THE BE ACTION FROM COEDUCATION. 23 



graduates from coeducational institutions shows that as a class the 

 young men and women trained under these auspices are filling with 

 honor the functions of the various stations to which life has called 

 them. The beauty and sanctity of domestic life does not appear to 

 have been shattered nor indeed shaken. In public station, to which 

 large numbers of them have been summoned, they appear to have 

 acquitted themselves with eminent credit. There is no great interest 

 of any kind throughout the west in which men and women of this 

 type will not be found important factors. This result may of course 

 be in spite of their education, rather than because of it, and a dif- 

 ferent form of education might have produced better results. Admit- 

 ting this, however, it remains to point out the fact, that in any event 

 for the vast majority of these persons coeducation has not resulted in 

 the disastrous fashion which it ought, if its critics were wholly correct. 

 It must in this connection be remembered that there are many thou- 

 sands of these graduates of coeducational colleges, so that the volume 

 of contamination which disturbs the critics should be considerable and 

 not difficult of recognition. 



Coeducation has a monopoly of neither the virtues nor the vices 

 of the educational world. It is a safe assertion that many young 

 men and women would be better off in colleges of some other variety. 

 Experience certainly suggests that a coeducational university is a 

 dangerous place to send certain young men and especially certain 

 young women, brought up in schools for boys or girls severally. The 

 sending of certain girls to such coeducational institutions without 

 providing for guardianship of any kind is often in the highest degree 

 reprehensible. But for the average young person brought up in coedu- 

 cational nurseries and secondary schools the university of this type is 

 capable of supplying a peculiarly valuable training, and one which 

 could be discarded only at great cost. The system represents so much 

 that is intrinsic to the noblest and best spirit of democracy in the 

 commonwealths where it flourishes, that its immediate overthrow would 

 be hardly feasible even were it thought desirable. The state institu- 

 tions, which furnish much the larger part of the coeducational con- 

 stituency, could probably take no extreme measures without legislative 

 endorsement, and this would certainly be very slow in coming. Pri- 

 vate institutions are less hampered, and we may look to them for 

 experimental research. Leland Stanford in the west has already dis- 

 covered that while 500 women in an institution are tolerable and even 

 valuable, 501 are not to be endured. Wesleyan University in the East 

 has also seen a light, but one of a different hue from that seen at Stan- 

 ford. At Wesleyan twenty per cent, of the student body may be 

 women, but educational propriety draws the line at this point. 



