tures were always being delivered in other departments of the college which would be beneficial to the students in the normal department, whose members were, therefore, gradually admitted to one privilege after another, until at last the college awakened to a consciousness that it had no reserves.

More State universities than denominational colleges have been entered by women via the "normal class," though many of the latter have been opened by the same insidious influence. So far as the State university was concerned, the end must have been seen from the beginning by all clear-sighted people.

The State university, like the common school, is supported at public expense, and free to the children of the State, who pass into it from the common school. What more natural indeed, more necessary, than that the teachers who are to prepare the boys for the university shall know, by their own experience in it as students, what the requirements of the university are? In illustration of this view, the steps by which co-education was attained in the universities of Wisconsin and Missouri are briefly indicated.

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In the spring of 1860 a ten weeks' course of lectures was given at the University of Wisconsin, to a "normal class” of fifty-nine, of whom thirty were ladies. In the spring of 1863 a 'normal department" was opened, which was at entered by seventy-six ladies. At this time the Regents announced that the lectures in the university proper upon chemistry, geology, botany, mechanical philosophy, and English literature would be free to the "normal" students.

Conditions at the close of the war demanded a reorganization of the university. This was effected in 1866, and Section Fourth of the Act under which the university was reconstructed, says: "The university in all its departments and colleges shall be open alike to male and female students."

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However, the Regents were obliged to ask the State to recede from this broad statement of co-education, and the next year the Legislature amended the charter upon this point as follows: The university shall be open to female as well as to male students under such regulations and restrictions as the Board of Regents may deem proper." The charter was thus amended because Dr. Chadbourne, to whom the presidency had been offered, had refused it on the ground that he feared that this innovation would lose to the university the confidence and support of the public.

Up to 1868 the ladies pursued the course which had been

laid down for the "normal department." This course, limited to three years, was now enlarged to four.

Until 1871 the recitations of the young women were separate from those of the young men. In that year, the number of professors and instructors being insufficient to carry on separate classes, the young women were permitted at their option to enter the regular college classes. In 1875 the president reported that for the first time women have been put, in all respects, on precisely the same footing, in the university, with young men."

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The year 1875 does not date the end of the contest in Wisconsin, but it dates the last incident pertinent to this part of the discussion, the object of which is to show the relation between the “normal class" and co-education.

In Missouri, State university co-education was reached by similar steps. A "normal class" was organized for women, who were next invited into the "normal department," which was originally open to men only. Then the women were admitted to such lectures in the university proper as were thought to have a special value for them as teachers. They were next invited to attend chapel, but at first only as silent witnesses to the worship of the male students; later they were solicited to join in the services of song and prayer; and finally, in 1870, they were admitted to the university on the same conditions with young men.

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In the early years, denominational effort was on double lines; wherever it founded a college for men, soon, in its nearer or more remote vicinity, it established a female seminary" or "ladies' institute. Generally the ladies' school was unsupplied with books, apparatus, or cabinets; it often happened that an ambitious instructor sought and obtained occasional permission to use the laboratory and the museum of the college for the benefit of her pupils, and to draw books for them from the college library. Sometimes, when a college professor was about to perform experiments of especial interest before his classes, the young ladies of the neighboring seminary" would be invited, under escort of their instructors, to witness them.

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Usually the college maintained a lecture course, the benefits of which were open to the seminary students. Unless the frivolous conduct of some college youth and seminary maiden excited a scandal which terminated such neighborly offices (a calamity that alone still withholds two or three colleges from becoming co-educational), these friendly relations were strength

ened from year to year, and in many instances have resulted in a reorganization by which the seminary has become a woman's college and an equal component part of the university which has been formed by its union with the college for men.

This process of building up a co-educational institution is illustrated in the history of the Northwestern University, at Evanston, Ill.

In reading current college history as presented in catalogues, college papers, and the general press, it is very interesting to observe how certain departures from ancient standards of college study have aided co-education. The cry for the "practical and the answer which colleges have made to this cry, by offering their scientific courses, may be named as one of these. The average person thinks of practical as a synonym for useful. One opinion in which all men agree (the most conservative with the most radical) is, that women should be useful. In connection with education the average man thinks that "scientific" is also a synonym for "practical." conviction that such a scientific, practical course of study will enlarge a woman's capacity for daily usefulness has sent many a young woman to a college where such courses of study were offered, who would not have been permitted to go to the college which offered only the inflexible course of classics and mathematics. The modern classical course, which permits the substitution of French and German for Greek is, on similar grounds, favorable to co-education.

The

The elective system has silenced a host of objectors to coeducation. All people who entertain vague notions that women are intuitional creatures, that their perceptions are quicker, but their reflective powers less developed than those of men, and who hold the consequent conviction that women cannot so well conform to prescribed lines of study, all of this class are reconciled to co-education by the elective system. The following quotation supports this view. A father writes: My daughter has entered Michigan University. Under the old régime I should not have permitted it, for I do not believe in a woman's undertaking a man's work; but under the elective system she can take what she likes, can take just what she would in a woman's college, in short; and as all of the professors are men, the subjects will be much better taught." This letter is written by an intelligent but rather old-fashioned gentleman, and the sentiments here expressed and implied con

cerning the elective system are entertained by a still numerous class.

The influence of the introduction of co-education at State universities upon the policy of smaller colleges has been irresistible.

Although, as has been shown, State universities did not take the initiative in co-education, the influence of the admission of women into such universities as those of Michigan and Wisconsin, has secured a similar change of policy in a large number of denominational and smaller non-sectarian colleges, founded for men only.

Appendix B., Table II., will show the relative number of colleges opened to women prior and subsequent to 1870, the year of the admission of women into Michigan University.

GENERAL ARGUMENT.

On the appearance of Dr. Clarke's book, "Sex in Education," in 1873, the controversy, which up to that time had been limited to the localities where co-education was being introduced, at once became general. For the next ten years this subject was discussed in the press, in the pulpit, in meetings of medical societies, and on the platform. In a large collection of old programs there is proof that every phase of the question was considered by all kinds of organizations of teachers, from national conventions to township institutes. Young teachers advanced their opinions, old teachers recited their experience, and the press everywhere gave the widest publicity to these discussions. At the end of a decade the public mind had fully expressed, and, through expressing, had gradually formed its opinion, which was in general favorable to co-education. In 1883 the whole question was opened in a new form by the attempt to exclude women from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University, which had already been open to them for twelve years.

Every reason which had formerly been urged against the admission of women was now offered for their exclusion. The peculiar origin of the discussion and the able and gallant defense of the rights of the women already enrolled in its classes which was made by Dr. Carroll Cutler, the president of Adelbert, attracted wide notice, and the arguments, pro and con, were reviewed by the press of the country.

Dr. Cutler wrote to the authorities of all the principal co-educational colleges, for the results of their experience.

The

courtesy of Dr. Cutler makes this voluminous correspondence available for this chapter.

Stated briefly and in the chronological order of their development, the arguments against co-education are as follows:

a. Women are mentally inferior to men, and therefore their presence in a college will inevitably lower the standard of its scholarship.

b. The physical constitution of women makes it impossible for them to endure the strain of severe mental effort. If admitted to college they will maintain their position and keep pace with men only at the sacrifice of their health.

c. The presence of women in college will result in vitiating the manners, if not the morals, of both men and women; the men will become effeminate and weak, the women coarse and masculine.

d. If women are admitted to college, their presence will arouse the emotional natures of the men, will distract the minds of the latter from college work, and will give opportunity for scandal.

e. The intimacies of college life will result in premature marriages.

f. Young men do not approve of the collegiate education of women; they dislike to enter into competition with women, and if the latter are admitted to our colleges it will result in the loss of male students, who will seek in colleges limited to their own sex, the social life which cannot be furnished by a co-educational institution.

g. A collegiate education not only does not prepare a woman for the domestic relations and duties for which she is designed, but actually unfits her for them.

h. Colleges were originally intended for men only, and the wills of their founders and benefactors will be violated by the admission of women.

i. Whatever the real mental capacity or physical ability of women, so fixed is the world's conviction of their inferiority, that colleges admitting them will inevitably forfeit the world's confidence and respect.

Let

This chapter affords no space for the à priori arguments which answer these objections; and indeed the best answer to all objections against co-education is found in its result. the following letters testify to the fruits of experience. tract from a letter from James B. Angell, president of the University of Michigan, dated September 2, 1884:

Ex

"Women were admitted here (Michigan University) under