” a name which she dropped after her
marriage, without losing the fancy that prompted its selection.
Her letters written during the Revolution show clearly enough the
tendency of her own thoughts and feelings in the substitute she then
adopted of “Portia.”
The young ladies of Massachusetts, in the last century, were certainly
readers even though only self-taught, and their taste was not for the
feeble and nerveless sentiment or the frantic passion of our day, but
was derived from the deepest wells of English literature. The superb
flowering of native mental gifts in many women of the last part of the
eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries, under so
slight stimulus of educational advantage, would almost force upon us the
theory of Descartes, that “in order to improve the mind we ought less to
learn than to contemplate”; and lead us to accept the dictum of Huxley,
that “all the time we are using our plain common sense we are at once
scientists and artists.”
Rev. William Woodbridge, a descendant of Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and for
fifty years an honored educator, wrote, in the latter part of his life,
to a correspondent: “You inquire how so many of the females of New
England, during the latter part of the last century, acquired that
firmness, and energy, and excellence of character for which they have
been so justly distinguished, while the advantages of school education
were so limited. The only answer is that it is not the amount of
knowledge, but the nature of the knowledge, and, still more, the manner
in which it is used to form character. Natural logic, the self-taught
art of thinking, was the guard and guide of the female mind. The first
of Watts’s five methods of internal improvement, ‘The attentive notice
of every instructive fact and occurrence,’ was exemplified in practice.
Newspapers were taken in a few families; books were scarce but freely
lent; the Scriptures were much read; and, as for time, ‘where there is a
will there is a way.’”
Since the women of that day left almost no record of their thought in
print, the biography of Mrs. Adams, already quoted, may be called upon
to illustrate the intellectual and moral characteristics attributed to
them. Among the New England women of the early part of this century who
are still remembered by the present generation, there was a noteworthy
number who, in vigor of intellect and strength of character, might truly
be called her peers.
While Mr. Adams was in Europe (from 1780) as Commissioner from the
United States, Mrs. Adams was managing the family property, at a time of
depreciation of paper money. Speaking of this period Mr. Charles Francis
Adams says: “Her letters are remarkable because they display the
readiness with which she could devote herself to the most opposite
duties, and the cheerful manner in which she could accommodate herself
to the difficulties of the times. She is a farmer, cultivating the land
and discussing the weather and crops; a merchant, reporting prices
current and the rates of exchange, and directing the making up of
invoices; a politician, speculating upon the probabilities of peace or
war, and a mother, writing the most exalted sentiments to her son. All
of these pursuits she adopts together; some from choice, the rest from
the necessity of the case; and in all she appears equally well.”
The complete sympathy of interest between Mrs. Adams and her
distinguished husband in “seeking for political truth in its fundamental
principles,” as Mr. Adams is said to have done, appears in her letters,
and it may be questioned whether, barring the consideration of sex, the
term “statesmanlike” might not apply to the views of both.
Just a month before the resolution declaring the independence of the
colonies was offered in the Continental Congress by Richard Henry Lee of
Virginia and seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts Mrs. Adams wrote to
her husband, under date of May 7, 1776.
“I believe ’tis nearly ten days since I wrote you a line. I have not
felt in a humor to entertain you. If I had taken up my pen, perhaps some
unbecoming invective might have fallen from it. The eyes of our rulers
have been closed and a lethargy has seized almost every member. I fear a
fatal security has taken possession of them. While the building is in
flames they tremble at the expense of water to quench it. In short, two
months have elapsed since the evacuation of Boston, and very little has
been done in that time to secure it, or the harbor, from future
invasion. The people are all in a flame, and no one among us, that I
have heard of, even mentions expense. They think, universally, that
there has been an amazing neglect somewhere.
“’Tis a maxim of state that ‘power and liberty are like heat and
moisture; where they are well mixed everything prospers; where they are
single they are destructive!’
“A government of more stability is much wanted in this colony, and they
are ready to receive it at the hands of Congress.
“And since I have begun with maxims of state, I will add another,
namely, that a people may let a king fall yet still remain a people; but
if a king let his people slip from him he is no longer a king. And as
this is most certainly our case, why not proclaim to the world, in
decisive terms, your own importance? Shall we not be despised by foreign
powers for hesitating so long at a word?”
To this Mr. Adams replied:
“PHILADELPHIA, _May 27, 1776_.
“I think you shine as a statesman, of late, as well as a farmeress.
Pray where do you get your maxims of state? They are very apropos.”
All history shows how long the conception of a plan, in some acute mind,
precedes the popular impulse toward it. The fertile mind of Daniel De
Foe, in an “Essay on Projects,” published in 1699, suggests the plan of
an Academy of Music, with hints for cheap Sunday concerts, an Academy
for Military Science and Practice, and an Academy for Women.
This is the earliest project for a school of this grade, for women, and
remained the only one for more than a century in England. In America,
from the middle of the eighteenth century, academies were established in
many towns where the law requiring instruction to fit boys for the
university did not apply. Some of these opened their doors to girls,
and, in a few instances, seminaries and academies for young ladies were
founded, and, once inaugurated, they multiplied with constantly
accelerating speed. A contemporary of these events, writing as “Senex”
in “The American Journal of Education,” says: “When at length academies
were opened for female improvement in the higher branches, a general
excitement appeared in parents, and an emulation in daughters to attend
them. The love of reading and habits of application became fashionable.”
There appear, from the first, to have been no discouragements from lack
of mental capacity on the part of girls, even in the academies where
they were instructed with boys.