Part 6

Thoroughness and system are manifest everywhere. This is not a college of yesterday. Nowhere are the latest methods and the best facilities more promptly welcomed. One wanders charmed and glad through its fine library, its extensive laboratories, its dining-room, where a special grace of living comes with the refined service of the students themselves, its dainty parlors and reception-rooms, and, seeking some flaw to prove it real, finds it, at last, in the fact that only half the youth of the land—only girls are admitted to it.

From the opening of the college it has been under the presidency of women. Miss Ada Howard, a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, was succeeded by Miss Alice Freeman, who received the degree of “Doctor of Philosophy,” from her alma mater, the University of Michigan, and that of Doctor of Literature from Columbia College. In 1887 Miss Palmer resigned the presidency of Wellesley College, but as Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer continues to serve it as a member of the board of trustees, which out of twenty-five members has one third women members. Miss Freeman was succeeded by the present President, Miss Helen A. Schafer, a graduate of Oberlin College.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

Cornell University is one of the national colleges founded upon the land-grant of 1862. The share of New York was nearly a million acres, and, by act of the Legislature of New York, passed in 1865, the university was incorporated, and the income from the sale of this land was given it for its maintenance. There were certain conditions, the principal one being the donation of $500,000 to the university by Ezra Cornell. This was made, together with 200 acres of land. In simple and comprehensive phrase, Mr. Cornell said: “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”

The act of incorporation provides for instruction “in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.” Thus thrice bound to the general service, by employment of the people’s resources, by acceptance at once of the gift and of the intent of the broad-minded donor, and again by provision of its own act, it would seem to go without saying that the State should see to it that there should be no discrimination against any class.

The university was opened, October, 1868, and, happily, it goes with saying, that by act of the trustees, passed in April, 1872, “Women are admitted to the university on the same terms as men, except that they must be at least seventeen years old.”

On the authority of the Dean of the faculty, Mr. H. S. White, August, 1890: “As to the status of young women at Cornell, they enjoy all the advantages which are open to young men, including the university scholarship and fellowships. We have eight fellowships which are open to graduate students, awarded by vote of the faculty, not only to our own graduates, but to graduates of other institutions. In 1888–89, three of these fellowships were secured by young women: one in botany; one in architecture; and one in mathematics. The present year the Fellows happen to be all young men; but this is a mere accident, and the question of sex cannot be said to be considered in the award. There were established, a few years ago, three Sage scholarships, set apart exclusively for the young women who attended the university; they were also eligible for the six university scholarships; so that at times four or five out of the nine scholarships might be held by young women. These Sage scholarships have recently been converted into university scholarships, open to all applicants without distinction of sex. Sage College was built and endowed by Hon. Henry W. Sage, in 1875, at a cost of $250,000, and was given to Cornell University as a place of residence for young women students. The gift had but one condition, that “instruction shall be afforded to young women by Cornell University, as broad and thorough as that afforded to young men.””

Up to the present time no professorship or offices of instruction in this university have been held by women.

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY.

Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y., embraces a college of liberal arts, a college of medicine, and a college of fine arts. Said the Chancellor, Dr. Sims, “Syracuse throws open the doors of all its colleges for the admission of women on the same terms as men. No especial rules are made because of the presence of both sexes in the university, the young women having every right that is accorded to young men. We have never had difficulty growing out of the presence of both sexes in the institution. The young ladies are as scholarly in every department as the young men.”

It is not strange that women’s benefactions set to such an institution. In addition to its general library of about 35,000 volumes, and a valuable professional library in connection with the college of medicine, in 1887, Mrs. Dr. G. M. Reid made a gift to the college of the great historical library of Leopold von Ranke. In 1889, Mrs. Harriet Leavenworth, of Syracuse, presented to the college of fine arts the Wolff collection of engravings, containing 12,000 sheets of rare and costly etchings of engravings from the great masters of art in all ages. The “John Crouse Memorial College for Women” was presented to Syracuse University in 1889. It is said to be the finest college building in the world.

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE.

Bryn Mawr College, situated at Bryn Mawr, ten miles from Philadelphia, Pa., was endowed by Dr. Joseph W. Taylor of Burlington, N. J., of the society of Friends, to afford to women opportunities for study equal to those given in the best men’s colleges. It was opened in 1885, and admits to lectures and class work three grades of students,—viz., graduates, undergraduates, and hearers. The entrance examinations are strict, and graduate students have from the first formed a large proportion of the students,—from one sixth to one fifth of the whole number. The time of graduation is determined only by the completion of the prescribed course.

The students at Bryn Mawr College enjoy exceptional opportunity for development of character through the important habit of self-direction. Notably wanting here are the customary restrictions on freedom of movement. For example, the student may choose her rising, retiring, and study hours; she may go in and out of Philadelphia at her discretion. This recognition of the student as personally responsible has been attended, it is said, with the happiest results.

Five fellowships are annually awarded: one in Greek, one in English, one in mathematics, one in history, and one in biology. The Bryn Mawr European fellowship is awarded annually to a member of the graduating class for excellence in scholarship. The holder receives $500, applicable to the expenses of one year’s residence at some foreign university.

The whole number of students enrolled during the year 1888–89 was 116. At the close of the scholastic year the degree of B.A. was conferred upon twenty-four candidates. All but two had been for four years in attendance at the college, and the president’s report says: “All of them left the college in their best state of health.”

No person is appointed a member of the faculty who is not, in every way, qualified to direct graduate as well as undergraduate study. There is absolutely no difference made in the salaries paid to the men and women employed in instruction; there is no difference made in academic rank.

The present Board of Trustees, twelve in number, are all men, appointed by the founder of the college. Should a vacancy occur it might be filled by a woman.

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE.

Swarthmore College, ten miles from Philadelphia, Pa., was founded in 1864 by members of the religious society of Friends, for the higher education of both sexes. The two sexes are about equally represented, not only among the pupils, but in the officers of the corporation and in the officers and committees of the board; in this latter respect differing from the record of any other college.

The number of female students in the collegiate department for the scholastic year 1888–89, was 80.

The college confers the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, of Letters, and of Science, on completion of the corresponding courses, and, conditionally, the Masters’ degrees, A.M., M.L., M.S., and also the degree of C.E., in the engineering department.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

The first admission of women to special courses in the University of Pennsylvania was in 1876 when, on application, two young women of Philadelphia were granted, after examination and payment of a fee, the full privileges of the analytical laboratory, and during that year were regular students, passing the final examinations with the junior class. The next year, 1877–78, they were admitted to lectures, laboratory work, recitations, and final examinations by the department of organic chemistry. In the years directly following, the physical laboratory received two young women, and upon lectures on modern history, opened to all fitted by previous study to appreciate them, from twenty-four to thirty ladies were regular attendants. In all departments the ladies received the highest courtesy and appreciation. One of the number writing of it says: “You have _carte blanche_ to say all you will in this respect,—you could not say too much.”

Through the favor of the dean of the college department the following very complete statement is presented of the progress toward giving to women the advantages of this venerable university, which has been gathering its rich resources since its foundation in 1746.

In 1876 a department of music was established, in which advanced instruction in the theory of music was given, and from the beginning women were admitted to the classes. While a degree was attainable, under certain conditions of post graduate work, none have been awarded.

In 1878 Mrs. Bloomfield Moore presented $10,000, the income of which was to pay the tuition fees of women who sought to qualify themselves for teaching, in any of the courses open to them. Certain special courses of lectures and laboratory work, e. g., English history, chemistry, mineralogy, were open to the public on a fee, and of course women were included, a few availing themselves of the opportunity; but these were not matriculated, nor entered upon the roll of students.

In 1880 Miss Alice Bennett, M.D., received the degree Ph.D. in the Auxiliary Faculty of Medicine,—a two years’ course in certain sciences open to graduates in medicine.

In 1888 Mrs. Carrie B. Kilgore received the degree LL.B., on completing the full two years’ course in the law department.

In neither of these cases was there any formal action opening the courses specified to women. They were simply accepted as students by the several deans, and when they had complied with the terms were, without demur, admitted to their degrees.

The School of Biology, organized in 1884,—a two years’ course, no degree,—has from the first been freely open to women, has always had a fair proportion among its students, and some of them have proved to be of superior ability. Its force and material are used in the new four years’ course in natural history, one of the college courses, but to this women are not yet admitted.

Applications were often made for the admission of women to the medical department, but trustees and faculty concurred in always refusing it. This was the more unanimously done since the establishment of the admirable Women’s Medical College, which would have been fatally injured by the opening of our doors to women.

Requests to open the college department to women have been periodically made for many years. At first the faculty positively declined to recommend this, but gradually opposition to the proposal weakened, until last year(1889–90) a bare majority voted the other way.

Before the trustees had taken action upon the matter, Col. Joseph M. Bennett came forward and presented two valuable houses, adjacent to the university, and a sum of $10,000 for establishing a college for women as a department of the university. The trustees accepted the offer, and after careful consideration and consultation with prominent women educators, decided, with Col. Bennett’s full approval, to make this a post graduate department of the highest grade.

Its organization and government are entrusted to a board of managers, one half women. By the autumn of 1891 the department will be open; ranking with the Faculty of Philosophy, giving the degree Ph.D. (which is no longer given by the Auxiliary Faculty of Medicine), and having special courses not leading to a degree. It is hoped that an ample number of free scholarships will be provided. The Faculty of Philosophy is freely open to women, and prepared to give Ph.D. degrees. Of course, when the department for women is opened it will practically be in this faculty.

In 1889–90 there were the following women students: College, Department of Music, 11, not candidates for a degree; Biology, 12, not candidates for a degree; Auxiliary Department of Medicine, 1, candidate for Sc.B. Total, 24.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was chartered in 1861. By a special vote of the Corporation in December, 1870, a graduate of Vassar College was admitted as a special student in chemistry. In June, 1873, the lady took the final examinations, covering two years of professional work. As no tuition fee was charged no precedent was established by this action. In 1873, at the request of the Woman’s Educational Association, and with its co-operation, the woman’s laboratory for chemistry and botany was established, to which women came as special students. Although they had not been recognized during their course as regular students, two women received the Institute Degree in 1881–82.

In 1883 final action was taken, opening all the courses to women on precisely the same terms as to men. Women now go into the laboratories with the regular classes.

The foregoing sketch of woman’s educational progress, while extended beyond due limit, leaves out the most encouraging record,—as it is the latest,—the story of what women are doing for themselves, and, no less, for humanity. No one can fairly estimate the educational forces of the coming decades who does not take into consideration the varied means of growth outside of both school and college; means which do not displace the need of these, but rather emphasize it. We may not even touch upon these here, but from a moment’s comprehensive glance backward we may dimly conceive the forward outlook.

It is not yet a century from the time when New England towns were voting “not to be at any expense to school girls,” and lo! as a type of to-day, Wellesley College, with a million and a half dollars wisely invested to entice girls from the remotest islands of the sea, to love and to get learning. For the unlettered housekeeper, filching time from her heavy labors to gather the children about her knee in the “Dame school,” we have the young but learned president of the college of nearly 700 students; or the woman directing, as its head, the orderly movement of a thousand or more pupils in the great city grammar school, which may represent a half score of nationalities. For the girl accustomed to denial, and deprecatingly asking for a little instruction when the boys shall have had their fill, we have the bright-faced, trustful young woman who expects and will get ere long the best the world has to offer.

In a country which finds its safety in the intelligence of its people and its peril in their ignorance, it behooves its thinkers to consider whether it is not too great a risk to leave four fifths of the instruction of youth in the hands of a sex of inferior education. The distinguished president of Harvard College, called attention some two years since, in an article in _The Atlantic Monthly_, to the condition of inferiority of our secondary schools, and he proposed remedying it by displacing a part of the female teachers. It would seem more in accordance with the spirit of the time, and certainly more practicable, to open to them the closed doors of opportunity and fit them to meet the demand made upon them.

The terror of the learned woman which, in one form or another, has had its many victims, has well nigh passed. Even the more timid and conservative are learning that it is the ignorant, not the instructed woman, that confuses affairs and works disaster. “A little knowledge is,” beyond doubt, “a dangerous thing”; but only because it is little.

It is told of Saint Avila that she gained her renown by this marvel. At one time, when frying fish in the convent, she was seized with a religious ecstacy, yet so great were her powers of self control that she did not drop the gridiron, nor let the fish burn!

So the educated woman of the nineteenth century has quieted many grave apprehensions as to the consequences of much learning to her sex. After the manner of Saint Avila, she does not permit her intellectual ecstacy to blind her to her simple duties. She has abundantly proved that she can carry the triple responsibility of loving and serving and knowing.

III. THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN THE WESTERN STATES.

BY

MAY WRIGHT SEWALL.

No formal history of the movement in the West on behalf of the higher education of women has been published. The materials for this paper have been derived from the reports issued under the auspices of the Bureau of Education; from the catalogues of institutions open to women; from various monographs, some of which recite the history of a single college (like “Oberlin, its Origin, Progress, and Results,” by Pres. J. H. Fairchild), others of which present the educational history of a State (like “Higher Education in Wisconsin,” by Professors Allen and Spencer); from a miscellaneous collection of baccalaureate sermons and congratulatory addresses delivered before the graduating classes and the alumnæ associations of many colleges; from old files of newspapers, and from scrap books which for a series of years have been collecting the records of contemporary effort along the lines of higher education; from the biographies of distinguished educators in our country; and from scores of letters, many of which have been written by college presidents and professors in response to my own inquiries, while others have been placed at my disposal by Dr. Carroll Cutler, formerly President of Adelbert College. No stronger evidence of the interest felt in the higher education of women could be found than the cordial, generous answers to my inquiries, which have come from the officials of scores of institutions extending from the Ohio to the Pacific. I am withheld from naming gentlemen to whom I am so deeply indebted only by the fact that a list of those who have courteously replied to my appeals for information would occupy more space than I can afford to give out of the limited number of pages allotted me in this volume.

The Western States and Territories in the order of their admission into the Union under their present names, include Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington—eighteen States; and Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming—three Territories. The changes undergone and the relations sustained by each of the above in its progress toward its present independent condition are exhibited in Table I. given in Appendix B. In this vast territorial expanse, embracing communities just being born into statehood, together with others which have enjoyed that dignity for periods varying from ten to eighty-seven years, one has an opportunity to witness almost every phase of the struggle for the higher education of women.

Conditions that ceased to exist in one State so long ago that they had almost passed from the memories of their victims, arose at a later period to vex other States. Questions long settled in one community became living issues in another; and such is the reluctance of the human being to learn from the experience of others, that these questions are still discussed with as much vivacity, not to say acrimony, as if they had never been settled.

Higher education in the West has been fostered by the national government, by the governments of the separate States, by many different denominations of the Christian church, and by individual enterprise and devotion.

As a large number of the strongest institutions in the West, open to women, owe their origin to provisions made by the general government, it is fitting to direct our first inquiry to the relations of that government to education in the West. On May 25, 1785, the Continental Congress passed an ordinance disposing of lands in the Northwestern Territory, by which it was decreed that: “There shall be reserved Lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within said township.” On July 13, 1787, the famous Ordinance relating to the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio River was passed; in it occurs the passage which is so frequently cited in proof that the United States government stands pledged to aid the higher as well as the lower education: viz.,” Religion, Morality, and Knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Ten days later, Congress passed another ordinance fixing the terms of sale for the tract of land purchased by the Ohio Company. This ordinance stipulated not only that section 16 of every township should be reserved for the maintenance of schools, but also “that two complete townships shall be given perpetually for the purposes of an university, to be laid off by the purchaser or purchasers as near the center as may be, so that the same shall be good land, to be applied to the intended object by the Legislature of the State.”

In these ordinances of 1787, we find the germ of all our State Universities in the West.

Owing to the grant secured by Congress in its contract with the Ohio Company, the Ohio University at Athens, O., was founded. It was first chartered as the “American Western University.” The name implies that its friends expected it to supply the educational needs of the then vague “West”; but only a year after the admission of Ohio as a State, i.e., in 1804, the University received a new charter from the State Legislature, under its present name. This precedent of Congressional grants for the endowment of institutions of higher education has been followed by the government to the present time.

Sometimes the two townships of land have been given _en bloc_, and some times they have been so given as to permit the location of university lands in different portions of the State; sometimes they have been kept as an endowment of the State University; sometimes they have been in part devoted to the founding of the university. But in every State and Territory in the above list, a university exists which owes its origin and its maintenance in part to the government of the United States.

A study of the history of the State Universities shows that in many States a strange hostility existed toward them. A feeling that by appropriating lands for their endowment, the general government was encouraging the growth of an aristocratic class of learned men, seems not to have been uncommon in the early days. This appears to be one valid explanation of the reluctance of State Legislatures to make generous or permanent appropriations for the support of such universities.