The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1904-07-22
FACTS ABOUT COLLEGE WOMEN.

eACI0 AbOOI COLLEfdG WO1AA&Ass
The Association Of Collegiate Alum
nae is about to publish and distribute
at st. Louis statistical investlga-
ton of college women who have
taken their degrees between 1869
and 1898. This investigation deals
with 1886 women, graduates from
the twenty-five most advanced col
leges in the United States. OF these,
26 per cent. came from families whose
total income, while their daughters
were in college, was less than $1,20O.
Forty-six per cent. came from faml-
lies whose total income during the
same time did not exceed $1,000. and
only IL per cent. were prepared ex-
clusively by private schools. Or the
total number of women graduates,
over 70 IL per cent. have at some
time engaged In remunerative occu-
pations.
1t is clear that college women in
the past have not come from the leis-
ure class. With these figures Presi-
dent M. Carey Thomas Of Bryn Mawr
compares the statistics from his own
collge. Bryn Mawr. which was open
ed only nineteen years ago, and,
therefore represents the newer condi-
lions of women's college education
as contrasted with the earlier condi-
lions prevailing among college women
as far back as 1869.
&C che graduates of Bryn Mawr up
to 1902, 60 per cent. came from fami-
lies whose income was over $4,000,
as against the u per cent. that, &C.
cording to the collegiate alumnae sta
tistics, came from families with an
income of under $4,000. Only 40 per
cent. of the Bryn Mawr graduates
had at any time engaged in teaching,
as against 70 per cent. of the grad
yates of the statistics before men
toned. Finally, in 1892. II per cent.
IL per cent. of the women Of the sta
tistics, had been prepared for col
lege in private schools.
Miss Thomas also draws attention
to point in the ever engaging dis
cussion over college women and mat
rimony, which seems to have been
overlooked by other thinkers.
IF anything in the world is
proved" she says, sit is that girls
going to college for four years does
not affect her marriage. any more
than mans going to college affects
his. Why, then, do only about so
per cent of college women marry?
Because the college women of the
past have come from the classes in
which only so per cent. of women do
marry. College has nothing whatever
to do with 1t. except perhaps to give
college women the intelligence to Sc
lect their husbands trifie more SEN
sibly. Statistics collected in England
and in this country show that about
so per cent. Of the sisters and cousins
Of college graduates who have not
themselves been to college marry,
and that about so per cent. of college
graduates marry.
The fact is, there are only two
classes in which all women marry
the working class, in which the wo-
man is not an expense, but contrib
utes her share in household labor at
home Or in paid work outside the
home, and the wealthy class, where
the women bring inherited wealth to
their husbands. In. the great inter-
mediate class. where the wife is u.s.
ually an ill-to-be afford luxury, and
unable from the circumstances of her
husbands position to conduct her
household without servants or to earn
part of the common livelihood, only
so per cent. marry. The other so
per cent. of unmarried women must
be self-supporting. or drag out a mis-
cradle existence on what can be
spared from the earnings of their
brothers or nearest male relatives.
And even the so per cent. who do
marry should also be self-supporting,
because in many cases they must at
some time, for a longer or shorter
period, support their children or their
husbands"