Again, as to a comparison between the exhibits of woman's work at previous expositions and at the one held in St. Louis; as I have visited nearly all since that of the Centennial, I think that no one could fail to note the fairer estimate put on woman's work at the, recent exposition than was ever before granted. From the days of the childhood of the race to the present time it has always been impossible to draw a hard and fast line between the labors of men and those of women, their work has continually interchanged and overlapped. What has been woman's work in one age has become man's in another. The history of textile industries is a well known case in point. Such being the fact, it is in keeping with the truth of the past and the present time, not to attempt to exhibit separately that which has always been interwoven.
In anthropology the number of women students is small, but the work accomplished by these few has been creditable, and has received its due recognition.
The Indian school exhibit came under the Department of
Anthropology, and several women received awards for special
accomplishments.
Looking over the field of woman's work as presented at the St. Louis Exposition, one is convinced of the growth of a healthful recognition of her labors in the upbuilding of social life, both in the ideal and the practical, and can not fail to note the uses to which she is putting the widening opportunities for her higher education.
Group 127, Mrs. Alice Palmer Henderson, of Tacoma, Wash., Juror.
Under the group heading "Ethnology" there was but one class, representing illustration of the growth of culture; the origin and development of arts and industries; ceremonies, religious rites, and games; social and domestic manners and customs; languages and origin of writing.
Mrs. Henderson says:
In the Department of Anthropology in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition there were but few individual exhibits, those being principally in the section of history. Women have always been the chief heralds of family and conservators of family records and relics. The Daughters of the Revolution have stimulated research, restoration, and preservation along historical lines. For the first time in exposition management a department of history had its own commissioner and that commissioner was a woman. Miss Hayward justified this decidedly new step by her services. I think I am right in asserting that she was the first woman commissioner on the board of any international exposition.[A] The section of history was part of the Department of Anthropology.
[Footnote A: Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mrs. Daniel Manning were appointed by President McKinley to serve as commissioners at the Paris Exposition, 1900.]
New, too, was representation on the jury of anthropology of workers in Indian affairs, as represented in the model Indian school, containing, as it did, so large a proportion of women's work in exhibits from different tribes and sections of the country, and of the suggested work of the white woman teachers. Of these latter was the juror, Miss Peters, of the domestic science department. Advancement along these lines since the Columbian Exposition is undoubted, except in the matter of such Indian arts as basketry and rug making. If there be any reason for the existence of a raffia basket in hideous aniline hues it doth not yet appear. I think this bastard has usurped the place of the Indians' beautiful art of long descent, and it is distressing. White teachers who presume to instruct the Indians in basket making, or who substitute hairpin lace and the like, have much to answer for.