Part 2

First, she has charge of the economies of the family state; for, as the general rule, men are to earn the support and women administer these earnings. In this must be included the style in which a house shall be prepared and furnished, so as best to secure pure air, sunlight, and the best arrangement and conveniences for labor. If women were scientifically trained in this particular, their influence would have saved much labor and much expense. But let the graduates of our female colleges be questioned as to the position and swing of doors to avoid draughts; or of windows, to secure sunlight where most needed; or of chimneys, to secure ventilation and economize fuel; or on the most successful modes of ventilation; or on the most economical arrangement of closets, store-room, and pantry, to save time and steps; and it will be found, ordinarily, that nothing at all has been done to prepare them to answer intelligently such important practical questions.

There is no department of domestic economy where there is more enormous waste than in the selection and management of fuel. Much science is involved in learning what fuel is made of; what kinds best furnish warmth without waste; what methods waste heat; what methods preserve it; what spreads it equally; what creates draughts and thus colds and headaches, and many other connected subjects. Having devoted more than usual attention to this topic, and especially to the proper selection and management of furnaces and cook-stoves, it is my firm belief that if I could impart to the housekeepers of our country the knowledge I have gained, (and that without any help from scientific schools,) it would enable them to save millions of money and an enormous amount of ill health and discomfort.

Again, a housekeeper has charge of the selection and preparation of the food on which family health and enjoyment so much depend. To prepare her for this duty she should be taught what kinds of food are most healthful and nutritious; what kinds are best for the young and what for the aged; how each should be cooked to secure most nutriment and least waste; the relative value of buying wholesale or retail; the best modes of storing food and of preserving it from vermin or decay; what dishes are at once economical, comely, and inviting and how a husband's earnings can secure the most comfort and enjoyment with the most economical outlay. A woman needs training and instruction in this department of her duties as much as her sons need similar instruction and training in agriculture or watch-making, when that is to be their profession.

Again, the mistress of a family controls the selection and making of the clothing and furniture, and will be called to decide what is most suitable and economical; what stuffs wear longest; what hold colors best; what parts wear out soonest, and how they can be made to last the longest; how much is needed for each garment; and what is the proper way to cut and fit each article; what is the proper way of mending; what is the most economical and easiest mode of washing and ironing; and so on through a long list of duties that demand judgment, science, and care.

Again, the health of a family is especially a responsibility that rests upon woman. There is no such wise and needed physician as a well-instructed mother and housekeeper; not to cure—for that is the physician's part, but to prevent—disease, or stop it at the starting. Our gravest illnesses come from neglected colds, indigestion, and headaches.

Who first finds out when one is ill, and is best prepared to search for the cause? Why should not every housekeeper know the first symptoms of common illnesses, the cause and the cure? Not chiefly in the hospital or by the bedside is a well-instructed nurse needed, but by the family fireside, where she can observe the first symptoms, give early warning, and apply the simple cure. There is no technical training so valuable to a woman as that which enables her to keep the doctor out of the house, and to send for him when he is needed.

Again, to woman must be committed the charge of new-born infants—and of the mothers at the most perilous and most anxious period of life, and one demanding so much discretion, tenderness, and self-denying labor. Thousands of young, uninstructed mothers are sent out of life or made suffering invalids from their own ignorance of all they most need to know, or from the neglect or ignorance of untrained nurses.

The departments of practical life, to which the majority of women are ordained, ought to receive the honors and aid of lectures, professorships, endowments, and scientific treatment; the same as is bestowed to fit men for practical life. The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock. Shall man secure for himself endowments, and professors, and lectures on stock-raising, the diseases of domestic animals, and the laws by which they are preserved in health, and woman be denied equal advantages for learning the laws by which health, beauty, and mental soundness may be secured to the more precious children under her care?

It is granted by all parties that it is women who are to nurse and train the children the first years of life, and they must do it either ignorantly and blunderingly, or intelligently guided by scientific knowledge. For this reason every college and high-school for women should have a well-instructed woman professor, whose duty it shall be to instruct young women (in the last years of their education) in all they need to know as wife, mother, nurse, and guardian of infancy and childhood.

For young men we find endowed scientific schools to teach them agricultural chemistry, that they may learn wisely to conduct a farm; why should not women be taught domestic chemistry and domestic philosophy? The more civilization advances, the more do complicated contrivances multiply for the charge of which women are mainly responsible. The laws that regulate heat, as applied in the construction of furnaces, stoves, ranges, and grates; the principles of hydraulics, as applied in constructing cisterns, boilers, water-pipes, faucets, and other multiplied modern conveniences, demand scientific and intelligent supervision impossible to a woman untrained in this department of her domestic duties.

Again, young men are provided with lectures on political economy, while domestic economy, as yet, has not been so honored. Most women come to the duty of providing for a family utterly ignorant of the science of comparative values, and of the greater or less economies of the articles they are to provide and preserve.

But the most important of all the departments of a woman's profession is one for which no college or high-school for women has made any proper provision.

Woman, as mother and as teacher, is to form and guide the immortal mind. She, more than any one else, is to decide the character of her helpless children, both for this and the future eternal life. And for this, liberal provision should be made; so that no woman shall finish her education till all that science and training can do shall be bestowed to fit her for this supernal duty. The preparation of young ministers for the duties of the church does not surpass in importance the training of the minister of the nursery and school-room. The clergyman meets his parishioners two or three times a week to train them for an immortal existence. But the mother and school-teacher have their ministry in charge every hour of the day, and with a power of influence such as no clergyman can command.

In this review of the varied and complicated duties of a woman's profession, we find that she needs not only the general discipline and training for the development of mental faculties, but a special training for a far greater diversity of duties than are ever to be undertaken by men. We claim that woman's profession demands such very diverse training from the professions of the other sex that access to universities for men does not meet her most sacred necessities. A university education for woman should be as diverse from that of man's as are her duties and responsibilities.

We will now notice what has been done to prepare young men for their several professions, that we may sustain our position, that such advantages are unjustly withheld from their sisters, and that this has engendered multiplied evils to our sex, and thus to the commonwealth.

The mode of providing for the professions of men has been, not to trust chiefly to tuition fees for the support of instructors, but to secure the highest class of teachers by endowments insuring a salary independent of popular whims and changes. By means of such endowment, such _a division of labor and responsibility_ is secured that each teacher is responsible for only one or two branches of instruction, and to only _one_ class, and for only one or two hours each day.

The president of a college teaches only one class, and has no care or responsibility as to the proper performance of the several professors. Each professor has charge of only one class in one or two branches, and is responsible for only those branches; while neither president nor any other officer has any control or responsibility except in his own department. For the president is only _primus inter pares_ (first among equals) as presiding officer of a faculty, in which every question is decided by majority vote. He has not (as do principals of most female colleges) the selection and direction of all the teachers, the supervision of finance and expenditure, the authority to inspect and control in every department, and the regulation of all salaries and expenditures for apparatus and libraries.

By this college method, every professor is made the honorable and independent controller of his own department, responsible to no one but the corporation or trustees. By this method, each teacher having in charge only one or two classes, and a single department, is able to devote much time to self-improvement and the advancement of his specialty.

Endowments also render the college permanent in its course of instruction and in retaining a permanent faculty, which can never be the case in schools that must change with every changing principal.

Endowments also open avenues of honor and support to large numbers of young men who eventually become professors, or who are stimulated to exertion by the hope of winning such permanent and honorable positions. No such opening for independence is provided for women.

Endowments have secured to young men not only a thorough training in branches of literature and science which enlarge the mental powers, but also have served to honor and elevate several of the trades and professions to which they are devoted, so that they are now on an honorable equality with the so-called liberal professions. The scientific schools, the art schools, and the schools of technology are fast elevating many heretofore degraded professions to equal honor with law, medicine, and divinity. The more these various arts and professions are made honorable by endowments to support learned professors, the larger the number of honorable and remunerative professions are provided for young men; and, as yet, woman (with one or two exceptions) has had no such opportunities provided. To support such institutions for young men, every State in the Union has been taxed, and large grants of land made by the general government, while individual benefactions have been still more abundant. Our oldest colleges all count their endowments as valued from half a million to four and five millions each. There are now more than two hundred well endowed colleges and scientific schools for young men, supporting many hundred professors. The State of New-York has twelve endowed colleges, having doubled the number in twenty years. Connecticut has three endowed colleges, and four endowed professional schools. Massachusetts has four colleges and six professional schools for young men, and other States in similar proportions.

As a contrast to this liberal provision for young men, I may be allowed to narrate some of my own experience. When I commenced my profession as teacher, the most popular boarding-schools taught little except the primary branches, though occasionally was executed by the pupils a "mourning piece," that is, an embroidered tombstone under an apparition by courtesy called a weeping willow, with a row of darkly-clad weeping friends approaching it. I was among the first to introduce what are called the higher branches. My school soon numbered over one hundred; and yet I had only one room and one assistant, while I had both to teach the higher branches and to study them myself; not having been taught them in my school days. I also had to prepare my teachers, who like myself had never been trained for these departments. And as my school rose in popularity, other schools followed the example, so that as fast as I trained reliable teachers, they were drawn off by the offers of higher salaries.

Meantime all the responsibilities, which in colleges are divided among the president, the professors, the tutors, and the treasurer, rested on me. Ten years of such complicated labor, study, and responsibility destroyed health, as it has done for multitudes of other women, who have thus toiled unaided by any of the advantages given to college teachers.

Ever since that time, I have devoted my income, strength, and time to efforts for securing professional advantages of education for my sex equal to those bestowed on men. It is over forty years that these efforts have been continued. And now, after remarkable and unexpected restoration to health, the institution I founded so many years ago is again committed to my charge.

In all this period, not a single institution has been founded which includes in its curriculum the course of practical training that prepares a woman for the complicated responsibilities I have enumerated as included in her profession. The Mount Holyoke plan does not even aim at any thing of this kind, but is only a method of economy to lessen expenditure. Vassar College has no endowment to support teachers, and so its tuition fees far exceed those of colleges for men. Nor is the industrial training of woman for her distinctive profession any part of its aim, while the largest portion of the income of that institution goes for the support of men instead of women teachers, five out of seven professors being men. And the excuse for this is, that well-trained female teachers can not be found, and so more highly educated men must be taken. But if woman had received the advantages given to men, most of these honorable and remunerative positions would have been hers.

The fact that men have been so much more highly educated in literature and science than women, causes the unjust discrimination in giving men the most honorable and remunerative positions even in female schools, where women equal or surpass them as successful teachers; so also in the comparatively unjust wages given to them in public schools.

The history of some of the most prominent female institutions shows that women are equal if not superior to men, in ability to educate their own sex, even when so little has been done for them and so much for men. For example, about the time I commenced my school, Mrs. Willard petitioned the Legislature of New-York to bestow some endowments on her flourishing institution, but without success; and yet without any such aid that institution has carried out a high course of literary education for woman, has had uninterrupted success, and still offers equal advantages with most female colleges where college-trained men are the chief recipients of the income, and are chief managers.

The Ingham University, of Central New-York, was founded by two women, and when it numbered over two hundred, sought endowments in vain. A man was then placed at its head, hoping thus to gain endowments; but under his administration the institution ran down, and was restored to prosperity only by restoration to woman's care.

The institution I founded at Hartford has always run down with college-educated men as principals, and flourished most under the charge of women.

The Milwaukee Female College, established by my influence, rose to prosperity under women, failed under a man, and was restored to prosperity by a woman.

The Mount Holyoke Female Seminary was founded by a woman, and has been sustained forty years by women alone. In all these cases, the men had a college education, and the women gained an education chiefly by unaided personal efforts. I think similar illustrations can be found all over the nation.

It is the unvarying testimony of the supervisors of public schools that women teachers are equal to men in ability and success, and yet to men, as the general rule, are given the best places and the largest salaries. While so many avenues to wealth and honor are open to men and so few to women, all will allow, that this is neither just nor generous, and if women can do so well at such disadvantage, what would they do if equal in privileges?

To illustrate still further the unjust discrimination in educational advantages, I will state that in Hartford, close beside my institution, is a college founded at nearly the same time, the numbers being about the same as in my school. The president teaches only one or two hours a day, and has no responsibility for any department except his own. The college treasurer has all the care of the finances, and, having endowments for this purpose, pays salaries to the president and five or six other teachers which would provide a house and support for a family to each. There are only four classes, and each teacher is required to instruct only one or two hours a day, having the remaining time for self-improvement and for literary labor to add to his income.

In the same city is a theological seminary with only twenty-five young men.[39:A] For them are provided spacious accommodations, with furniture frequently provided by generous women. Women also are among the most liberal founders of those endowments, valued at nearly or quite half a million, by which four professors and their families are supported and the board and expenses of a good portion of the pupils are paid. In Middletown is another endowed theological seminary, where ten instructors are provided for only thirty-six students. At New-Haven is another endowed theological seminary, where six instructors are employed to teach fifty-two young men, and so endowed that four professors and their families are supported by funds. And in all these cases, each professor teaches only one or two hours a day in only one or two branches. And in more than half the States of our Union, are similar institutions to train young men for church ministries, a large portion of them largely endowed by women; while not even one has yet been established to train woman for her no less sacred ministry.

[39:A] These statistics are taken from the Report of the National Bureau of Education for 1870.

When I took charge of the Hartford Female Seminary, this fall, the trustees and former principal had established a course of study, and pupils were preparing to graduate as in past time; while many reasons were urged for making no great changes.

The list of branches to be taught, as exhibited in the circular, is no larger than is common in many women high-schools and colleges, each one requiring a text-book, and reads thus: Spelling, reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, higher arithmetic, algebra, history of the United States, physiology, physical geography, geometry, natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, mental philosophy, Butler's Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion, æsthetics, English literature, history of Greece, history of Rome, philology, ancient and modern history, composition, natural history, history of England, history of France, botany, geology, rhetoric, trigonometry, moral philosophy, history of literature, history of arts and sciences, Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, Spanish, drawing, painting in water-colors, painting in oil, vocal music, instrumental music, and gymnastics; _forty-four_ in the whole.

For all these I am responsible to select teachers, to examine text-books, to decide on the modes of teaching, and to see that all departments are administered properly.

I can not carry out all these without at least seven English teachers, and four or five for the languages and accomplishments. And in arranging classes in so many branches, these teachers, on an average, must teach four or five hours a day, and have charge of six or seven classes in nearly as many different studies.

Though tuition charges have ever been larger than young men pay in colleges, in my former experience forty years ago, I could not retain the best teachers and furnish apparatus and advantages needed, only by using the whole income, except what I paid for my own board and my very economical personal expenses. And now, the income from one hundred pupils would not save me from embarrassing debt had I not other resources.

If I worked my teachers at the risk of their health, and employed those of humbler qualifications, I might, perhaps, make a small profit, but not otherwise. And as fast as teachers are trained, so as to be most valuable, (as in my earlier experience,) they will leave for posts offering higher pay and less labor. Neither Mrs. Stowe, nor myself, nor any of the most highly qualified ladies of our country, could take charge of such an institution without a sacrifice of an income counting by thousands. Will not a time come when ladies, the most highly qualified to educate their own sex, shall receive such advantages and compensation for these duties as now are exclusively given to men? My extensive acquaintance with ladies of this class all over the land enables me to predict an abundant supply of highly-trained educators to the duties of our sex, if the appropriate facilities, such as college professors obtain, were offered to them. But to take such a post as I now occupy, or to become a hard-working, ill-paid subordinate, or to become a family assistant, would not tempt them from present advantages of usefulness, independence, and comfort.

The present agitation as to woman's rights and wrongs is the natural and necessary result of the want of appreciation and neglect of the claims and duties of the family state. It is the manifest design of our Creator that each man should seek a wife and establish a family. And the family state has two ends to be accomplished; one is the increase and perpetuity of our race, and the other is its education and training; not chiefly to enjoy this life, but mainly to form a character that will secure endless happiness in the life to come.

The distinctive feature of the family state is, _the training of a small number by self-sacrificing labor and love_. Abraham, the friend of God, and the great model of faith and obedience to both Jews and Christians, was not allowed to have a child of his own till he had trained six hundred servants, each man dwelling in his tent with a family of his own, forming a religious community that obeyed the true God. This shows that it was not for personal gratification as the chief end that God instituted the family, and that those who are childless may have as great a work to perform as the parental.