Ed. News:—We find proofs at every step that one class cannot legislate for another, the rich for the poor, nor men for women.
The State University, supported by the taxes of the people and for the benefit of the people, should offer equal advantages to men and women. By amendment of the Constitution in 1867, it was declared that the University shall be open to female as well as male students, under such regulations and restrictions as the board of regents may deem proper. At first the students recited together, but Mr. Chadbourne made it a condition of accepting the presidency that they should be separated. I do not speak of the separation of the sexes to find fault. I conceive that if equal advantages be given women by the State, whether in connection with or apart from men, they have no ground for complaint. My object is to compare the advantages given to the sexes and see the practical effect of legislation by men alone in this department. From all the facts that are now pressed upon us, confused, contradictory and obscure, we begin to obtain a glimpse of the general law that informs them. The University has a college of arts (including the department of agriculture, of engraving and military tactics), a college of letters, preparatory department, law department, post-graduate course, last and certainly least, a female college. The faculty and board of instructors number twenty-one. The college of arts has nine professors, one of natural philosophy, one each of mental philosophy, modern languages, rhetoric, chemistry, mathematics, agriculture, and comparative anatomy, and a tutor. In the department of engineering is an officer of the United States Army. In the college of letters is the same faculty, with the addition of William F. Allen, professor of ancient languages and history, one coming from a family of scholarly teachers and thoroughly fitted for his post. In the law department are such names as L. S. Dixon and Byron Paine.
Read now the names composing the faculty of the female college, Paul A. Chadbourne, M. D., president; T. N. Haskell, professor of rhetoric and English literature; Miss Elizabeth Earle, preceptress; Miss Brown, teacher of music; Miss Eliza Brewster, teacher of drawing and painting. Compare these faculties and note what provision is made here for the sciences and languages. Look at the course of instruction in the college of arts. During the first year the men study higher algebra, conic sections, plane trigonometry, German (Otto's) botany, Gibbon's Rome. In the college of letters the course is similar, but more attention is given to classical studies; to Livy, Xenophon and Horace. During the same years in the female college, they are studying higher arithmetic, elementary algebra, United States history, grammar, geography and map drawing. Truly a high standard! The studies in the first term of the preparatory department (to which none can be admitted under twelve years of age) are identical with those in the female college at the same time, except the Latin. Indeed, I cannot see why it would not be an advantage to the students of the female college to go into the preparatory department during their first college year, since they can get their own course with geometry added, and if they stay three years a proportional amount of Latin and Greek. I could compare the whole course in the same way, but my time and the reader's patience would fail. There is no hint either of any thorough prescribed course in any of the languages. In the first and fourth year no foreign language is put down. In each term of the second year French and Latin are written as elective, the same for Latin or German in the third. This is a wretched course at the best. I have no faith in a course set down so loosely as "Latin" instead of being defined as to what course of Latin, and what authors are read. In that case we know exactly how much is required and expected, and what the standard of scholarship. In the college of letters we know that they go from Livy to Cicero on Old Age, then to Horace and Tacitus. Similar definiteness would be encouraging in the female catalogue. Its absence gives us every reason to believe that the course does not amount to enough to add any reputation to the college by being known. Under the head of special information we are told that in addition to this prescribed course of "thorough education young ladies will be instructed in any optional study taught in the college of letters or arts, for which they are prepared." By optional I understand any of the studies marked elective, since they are the only optional studies. In the college of letters there is but one, and that is the calculus. In the college of arts the optional studies are generally, not always, those that they could not be prepared for in the course prescribed by their own college. Under the head of degrees we find a long account of the A. B., A. M., P. B., S. B., S. M., L. B., Ph. D., to which the fortunate gentlemen are entitled after so much study. Lastly, the students of the female college may receive "such appropriate degrees as the regents may determine." I wonder how often that solemn body deliberates as to whether a girl shall be A. B., P. B., or A. M., or whether they ever give them any degree at all. It makes little difference. With such a college course a degree means nothing, and only serves to cheapen what may be well earned by the young men of the college.
Racine, August 4, 1875.
My Dear Miss Anthony: Would it not be well for us women to accept the hint afforded by these Englishmen, and bind ourselves together by a constitution and by-laws. By so doing we might sooner be enabled to secure the rights which men seem so persistently determined to withhold from us.
E. R. Wentworth.
Very respectfully yours,
Is not this the first organized resistance in the history of the race, against the encroachment of women; the first manly confession by those high in authority—by lords, attorney-generals, sirs, and gentlemen—of fear at the progressive steps of the daughters of men? These conservative gentlemen had no doubt found Lady Amberly, Lydia Becker, and Mrs. Fawcett too much for them in debate; they had probably winced under the satire of Frances Power Cobbe, and trembled before the annually swelling lists of suffrage petitions. Single-handed they saw they were helpless against this incoming tide of feminine persuasiveness, and so it seems they called a meeting of faint-hearted men, and bound themselves together by a constitution and by-laws to protect the franchise from the encroachment of women.
The Rev. Father Mahoney, of St. John's Cathedral, preached a temperance sermon to a large concourse of people yesterday morning, in which he heartily indorsed the action of Mayor Stowell in his war against the ordinary saloon, and declared that he should be reëlected. He also said that the men who opposed him were covering themselves with infamy, and that he could not conscientiously administer the sacraments to any saloon-keeper who refused to obey the commands of the Church or the laws of the State concerning the good order and welfare of the city. The sermon caused quite a stir, and was much discussed in secular as well as religious circles.
During the past week a woman's council has been held in Racine, the success of which has been most noticeable. The different sessions have been attended by large audiences of intelligent men and women, who have very thoughtfully and carefully weighed and discussed the various questions under consideration.
From the beginning to the end there has never been a hitch or jar; the myriad wheels of the machinery required to make smooth the workings of such large assemblies have moved so quietly, and have been so well oiled and in such perfect order as to be absolutely unnoticed; really, one might have been tempted to feel that the machine had no master, no controlling hand.
But now that the council is over; now that we can pause and begin to estimate the good that has been done; now that the seed is sown, from which, please God, a grand harvest shall be reaped—now we can look back and see how one brain has planned it all. One clear-eyed, far-seeing will gathered together these women of genius, who have been with us; one practical, mathematical brain made all estimates of expense, and accepted all risks of failure; one hospitable heart received a house full of guests, and induced others to be hospitable likewise; and one earnest, prayerful soul—and this the best of all—besought and entreated God's blessing upon the work. Need we tell you where to find this master-hand which has planned so wisely? the strong will, the clear brain, the warm heart, the pure soul? We all know her; she is indeed a noble woman, and her name—let us whisper lest she hear—is Olympia Brown Willis.
Olympia Brown was born in Kalamazoo county, Michigan, January 5, 1835. At the age of fifteen she began to teach school during the winter months, attending school herself in the summer. At eighteen she entered Holyoke seminary, but finding the advantages there inadequate for a thorough education, her parents removed, for her benefit, to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she entered Antioch college, Horace Mann, one of the best educators of his day, being president. There her ambition was thoroughly satisfied, and she was graduated with honor in 1860. She then entered Canton Theological school, was graduated in 1863, and, duly ordained as a Universalist minister, commenced preaching in Marshfield and Montpelier, Vermont, often walking fifteen miles to fill her appointments. In 1864 she was regularly installed over her first parish at Weymouth, Massachusetts. Her energy and fidelity soon raised that feeble society into one of numbers and influence.
In 1869, she accepted a call to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she remained seven years. In 1878, with her husband, John Henry Willis, and two children she removed to Racine, Wisconsin, where she became pastor of the church of the Good Shepherd, without the promise of a dollar. The church had been given up as hopeless by several men in succession, because of the influence of the Orthodox theological seminary. But she soon gathered large audiences and earnest members about her; established a Sunday school, had courses of lectures in her church during the winter, which she made quite profitable financially for the church, beside educating the people. Outside her profession she has also done a grand work, in temperance and woman suffrage.[429] She is rarely out of her own pulpit; has generally been superintendent of her own Sunday school, and head of the young ladies' club, doing at all times more varied duties than any man would deem possible, and with all this she is a pattern wife, mother and housekeeper, and her noble husband, while carrying on a successful business of his own, stands ever ready to second her endeavors with generous aid and wise counsel, another instance of the happy homes among the "strong minded."
She was born in Westphalia, April 3, 1817. Her childhood was passed in happy conditions in a home of luxury, where she received a liberal education, yet her married life was encompassed with trials and disappointments. From her own experiences she learned the injustice of the laws for married women and early devoted her pen to the redress of their wrongs. Her articles appeared in leading journals of Germany and awoke many minds to the consideration of the social and civil condition of woman.
She was identified with the liberal movement of '48, her home being the resort for many of the leaders of the revolution. She published a liberal paper which freely discussed all the abuses of the government, a whole edition of which was destroyed. At length denounced by the government, she secretly made here escape from Cologne, and joined her husband at the head of his command in active preparation for a struggle against the Prussians.
She immediately declared her determination to share the toils of the expedition. Accordingly Col. Anneke appointed her Tolpfofsort, the duties of which she continued to discharge to the end of the campaign. In one of her works published in 1853, she has given a graphic description of the disastrous termination of the revolution, of their flight into France, of their expulsion from France and Switzerland, and of their final determination to come to the United States.
They reached New York in the fall of 1849. Madame Anneke lectured in most of the Eastern cities on the social and civil condition of women, claiming for them the right of suffrage and more liberal education. She also published a woman's journal in New York, and was soon recognized as one of the earnest representative women in America. For many years she made her home in Milwaukee, where she taught a successful school for young ladies. Madame Anneke, a widow with one son and two daughters, lived quietly the closing years of her life, and in death found the peace and rest she had never known in her busy life on earth.
Madison, Wis., January 16, 1885.
My Dear Miss Anthony: I am sorry I cannot be present and meet the many wise and great women who will respond to your call for the Seventeenth Annual Convention.
What a glorious record these words reveal of unwavering faith in the right, and heroic persistency in its pursuit on one side, and what blindness of prejudice and selfishness of power on the other. The struggle has indeed been a long one, and yet no other moral movement involving so many and so great social changes ever made more rapid progress. You and your fellow-laborers are truly to be congratulated on the full and abundant harvest your faithful seed-sowing has brought to humanity. The irrational sentiment, based upon the methods and customs of barbarous times, is rapidly yielding to reason. The world is learning—women are learning—that character, even womanly character, does not suffer from too much breadth of thought, or from too active a sympathy in human interests and human affairs, but is ever enriched by a larger circle of ideas, larger experience, and more extended activities.
The advance of women in position and influence has been especially great during the past year, and in directions especially cheering and hopeful to the heart of every woman. In national political conventions, as your call so justly says, she has "actively participated in the discussion of candidates, platforms and principles." The last mile-stone before the goal has been reached and passed!
Your convention will offer the final opportunity to the Republican party. Will it be wise enough to seize it for self preservation, if not from principle? Will there be found in this party enough of spiritual life to lay hold of the help now proffered it, and once more renew its strength thereby? Or will it, as so repeatedly in the past, turn a deaf ear to reason, and still continue to deny the rights of half the human family? If so, if it continue deaf, dumb and blind, then the Republican party has no longer any function, and the power of government will pass forever from its hands. The sixteenth amendment to the national constitution is coming, but it will be the crown of blessing and of fame of another party that will inaugurate this era in social life! I take the liberty to send loving greetings to you and the convention in the name of our Wisconsin Equal Suffrage society. I hope our bright, eloquent Rev. Olympia Brown will be with you. Of Wisconsin's eleven representatives in congress, I am happy to make honorable mention, as broad-minded advocates of our cause, of three, Cameron, Price and Stephenson. In earnest sympathy with the object and method of the convention, and with high regard for yourself, I remain yours truly,
Emma C. Bascom.
FOOTNOTES:
[418] Mrs. Wolcott is a remarkable woman, of rare intelligence, keen moral perceptions and most imposing presence. Much of her success in life is due no doubt to her gracious manners. Her graceful figure, classic face, rich voice and choice language make her attractive in the best social circles, as well as in the laboratory and lecture-room. She is a perfect housekeeper and a most hospitable hostess. Having enjoyed many visits at her beautiful home I can speak alike of her public and domestic virtues.—[E. C. S.