182 New Yoek at the Woeld's Columbian Exposition. 



stood why the report is in some respects so imperfect and so inadequate 

 in representing the wornen of tjie State. 



"Thje ■w^0ti3;ien of Ifew Yprk State number 3,020,960 (total popula- 

 tion 5,997,953), an eleventh of the whole female population of the 

 Uuion. Owing partly to 'New York's being an old and thickly-settled 

 State, contafining the largest city in the republic, it has initiated and 

 led many of the most important experiments and movements in which 

 women have jjpen engaged duriug the past fifty years. 



" Among the profpssions, the progress of the study of medicine by 

 wonien has l^een peculiarly noteworthy, the first medical diploma ever 

 given to a woman being presented to Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell in 

 Q-eneva, !N. Y., in 1849 ; the £rst women's ho3pital in the world founded 

 in 185Y, in JSTew York city, and the first medical society to admit women 

 members opening its doors to thpm in 1867. The medical educational 

 f^pilities for A\'omen, with the exception of hospital practice, are bet- 

 ter in this State at this moment than in any other State or country in 

 tjie world. 



" The numlier of women ■journalists is also noteworthy, 2,401, among 

 whom 321 rank as editors oi daily, weekly and monthly publications. 



" The phila^ithropic movements in which women have taken part 

 and in most of which they have co-operated with men, have not only 

 been earnest and benevolent but wise and enlightened, and the condi- 

 tions of important social problems have in many instances been radically 

 changed and bettered by their action. A number of individual women, 

 among whose names that of the great reformer Dorothea Dix may be 

 mentioned, have done valuable and important work in relation to the 

 State care of the insane, the pauper and tlie criminal population, not- 

 ably in the case of the State Charities Aid Association, which in con- 

 junction with men, but founded by a Avonian, has, since its birth in 

 1872, made many important legislative reforms. 



" The Working Girls' Clulj Association, the Training School for 

 Nurses, the Kitchen Garden system of education, the Day Nursery, 

 the Consumers' League, were all of them first started in this State by 

 women. 



" Its age and size, however, have also formed a strong conservative 

 element in the State and kept practically closed many professions and 

 checked many movements which the younger and less-fettered Western 

 States have fprwarded. For instance, the practice of law by women is 

 practically a dead letter in New York, although the bar is nominally 

 open to women and the legal educational facilities good; and in all 

 questions concerning the political rights and duties of women New 

 York holds a very conservative position, and as yet has not extended 

 any of the privileges of the franchise (except voting for school boards) 

 to women. The first woman member of the State Board of Charities 

 was appqinted in 1877 in New York city. In collegiate, academic and 

 common-school education New York stands next to Massachusetts, and 

 in special professional, technical and industrial education leads the 

 Union Mention has already been made of the special facilities offered 

 to physicians, and the list of yaluable technical schools and institutions 

 is a long one. 



