In attempting this, the methods the other sex have employed to honor and sustain their professions have been claimed, viz.: institutions governed by a faculty instead of an individual, and teachers supported by endowments for this express object.
The following extract from the fourth Annual Report of this Association gives some of the results.
"We are now prepared to indicate what has been accomplished. We have, then, in the first place, evolved and set forth a fundamental idea. This is no small part of the success of any great movement. Whatever were the difficulties of first learning to print, the triumph of Gutenberg was nearly achieved when he first mastered the idea of the type. It was a secondary affair to work it out and set the world vibrating to its power. We have got the idea, and done something toward its execution.
"We have secured the existence of two institutions on our plan, one at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the other at Dubuque, Iowa, whose united catalogues will show some five hundred pupils the past year. Both are in very successful operation, with efficient boards of teachers, silently doing the work for which they have been established.
"We have united all the Protestant citizens in the noble work of founding and patronizing these institutions, which they cherish as among their most valued public establishments. We have shown that the faculty principle is as good for female institutions as for those of the other sex, and that results may be expected from it for woman corresponding in utility and dignity with those it has secured to man.
"We have shown that, by the offer of the small endowment of twenty thousand dollars, we can secure the establishment of one of these invaluable institutions, and make it a permanent source of measureless good—a most economical and wise expenditure of educational benefactions.
"We have, in short, carried out our plan successfully just as far as it can be done before the endowments are actually furnished.
"We have made a beginning toward raising the first endowment, and are able to report on hand and pledged nearly ten thousand dollars.
"Our movement has the confidence and full endorsement of many leading clergymen, educators, and editors of our country. Our institutions have the hearty co-operation of the religious bodies where they are located.
"At our last annual meeting, an urgent request was made to the Association to aid in the establishment of a third institution at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Without any pledge of immediate action, it was agreed that, if the citizens should comply with our conditions, we would aid them as soon as our means would allow. Those conditions have not yet been met, and we have not, therefore, been called to do any thing at that place.