of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, the President was receiving two thousand two hundred and thirty-five dollars, and the usual professional salary was from eighteen to fifteen hundred dollars, although there was at least one salary of two thousand dollars and others of one thousand dollars.

Attempts have been made in most colleges to equalize all salaries without regard to the value of the service rendered. But such attempts have usually failed. The stipend received by a member of the teaching staff has depended upon the income that might be attached to the specific chair he filled, as well as upon the annual determination made by a Board of Trust. In certain colleges, and especially in their beginning, salaries have frequently been dependent upon the amount of money which a college might possess after having paid what might be called its necessary bills. This method, which was popular among many proprietary medical schools, has obtained among some colleges, but the custom is now fast passing.

In the last decades of the last century, the necessary and customary method of small beginnings and constant poverty, but of slow enlargement, approached its end. The foundation. of the University of Chicago, and of the Leland Stanford, Jr., University, represented the devotion of many millions to the cause of the higher education. In the great increase of the property of the American nation, and in the great increase of the amount given in beneficence, the colleges in the last decades. have been among the most favored objects of good-will. The amount of money bestowed upon the colleges each year represents a beneficence the like of which the world has never known. At the present time, there are no less than sixty-five colleges having an endowment of over five hundred thousand dollars. Twentynine have an endowment between this sum and one million; fifteen have an endowment between one million and one million and a half; ten an endowment between this sum and three millions; four between three millions and five; four between five millions and eight and a half; and three an endowment of over twelve and a half millions.1

"Report of Commissioner of Education," 1903, vol. i, p. 1143.

After two hundred and seventy years, the property of American colleges has come to amount to about four hundred million dollars. This sum is divided, with comparative equality, between interest-bearing funds, and buildings, libraries and scientific apparatus. The additions made to this sum have been especially rapid in the last years of the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth century. In each of the years of the last decade of the last century, the annual increment was about seven million dollars. The annual increment in the middle years of the first decade of the twentieth century is about fifteen millions. The larger share of these additions is made in colleges in the North Atlantic and the North Central states. About three-quarters of the amount is to be credited to this territory and is to be divided almost equally between the two sections. The Southern states receive the smallest benefactions.

CHAPTER XV

THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN

THE progress of the higher education of women illustrates the truth of the remark made by one of the most famous of social philosophers, Sir Henry Sumner Maine, to the effect that the progress of modern societies is a movement from status to contract.1

2

The education of women for two centuries had relation to their condition as wives and as mothers. Their education was, like that life, simple, prosaic, narrow. The first President Dwight, said: "The employments of the women of New England are wholly domestic." Education, therefore, hardly extended beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic. In Boston, girls were not allowed to attend the public schools until the year 1790, and then their attendance was limited to the months of summer. Two years before, the town of Northampton voted not to be at any expense for "schooling girls." Four years after, in 1792, they were admitted, but it was not until 1802 that all restrictions were withdrawn. In the education of women, as in education of every form, the opportunities offered are seldom far in advance of the needs recognized by the people. Beyond the three elementary subjects, education included in its content the Bible and the Catechism. The demand for education in order that women might become teachers had, at the beginning of the last century, hardly been created. At this time, as well as in the preceding one hundred and fifty years, teachers were largely "masters," among whom were included clergymen and college students.

Few were the women of the period, either colonial or national, of the type of Mary Moody Emerson. Of her, Ralph Waldo Emerson says:

"Ancient Law," p. 164.

2 "Dwight's Travels," vol. iv, p. 474.

"Her early reading was Milton, Young, Akenside, Samuel Clarke, Jonathan Edwards, and always the Bible. Later, Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus, Stewart, Coleridge, Cousin, Herder, Locke, Madame De Staël, Channing, Mackintosh, Byron. Nobody can read in her manuscript, or recall the conversation of old-school people, without seeing that Milton and Young had a religious authority in their mind, and nowise the slight, merely entertaining quality of modern bards. And Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,-how venerable and organic as Nature they are in her mind!"

Most women had neither the desire nor strength to go beyond the domestic duties of washing, carding, cleaning, and baking. Of their work in these important respects, President Dwight says:

"The business, which is abroad, is all performed by men, even in the humblest spheres of life. That of the house is usually left entirely to the direction of the women, and is certainly managed by them with skill and propriety. Domestic concerns admit of improvement, and even of science; and it must, I believe, be acknowledged, that we might learn in this particular several useful things from you. Our economy is less systematical, and less perfect, than yours; and our activity sometimes less skillfully directed. I am apprehensive, however, that we approach nearer to you in the house, than either in the shop or the field. The houses in this country are, with their furniture, almost all kept in good order; and a general neatness prevails, even among those who are in humble circumstances. Indeed, a great part of the women in this country exert quite as much industry as is consistent with the preservation of health.”

But as society progressed, the education of women enlarged. From a state in which rights and duties arose from a personal condition, women advanced into a life in which they were active agents. The first significant element of advancing personality and increasing power was manifested in an extreme opposite to their former condition. From a simplicity and plainness of education, sympathetic with their state as servants, women passed into a type of education symbolized by the butterfly. From being regarded as drudges, they came to be admired as

"Lectures and Biographical Sketches," by Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. x, p. 402. ""Dwight's Travels," vol. iv, p. 474.

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dolls. The first decades of the nineteenth century record this transformation. President Dwight is still a wise interpreter when he says:

"Miss, the darling of her father and the pride of her mother, is taught from the beginning to regard her dress as a momentous concern. She is instructed in embroidery merely that she may finish a piece of work, which from time to time is to be brought out, to be seen, admired, and praised, by visitors; or framed, and hung up in the room, to be still more frequently seen, admired and praised. She is taught music, only that she may perform a few times, to excite the same admiration, and applause, for her skill on the forte piano. She is taught to draw, merely to finish a picture, which, when richly framed and ornamented, is hung up, to become an altar for the same incense. Do not misunderstand me. I have no quarrel with these accomplishments. So far as they contribute to make the subject of them more amiable, useful, or happy, I admit their value. It is the employment of them which I censure; the sacrifice, made by the parent of his property, and his child at the shrine of vanity.

"The Reading of girls is regularly lighter than that of boys. When the standard of reading for boys is set too low, that for girls will be proportionally lowered. Where boys investigate books of sound philosophy, and labour in mathematical and logical pursuits; girls read history, the higher poetry, and judicious discourses in morality, and religion. When the utmost labour of boys is bounded by history, biography, and the pamphlets of the day; girls sink down to songs, novels, and plays."

Out of this condition of intellectual insipidity and emotional intensity, the education of women has, for almost one hundred years, been rising. The first step in the progress was the estab lishment of academies. The academies organized near the close of the eighteenth and in the first decades of the nineteenth century in New England were open to girls. Leicester Academy was incorporated in 1784, and one at Westford in 1793. Bradford received its first students in 1803. A department for girls was not opened till 1828; after 1836, only girls were received. The first academy designed for girls only was founded in Derry, New Hampshire, in 1823. The first in Massachusetts was Ipswich, which received its act of incorporation in 1828. The next year Abbot Academy at Andover received its charter. Before

"Dwight's Travels," vol. i, pp. 514, 515.