Women have proved capacity and desire for training. In 1872 America had 50 college women to each million population; in 1899, 323. In 1900 a third of all the college students in America were women: 4,000 in women's colleges; 20,000 in coeducational institutions.
It is not necessary at this time to enter upon an argument for the increased efficiency of these women and of the homes, communities, and nation to which they belong. One prodigious undertaking alone is their work as teachers in the secondary-schools and the colleges. The purpose of all education is to develop character and the chief test of character is to render service. Service is the end; education only the means. A French writer has said "The test of civilization is the place which it affords to women." Is it not true that the test of an educated woman is some sort of service to her day and generation?
We are as thoroughly committed to higher education of women as to universal education of the masses. We have faith to believe that such education not only imparts information, but lessens wrong and crime, lessens temptation, increases content and happiness, increases the earning power of the working woman, increases the influence of mother and daughter and sister in the home, increases the refined qualities and graces of womanhood, and the effective forces of the nation.
Individuals there were, in the older times, queens of powerful nations, mothers of mighty rulers. We may regard as an omen that it was Isabella that aided Columbus; the peasant girl Joan of Arc heard voices calling her to rescue France. The women of our nation erected last summer at the head of the grand entrance to the beautiful Lewis and Clark Exposition a bronze statue designed by a woman to the memory of Sacajawea, whose intrepid valor and courageous soul and mother's heart guided Lewis and Clark through trackless forests, over
