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.
The truth is, however, that the State Universities are the most democratic of all the institutions of higher learning; this truth is now generally perceived, and the institutions are growing proportionally popular. It is due to their necessarily democratic nature that they are now without exception open to women. Their chief feeders are the public high schools, with which they must maintain direct and constant communication. Their chief financial support comes directly and equally from all property-holding citizens; either by appropriation from the public treasury, varying in amount with each Legislature, or by a fixed, special tax, of a certain percentum of all assessed property. Finding their students in the public high schools, which in the West are almost universally co-educational, and their support in the public treasury, into which flow taxes upon the property of women and girls as well as upon that of men and boys, the wonder is that the State Universities did not from their origin admit women as students.
The following table will show when each State University was chartered, opened, and opened to women. The list of States in this table is presented as above in the chronological order of their admission to the Union.
| CHARTERED. | OPENED. | ADMITTED WOMEN. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ohio | Athens | 1804 | 1809 | 1871 |
| Columbus | 1870 | 1873 | 1873 | |
| Indiana | 1820 | 1824 | 1867 | |
| Illinois | 1867 | 1868 | 1871 | |
| Missouri | 1839 | 1843 | 1870 | |
| Michigan | 1837 | 1841 | 1870 | |
| Iowa | 1847 | 1860 | 1860 | |
| Wisconsin | 1848 | 1849 | 1860, 1863, 1868, 1871, 1875 | |
| California | 1868 | 1869 | 1870 | |
| Minnesota | 1868 | 1869 | 1869 | |
| Oregon | 1876 | 1876 | 1876 | |
| Kansas | 1861 | 1866 | 1866 | |
| Nevada | 1864 | 1874 | 1874 | |
| Nebraska | 1869 | 1871 | 1871 | |
| Colorado | 1861 | 1877 | 1877 | |
| North Dakota | 1883 | 1884 | 1884 | |
| South Dakota | 1862 | 1885 | 1885 | |
| Montana | 1884 | 1883 | 1883 | |
| Washington | 1861 | 1862 | ||
| Utah, Deseret | 1850 | 1850 | 1850 | |
A glance at the table will show that the periods of time during which these universities received men only, vary from two to sixty-two years, that but one of those opened prior to 1861 has been from the outset co-educational; that all opened prior to 1861 became co-educational between 1861 and 1871: and that all organized since 1871 started as co-educational institutions.
National government made additional provision for higher education by an act usually referred to as “The Agricultural College Act of 1862.” By this act each State received 30,000 acres of land for each Senator and Representative to whom it was entitled in the United States Congress, “the proceeds to be applied to the maintenance of at least one college in each State,” “without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts.” Under this act there have been established in the territory discussed in this chapter, since 1862, fourteen colleges of the character indicated.
In Ohio, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Nevada, and Nebraska such institutions exist as Departments of the State University, and, like all its other departments, admit women.
In Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, and Colorado, such institutions, under various names, as “Agricultural College,” “Industrial and Mechanical College,” “College of Applied Science,” etc., enjoy an independent organization, in some States loosely connected with, in others entirely separate from, the State University.
These institutions are authorized to give degrees appropriate to the courses of study pursued in them, and they are likewise open to women. The act of 1862 gave a distinct impulse to the higher education of women in the West, for reasons to be hereafter mentioned.
Although the germ of a State University was secured by the national government to each of the twenty-one States and Territories in our list at or prior to the time of its admission, in many instances the State action relative to these institutions, upon which the government aid had been conditioned, was postponed for a long series of years. In the mean time the desire for the higher education was stimulated, and opportunities for obtaining it were provided by the churches.
Appendix B, Table II., to this article, gives a list of 165 institutions, within my prescribed territory, open to women, which are of sufficient importance to be included in the tables of “Colleges of Liberal Arts,” published by the United States Commissioner of Education, in his Report for 1888–89 (taken from the advance sheets). Of these, 45 are non-sectarian. The remaining 120 are distributed among the various denominations as follows:
Methodist Episcopal, 31; Baptist, 16; Presbyterian, 14; Congregational, 13; Christian, 10; United Brethren, 7; Lutheran, 6; United Presbyterian, 4; Reformed, 3; Friends, 3; Cumberland Presbyterian, 2; M. E. South, 2; Universalist, 2; Seventh Day Baptist, 1; Methodist Protestant, 1; Evangelical Association, 1; Brethren, 1; Church of God, 1; New Church, 1; Protestant Episcopal, 1.
At the present time one frequently hears people deprecate the effort to maintain so large a number of colleges. It is asserted truly that the distribution of patronage among so many, necessarily prevents any from attaining commanding influence. Especially do the advocates of non-sectarian education recommend that the weaker institutions be closed, that their properties be sold, and that effort be concentrated upon the few stronger ones. The arguments by which this recommendation is sustained are sound.
If the financial support, the love, the loyalty, the ambition, and the students that are distributed among the thirty-one colleges of Liberal Arts in the State of Ohio, could be united in the support of any one of the number, the fortunate recipient might soon rank with the great universities of our country, nay, of the world. But however desirable such a concentration of patronage ultimately may be, one cannot read the history of the educational work of the churches, without feeling that “Wisdom is justified of her children.”
It is true that many of these colleges were founded in the interests of sectarian theology, rather than of liberal culture; that they were all in some degree, some of them in very large degree, regarded and used by their supporters as the most available instruments in the labor of securing proselytes to the particular school of Christian faith in whose name they were planted. In the degree to which these institutions have nurtured sectarian zeal, emphasized distinctions in minor points of doctrine, and strengthened the barriers between denominations, it must be conceded that their influence has been benumbing and narrowing; and in this degree they have tended from instead of toward culture, whose mission is to broaden and quicken instead of to narrow and benumb.
In spite of this limitation upon the work of denominational colleges, they merit the profoundest respect and gratitude of the public. A large proportion of these institutions were established when the wilderness was being cleared and settled.
It is related by its historian that the site of Ripon College was chosen by two enthusiasts in the cause of higher education, in the year 1850, when the State of Wisconsin was but two years old, when “there were but fourteen rude buildings in the village of Ripon,” and when but a single year had elapsed since the first clearing on the village site had been made. At once these brave men applied for a charter for a college; and the purpose of the corporation was declared to be, “To found, establish, and maintain at Ripon, in the county of Fond du Lac, an institution of learning of the highest order, embracing also a department for preparatory instruction.”
This is hardly an exceptional, but a typical instance.
The people were few, scattered, and poor. Communication between places remote from each other was slow and uncertain. Means of travel and transportation were limited to the pack horse, the private wagon, the stage coach, and the flat-boat. If poverty had not rendered it impossible for the pioneers to incur the expense of sending their children on long and slow journeys, to distant colleges, the time consumed in such journeys, and the anxiety incident to separation, in the absence of any means of frequent and speedy communication, would have prohibited it.
Forty years ago, in all of the territory covered by the twenty-one States and Territories under consideration, twenty-five years ago in most of it, and so lately as ten years ago in much of it, the time, fatigue, and expense which a dweller in a remote corner of a county incurred in traveling to its county seat, was more than he will now expend to reach the State capital. Under such conditions the question with the pioneer was not whether he should send his children to a near or to a distant college, but whether he should send them to the near college or to none.
The influence of these 165 colleges upon the life of the Western States cannot be measured by the number of their graduates, nor by adding to this number those who have attended the colleges one or more terms.
The presence of a college, with its educated faculty, in any community, modifies the tone of its intellectual and social life. The colleges have been centers of leavening influence in the new States. While recognizing this with gratitude, one can also see that the conditions which justified and demanded the multiplication of these small colleges have ceased to exist, and that the different conditions which now prevail counsel denominations to consolidate their weak institutions, and to concentrate their dissipated forces upon a few strong ones. The present means of speedy and certain communication and transit enable a strong college, with high standards and an able faculty, to bring its influence to bear upon all parts of a State and to command the patronage of its remotest corner.
That the tendency is toward concentration of effort is indicated by the Year Books of the denominations for 1888–89.
In studying the educational work of the churches, one cannot fail to discern the results of creeds and habits of worship.
In a sketch of this character it would be unjust to withhold the fact that the colleges under Methodist control have been generally first and most generous in opening their opportunities to women; and that they are also conspicuous among the colleges that include women in their faculties and in their boards of trustees.
The progressiveness of Methodists in regard to the education of women is evinced not only in their co-educational colleges, but also in institutions founded by them for the exclusive education of women.
The latest report of the United States Commissioner of Education contains over two hundred institutions for the superior education of women. The list includes colleges and seminaries entitled to confer degrees, and a few seminaries, whose work is of equal merit, which do not give degrees. Of these more than two hundred institutions for the education of women exclusively, only 47 are situated within the territory here discussed. Of these 47, but 30 are chartered with authority to confer degrees. Of these 30, 7 are non-sectarian; the remainder are distributed among the denominations as follows:
Presbyterian, 7; Methodist Episcopal, 5; Baptist, 3; Christian, 2; Protestant Episcopal, 1; Congregational, 1.
The religious affiliations of the remaining four have not been ascertained.
The extent to which the higher education of women is in the West identified with co-education, can be seen by comparing the two statements above given. Of the total 212 higher institutions receiving women, and of the total 195 such institutions which confer the regular degrees in arts, science, and letters, upon their graduates, 165 are co-educational. Almost necessarily, therefore, the most important discussion in this article will be that of co-education.
Before approaching it, however, some space must be devoted to women’s colleges in the West. Almost without exception they include preparatory departments; very generally the attendance in the preparatory department exceeds that in the collegiate; frequently members of the faculty divide their attention between preparatory and collegiate classes; generally the courses of study offered are less numerous and less complete than those offered in colleges of liberal arts for men; most of these institutions have paltry or no endowments.
With all these limitations, some of them do much creditable work; but, at present, they occupy a rather vague, indefinite position between “the ladies’ seminary” of thirty years ago and the modern college. Quoting from the United States Commissioner of Education (Report for 1887–88): “The adjustment of studies is evidence of a double purpose in these institutions. On the one hand they have endeavored to meet the general demand with respect to woman’s education. On the other they have sought to maintain that higher ideal which would appropriate for women as well as for men the advantages of the kind of instruction and training approved, by wise effort and long experience, as the best for mental discipline and culture.”
A double purpose, when its parts are, as in this instance, to a degree contradictory, imposes impossible tasks. A process of sifting is now going on among these institutions. Some of the weaker will doubtless be absorbed by stronger ones having the same denominational support. Some, whose strength is chiefly in their preparatory departments, will find their ultimate place in the lists of secondary schools; and, ceasing to compete with colleges, will do an important and much needed work in preparing students to enter college. Others, already strongest in their collegiate departments, pledged by a noble past to achieve a corresponding future, will persist in emphasizing their real collegiate side until at last they secure an absolute separation between their preparatory and their collegiate work, and can take rank with genuine colleges of liberal arts.
In this sketch it is impossible to give the history of all these institutions; but among colleges characterized from birth by a liberal and progressive spirit may be mentioned “The Cincinnati Wesleyan Woman’s College.” This institution was chartered in 1842, and claims to be “the first liberal collegiate institution in the world for the exclusive education of women.” This claim sounds somewhat boastful, but a perusal of the discussions which were called forth by the establishment of this college, will convince one that its undertaking was novel and quite foreign to the thought of its public, if not, indeed, quite unprecedented in the world’s history. Dr. Charles Eliot, the editor of the Western Christian Advocate, heroically defended the project against the attacks of both the secular and the religious press. Rev. P. B. Wilber was elected president, and his wife, Mary Cole Wilber, was made principal.
The broad claim made by these enthusiastic educators was “that women need equal culture of mind and heart with men, in their homes, in the church, and in the state.” The enterprise was accused of “being counter to delicacy and to custom, as it was to orthodoxy.” Mrs. Wilber, who is still living (in 1890), writes that those who had upheld the college “were convinced that a higher intellectual and moral education for women was indispensable to the continued prosperity and existence of civilization, especially under our form of government. They believed it would be a powerful influence for good in the home, in social life, and in all benevolences and philanthropies. They believed in the elevation of women through education, which is development; through labor, which is salvation; and through legal rights, which should give freedom to serve and to save.” These sentiments do not seem antiquated in 1890, and must have seemed not merely advanced but dangerous in 1842.
Violations of precedent continued to keep the watchful eye of the public on the college. The college professed to give to women the same instruction which secured for young men the degree of A.B., and it obtained from the Legislature authority “to confer the degrees of A.B. and B.S.” The college held public commencement exercises, at which the graduates read their own productions, a performance that was the occasion of much scandal.
September 25, 1844, “The Young Ladies’ Lyceum” was organized in the college. This was a literary society, at the meetings of which debates upon current public questions were conducted and essays were read. Cuttings from contemporary newspapers show that this lyceum created no small stir.
In 1852 the graduates of the college organized an alumnæ association, which is claimed to be the first organization of the kind in this country. The preamble to the constitution adopted by this body begins thus:
“The undersigned, graduates of the Wesleyan Female College of Cincinnati, believing that as educated American women, society and the world at large have peculiar claims upon them, which they can neither gainsay nor resist,” etc.
The association at once decided to publish an annual which should contain only original articles from the pens of its members; and Article VII. of the constitution says: “The immediate object of this publication shall be to afford an opportunity for continued mental effort and improvement to members; and its ultimate aim shall be the elevation of woman,” Rachel L. Bodley, so long dean of the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia, was one of the original members of this association.
The professions, claims, and efforts above indicated, probably show the high-water mark of educational aspiration of women in the West in and before the middle of this century.
The college drew students from all parts of the country, and from Canada; and, at one time, according to one of its historians, there were in attendance upon it “representatives from every State in the Union, excepting New Hampshire, Delaware, North Carolina, and Florida.”
At one time this college enrolled nearly five hundred students; but, as seminaries and colleges for women have multiplied throughout the region from which it drew its patronage, and especially as more richly endowed colleges which were established for men have opened their doors to women, its numbers have diminished and its influence has waned. But such a past should compel its alumnæ and its friends to give it an endowment, a course of study, and a corps of instructors that shall make it the peer of its strongest young sisters.[[10]]
There is a function for the true woman’s college which the co-educational college does not and as yet cannot perform. To get one’s college education in an institution which admits only women, and to enjoy some years of post-graduate work in a co-educational university, is the ideal of opportunity now cherished by some most careful and intelligent parents and by some ambitious young women. It is possible that provision for satisfying the first half of this ideal is held in germ by some or all of the thirty colleges for women only, now existing in the West.