seminaries, of the primary education of girls into something like
secondary or high-school opportunities, the period of quiescence comes
to an end. There follows a period of agitation when the full privilege
of college training side by side with men was demanded for women. This
agitation was closely connected on the one hand with the antislavery
movement and the general passion for moral reform at that time current;
and, on the other, with the interest in teaching and that study of its
methods which Horace Mann fostered. From 1830 to 1865 it was becoming
evident that women were destined to have a large share in the
instruction of children. For this work they sought to fit themselves,
and the reformers aided them. Oberlin College, which began as a
collegiate institute in 1833, was in 1850 chartered as a college. From
the beginning it admitted women, and in 1841 three women took its
diploma. Antioch College, under Horace Mann's leadership, opened in
1853, admitting women on equal terms with men. In 1855 Elmira College
was founded, the first institution chartered as a separate college for
women.
Even before the Civil War the commercial interests of the country had
become so much extended that trade was rising into a dignity comparable
to that of the learned professions. Men were more and more deserting
teaching for the business life, and their places, at first chiefly in
the lower grades, were being filled by women. During the five years of
the war this supersession of men by women teachers advanced rapidly. It
has since acquired such impetus that at present more than two thirds of
the training of the young of both sexes below the college grade has
fallen out of the hands of men. In the mean time, too, though in smaller
numbers, women have invaded the other professions and have even entered
into trade. These demonstrations of a previously unsuspected capacity
have been both the cause and the effect of enlarged opportunities for
mental equipment. The last thirty or forty years have seen the opening
of that new era in women's education which I have ventured to call the
period of accomplishment.
From the middle of the century the movement to open the state
universities to women, to found colleges for men and women on equal
terms, and to establish independent colleges for women spread rapidly.
From their first organization the state universities of Utah (1850),
Iowa (1856), Washington (1862), Kansas (1866), Minnesota (1868),
Nebraska (1871) admitted women. Indiana, founded in 1820, opened its
doors to women in 1868, and was followed in 1870 by Michigan, at that
time the largest and far the most influential of all the state
universities. From that time the movement became general. The example of
Michigan was followed until at the present time all the colleges and
universities of the West, excepting those under Catholic management, are
open to women. The only state university in the East, that of Maine,
admitted women in 1872. Virginia, Georgia, and Louisiana alone among all
the state universities of the country remain closed to women. This
sudden opening to women of practically all universities supported by
public funds is not more extraordinary than the immense endowments which
during the same period have been put into independent colleges for
women, or into colleges which admit men and women on equal terms. Of
these privately endowed colleges, Cornell, originally founded for men,
led the way in 1872 in opening its doors to women. The West and South
followed rapidly, the East more slowly. Of the 480 colleges which at the
end of the century are reported by the Bureau of Education, 336 admit
women; or, excluding the Catholic colleges, 80 per cent of all are open
to women. Of the sixty leading colleges in the United States there are
only ten in which women are not admitted to some department. These ten
are all on the Atlantic seaboard and are all old foundations.
This substantial accomplishment during the last forty years of the right
of women to a college education has not, however, resulted in fixing a
single type of college in which that education shall be obtained. On the
contrary, three clearly contrasted types now exist side by side. These
are the independent college, the coeducational college, and the
affiliated college.
To the independent college for women men are not admitted, though the
grade, the organization, and the general aim are supposed to be the same
as in the colleges exclusively for men. The first college of this type,
Elmira (1855), has been already mentioned. The four largest women's
colleges--Vassar, opened in 1861; Smith, in 1875; Wellesley, in 1875,
and Bryn Mawr, in 1885--take rank among the sixty leading colleges of
the country in wealth, equipment, teachers and students, and variety of
studies offered. Wells College, chartered as a college in 1870, the
Woman's College of Baltimore, opened in 1888, and Mt. Holyoke,
reorganized as a college in 1893, have also large endowments and
attendance. All the women's colleges are empowered to confer the same
degrees as are given in the men's colleges.
The development of coeducation, the prevailing type of education in the
United States for both men and women, has already been sufficiently
described. In coeducational colleges men and women have the same
instructors, recite in the same classes, and enjoy the same freedom in
choice of studies. To the faculties of these colleges women are
occasionally appointed, and, like their male colleagues, teach mixed
classes of men and women. Many coeducational colleges are without halls
of residence. Where these exist, special buildings are assigned to the
women students.
The affiliated colleges, while exclusively for women, are closely
connected with strong colleges for men, whose equipment and
opportunities they are expected in some degree to share. At present
there are five such: Radcliffe College, the originator of this type,
connected with Harvard University, and opened in 1879; Sophie Newcomb
Memorial College, at Tulane University, opened in 1886; the College for
Women of Western Reserve University, 1888; Barnard College, at Columbia
University, 1889; the Woman's College of Brown University, 1892. In all
these colleges the standards for entrance and graduation are the same as
those exacted from men in the universities with which they are
affiliated. To a considerable extent the instructors also are the same.
During the last quarter-century many professional schools have been
opened to women--schools of theology, law, medicine, dentistry,
pharmacy, technology, agriculture. The number of women entering these
professions is rapidly increasing. Since 1890 the increase of women
students in medicine is 64 per cent, in dentistry 205 per cent, in
pharmacy 190 per cent, in technology and agriculture 194 per cent.
While this great advance has been accomplished in America, women in
England and on the Continent, especially during the last thirty years,
have been demanding better education. Though much more slowly and in
fewer numbers than in this country, they have everywhere succeeded in
securing decided advantages. No country now refuses them a share in
liberal study, in the instruction of young children, and in the
profession of medicine. As might be expected, English-speaking women,
far more than any others, have won and used the opportunities of
university training. Since 1860 women have been studying at Cambridge,
England, and since 1879 at Oxford. At these ancient seats of learning
they have now every privilege except the formal degree. To all other
English and Scotch universities, and to the universities of the British
colonies, women are admitted, and from them they receive degrees.
In the most northern countries of Europe--in Iceland, Finland, Norway,
Sweden, Denmark--the high schools and universities are freely open to
women. In eastern Europe able women have made efforts to secure advanced
study, and these efforts have been most persistent in Russia and since
the Crimean war. When denied in their own land, Russian women have
flocked to the Swiss and French universities, and have even gone in
considerable numbers to Finland and to Italy. Now Russia is slowly
responding to its women's entreaties. During the last ten years the
universities of Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Greece have been open to
women; while in Constantinople the American College for Girls offers the
women of the East the systematic training of the New England type of
college. In western, central, and southern Europe all university doors
are open. In these countries, degrees and honors may everywhere be had
by women, except in Germany and Austria. Even here, by special
permission of the Minister of Education, or the professor in charge,
women may hear lectures. Each year, too, more women are granted degrees
by special vote and as exceptional cases.
In brief, it may be said that practically all European universities are
now open to women. No American woman of scholarship, properly qualified
for the work she undertakes, need fear refusal if she seeks the
instruction of the greatest European scholars in her chosen field. Each
year American women are taking with distinction the highest university
degrees of the Continent. To aid them, many fellowships and graduate
scholarships, ranging in value from $300 to $1000, are offered for
foreign study by our colleges for women and by private associations of
women who seek to promote scholarship. Large numbers of ambitious young
women who are preparing themselves for teaching or for the higher fields
of scientific research annually compete for this aid. Three years ago an
association was formed for maintaining an American woman's table in the
Zoological Station at Naples. By paying $500 a year they are thus able
to grant to selected students the most favorable conditions for
biological investigation. This association has also just offered a prize
of $1000, to be granted two years hence, for the best piece of original
scientific work done in the mean time by a woman. The American Schools
of Classical Studies in Athens and Rome admit women on the same terms as
men, and award their fellowships to men and women indifferently. One of
these fellowships, amounting to $1000 a year, has just been won by a
woman.
The experience, then, of the last thirty years shows a condition of
women's education undreamed of at the beginning of the century. It shows
that though still hampered here and there by timorous restrictions,
women are in substantial possession of much the same opportunities as
are available for men. It shows that they have both the capacity and the
desire for college training, that they can make profitable and approved
use of it when obtained, and that they are eager for that broader and
more original study after college work is over which is at once the
most novel and the most glorious feature of university education to-day.
Indeed, women have taken more than their due proportion of the prizes,
honors, and fellowships which have been accessible to them on the same
terms as to men. Their resort to institutions of higher learning has
increased far more than that of men. In 1872 the total number of college
students in each million of population was 590. Last year it had risen
to 1270, much more than doubling in twenty-seven years. During this time
the number of men had risen from 540 to 947, or had not quite doubled.
The women rose from 50 in 1872 to 323 in 1899, having increased their
former proportional number more than six times, and this advance has
also been maintained in graduate and professional schools.
The immensity of the change which the last century has wrought in
women's education may best be seen by setting side by side the
conditions at its beginning and at its close. In 1800 no colleges for
women existed, and only two endowed schools for girls--these belonging
to a small German sect. They had no high schools, and the best grammar
schools in cities were open to them only under restrictions. The
commoner grammar and district schools, and an occasional private school
dedicated to "accomplishments," were their only avenues to learning.
There was little hostility to their education, since it was generally
assumed by men and by themselves that intellectual matters did not
concern them. No profession was open to them, not even that of teaching,
and only seven possible trades and occupations.
In 1900 a third of all the college students in the United States are
women. Sixty per cent of the pupils in the secondary schools, both
public and private, are girls--_i.e._ more girls are preparing for
college than boys. Women having in general more leisure than men, there
is reason to expect that there will soon be more women than men in our
colleges and graduate schools. The time, too, has passed when girls went
to college to prepare themselves solely for teaching or for other
bread-winning occupations. In considerable numbers they now seek
intellectual resources and the enrichment of their private lives. Thus
far between 50 and 60 per cent of women college graduates have at some
time taught. In the country at large more than 70 per cent of the
teaching is done by women, in the North Atlantic portion over 80 per
cent. Even in the secondary schools, public and private, more women than
men are teaching, though in all other countries the advanced instruction
of boys is exclusively in the hands of men. Never before has a nation
intrusted all the school training of the vast majority of its future
population, men as well as women, to women alone.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Published in _The New York Evening Post_, 1900.
XV
WOMEN'S EDUCATION AT THE WORLD'S FAIR[16]
Few persons have stood in the Court of Honor at Chicago and felt the
surpassing splendors gathered there, without a certain dismay over its
swiftly approaching disappearance. Never in the world before has beauty
been so lavish and so transient. Probably in all departments of the Fair
a hundred million dollars have been spent. Now the nation's holiday is
done, the little half-year is over, and the palaces with their widely
gathered treasures vanish like a dream. Is all indeed gone? Will nothing
remain? Wise observers perceive some permanent results of the
merry-making. What these will be in the busy life of men, others may
decide: I point out chiefly a few of the beneficial influences of the
great Fair on the life of women.
The triumph of women in what may be called their detached existence,
that is, in their guidance of themselves and the separated affairs of
their sex, has been unexpectedly great. The Government appointed an
independent Board of Lady Managers who, through many difficulties,
gathered from every quarter of the globe interesting exhibits of
feminine industry and skill. These they gracefully disposed in one of
the most dignified buildings of the Fair, itself a woman's design. Here
they attractively illustrated every aspect of the life of women,
domestic, philanthropic, commercial, literary, artistic, and traced
their historic advance. Close at hand, in another building also of their
own erection, they appropriately appeared as the guardians and teachers
of little children. Their halls were crowded, their dinners praised,
their reception invitations coveted. Throughout they showed organizing
ability on a huge scale; they developed noteworthy leaders; what is
more, they followed them, and they have quarrelled no more, and have
pulled wires less, than men in similar situations; their courage, their
energy, their tact in the erection of a monument to woman were
astonishing; and the efforts of their Central Board were efficiently
seconded by similar companies in every state. As in the Sanitary and
Christian Commissions and the hospital service of the war, in the
multitude of women's clubs, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the
King's Daughters, the associations for promoting women's suffrage, so
once more here women found an opportunity to prove their ability as a
banded sex; and it is clear that they awakened in the nation a deeper
respect for their powers.
But the very triumph does away with its further necessity. Having amply
proved what they can do when banded together, women may now the more
easily cease to treat themselves as a peculiar people. Henceforth they
are human beings. Women's buildings, women's exhibits, may safely become
things of the past. At any future fair no special treatment of women
is likely to be called for. After what has been achieved, the
self-consciousness of women will be lessened, and their sensitiveness
about their own position, capacity, and rights will be naturally
outgrown. The anthropologist may perhaps still assemble the work of a
single sex, the work of people of a single color, or of those having
blue eyes. But ordinary people will find less and less interest in
these artificial classifications, and will more and more incline to
measure men's and women's products by the same scale. Even at Chicago
large numbers of women preferred to range their exhibits in the common
halls rather than under feminine banners, and their demonstration of
the needlessness of any special treatment of their sex must be reckoned
as one of the most considerable of the permanent gains for women from
the Fair.
If, then, women have demonstrated that they are more than isolated
phenomena, that they should indeed be treated as integral members of the
human family, in order to estimate rightly the lasting advantages they
have derived from the Fair we must seek those advantages not in
isolations but in conjunctions. In the common life of man there is a
womanly side and a manly side. Both have profited by one splendid event.
Manufactures and transportation and mining and agriculture will
hereafter be different because of what has occurred at Chicago; but so
will domestic science, the training of the young, the swift intellectual
interest, the finer patriotism, the apprehension of beauty, the moral
balance. It is by growth in these things that the emancipation of women
is to come about, and the Fair has fostered them all in an extraordinary
degree.
Although the Fair was officially known as a World's Fair, and it did
contain honorable contributions from many foreign countries, it was, in
a sense that no other exhibition has been before, a nation's fair. It
was the climacteric expression of America's existence. It gathered
together our past and our present, and indicated not uncertainly our
future. Here were made visible our beginnings, our achievements, our
hopes, our dreams. The nation became conscious of itself and was strong,
beautiful, proud. All sections of the country not only contributed their
most characteristic objects of use and beauty, but their inhabitants
also came, and learned to know one another, and their land. During the
last two years there has hardly been a village in the country which has
not had its club or circle studying the history of the United States. No
section has been too poor to subscribe money for maintaining national
or state pride. In order to see the great result, men have mortgaged
their farms, lonely women have taken heavy life insurance, stringent
economy will gladly be practised for years. A friend tells me that she
saw an old man, as he left the Court of Honor with tears in his eyes,
turn to his gray-haired wife and say, "Well, Susan, it paid even if it
did take all the burial money."
Once before, we reached a similar pitch of national consciousness,--in
war. Young, unprepared, divided against ourselves, we found ourselves
able to mass great armies, endure long strains, organize campaigns,
commissariats, hospitals, in altogether independent ways, and on a scale
greater than Europe had seen. Then men and women alike learned the value
of mutual confidence, the strength of cooperation and organization. Once
again now, but this time in the interest of beauty and of peace, we have
studied the art of subordinating fragmentary interests to those of a
whole. The training we have received as a nation in producing and
studying the Fair, must result in a deeper national dignity, which will
both free us from irritating sensitiveness over foreign criticism, and
give us readiness to learn from other countries whatever lessons they
can teach. Our own provinces too will become less provincial. With
increased acquaintance, the East has begun to drop its toleration of the
West, and to put friendliness and honor in its place. No more will it
be believed along the Atlantic coast that the Mississippi Valley cares
only for pork, grain and lumber. As such superstitions decay, a more
trustful unity becomes possible. The entire nation knows itself a
nation, possessed of common ideals. In this heightened national dignity,
women will have a large and ennobling share.
But further, from the Fair men, and women with them, have acquired a new
sense of the gains that come from minute obedience to law. Hitherto, "go
as you please" has been pretty largely the principle of American life.
In the training school of the last two years of preparation and the six
months of the holding of the Fair, our people, particularly our women,
have been solidly taught the hard and needful lesson that whims,
waywardness, haste, inaccuracy, pettiness, personal considerations, do
not make for strength. Wherever these have entered, they have flawed the
beautiful whole, and flecked the honor of us all. Where they have been
absent results have appeared which make us all rejoice. Never in so wide
an undertaking was the unity of a single design so triumphant. As an
unknown multitude cooperated in the building of a mediaeval cathedral, so
throughout our land multitudes have been daily ready to contribute their
unmarked best for the erection of a common glory. We have thus learned
to prize second thoughts above first thoughts, to league our lives and
purposes with those of others, and to subordinate the assertion of
ourselves to that of a universal reason. Hence has sprung a new trust in
one another and a new confidence in our future. The friendliness of our
people, already rendered natural by our democratic institutions, has
received a deeper sanction. How distinctly it was marked on the faces of
the visitors at the Fair! I was fortunate enough to spend several hours
there on Chicago Day, when nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand
people were admitted. The appearance of those plain, intelligent, happy,
helpful thousands, all strangers and all kind, was the most encouraging
sight one woman had at the Fair. It has been said that the moral
education of a child consists in imparting to him the three qualities,
obedience, sympathy, dignity. These all have been taught by the Fair,
and women, more swiftly perceptive than men, have probably learned their
lesson best.