The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-12-24

/ my sex during this century, in complying
with that request 1t is almost inevitable
| that 1 should cast more or less anxious
/ glance towards the future. The retro
! spect suggests the prospect. I do not
| prophesy because 1 do not know; but
| cannot promise that 1 shall forbear to
| speculate
When we consider that for more than
| three-fifths of a century the still current,
though closing century, one of the very
! foremost places has been occupied by q
woman-one of the so-called weaker
sex-and occupied, to put it mildly, with
; signal success in every department. it
must be acknowledged that have a good
! case. If indeed, were going to advo-
! cate a cause, or even to summarize my
facts with an eye to a verdict l do not
understand that l am asked to do any
| thing of the kind I shall therefore only
gather up and group together facts leav-
! ing them to tell their story.
With regard to that same grouping, let
me premise that 1 direct my attention
| chiefly to the social and educational, in
! Guiding the professional status of women
| during the now morfbund nineteenth CEN
fury With the purely political aspect
| of the question, save in so far as 1t i'm
! plnges upon other departments, l am
|
| myself; nor do 1 imagine that a purely
! political sketch would be appropriate.
In 1910 Sydney Smith glanced with his
| usual good sense and Sunshiny style at
| the controversy then opening between
! the friends and foes of the higher edu-
| cation of women. At that period, close
| on the frontier line between the centu-
J ries, the witty canon was moved to ask
! the reason why a woman of forty should
! be more ignorant than boy of twelve,
! and to hazard the answer that women
! had not their livelihood to gain by knowl
| edge. That is, so to say, our point of
-! departure Hannah More might perhaps
! be taken as the brilliant exception to the
! rule of feminine ignorance and incapaclty
which characterized the period In Ques-
| ton, If it were possible to associate any
| thing like brilliancy with that particular
| lady. Hannah's environment forms the
! Dark Ages of the by-past century, so far
| as women are concerned. We have hap
| PLY changed all that. Against the then
| prevailing ignorance of women, we can,
| for example, point to the work done by
| the girls public schools and to the ladies
| colleges and universities.
All these institutions however, repre-
| sent an advanced period of the century,
! on the borderiand of which stand the au-
| thoritieS just quoted, an homogeneous
! group enough, in advance of thar gene "a
ton and prophesying the possibilities OF
! the nineteenth century just as we, on our
| new boi6eTland while gathering up our
! actual SurrSdlaiQgS, cast ever and anon
Il furtive glance ahd speculate what may
! be in store for US daring the twentieth.
| We have, at all events, something more
! tangible than our predecessors had 20
I work upon in the shape of facts while
| the cui bono of woman's work has passed
| out from the realm of speculation into
| that of solid fact.
! AS for women making nothing by her
wits, we have thousands of young WON n,
! thoroughly educated and with all those
! wits about them, working as postoh.ce.
| savings bank and insurance clerks; ami
! even so keen a critic as Mr.. FaWcett felt
| impressed to say They make excellent
| civil servants, and he added with con-
siderable naivette. their salaries are
| only about one-thiId of what Is paid to
men for similar work
| Be 1 right or be | wrong, l am dispos-
ed to look upon the educational phase as
! the most important and crucial one in
| this mUltiso m quest on; and 1t is no small
| announcement TO find excellent an
| authority as Sydney Smith, supported
! seventy years after writing by the e in
! burgh reviewer, indorsing this~Very prin-
| ciple. The TIVE -ve-ye aI-old-bOy woman OF
! 1910 was supposed to have nothing to d.,
| no livelihood to gain, and no powers OF
! gaining it, if she had. What use, then,
| to educate so incapable and superfuous
! a creature? By and by it dawned upon
| the wisdom of our forefathers that the
| absence of education might possibly &C
count for the incapabili;y, real or assuIe-
| ed, and that there might be a sphere
! for womans work if the right woman
! could be found for the right place. AS
| it was, the situate formed only a fem
| mime variant of that so admirably sket CHI
| ed by the same master hand, where the
round person always got into the square
| hole, and the square person into the round
one.
! To my thinking the most obvious en-
ployment for the duly qualified woman
| next if even subo rdirate, to her undi3-
| puted vocation as a teacher, is III the
| capacity of physician. We have slowly
| CROPPED during our modern dark ages to
| the conviction that sanitary science is
| part of medicine proper. The prevention
| of disease has been promoted to some
| thing like equal rank with its cure; and
| for each of these spheres woman apps airs
! to me gifted with a special adaptation.
| OF course l may be wrong. l cannot hope
! to write dispassionate,y, but advancing
| intelligence has done a good deal to in
| dorse my opinion during what l suppose
l may still call the current century.
! Why, at the beginning of the century
| a person who called in a lady doctor
| would have been suspected of trying to
sign the patients death warrant He
would have been regarded in the same
| light as we regard the Peculiar People
| or the Christian Scientists, whilst at the
! close of the century nobody's sanity or
| sincerity would be called in question if
| he preferred DR.. Elizabeth Blank before
Dr. John L:ank as his regular medical
| attendant.
| But that was not all There are doctors
of philosophy and logic, bachelors of art,
! science, music and of law in the word of
| women.
There is one question looming, so to
| say, on the horizon of my subject, which
l shall only glance at and then leave,
| flying off scared at my own remcrity.
| Should women preach? Why should they
not? Might girl be curate? 10 me
there seems a fitness of things in the ar
| rangement. But l am not expressing
| views; 1 am recording facts In the
waning months of 1899, Mile. Adrienne
| Veigele preached with much acceptance
at suburban church. The thin end of
| the wedge is inserted. How long before
n, Oil n,,ra 70 oud tho lodU ROTOR ooTo-