primary school to the highest university classes complete equality of provision for both sexes.

RISE OF COLLEGES FOR WOMEN.

In 1861, when the land-grant act was already under consideration, an event occurred in the eastern section of our country which strengthened the tendencies toward separate education for men and women. In that year Mr. Matthew Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., conveyed to trustees stocks, bonds, etc., of the total value of $108,000, to found a college which, as stated in his own words, "shall accomplish for women what our colleges are accomplishing for men." The trustees to whom Mr. Vassar committed the enterprise carefully canvassed the whole subject, considering the possible adaptations of the usual college course to the needs of woman, and more particularly the means of making her college residence safe and healthful. It is amusing now to recall the fears expressed in many quarters as to the effect of this very cautious experiment in college education upon womanly character-fears which drew from Mr. Vassar an emphatic expression of his own ideals. It is my hope," he said, “indeed, it has been the main incentive to all I have already done or may hereafter do or hope to do, to inaugurate a new era in the history and life of woman. I wish to give one sex all the advantages so long monopolized by the other. Ours is and is to be an institution for women, not men. In all its labors, positions, rewards, and hopes the idea is the development and exposition and the marshaling to the front and the preferment of women, of their powers on every side, domonstrative of their equality with men. ** This, I conceive, may be fully accomplished within the rational limits of true womanliness and without the slightest hazard to the attractiveness of her character. We are, indeed, already defeated before we commence if such development be in the least dangerous to the dearest attributes of her sex. We are not the less defeated if it be hazardous for her to avail herself of her highest educated powers when that point is gained. We are defeated if we start upon the assumption that she has no powers save those she may derive or imitate from the other sex. We are defeated if we recognize the idea that she may not, with every propriety, contribute to the world the benefits of matured faculties which education works. We are especially defeated if we fail to express by our acts our practical belief in her preeminent powers as an instructor of her own sex."

*

The statement reflects very plainly the adverse sentiments that the experiment had excited and also shows how little sympathy the founder had with those who advocated the plan of identical education for men and women. The novelty of this experiment, the noble spirit of the founder, the beauty of the site, the admirable plan of the buildings, the influential patronage which was attracted, combined to give éclat to the new institution. At the time, as President Raymond observed, not a single endowed college for young women existed in all Christendom. The example was contagious. Vassar did not assume full collegiate rank till 1868; two years after, Wellesley followed; the next year, 1871, Smith was founded; and thus the policy of separate education to which the older colleges of the East were committed was enormously strengthened.

THE NEW ERA-ITS PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTION.

In the general history of education 1870 stands forth as a memorable date; in that year was passed the education law by which the English Government was pledged to secure elementary education for every child in the realm; the same year was proclaimed the French Republic, whose existence is staked upon a system of state education; in that year also the Prussian Government, alarmed, it is

ED 1903-67

stated, by the declaration of papal infallibility, issued new school regulations, emphasizing the paramount right of the state in respect to the control of popular education. In the United States, as we have seen, the tentative period of the public school systems was virtually completed before 1870. The essential principles of such a system-support by public taxation, public supervision, public provision for the training of teachers, free tuition for all youth from the primary school to the door of the college, compulsory school attendance-one and all had been adopted in every State. Recent events-the land-grant act of 1862 and the establishment of the Bureau of Education in 1868—had also shown on the part of the Federal Government a growing sense of responsibility in respect to this great interest. Two educational questions were then uppermost in our countrynamely, that of new adjustments of college education and that of higher education for women. By the passage of the land-grant act the two questions had been brought into close relation, since it was very generally conceded that women should not be excluded from a share in the Government bounty. College facilities for women were multiplying, and events seemed to indicate that coeducation would prevail in the West and separate education in the East. The South had scarcely yet applied itself to the problem.

While such was the general situation in 1870, two events occurred about that time which greatly modified the outlook in the East-Cornell University, enriched at once by the land grant and the liberal benefactions of Mr. Cornell, was formally opened at Ithaca, N. Y., in 1868. The institution stood for the departures in higher education which were being agitated throughout the civilized world. The forceful and deliberate manner in which the new problems were undertaken, the remarkable character of the two men-Mr. Ezra Cornell, the founder, and Mr. Andrew D. White, first president of the institution, who together had worked out the plan of its operations-excited universal interest. The college was at first opened to men students only, but at the inaugural ceremony, which was of an imposing character, both Mr. Cornell and Mr. White expressed the hope that the university might speedily offer every advantage necessary for the higher education of young women equally with young men. "Speaking entirely for myself,” said Mr. White, "I would say that I am perfectly willing to undertake the experiment as soon as it shall be possible to do so." The mere expression of this hope brought the means for its realization. Upon the evening of the inaugural day Mr. Henry W. Sage went quietly to President White and said: "When you are ready to carry out the idea of educating young women as thoroughly as young men, I will provide the endowment to enable you to do so." Mr. Sage's purpose strengthened with the growth of the university, and shortly after, all other difficulties being then practically removed, he renewed his offer. A committee, of which President White was chairman, made an exhaustive study of all questions relating to coeducation, visited the leading institutions in which it had been tried, corresponded with eminent educators, and in a report, which reviews at length the whole problem, recommended the acceptance of the offer. That offer was of an endowment of $250,000 upon the simple condition that "instruction shall be afforded to young women by the Cornell University as broad and thorough as that now afforded to young men." In April, 1872, the offer was formally accepted by the trustees, and women were admitted to all the privileges of the university. The University of Michigan, whose commanding influence was already foreshadowed, had opened its doors to women two years previous, and its example had great weight at Cornell. Meanwhile, in conservative Massachusetts, measures had already been started which in 1889 resulted in the incorporation of Boston University with coeducation as one of several distinguishing features. The spirit of the institution in this respect was frankly set forth by the president, Dr.

William F. Warren, in the first “Yearbook" of the new institution. "A fourth fundamental idea with the organization of Boston University," he says, was, and is, that a university should exist not for one sex merely, but equally for the two. Class schools are very well in their place. Schools for the feeble-minded, reform schools, schools for deaf-mutes-no one should object to these. So, if any class of philanthropists feel called upon to organize special schools for girls or boys constitutionally too delicate to bear the nervous shock of school association with the other sex, let no one oppose. Such institutions may serve to illustrate the tender and gentle charities to which our Christian civilization gives origin, but a university exists for altogether different purposes. It is not instituted for the benefit of a class. It is the highest organ of human society for the conservation, furtherance, and communication of knowledge; for the induction of successive generations into its possession; for the service of mankind in all highest social offices. To artificially restrict the benefits of such an institution to one-half of the community by a discrimination based solely upon a birth distinction is worse than un-American. It is an injury to society as a whole, a loss to the favored class, a wrong to the unfavored.

Boston University, therefore, welcomes to all its advantages young women and young men on precis ly the same conditions. It welcomes women not merely to the beach of the pupil, but also to the chair of the professor. It is the first institution in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to admit the two sexes to common advantages in classical collegiate studies; the first in the world to open the entire circle of post-graduate professional schools to men and women alike. Nor is any fear whatever felt lest the newly enfranchised class prove in the end incapacitated, either intellectually or by physiological constitution, for making a wise and beneficent use of these new-found facilities." (Boston Yearbook, 1874, p. 24.) These events occurring in rapid succession excited intense interest. Conservative sentiment in the East was alarmed, and earnest efforts were put forth to stay what was regarded by many people as a serious evil. Notable among these efforts was a contribution to the general discussion by Dr. E. Clarke, entitled “Sex in education." The author opposed the new movement from considerations of woman's physical constitution, and even went so far as to declare that identical education for boys and girls, "the prominent characteristic of our American school system," was responsible for the physical degeneracy of American women. A large part of his essay was taken up with accounts of particular cases illustrating this degeneracy, but the relation between these cases and the education of the unfortunate subjects was scarcely proven. The importance of Doctor Clarke's main consideration-namely, that of the physical welfare of women students can hardly be exaggerated, but his inference with regard to coeducation was not well based at the time, and has no longer any force, because of the adjustment of school and college conditions to the needs of different classes of students. In this respect the change since 1870 is so marked that we may call the last three decades the period of special adjustments, and it may readily be shown that this change, which is as beneficial to men as to women, is largely the outcome of the movement for woman's education.

Doctor Clarke's discussion called forth vigorous rejoinders, among which were two books of special note, namely, Sex and Education, and The Education of American Girls. Against scientific theories, well-known experts submitted in these books the results of extended observation and of actual experience in respect to the processes and the effects of mental discipline. In a contribution to the former work, Thomas Wentworth Higginson pointed out the chief weakness in Doctor Clarke's argument, i. e., the want of a sufficient basis of facts.

At that time, indeed, no systematic effort had been made to collect and sift the

facts as to the actual effects of coeducation in places where it was already practiced. The want has since been well supplied by the collection of vital statistics published by the Collegiate Alumnæ Association, and by a similar collection, "Health statistics of women students at Cambridge and Oxford and of their sisters," due to the efforts of Mrs. Henry Sidgwick."

The stubborn facts disclosed by the investigations refute the unsupported assertions of alarmists. They show, as Professor Angell humorously puts it, that 'the audacious young female who attempted to follow the same collegiate course as her brother generally insisted on the retention of oppressively good health; and she has done even worse things to discredit the general calling of prophet by discovering numbers of educated men who were willing and eager to attempt matrimony with her assistance. Worst of all, when she has married, she has had a normal number of vigorous children." Nothing, indeed, is left “the irreconcilables on these points" but to "deny themselves the luxury of the available statistics."

Public school officials were naturally drawn into the early discussion of coeducation, as the public high schools furnished a point of attack for its opponents and also the most extended experience with reference to its effects. Doctor Harris, at that time superintendent of public schools in St. Louis, went into a full discussion of the subject in his report for 1872-73, meeting objections such as Doctor Clarke had advanced by the actual results of coeducation in his own city and disclosing the relation of the policy to advancing civilization. Dr. E. E. White, then editor of the Ohio Educational Monthly, in a paper published in the National Teacher (June, 1872), supported the policy as it had developed in high schools while admitting the need of special caution with respect to its further extension, and Doctor Philbrick, superintendent of public schools, Boston, avowed his opposition to the policy.

The literature of the subject which accumulated thus between 1870 and 1875 foreshadowed the lines which all subsequent discussions have followed, and afforded one of the earliest illustrations in this country of the substitution of fact and experience for a priori theories in the investigation of social problems. The physiological argument against coeducation and in general against higher disciplinary education for women has shifted its basis slightly in consequence of the tendency to interpret all social phenomena in biological terms, but it reduces practically to that advanced by Doctor Clarke. Meanwhile the accumulated experience of thirty years has merely added weight to that which showed the exaggerated inferences from this argument when it was first advanced.

Looking back thus over the past, it is easy to see that public education in our country is a growth in which all the parts are organically related. The admission of girls to the public schools and subsequently the admission of young women to the publicly endowed colleges and universities came about naturally, and was a well-established policy prior to 1870. This date, as we have seen, may be conveniently taken to mark the close of the merely formative period of our State systems of education. In the sifting that has since been going on, temporary expedients have been gradually eliminated; continuance and progress since that date may be taken as signs of vital force. Peculiar interest therefore attaches to the history of coeducation since the year specified. In this consideration only secondary schools and higher institutions-colleges and universities-demand attention, as the policy of elementary schools in this respect has passed beyond all question.

a See Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1901, vol. 2, pp. 1278-1281.

b For an extended bibliography of coeducation see the Commissioner's Report for 1901, vol. 2, pp. 1310-1315.

PROGRESS OF HIGH SCHOOLS AND THEIR RELATION TO COEDUCATION.

The most noticeable fact in the recent history of high schools is the increase in their numbers, or, to state it more impressively, in the number of youth brought under their influence." The 6,292 high schools reported in 1902 enrolled 550,611 pupils (226,914 boys, 323,697 girls), and of this number 95 per cent, or a total of 523,344 pupils (215,944 boys, 307,400 girls), were in coeducational schools. In this respect there is no break between the high schools and the lower grade public schools, in which at least 96 per cent of the pupils are enrolled in mixed classes. The few separate high schools for boys and girls are in cities situated for the most part on the eastern border of the country. They form exceptions, however, to the general practice even in their own States, and as a rule are survivals from the period of cautious experiments rather than indexes of public opinion or sentiment.

From the replies to special inquiries respecting the subject issued by the Bureau of Education in 1891 and 1901, it appears that of 628 leading cities of the country 15 only had separate high schools in 1891; in 1901 the number had fallen to 12. The chief cities reporting separate high schools and their actual status in this respect in 1901 were as follows:

A second matter of great significance in our present consideration is the constant increase in the proportion of pupils of public high schools in the college

a Number of secondary students in public and private secondary schools.

The relative increase of public high schools as compared with private schools is emphasized by the expression in ratios. In 1876 the public high schools comprised 23.75 per cent of secondary pupils; in 1882, 30.8 per cent; in 1892, 70.39 per cent; in 1902 their proportion had increased to 84.02 per cent.

For full results of these inquiries see Commissioner's Report for 1901, vol. 2, pp. 1218–1229. The remaining pupils (651) are in a separate high school for boys.