strongly in contrast with the conduct of Mrs. Willard or any of the great educators. Miss Anthony gave no reason for her belief that the entrance of woman upon the other professions would raise either the status or the wages of those engaged in the teacher's profession, and as a matter of fact it has not done so. It was not the society that cast scorn at woman's "lack of brains" which assisted to remove the natural prejudice against her assuming duties that had been deemed unsuited to her physique and her necessary work.
Meantime, one year before the Rochester meeting was held, the first college for women had been chartered at Auburn, N. Y., under the name of "Auburn Female University." In 1853 it was transferred to Elmira, and it was formally opened in 1855. It was placed under the care of the Congregational Church, but its charter required that it should have representative trustees from five other denominations. Its course of study for the degree A. B. was essentially the same that was then pursued in the men's colleges of the State. It was expected to rely upon endowment, which put woman's education upon a new and more secure footing.
Suffrage leaders lose no opportunity to represent the Church as an enemy to woman's advancement. Nothing can be further from the truth; and in striking evidence stand the colleges, which, while unsectarian in spirit and in method, have been established and cared for by special religious denominations. Dr. Jacobi, in her book Common Sense, takes up the tale and says, "The Mount Holyoke Seminary, the immediate successor of that at Troy, was opened in 1837 by Miss Lyon, in spite of the opposition of the clergy." Many besides the clergy were opposed to the plan for which Miss Lyon was endeavoring to raise money. Her idea that the entire domestic work of the establishment could be done by pupils and teachers was thought unwise and hopeless; and it was simply this feature that they disapproved, not the school itself. In that noble school, where thousands of women have been educated, a great number have become missionaries. When a suffrage convention in session in Worcester wrote to Miss Lyon, asking her to interest herself in the wrongs of her sex, she answered, "I can not leave my work." Neither was Vassar College founded from any impulse or suggestion of suffrage agitators, but in a spirit exactly the opposite. The real impetus to its founding came from Milo Parker Jewett. He suggested to Mr. Vassar an endowed college for women, and visited the universities and libraries of Europe with a plan of organization in mind. Mr. Vassar gladly accepted this great enlargement upon an idea that had lain dormant in his own mind, and Vassar College was founded, Dr. Jewett becoming its first president in 1862.
