Of the special schools, not State institutions, which exhibited, those conducted by women showed work on a par with that done in the schools conducted by men, and received as liberal rewards.
Particularly creditable was the work done in the schools for the feeble-minded.
In group 7 the exhibits were divided into three classes, 19, 20, and 21, the work respectively of the blind, the deaf, and the feeble-minded. In class 19 women showed basket work, raffia work, modeling in clay, hammock weaving, crocheting, embroidery, printing by means of Braille writing machines, and class work; in class 20, sewing, embroidery, crocheting, painting, drawing, modeling, and class work, and in class 21, basket making, sewing, embroidery, crocheting, and class work.
There was but one foreign woman who made an exhibit. This was Mademoiselle Mulot, a French woman, who had invented a writing machine for blind children. She had brought a little blind French boy with her, who was not installed as an exhibit, but whom she brought before the jury to show the working of her machine. This machine consisted of a small frame blocked off into squares, in which the child was taught to write the letters of the English alphabet. Mademoiselle Mulot's claim for award was that with the machine generally in use it was necessary to teach the child a language of dots and dashes which was not legible by people in general. Although ingenious, Mademoiselle Mulot's machine was not considered striking or new enough to warrant an award.
There was no display within the jurisdiction of group 7 which would seem to indicate any great advancement in the work of women since the Chicago Exposition, though the methods of instruction—many of them through the painstaking application of women—have undergone marked improvement. The work of women as shown by the exhibits in the education of defectives at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, placed on equal terms of comparison with that of men, was very creditable. There was nothing particularly helpful or suggestive in the school work being shown on equal terms of comparison with that of men, for in this field women have always kept well abreast of men, and their work has been appreciated equally with that of men.
Department B, art, Prof. Halsey C. Ives, chief, comprised six groups and eighteen classes, the board of lady managers being represented in four of the groups.
GROUP 9. MISS MARY SOLARI, MEMPHIS, TENN., JUROR.
Under the group heading "Paintings and Drawings," the two classes into which it was divided represented. Paintings on canvas, wood, metal, enamel, porcelain, faïence, and on various preparations, by all direct methods, in oil, wax, tempera, and other media; mural paintings; fresco painting on walls; drawings and cartoons in water color, pastel, chalk, charcoal, pencil, and other media, on any material; miniatures on ivory.
Miss Solari reports as follows: