The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1890-10-11
EDUCATED WOMEN.
Their Influence for Good In the hnaira Of
the Nntion.

| the Nation.
Since Horace Mann pleaded for the
liberal education OF women, and since
oberlin set example to other colleges
by opening its doors to them, great
,hanges have come to pass. OF the $3.50
colleges in the United States by which
literary or scientific degrees arc con-
ferred upon male students, 23T admit
women to all their honors and priv
ileges. Even conservative Harvard has
| Its annex" in which women are given
equal education, though refused equal
honors to those granted to men in the
university proper. Besides these there
are 207 colleges and seminaries devoted
solely to the education of women, en-
ploying 1851 professors and numbering
5,31s students during the past year.
| These figures prove that the higher
education of women has passed out OF
the experimental stage in this country.
The higher life no longer is condition
open to gentlemen only. Art and litera-
ture, science and business, are fields
now trodden frequently and hereafter
to be trodden far more frequently, by
the feet of women.
Not every girl will pass from school
to college, not every boy does; not every
girl who enters college will be more
useful to others or more happy in her
self than many other girls who do not;
but not every boy who develops into a
man graduate becomes potent factor
of social or civic life. But those who
do graduate, be they male or female,
are better fitted for the duties of pri-
vate and public life than they would
have been had they not graduated. The
education has done very much for him
or her who had very great qualities to
educate, very little for him or her who
had very small qualities to educate; but
it has done something for each; it has
secured the best crop that could be-
raised upon the quality of soil.
| This much has been gained in very
few years: Nobody now is foolish
enough to predict that a liberal educa-
tion will "unsex" a woman; nobody, at
any rate in Northern State, for since
we began this sentence memory told us
of very recent debate in the Legisla.
ture of Georgia in which member from
q rural district denounced State aid to a
| cOlleRe lOE 1euldleS, dS W
sex" the sex. The ladies who have
graduated from Vassar and Wellesley
and Smith, where girls only graduate,
or from Oberlin or Berea or Hanover,
or any one of the more than two hun
dred colleges where the youth of both
sexes study, carry as high honors in
the sacred circle of domestic life as their
less learned sisters. Slande- and scan
dal have not assailed the college life of
the girl graduates; her presence in col
leges where tho sexes are educated to-
gether often has prevented, and always
mitigated, the necessarily rough and
frequently brutal custom of hazing.
Ths return of the girl from Vassar,
Smith or Wellesley frequently has
taught the boy who has returned from
Yale or Harvard that it is possible to be
a collegian without being rowdy.
The future of women is part, possi-
bly, the most important part, of the fu
ture of the human race. A highly cul-
tured woman is likely to require a
highly cultured husband, and highly
cultured parents are likely to be heads
of highly cultured families. The COL
leges are doing great work for the fu-
ture wives and mothers of the land,
leaving out of consideration the hardly
| less important fact that they are edu-
eating race of women who will not
need to marry Ito secure home," or
the very important fact that they are
| training girls to enter trades and pro-
fessions to which they will bring those
| higher morals and gentler modes which
are peculiar to women. The refine.
ment of womanhood may refine several
''liberal professions" which of late years
have given sad evidences of degenera.
tion toward quackery, pettifoggery and
pedantry. Chicago Inter Ocean.