444 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



parents are willing to keep their daughters at home longer than their 

 sons. The woman teacher has not been accustomed from early life to 

 the thought that she must one day earn her living. She knows even 

 after entering the school-room that her career as teacher is likely at 

 any time to be cut short by marriage. Comparatively few women are 

 wage-earners; the economic condition of the woman wage-earner is, 

 moreover, quite different from that of the man; and the difference lies 

 in the fact that the one is much less under the necessity of work than the 

 other. It might naturally be inferred that the education of both sexes by 

 that sex upon which the necessity of earning a living is rarely imposed 

 would tend to keep economic considerations in the background. And 

 it is true. Even in the higher grades economic independence is seldom 

 a conscious aim; and the esthetic has a larger place than the useful. 

 There ought to be more sympathy than there is for the boy with a 

 yearning as he enters the age of adolescence to get out into the work- 

 a-day world and earn a place for himself ; a thing which the enrollment 

 shows he is pretty likely to do if school does not prove that he will be 

 the gainer by delay, or appeal to this side of his nature. 



The presence of girls in the same classes with boys is not without 

 significance here. It acts as a reinforcement of the same tendency 

 away from the economic side which we have noted as a result of teach- 

 ers exclusively women. A study of the tastes and preferences of 

 women students in our universities, as indicated by the studies they 

 elect, reveals the fact that they are not influenced to a great extent by 

 economic forces. Women choose the purely cultural courses. A much 

 larger proportion of them than of men study languages and literature; 

 while very few take seriously to physics, chemistry, mathematics, polit- 

 ical economy and political science. 



In the University of Chicago in 1900-01, there were 3,520 students 

 registered in attendance, of whom 1,844 were men and 1,676 were 

 women. The two sexes were thus fairly equal in point of numbers, 

 the men out-numbering the women by 168. But in the language 

 courses women greatly out-numbered the men. There were during the 

 year 1,603 women studying English, and only 1,084 men; in French 

 there were 468 women and 435 men; in Latin 621 to 430. In those 

 courses which are more practical as being more closely associated with 

 industry, the figures are reversed; here the men greatly out-number 

 the women. In chemistry during the same year, there were 666 men 

 enrolled and 120 women; in physics, 353 men and 90 women; in polit- 

 ical economy, 354 men and 65 women. As showing that women are less 

 interested in political and governmental matters, there were in political 

 science only 68 women to 269 men. 



These figures have been compared with statistics of other universi- 

 ties in the same subjects and they show a remarkable similarity. Where 



