406 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



age of machinery have completely changed the conditions 

 of life which obtained but a generation ago. They have 

 not only opened up for women countless occupations that 

 were undreamed of in their mother's time, but have also 

 given to tens of thousands of them the necessary means and 

 leisure to indulge their tastes for study and research and 

 enabled an ever increasing number of them to realize their 

 aspirations for achieving distinction in the divers depart- 

 ments of scientific research. 



As an instance of this marked change in the intellectual 

 activity of women, we need only consider what an impor- 

 tant part they now take in our present prodigious literary 

 output, as compared with their share in similar work but 

 a few decades ago. As authors, as writers and readers in 

 the editorial rooms of our leading periodicals, as contrib- 

 utors to learned journals and reviews dealing with every 

 branch of science, even the most abstruse, they now occupy 

 a conspicuous place and are doing work that is quite as 

 creditable as that of men. 



And it is no longer necessary, in deference to public 

 sentiment, for them to write under a pseudonym, for it is 

 no longer considered unfeminine, as it was in the time of 

 the Bronte sisters, for women to acknowledge themselves 

 the authors of books or of articles in magazines. If they 

 elect to devote their lives to literary or scientific work, 

 they will not be deterred from so doing by what Mrs. 

 Grundy may say, or by the fear that some feeble imitator 

 of Moliere may dub them as Precieuses Ridicules. The 

 value of their productions, like those of men, is gauged 

 solely by merit and not by any narrow-minded considera- 

 tions of the author's sex. 



So also will it be in all other occupations where women 

 choose to gain their livelihood by devoting themselves to 

 scientific pursuits rather than to manual labor or to sec- 

 retarial work in the counting-room. There are positions 

 open for them in colleges, universities and the government 



