222 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



will refund any overcharges made. These magnanimous reduc- 

 tions in the cost of travel are due to the personal efforts of 

 A. Yermolow, Minister of Agriculture, to the proprietors and ad- 

 ministrations of the districts having works, and to the officers of 

 municipalities along the routes of the excursions. 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION.* 



BY HELEN KENDRICK JOHNSON. 



IN 1848 a Woman-Suffrage Convention, called by Mrs. Stanton, 

 Mrs. Mott, and others, issued a " Declaration of Sentiments/' 

 which was an imitation of the famous Declaration of Independ- 

 ence. It constituted an elaborate indictment of man as the 

 oppressor of woman, and the suffrage leaders of to-day still hold 

 to it as their broad exposition of principles. The seventh count 

 in the indictment was, " He has denied her facilities for obtain- 

 ing a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her." 



Among the resolutions passed in an early suffrage convention 

 was one demanding " equal rights in the universities," and the 

 first petition presented by suffrage advocates contained a clause 

 asking that entrance to men's colleges be obtained for women by 

 legal enactment. We note that this is far from being a demand 

 for education for women equal to that given to men in the uni- 

 versities. Men have founded colleges for women, men and women 

 have worked together in securing for woman every facility and 

 opportunity for education of the highest grade; but the "barrier 

 of sex " is not broken down in education. But few of the older 

 colleges for men admit women, and those few, so far as I have 

 learned from conversation with members of their faculties, speak 

 of the arrangement as an experiment, and give the need for 

 economy, combined with a desire to assist women, as a reason for 

 making that experiment. Meantime the knocking at men's liter- 

 ary portals by suffrage advocates has gone on as vigorously as if 

 women could obtain education in no other way. 



In the first suffrage convention ever held in Massachusetts 

 these two resolutions were adopted: "That political rights ac- 

 knowledge no sex, and therefore the word ' male ' should be stricken 

 from every State Constitution " ; and " that every effort to edu- 

 cate woman, until you accord to her her rights, and arouse her 

 conscience by the weight of her responsibilities, is futile, and a 

 waste of labor." 



* From Woman and the Republic. By Helen Kendrick Johnson. In press of D. 

 Appleton & Co. 



