Part 21 (2/2)
This is true. Nevertheless, it must be made a condition precedent for admission, in order that the dignity of science may not suffer.”_
Gradually is the opposition to the necessity of a ”cla.s.sical” education for the study of medicine being felt in Germany also. The immense progress made in the natural sciences, together with their importance to life, require an early initiation. Collegiate education, with its preference for the cla.s.sic languages, Greek and Latin, looks upon the natural sciences as subordinate and neglects them. Hence, the students are frequently devoid of the necessary and preparatory knowledge in natural science that are of decided importance in certain studies, medicine, for instance. Against such a one-sided system of education opposition begins to spring up even in the circles of teachers, as proven by a declaration published in the autumn of 1894 by about 400 teachers of the German High Schools. Abroad, in Switzerland, for instance, the leading place has long since been given to the studies in natural science, and any one, even without a so-called cla.s.sic education, is admissible to the study of medicine, provided otherwise sufficiently equipped in natural science and mathematics. Similarly in Russia and the United States.
In one of his writings, the late Pro. Bischoff gave ”_the rudeness of the students_” as the reason why he did not recommend the study of medicine to women. He certainly was a good judge of that. In another place, and also quite characteristically, he says: ”Why should not one (as professor) now and then allow some interesting, intelligent and handsome woman to attend a lecture upon some simple subject?”--an opinion that v. Sybel evidently shares and even expresses: ”Some men there are who have rarely been able to refuse their a.s.sistance and help to a female pupil, greedy of knowledge and not uncomely.”
Pity the words spent in the refutal of such ”reasons” and views! The time will come, when people will trouble themselves about the rudeness of the ”cultured” as little as about the old fogyism and sensuous l.u.s.ts of the learned, but will do what common sense and justice bid.
In Russia, after much pressure, the Czar gave his consent in 1872 to the establishment of a female faculty in medicine. The medical courses were attended in the period of 1872-1882 by 959 female students. Up to 1882 there were 281 women who had filled the medical course; up to the beginning of 1884, there were 350; about 100 came from St. Petersburg.
Of the female students who visited the faculty up to 1882, there were 71 (9.0 per cent.) married and 13 (1.6 per cent.) widows; of the rest, 116 (15.9 per cent.) married during their studies. Most of the female students, 214, came from the ranks of the n.o.bility and government officials; 138 from the merchant and privileged bourgeois cla.s.s; 107 from the military, 59 from the clergy, and 54 from the lower cla.s.ses of the population. Of the 281 female physicians, who, up to 1882, had finished their studies, 62 were engaged by several Zemstvos; 54 found occupation in clinics; 12 worked as a.s.sistants at medical courses; and 46 took up private practice. It is noteworthy that, of these female students, more than 52 per cent. had learned neither Latin nor Greek, and yet they did as good work as the men. This notwithstanding, female study was far from being a favorite among the Russian Government circles, until the great services rendered by the female physicians on the theater of war in Turkey during the Russo-Turkish campaign of 1877-1878, broke the ice. At the beginning of the eighties, female studies took great increment in Russia: thousands of female pupils devoted themselves to several branches. Due thereto, and due especially to the fact that thereby free ideas were breaking through, threatening to endanger despotism, the female courses were suppressed by an imperial ukase of May 1, 1885, after the lives of the female students had for some time been made as hard as possible.[149] Since then, resolutions have been adopted at several Russian conventions of physicians to pet.i.tion for the re-opening of the medical courses for women,--more than a German convention of physicians would do. As yet the attempt in Russia has remained unsuccessful.
In Finland, a country that, although belonging to Russia, occupies an exceptionally privileged position in the Russian system, 105 female students were at the University of Helsingfors during the winter course of 1894-1895, as against 73 in the summer course of 1894. Of these 105 female students, 47 were entered in the faculty of philosophy of history and 45 in that of mathematics; 5 studied medicine, a strikingly small figure compared with elsewhere; 7 law; and 1 theology.
Among the women who distinguished themselves in their studies, belong the late Mrs. v. Kowalewska, who received in 1887 from the Academy of Sciences in Paris the first prize for the solution of a mathematical problem, and since 1884 occupied a professors.h.i.+p of mathematics at the University of Stockholm. In Pisa, Italy, a lady occupies a professors.h.i.+p in pathology. Female physicians are found active in Algiers, Persia and India. In the United States there are about 100 female professors, and more than 70 who are superintendents of female hospitals. In Germany also the ice has been broken to the extent that in several cities--Berlin, Dresden, Leipsic, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, etc.,--female physicians, especially dentists, are in successful practice.
With regard to energy and capacity in the scientific studies, England, in particular, can cite a series of handsome results. At the examinations in 1893, six women and six men held the highest marks. The examinations on art and on the theory and history of pedagogy were pa.s.sed by nine women and not one man. At Cambridge, ten women sustained the severest test in mathematics. According to the sixteenth report of examinations of female students in Oxford, it appears that 62 women sustained the test of the first cla.s.s, and 82 that of the second cla.s.s; moreover the honorary examinations were sustained by more than one-half of the female candidates. Surely extraordinarily favorable results.
Hostility to compet.i.tion with women is particularly p.r.o.nounced in Germany, because here the military turns out every year such a large number of mustered-out officers and under-officers as aspirants for the Civil Service, where there is little room for applicants from other sources. If, however, women are employed, and then at lower salaries, they appear to the already jealous men in a light that is doubly bad,--first, as cheap labor; then as lowerers of wages. An extensive field of activity have women gained as teachers, a field for which, on the whole, they are well fitted. This is particularly the case in the United States, where, in 1890, of 363,000 teachers, 238,000 were female.[150] In Berlin there were on January 1, 1892, along with 194 Rectors and 2,022 teachers, 1,024 pedagogically educated and 642 technical female teachers, inclusive of their helpers. In England, France and the United States there are, furthermore, since several years, women successfully engaged in the important service of Factory Inspectors, a move that, in view of the enormous proportions that female labor is a.s.suming ever more in the trades and industries, is well justified and becomes everywhere a necessity.
At the Chicago Exposition of 1893 women, furthermore, distinguished themselves in that, not only did female architects draw the plan and superintend the execution of the magnificent building for the exhibition of female products, but that women also appeared as independent operators in a number of products of art, which provoked general applause, and even astonishment. Also on the field of invention have women distinguished themselves, a subject on which, as early as 1884, a publication in the United States imparted information to the world by producing a list of female inventors. According to the list, the following inventions were made or improved by women: an improved spinning machine; a rotary loom, that produces three times as much as the ordinary loom; a chain elevator; a winch for screw steamers; a fire-escape; an apparatus for weighing wool, one of the most sensitive machines ever invented and of priceless value in the woolen industry; a portable water-reservoir to extinguish fires; a device for the application of petroleum in lieu of wood and coal as fuel on steamers; an improved catcher of sparks and cinders on locomotives; a signal for railroad crossings; a system for heating cars without fire; a lubricating felt to reduce friction on railroad cars; a writing machine; a signal rocket for the navy; a deep-sea telescope; a system for deadening noise on railroads; a smoke-consumer; a machine to fold paper bags, etc. Many improvements in the sewing machines are due to women, as for instance: an aid for the stretching of sails and heavy stuffs; an apparatus to wind up the thread while the machine is in motion; an improvement for the sewing of leather, etc. The last of these inventions was made by a woman who for years kept a saddle and harness shop in New York. The deep-sea telescope, invented by Mrs. Mather, and improved by her daughter, is an innovation of great importance: it makes possible the inspection of the keel of the largest s.h.i.+p, without bringing the same on the dry-dock. With the aid of this gla.s.s, sunken wrecks can be inspected from the deck of a s.h.i.+p, and search can be made for obstructions to navigation, torpedoes, etc. Along with these practical advantages, its application in science is full of promise.
Among the machines, the extraordinary complexity and ingenuity of whose construction excited great admiration in America and Europe, is one for making paper bags. Many men, leading mechanics among them, had until then vainly sought to construct such a machine. A woman, Miss Maggie Knight, invented it. Since then, the lady invented also a machine to fold paper bags, that does the work of 30 persons. She herself superintends the construction of the machine in Amherst, Ma.s.s. That German women have made similar inventions is not yet known.
The movement among women has spread even to j.a.pan. In the autumn of 1892, the j.a.panese Parliament decided that it was forbidden to women to figure as publishers or editors of newspapers, also of such papers as are devoted to fas.h.i.+ons, cooking, education of children, etc. In j.a.pan, even the unheard-of sight has been seen of a woman becoming the publisher of a Socialist paper. That was a little too much for the j.a.panese legislators, and they issued the above stated decree. It is, however, not forbidden to women to act as reporters for newspapers. The j.a.panese Government will succeed as little in denying their rights to women as its European rivals of equal mental make-up.
FOOTNOTES:
[124] On this subject, the law for protection of working-women, adopted by the people of the canton of Zurich in August, 1894, with 49,909 votes against 12,531, contains an excellent provision. The law makes it a penal offence for working-women to take from the shop, where they are employed during the day, work to be done at home. This law goes further than any other known to us for the protection of working-women. It also prescribes an extra pay of 25 per cent. for the extra hours fixed by law: the most effective means to check the evil of overwork.
[125] The census of 1890 gives 3,914,571 women of at least 10 years of age engaged in gainful occupations in the United States; that is 17.6 per cent. of the total population engaged in gainful occupations, and 12.7 per cent. of the total female population of the country.
According to the census of 1900 there were 5,319,912 women of at least 10 years of age engaged in gainful occupations in the United States; that is 18.2 per cent. of the total population engaged in gainful occupations, and 14.3 per cent. of the total female population of the country.
Cla.s.sified by kinds of occupation, the census of 1900 shows: 977,336 women engaged in agricultural pursuits; 430,576 in professional service; 2,095,449 in domestic and personal service; 503,347 in trade and transportation; 1,313,204 in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits.--THE TRANSLATOR.
[126] For the sake of verification, and especially with the view of avoiding any serious discrepancy that might arise from a translation back into English from a German translation of the original English, an attempt was made to secure a transcript of the original of the above interesting article. A serious difficulty was encountered. Besides the indefinite date, the abbreviated form, in which the German text gives the name of the Maine paper quoted from--”Levest. Journ.”--and as reproduced in this translation, forced a recourse to guess work. The nearest that any Maine paper, given in the American Newspaper Directory, came to the abbreviation was the ”Lewiston Evening Journal.” The below correspondence tells its tale:
”Daily People, 2, 4 and 6 New Reade street, ”New York, May 18th, 1903.
”Editor 'Lewiston Evening Journal,' Lewiston, Me.:
”Dear Sir--The within is a translation from the German of what purports to be a German translation of an article, or part of an article, that appeared in the 'Journal.' The only date given is 1893.
”I shall esteem it a favor if you will let me have an accurate transcript of the pa.s.sage in the original. If the 'Journal' had such an article, the enclosed re-translation back into English may help to identify the article. Thanking you in advance,
Yours truly, ”D. DeLeon, ”Ed. 'The People.'”
”D. DeLeon, Esq., New York City:
”My Dear Sir--I regret that I can not find the article of which the enclosed is a transcript.
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