It appears that of the 41 graduates, ranging from the year 1857 to 1873, no fewer than 36 are now living. Of these the health of 11 is reported as "very good"; 19[Pg 497] "good"; making 30 in all; 1 is reported as "fair"; 1 "uncertain"; 1 "not good," and 3 "unknown." Of the 41 graduates, 30 are reported as married and 11 are single, five of these last having graduated within three years. Of the 30 married, 24 have children, numbering 48 or 49 in all. Of the 6 childless, 3 are reported as very recently married; one died a few months after marriage, and the facts in the other cases are not given. Thirty-four of the forty-one have taught since graduated, and I agree with Professor Weston that teaching is as severe a draft on the constitution as study. Taking these facts as a whole, I do not see how the most earnest advocate of higher education could ask for a more encouraging exhibit; and I submit the case without argument, so far as this pioneer experiment at coëducation is concerned. If any man seriously believes that his non-collegiate relatives are in better physical condition than this table shows, I advise him to question forty-one of them and tabulate the statistics obtained.
In the following editorial in the Woman's Journal Mr. Higginson pursues the opposition still more closely, and answers their frivolous objections:
I am surprised to find that Professor W.S. Tyler of Amherst College, in his paper on "The Higher Education of Woman," in Scribner's Monthly for February, repeats the unfair statements of President Eliot of Harvard, in regard to Oberlin College. The fallacy and incorrectness of those statements were pointed out on the spot by several, and were afterwards thoroughly shown by President Fairchild of Oberlin; yet Professor Tyler repeats them all. He asserts that there has been a great falling off in the number of students in that college; he entirely ignores the important fact of the great multiplication of colleges which admit women; and he implies, if he does not assert, that the separate ladies' course at Oberlin has risen as a substitute for the regular college course. His words are these, the italics being my own:
In Oberlin, where the experiment has been tried under the most favorable circumstances, it has proved a failure so far as the regular college course is concerned. The number of young women in that course, instead of increasing with the prosperity of the institution, has diminished, so that it now averages only two or three to a class. The rest pursue a different curriculum, live in a separate dormitory, and study by themselves in a course of their own, reciting, indeed, with the young men, and by way of reciprocity and in true womanly compassion, allowing some of them to sit at their table in the dining-hall, but yet constituting substantially a female seminary, or, if you please, a woman's college in the university.—Scribner, February, page 457.
Now, it was distinctly stated by President Fairchild last summer, that this "different curriculum" was the course originally marked out for women, and that the regular college course was an after-thought. This disposes of the latter part of Professor Tyler's statement. I revert, therefore, to his main statement, that "the number of young women in the collegiate course has diminished, so that it now averages only two or three to a class." Any reader would suppose his meaning to be that taking one year with another, and comparing later years with the early years of Oberlin, there has been a diminution of women. What is the fact? The Oberlin College triennial catalogue of 1872 lies before me, and I have taken the pains to count and tabulate the women graduated in different years, during the thirty-two years after 1841, when they began to be graduated there. Dividing them into decennial periods, I find the numbers to be as follows: 1841-1850, thirty-two women were graduated; 1851-1860, seventeen women were graduated; 1861-1870, forty women were graduated. From this it appears that during the third decennial period there was not only no diminution, but actually a higher average than before. During the first period the classes averaged 3.2 women; during the second period 1.7 women, and during the third period 4 women. Or if, to complete the exhibit, we take in the two odd classes at the end, and make the third period consist of twelve classes, the average will still be 3.8, and will be larger than either of the previous periods. Or if, disregarding the even distribution of periods, we take simply the last ten years, the average will be 3.1. More-
