could not perform its duties. The people, disgusted, turned to the women for relief, and took good care to elect the ones best fitted to do the work. Had equal care been used in the selection of their predecessors, they might have done equally good work. In quoting opinions, I have purposely confined myself to those given by gentlemen.
The limits of this paper have restricted this discussion to the work of woman as a county superintendent; but in other school offices she is doing efficient work. All over the State we have examples of her efficiency as school director. Miss Sarah E. Raymond, in Bloomington, and Miss Ludlow, in Davenport (by the way, the Iowa State Teachers' Association last year honored itself by electing her president), abundantly proves woman's ability to superintend the schools of large cities.
In Zion's Herald 1873, on the origin of the Woman's College in Evanston, Miss Frances E. Willard writes:
In 1866, when we were all tugging away to build Heck Hall for ministers, I heard several thoughtful women say, "We ought to be doing this for our own sex. Men have help from every side, while no one thinks of women." In the summer of 1868 Mrs. Mary F. Haskins, who had been treasurer of the American Methodist Ladies' Centenary Association, which built Heck Hall, raising for the purpose $50,000, invited the ladies of Evanston to her home to talk over the subject of founding a Woman's College, which should secure to young women the highest educational advantages. Mrs. Haskin originated the thought—with her own hands assisted in laying the corner-stone, and in her first address as president she said: "I have often thought that to the successful teacher the words must be full of hope and promise, which a great writer uses of education: 'It is a companion which no misfortune can distress, no crime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despot enslave; at home a friend, abroad an introduction; in solitude a solace, in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it adds a grace to genius. Without it what is man?'—and I would add with emphasis, Without an education, what is woman?"
This Woman's College at Evanston is the first on record to which a charter, granting full collegiate powers, was ever given by legislative act, including only names of women in its board of trustees. This board, elected Miss Frances E. Willard president, who presided over the institution for two years, during which term a class of young women was graduated, the first in history to whom diplomas were voted and conferred by women. The degree of A. M. was given Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing, of Chicago, who preached the baccalaureate sermon at the unique commencement exercises. Mrs. Mary F. Haskin, and Mrs. Elizabeth Greenleaf were respectively presidents of the board of trustees.
Later on, as a higher evolution of the central thought, an arrangement was made between the Woman's College and the Northwestern University, by which the former became the woman's department of the latter, on condition that in its board of trustees, faculty of instruction, and all its departments of culture, women should be admitted on an equality with men, as to opportunities, positions and salaries. Miss Willard was then chosen dean of the Woman's College, and professor of æsthetics in the University. Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller was placed on the executive committee of the board, and Mrs. R. F. Queal, Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing, Mrs. Mary Bannister Willard, and Mrs. L. L. Greenleaf were elected trustees. One year later, Miss Willard entered the temperance work f
