over, during the first period there was one class (1842) which contained no women at all; and during the second period there were three such classes (1852-3, 7); while during the third period every class has had at least one woman.
It certainly would not have been at all strange if there had been a great falling off in the number of graduates of Oberlin. At the outset it had the field to itself. Now the census gives fifty-five "colleges" for women, besides seventy-seven which admit both sexes. Many of these are inferior to Oberlin, no doubt, but some rose rapidly to a prestige far beyond this pioneer institution. With Cornell University on the one side, and the University of Michigan on the other—to say nothing of minor institutions—the wonder is that Oberlin could have held its own at all. Yet the largest class of women it ever graduated (thirteen) was so late as 1865, and if the classes since then "average but two or three," so did the classes for several years before that date. Professor Tyler knows very well that classes fluctuate in every college, and that a decennial period is the least by which the working of any system can be tested. Tried by this test, the alleged diminution assumes a very different aspect. If, however, there were a great decline at Oberlin, it would simply show a transfer of students to other colleges, since neither Professor Tyler nor President Eliot will deny that the total statistics of colleges show a rapid increase in the number of women.
Moreover, I confess that my confidence in Professor Tyler's sense of accuracy is greatly impaired by these assertions about Oberlin, and also by his statement, which I must call reckless, at least, in regard to the inferiority in truth, purity and virtue of those women who seek the suffrage. He asserts (page 456) that "women—women generally—the truest, purest and best of the sex—do not wish for the right of suffrage." Now, if the women who oppose suffrage are truest, purest and best, the women who advocate it must plainly be inferior at all these points; and that is an assertion which not only these women themselves, but their brothers, husbands and sons are certainly entitled to resent. Mr. Tyler has a perfect right to argue for his own views, for or against suffrage, but he has no right to copy the Oriental imprecation, and say to his opponents, "May the grave of your mother be defiled!." He claims that he holds official relations to one "woman's college," one "female seminary" and one "young ladies' institute." Will it conduce to the moral training of those who enter those institutions that their officers set them the example of impugning the purity and virtue of those who differ in opinion from themselves?
But supposing Professor Tyler not to be bound by the usual bonds of courtesy or of justice, he is at least bound by the consistency of his own position. Thus, he goes out of his way to compliment Mrs. Somerville and Miss Mitchell. Both these ladies are identified with the claim for suffrage. He lauds "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but Mrs. Stowe has written almost as ably for the enfranchisement of woman as for the freedom of the blacks. He praises the "sacramental host of authoresses," who, he says, "will move on with ever-growing power, overthrowing oppression, restraining vice and crime, reforming morals and manners, purifying public sentiment, revolutionizing business, society and government, till every yoke is broken and all nations are won to the truth." But it has been again and again shown that the authoresses of America are, with but two or three exceptions, in favor of woman suffrage, and, therefore, instead of being "sacramental," do not even belong to Professor Tyler's class of "wisest, truest and best." He thus selects for compliment on one page the very women whom he has traduced on another. His own witnesses testify against him. It is a pity that such phrases of discourtesy and unfairness should disfigure an essay which in many respects says good words for women, recommends that they should study Greek, and says, in closing, that their elevation "is at once the measure and the means of the elevation of mankind."
In the autumn of 1884 an effort was made to exclude women from Adelbert College. We give an account thereof from the pen of Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton, published in the English Woman's Review of January, 1885:
