USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 46
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Of endowed schools there were a considerable number in Glasgow previous to 1882. But as these had chiefly been founded by private benefactors in order to pro- vide for the education of poor children, under various conditions specified by the founders, and as the institution of the school board had made the existence of these unnecessary, an act of parliament was passed in 1882, entitled the Educational Endow- ments (Scotland) Act, appointing commissioners to review all these foundations, and to make arrangements for the alteration or abolition of many of the schools, and the application of most of the money bequeathed to them to the purposes of education in the shape of bursaries and scholarships. One large bequest, however, remained, that under the Hutchesons' "Trust," which was too large to be abolished, and for it the commissioners formulated a new scheme, appointing a board of governesses, to be elected by various public bodies, and making regulations for the continued existence of two schools, one for boys and one for girls. They also fixed the amount of the fees to be charged, and the subjects to be taught, and made provision for the remission of the very moderate fees in the case of two hundred "foundationers," and for the maintenance and the clothing of a few of them, besides offering a number of free scholarships and bursaries for secondary and higher education to be held in the schools; also for some bursaries for university and higher education in other institutions. The staff of the girls' school consists of a head master and twelve men and fifteen women teachers, and the organization comprises a preparatory school and a higher school. A girl can enter the preparatory school at the age of seven, and can continue her edu- cation after passing from it to the higher school until the age of eighteen or nineteen. The course of instruction begins at the stage that corresponds with the school board's "standard two," extends over nine years, and is divided into two parts of almost equal duration, the plan of study for the first five years being divided with a view to laying a solid basis for the higher work which the school makes its special province. Besides the usual branches of an English education a special study is made of modern lan- guages, a three years' course of oral instruction in French, and a two years' course in German, given in the preparatory school, followed up by further continuous study of both in the higher school, and mathematics, drawing and science also receive special attention. The pupils of the higher classes are prepared for the government Leaving Certificate, and those who intend to adopt teaching as their profession have, if they so desire, opportunities of becoming acquainted with the organization of the whole school, and of handling various classes under the criticism and guidance of the head master. The yearly fees range from twelve dollars and fifty cents in the lowest class of the pre- paratory school to forty dollars in the first or students' class of the higher school; but after the bursary system was established fee-payers in the higher class became grad- ually fewer, until now the two highest classes contain none but scholars and bursars.
Private or proprietary schools are numerous in Glasgow and of considerable vari- ety as to grades of instruction and fees, some being for kindergarten work and young children only, others carrying their pupils up to preparation for university classes. These are much more expensive than the public schools, and much smaller, but they are preferred by some parents as giving more attention to manners and individual training than it is possible to expect in a large public school. Some of them have a master at the head of the school, others a mistress; there is generally a staff of visit- ing teachers, chiefly masters, and a staff of governesses, who remain during the whole of the school day. There is, however, especially one exception in Glasgow to this general rule, viz., a girls' school worked by a company of shareholders, many of whom are parents of the pupils being educated there. This school is taught entirely by ladies.
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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
As regards higher education, a girl on leaving school can continue her work along various lines. For higher instruction in art provision is made in several institutions, the principal of which is the Government School of Design. There she can either prepare herself for work as an artist, or learn designing of patterns for textile fabrics, or architectural, mechanical, engineering or other drawing, ceramic painting, modeling, etc. Domestic arts can be learned in the School of Cookery, which includes also a school for laundry and other household work; and there are a variety of classes for dressmaking and millinery on different systems. The West of Scotland Technical College provides instruction for women as for men in many scientific and practical subjects.
University education for women is given by the University of Glasgow in its de- partment for women. Queen Margaret College and the various university degrees are open to women as to men, the same subjects of instruction and examination being given to both sexes, and the same degrees conferred. This, however, is a concession which was made by parliament in the summer of 1892. Previous to that time no degree of any Scottish university would be conferred on a woman, nor could the universities provide for her instruction.
To meet the desire of women for higher education, while waiting for the often asked for, but not then granted, opening of the universities, associations for the higher education of women were formed in the different university towns. In Glasgow one was founded in 1877. Before that date some of the professors of the universities had from time to time given short courses of lectures to women in public halls, etc., but in that year a full organization was formed and classes were held in connection with it on university subjects, taught by university professors and graduates, some of the courses of lectures being given in the university and others in rooms rented for the purpose outside. After six years of existence this association was incorporated as Queen Margaret College, the name being taken from Queen Margaret of Scotland, the first patroness in Scotland of literature and art. A suitable building with extensive grounds was presented to the college by Mrs. Elder, widow of John Elder, a well- known engineer and shipbuilder, on condition that $100,000 should be raised as an endowment. These buildings have since been considerably increased by the addition of science laboratories, etc., and are situated about ten minutes walk from the uni- versity. And by donations from various residenters in Glasgow and its neighborhood, with the addition of a bazaar which brought in about $55,000, the cost of these new buildings was met, and an endowment fund of upward of $125,000 was collected.
From its incorporation in 1883 the college went on gradually building up on uni- versity lines. By degrees a full curriculum in arts, including modern languages, was established, with courses of lectures of the same scope and length (one hundred leet- ures each ) as those of the university for the master of arts degree; then several classes were instituted; and in 1890 a school of medicine for women was added to the college, which is now complete as to classes, hospital and dispensary work, the same as those provided for men at the university. The lecturers were university professors or gradu- ates, the dean of the medical school being a university professor (Prof. Young, M.D.), and the fees and regulations were the same as those of the university. When, there- fore, in 1889, the act of parliament was passed, called the Universities (Scotland) Act, which appointed commissioners to revise and altar where necessary the constitution and regulations of the Scottish universities, and when the ordinance of those commis- sioners was published, in 1892, which permitted the universities to provide for the education of women and to admit them to the degrees, Queen Margaret College was in a position both as to nature and completeness of the courses it offered to its stu- dents, and as to the state of the buildings and endowment fund, to offer itself to the university to become university property, to be taken under the government of the university and to be especially recognized as giving preparation for the degrees. On this offer being made by the council of the college it was accepted by the university, which accordingly adopted Queen Margaret College as its department for women.
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The college is now governed entirely by the university court and senate, and all its lecturers are appointed by the court. The average number of students in the college is about two hundred, of whom about fifty are in the medical school. They.receive full preparation for the university degrees in arts, science and medicine.
The course of work for the master of arts degree, after the preliminary examina- tion (preparation for which usually occupies one or two additional years) has been passed, takes three years, and duration of study is the same for the degree of bachelor of science; the degree of doctor of science can only be taken five years after that of bachelor of science, after further study and examination. The course of study after the preliminary examination for bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery is of five years' duration, and the degree of doctor of medicine and master of surgery can only be taken after two years' further study, after the bachelor degree has been obtained.
The women students of the University of Glasgow do not study with the men students, having their classes in their own college, but they are examined together.
A woman can thus now in Glasgow obtain a full university education, and has every facility for preparing herself for her life-work, whether for a professional career as a teacher, a literary woman, a scientist or a doctor, or for home life-to which she will bring the culture and the large and practical views derived from a university edu- cation. The progress made in Scotland in general, and in Glasgow in particular, in educational matters during the last few years has been great, and still goes on. And although in the old country we do not move so rapidly as in the new, the movement continues, if slowly yet surely-the New World and the Old advancing hand in hand and working together in the great field of intellectual progress and culture.
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INFLUENCE OF GREAT WOMEN .* By MRS. MARY NEWBURY ADAMS.
In our subject, " Influence of the Great Women of Yesterday on the Civilization of Today," we admit that greatness in womanhood is an ancient quality. We cannot look upon the recently unearthed statuary without this faith. She had a strength that was big with the future of mankind. She ventured, she dared, she had courage to begin things. She had faith in her work because she knew she worked for the good of her kind and from inborn instincts.
Let us know definitely what we mean by the word great. In primitive times they represented greatness by size. Their images of gods and goddesses were large, to indicate power and influence. The Egyptians in their art represented the women as of equal size with men to indicate the cquality of influence and position in government and religion, and when thousands of years ago Egyptians wanted to leave an enduring rec- ord of their belief of the supremacy of man and woman over all material things, over the carth, they built the statues of Memnon on the Nile. Human beings mountain high, great and big. Another method to express greatness and power was for God to speak from Mt. Zion or Mt. Sinai, a high place. Then, greatness was for a patriarch with many wives MRS. MARY NEWBURY ADAMS. and much cattle, a terror to other tribes, whose one supreme will must be a law to the many. But this was not the matriarchal idea of the great person. Womanhood called a mind great that could think, one that could reason, one that could invent, one that could have foresight, save the grain today to plant next season, plant the clover to keep the bees and the cows close at hand; one was great who built the hut before the winter and storm came, or who carried the stone hatchet in case the wild beast is met. The mind that could collect experience and plan a better future, this mind could command respect for its strength in judgment, and was called great by women. One with energy and courage to make successful an idea, be it for a basket, a canoe, or a treaty between enemies, or a migration to inau- gurate new habits with the selected best, these were the great women who had an idea and could carry it out. Disciples of Minerva and Juno, people from Ephesus and Athens, women from Asia Minor, from the Istes of the Sea, from the halls where taught the white-robed Hypatia; when these spoke of great women it was quality of mind and tastes they referred to. Among the worshipers of Ceres, the goddess of
Mrs. Mary Newbury Adams is a native of Peru, Ind. She was born October 17, 1837. Her parents were Rev. Samnel Newbury and Mrs. Mary Ann Sergeant Newbury. She received her early education at home private schools; graduated from Cleveland public schools later, and from Troy, Tenn., Seminary in 1857. She married Austin Adams, Esq., who was after- ward twelve years judge of the Supreme Court of Iowa. She takes great interest in the history and study of humanity, par- ticularly woman's work in civilization. Her principal literary works are numerons essays, lectures, sermons, and news- paper articles. Her profession is housekeeper and home-keeper. In religions faith she is a Cosmopolitan Unitarian. Mrs. Adams is a member of the National Woman's Suffrage Association and many archæological and historical societies. In per- sonal appearance she is stately, dignified and commanding. Mrs. Adams' parents and ancestors were ministers, judges, phy- sicians, and seven of her grandmothers daughters of professional inen. Her line of thought and work has been inherited, and is not military nor business. Her postoffice address is Dubuque, Iowa.
* The original title of the address as delivered before the Congress was, "Influence of the Great Women of Yesterday on the Great Women of Today."
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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Agriculture and Commerce, greatness was shown in the discovery of new lands, fruits palatable, grains nutritious, and in the power of the will to direct energy to useful ends, to plow and plant, to save and sell, to make fruitful Earth serve the will and wish of the human mind; with them the great woman was one who had found a new grain that could be utilized for food of people that they might not be compelled to be marauding tribes, stealing cattle from other tribes for food. The mothers in council learned how to feed with grain their people quietly, peacefully. and gradually to work into the nerve of children and youth strength and reason, and thus check the raven- ous dispositions and the roving, stealthy habits that always go with those who herd cattle, and are eaters of blood and sinew, the habits of patriarchs, and the people they herd and were shepherds of. The great women, mothers of commerce, of agriculture, of trade and ingenious workmanship, compared good with evil, and aspired to become self-directing, co-working with Creation and its laws. The same idea animates the highest civilization to-day, and it is our duty to find who the women were who helped to bring it about.
The methods for our enlightened life today were those of the great mothers in council, who were drawn by sympathy to help one another in distress, in sickness, at harvest, and in journeys for trade, not to slay or steal from other tribes, but to learn to exchange baskets for pots, minerals, shells and fiber to make into raiment. The great women of antiquity are those who aided the human mind to distinguish good from evil, and through habits of industry curb the powers of passion, and tame force and strength to serve the tribe under the direction of reason. She was great who could think some thought, do some deed to add to the experience of the world, to aid the next generation of women so they could be sure of a permanent home, sure of food and raiment and ability to make something to sell. The great souls were not the strong forces that destroyed enemies or beasts, but the inventive souls, the intuitive minds that circumvented evils, that brought positive good to a people. How? Not by conquering a neighbor and securing booty in land and cattle, but those who trained families to supply their own wants by work, to have an aim in life, to so order their ways that they could be imitated with advantage to the whole tribe; thus mankind could become by habit civilized, that is, to work together by free choice, that the work of each should be good for all. It is women who have brought these ideals into human life. Women have not been visionary but practical, unless the having a high ideal and working for a future better than the present can appreciate is visionary.
There is an irrepressible conflict between the patriarchal idea of greatness and the matriarchal. Since the re-discovery of the Western continent by Western Europeans four hundred years ago, and the discovery that the sphere was balanced by its own motion, and this motion intimately connected with life thereon, then began changes in governments and in religions, from the patriarchal to the matriarchal methods, and the laws of earth and woman have been honored. Woman began to be recognized as a sphere in society, gaining equilibrium, too, by her own reason and her motion of mind, and that intimately connected with her movement of mind was the equilibrium of society. The literature of Greece was revived because the methods, the principles, the ideals of goddesses, the matriarchal ideals, were to come forth in power to shape and direct the New World era And this republic is the result of matriarchal not patri- archal methods of life and in ideals. This is the influence we inherit. Have we knowledge to understand it?
Histories heretofore have been written by men; Scriptures preserved by the high priests, the Druids, the patriarchs; reprinted and upheld by empires, religious and political. The true history of human progress from savagehood to enlightened civil life is yet to be written. Not till the spirit of archaeology, philology and folk-lore was awakened did we have the material facts to reason from. Now, here, in the center of the oldest continent, we find Scripture fulfilled, and the last continent is found to be the first, and the rejected stones of the early Americans are to become the corner- stones of human history.
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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The influence of the great women of the past is felt today, not by knowledge of their names and their individual work, or the time they lived, but by the things they started, the methods of activity they began; what they inaugurated by following their natural instinct to change the present, to secure the greater future, which we enjoy today.
We have heard only of the women of gayety at the courts; we need the lives of the great women who changed the history of their time by finding new fords, opening new fields for commerce.
Matilda of Scottish lineage was called Maude. She was the mother of Henry II. of England, and Hume says her son was the greatest prince of his time for wisdom, virtue and ability. She introduced the culture of broom corn. She built the first arch bridge in England, Bowbridge, made new roads, repaired the Roman roads. She was prudent, and encouraged those things which educated and benefited the people. She was political, and to her we trace the constitutional blessing England enjoyed.
The arrangements for peace and progress, the law that the people could depend upon, based on principles of justice and reciprocation, she had written out into char- ters, and so established a precedent for the rulers that followed. She made history. Through her influence her son, called Henry Beauclerc, granted the important char- ter which was the model and precedent of the great Magna Charta.
English history is full of the greatness of the reign of Edward III., yet when Philippa died he brought forth only evil deeds, and what was good in his reign is owing almost wholly to the queen. Through her the shipbuilding and commerce began, the navy was established. With her own pin money she brought to England Froissart, to travel at her expense, so the French and English by knowing one another better might have less wars, and that he might meet her charming young relative, Chaucer. With her own money she established the Flemish weavers and cotton and flax indus- tries in Norfolk, built houses for these people she brought from her girlhood home. She began the great commerce of England. It would take volumes to tell all that Philippa did for England to civilize and enlighten it, and cause it to revolve about its own industrial life, instead of seeking to conquer its neighbors.
Margaret, born in 1353, in Denmark, daughter of Waldemar III., was married in 1373 to Haquin, King of Norway, in 1376 regent, too, of Denmark. The year Cath- erine of Sienna died, 1380, she became Queen of Norway. Her son dying, she was acknowledged also sovereign of Denmark. At an assembly of the three countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark she held at Calmar in 1397 the famous treaty of peace between these contending countries, and formed the "Calmar Union." Her nephew appointed her successor.
The Woman's Peacc at Cambrai, which held the domination of Venice in check and awakened and helped Western Europe, shows the moderate policy of women, their foresight, judgment and perseverance, higher qualities of mind than aggressive con- quering wars.
Margaret, daughter of Ernest of Austria, born in 1416, died in 1486; married Frederick the Wise, of Saxony, and had eight children. She was a wise counselor in state affairs. Her husband accorded her the right, which she exercised, of coining money and to assist in governing the state. She contributed much by wise counsel in putting an end to wars. In 1467 her husband died. She reigned and proved herself a mother to her subjects. She died in 1486, seventy years old. She was the first sovereign to provide public rooms where the poor could have opportunity to warm themselves during severe winters. Learning and public education by meetings and discourse were inaugurated by her. Poems were recited, the rude dramas and public fairs encouraged.
Ann of Denmark, wife of James I., demanded that the crown be put on her head as well as the king's. Her descendants were the powers to form the best civil life in Germany and England, and Elizabeth, the friend of Des Cartes, furthered the highest philosophic thought and practical education.
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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
"Mother Anna" of Saxony, born in 1531, daughter of Christian III. of Denmark, a protestant, humane and wise king. She was educated by her mother, Dorothea, and the chaplain. In 1548, when seventeen years old, married August of Saxony, a wise ruler. She had fifteen children. She devoted herself to the moral and mental improvement of her people; she had faith in them and patience with the evil. She is called " the mother of her country." She multiplied schools for the people. The rich had tutors in their castles, but she raised the standard of education, making it prac- tical. Under her direction waste land was cultivated, and new foods introduced suited to the soil. On one occasion she headed the pioneers with a spade, carrying it in the procession in order to patronize agriculture, which she did much to improve. She devoted much time to chemistry, natural philosophy, botany, and studied for knowl- edge that her people needed; on all occasions tried to make her knowledge contribute to the happiness, comfort and wealth of her people. She did much not only to improve lands, but the houses of the poor. She aided her husband in welcoming and supporting the Dutch exiles and the cloth and cotton weavers who were driven from their homes by Christian persecution from Holland and France. She accompanied her husband on his travels to learn of the condition of her people and other nations. She distributed the best seed to the people, and taught them how to save and preserve it .. She induced her husband to pass a law that every newly married couple must plant and graft two fruit trees during the first year of their marriage. A wise mother of her large family, and a loving, devoted wife, "mother of her country, too," she is an example of the matriarchal ideal.
These women did
" Mutually leaven Strength of earth with grace of heaven."
The great women active from 1450 to 1600 will tell you why the eighteenth cent- ury was so vital with progress, knowledge, and demand for human rights. It was the renaissance of the matriarchal ideal-knowledge with opportunity to work unhindered by supreme authority.
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