Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-05-25
SCHOOLS FOR WOMEN.
How Ladies of Wealth Might Help
the Cause of Co-Education.
SLOW PROGRESS OF THE REFORM.
Teaching Girls Society Formalities Rather
Than Useful Facts.
A CHANCE TO DO GOOD HERE AT HOME
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH.

money to colleges ior young men; to schools
OF theology where poor students could be
trained by charity for the ministry, or to the
foreign missionary societies. But the indi-
cations now are that they incline more and
more to bestow their benefactions for the
benefit of girls rather than boys. Many Of
the older colleges are largely indebted to
women for rich gifts and eldowments, and
yet they would not admit woman within
their walls to get a share of their great ad-
vantages. But that the gates are creaking
upon their hinges to open to women becomes
more and more evident every year. Even
Princeton shows signs of being stirred up,
and DR.. Patton's brains are evidently work.
ing.
Miss Mary Garrett, who has made herself
famous as a master mind in the affairs of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, has
furnished the funds for new college build
Ing in Baltimore tor girls, to be of the same
high educational standard as Bryn Mawr.
Her contribution was $3.50, 900 to begin with.
Miss Garrett is one of the richest women in
America. She has, moreover, inherited the
executive business ability of her father, who
was the President of the Baltimore and
Ohio, and is said "to run the road"
even more successfully than did he or her
brother before his illness.
DOWN IN LOUISIANA.
Tulane University in New Orleans has
done the equivalent of opening its doors to
women, since by gift of Mrs. Newcomb
its trustees will open the Sophie Newcomb
College in com junction with the Tulane for
the education OF women, where the course of
study will be precisely the same as in the
University. Many people of liberal ideas
will regard this use of money as exhibiting
vastly more sense than sending it off to be
frittered away upon Hottentots or Hindoos,
while many of the children of this country
are growing up into ignorant ragamuffius,
and state of barbarism exists in parts Of
all great cities which equals and exceIls any
thing related OF far-of India or Japan, or
Greenland's icy mountains.
Back in the earlier days it was the COM
mon thing for mother and sisters to toll, to
save, to contrive, to deny themselves, not
only luxuries but the commonest com forts
OF life, in order that the boys OF the family
should 20 to college and be educated for a
profession. Lucy Stone tells how shocked
her good people were when she said she did
not see why she couldn't 60 to college as
we'll as her brother, and how the remarks
Il
such thing reused her wrath and so ex-
cited her ambition that she made up her
mind she would go to college, and would
show them that girl had some brains as
well as a boy. Fired with this endeavor
she bent every energy OF mind and body in
teaching to securing enough money to go to
Oberlin, the only college in the country at
that time open to women, where. to the con-
sternation of the faculty, she talked
''woman's rights to the students.
HISTORY OF Co-EDUCATIoN.
Colleges were organized for men before
girls were even allowed to attend the public
schools. This shows how slowly the idea
grew that woman should be educated for
anything save housework. How far the ad-
vantages OF women as to college education
are behind those of men, and how much less
money is spent on the girls than the dear
boys" the following statistics show:
Value of grounds, buildings and apparatus
of colleges Tor women, S9, ,635, ,282: productive
funds. So, 1916, ,619; income from productive
funds. S136, ,S01.
Value of grounds, buildings, etc., of
colleges for men, S62 376, ,63S; productive
funds of same, S57, ,7S2, 1903; income from
productive funds, 3,271 ,991.
These figures tell the story of how men
have been favored as to cash, and yet trav-
elers from abroad say they find the women
OF America on the average more intelligent
than the men. This is not true, as we ali
know, but culture will come even with the
disadvantages under which women labor.
The class OF women who most need educa-
tion are those who with leisure and money
devote themselves to charity and philan-
thropy-ottentimes so misdirected by senti-
ment and want OF logical thought as to be
more productive of harm than good. Men
under the drill OF daily business are much
more practically intelligent than women as
a class. The latter are more inclined to
sentiment than logic, and the study of So
cial problems, but the study of these would |
take the nonsense out of them, and make of
them more useful, practical and sensible
beings-the sort of women men most need
and wish for after the honeymoon is over.
THE GREATEST GOOD.
Women eager and anxious to do the most |
good should spend of their wealth for the |
education OF women. Ignorance in women |
suStains superstition, fosters narrowness and |
prejudice, carries on from age to age the |
ioolishness of the past. A study of polit- |
ical economy would prevent women engaged |
in charity and missionary enterprises from |
wasting millions of dollars on unworthy OBJ |
jects and foolish enterprises. Those possess.
ing means should become patrons OF learn
ing, endow colleges, establish iellowships |
and offer all encouragement to young
women Instead of giving money to theolog-
ical seminaries or colleges for men only.
Senator Stanford and Mrs. Stanford will |
shortly open one OF the best endowed and |
most magnifcentIy equipped colleges in the
United States. The best talent of Europe
and this country is to be secured for its |
faculty. Mrs. Stanford is responsible for
the fact that this great tinstitution-Adelbert
Colleges to be co-educational-women
and men standing on per ect equality in
every respect, as they do in Michigan Uni
versity, Ohio State University, London Uni
versity-all the universities of Italy, of |
Switzerland, and Australia. England,
France, Canada and this country are not
committed to such an extent, but they are
getting there. Even Columbia College, in
New York, where Rev. DIR. Dix showed
such generalship and fighting powers in the
endeavor to exclude women from its sacred
precincts, has surrendered, and Barnard"
is the monument OF the defeat of those who
opposed extending the privileges of higher
to women.
THE SOCIETY WOMEN.
DR.. Dix predicted all manner of evils |
which nave not ana Will not come to pass.
The women who go to college with an ambi-
tion for knowledge are not OF the society
class whicn he so ruthlessly assailed in his
Lenten sermons some time ago. The aspira-
tion and ambition OF such society is not to
gain honors in learning, but to marry into !
European nobility, and splurge around as a /
circus for the gaping multitude. From So
ciety so called comes the "decayed gentility"
who, when fortune fies-as fortune has
habit of doing-are left stranded to take
refuge in the Louise Home or some similar