CHAPTER XVII

I

CO-EDUCATION

T was a part of Mr. Cornell's original plan that the university should be open for the instruction

of both young men and women. It was in accordance with his natural training and mode of thought; he was of Quaker ancestry, and was familiar with the traditions of that body, in which an equal prominence is given to women in public meetings. To the eloquence and pure moral sense of women who have advocated moral reform, education, and the abolition of slavery, the advance of our country has been largely due. It was therefore natural that, in any conception of the university, he should include co-education of the sexes. In a letter written from Albany to his only granddaughter, February 17, 1867, nearly two years before the opening of the university, he said: "I want to have girls educated in the university, as well as boys, so that they may have the same opportunity to become wise and useful to society that the boys have." He even asked that his letter might be preserved, so as to show to the university authorities in the future what his wishes were. In his address at the opening of the university he had distinctly stated: "I believe we have made the beginning of an institution which will prove highly beneficial to the poor young men and poor young women of our country."

Mr. Cornell paid a beautiful tribute to his wife and to her share in the foundation of the university, in a letter from Washington, January 16, 1869:

yet they are pleasant and profitable to look upon. Honors, cheaply won, are lightly esteemed. Our honors are the price of long years of toil, patient, persistent labor, scanty means, long absence from home and each other's society, anxious cares and perplexities such as swamp many stout hearts and send them wrecked down the stream of time to the ocean of oblivion. Happily, we have reached a nobler goal. Your trials have triumphed, and you now hold a position envied by those whom you once regarded as the most favored among women.

"To pass by minor honors, the one of being the wife of the founder of the Cornell University, and the wife to whose efforts and privations and struggles that institution owes its existence, as much as to the founder himself (for I freely acknowledge that without your assistance at home I could never have accomplished the successes which have culminated in the university), is an honor higher and nobler than falls to the lot of many women. I hope that a still higher honor awaits my dear wife.

"The honor of founding a system of industry by which girls holding the same position in society that you did at the period of our marriage, may, by the application of three or four hours of their time each day, provide the means for procuring the highest and most useful education. The need of such an industry is becoming daily more and more apparent, and it is sure ere long to be worked out, and nowhere can it be more easily done than in connection with the Cornell University. And no woman or man will in future receive nobler and more lasting, or better deserved honors, than will she or he who organizes such an industry. That my wife may be the great benefactor of her sex in this reform is an ambition that I dearly cherish.

"The glory of woman's suffrage will pale before

the brighter rays that will flash from the sun of woman's self-reliant and independent action in providing for her greatest needs. Your practical and well-organized mind directed in this channel cannot fail to arrive at conclusions that will lead to success. I shall be happy to contribute my mite in such a noble work."

It is easy to see whence Mr. Cornell derived his faith in woman, and how naturally, and as a debt of gratitude to his wife, he sought to provide facilities for the higher education of woman. All Mr. Cornell's letters to his wife bear witness to the perfect confidence which existed between them, and contain a revelation of his lofty ideal not often shown in familiar correspondence. Thus, in a letter from Albany, written August 4, 1866, he says:

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I now feel, for the first time, that the destiny of the Cornell University is fixed, and that its ultimate endowment would be ample for the vast field of labor it embraces, and if properly organized for the development of truth, industry, and frugality, it will become a power in the land which will control and mould the future of this great state, and carry it onward and upward in its industrial development, and support of civil and religious liberty, and its guaranty of equal rights and equal laws to all men."

President White in his inaugural address met the question with great frankness, when he said: "As to the question of sex, I have little doubt that within a very few years the experiment desired will be tried in some of our largest universities. There are many reasons for expecting its success. It has succeeded not only in the common schools, but, what is much more to the point, in the normal schools and academies of the state. It has succeeded so far in some of the lecture rooms in some of our leading colleges that it

is very difficult to see why it should not succeed in all their lecture rooms; and if the experiment succeeds as regards lectures, it is very difficult to see why it should not succeed as regards recitations. Speaking entirely for myself, I would say that I am perfectly willing to undertake the experiment as soon as it shall be possible to do so, but no fair-minded man or woman can ask us to undertake it now, as it is with the utmost difficulty that we are ready to receive young men. It has cost years of hard thought and labor to get ready to carry out the first intentions of the national and state authorities which had reference to young men. I trust the time will soon come when we can do more." At the opening of the university, co-education had already received a successful trial of more than thirty years in Oberlin by the noble and devoted citizens of New England who settled the Western Reserve in Ohio. Horace Mann and his equally enthusiastic supporters had set on foot a similar experiment in 1853. Mr. Mann had declined the nomination to be governor of Massachusetts in order to accept the presidency of Antioch College, and to pass through the pathetic struggles which accompanied the foundation of that institution. Other institutions in the East had adopted the Oberlin plan, but the movement had occurred on so small a scale that its presence as a decisive factor in educational life had not been widely felt. Michigan, which possessed the largest state university, had felt the powerful demand among the people, and even in the legislature, for the admission of women. In the years 1867 and 1868 the legislature passed recommendations urging the Regents to admit women to all the facilities of instruction in the state university. President White, while accepting theoretically the justice of the demand for the higher education of women, felt the limitations, both financial and otherwise, which

would make immediate favorable action in that direction impossible. In the interval a vigorous aggressive movement on the part of the advocates of female suffrage, who saw, in the higher education of woman, a step toward her wider participation in public life, began, and pressure, personal as well as public, was exerted to use the university as an instrument to promote these views. Miss Susan B. Anthony visited the university and consulted with Mr. Cornell. She afterward wrote: "I visited Cascadilla, smelt tobacco smoke, and saw that ladies were needed there." She advised the engagement of a woman housekeeper to teach culinary branches.

Early in the year 1869, an organized campaign was begun to secure the admission of women to the university. On March 27 Miss Susan B. Anthony delivered an address in Library Hall as the opening note of this movement. In order to storm the citadel in the initial attack, Mr. Cornell was invited to conduct Miss Anthony to the platform and to introduce her to the audience. In presenting her, he stated that he had supposed that she would have had independence enough to take the stand alone and introduce herself. He was willing to accompany her, but opposed to the surrender of all his masculine rights. Miss Anthony stated that the day in which the constitution of the university should be amended so that women might be admitted to all its benefits and privileges, on the same terms as men, would be celebrated hereafter as sacredly as the Fourth of July or the day of the birth of Jesus Christ. At the conclusion of Miss Anthony's address, Mr. Cornell, in obedience to a call from the audience and at the command of Miss Anthony, informed her, whom he characterized as the "ungentle advocate of the rights of the gentle sex," that any lady passing the competitive examinations for a state