Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator, with Views in Opposition to Woman Suffrage

by Catharine Esther Beecher

There is great misconception as to the advantages of education for daughters of the more wealthy classes, owing to the fact that the ambitious name

of "college" is given to schools that have no proper claim to this appellation. For the distinctive feature of a college heretofore has been its endowments, by which a permanent faculty of superior and co-equal teachers are maintained to a great extent independent of tuition fees; and also supporting professors as independent heads of departments, instead of subordinates to a principal, as in High Schools and academies. This being the fact, there is not a single college for women in this country, nor in the whole world.

The only feature of a college in any institutions for women is a similar course of study and graduating diplomas, and these without endowments only increase the branches taught, and decrease the thoroughness of instruction and overwork the teachers.

There is also great misconception as to the influence of woman's domestic duties in developing and training the intellect. A problem in arithmetic or geometry is far more interesting, and therefore more quickening to the intellect, when it is directly applied to some useful, practical purpose. Thus a woman who is daily calculating her

butcher's and grocer's accounts, or trading at stores, is cultivating her intellect as much or more than she would by studying arithmetic in college or school without any end but to escape reproof or marks of imperfection. So the planning and cutting garments and the various other calculations and measurements of carpets, curtains, and furniture, are daily exercises in both geometry and arithmetic, while the practical interest and the handicraft involved tend to quicken intellectual vigor.

Then in kitchen affairs, domestic chemistry, though on a small scale, is constantly studied and practically applied. Again in the care of infants and of the sick, the discipline of the physiologist and the physician are united. Then in the government of servants and children, the same mental exertion and principles are employed as are demanded for legislatures, statesmen, and magistrates. Then in the religious training of children, all the most profound questions of the metaphysician and the theologian are daily objects of enquiry and reflection as childhood urges the most difficult problems of mental science, and of natural and revealed religion.

A man in his daily toils, or in the learned professions has only one or two subjects that hold his practical attention and interest, but a woman as mother and housekeeper has a constant succession of employments that tax all her intellectual and her moral powers. These views are remarkably illustrated by some of the women of a former generation whose intellectual training was chiefly in domestic pursuits with little else except the humblest kind of common school, a very small library, and a vigorous pulpit ministry. Let such be compared with multitudes of women who with little domestic training and exercise have graduated from the High Schools and Colleges of the present day, and we shall have occasion for serious reflection as to the diverse results.

I can best illustrate this by an individual case that may fairly represent a large class of women forty or fifty years ago. In early youth I lived in Litchfield, Conn., where a law school was conducted by Judge Reeves, and Judge Gould, two of the most talented and learned jurists of the nation, and gathered from forty to over one hundred law students from the first colleges and the first families

of every state in the Union. There were also eight or ten other gentlemen of liberal education and some of more than ordinary talents and culture, in the same circle.