a man. The salaries of women in general range from $900 to $1,600, not more than fifty receiving the latter sum, while many hundreds of men clerks receive $1,800. Clerkships under Civil Service rules are supposed to pay the same to men and women, but the latter rarely secure the better-paid ones. There are a large number of positions graded above clerkships and paying from $2,000 to $3,000 a year to which women are practically never appointed.
Occupations: No professions or occupations are forbidden to women. Two of the pioneer women physicians in the United States made name and fame in Washington—Dr. Caroline B. Winslow and Dr. Susan A. Edson—the latter the attending physician during the last illness of President James A. Garfield.
Education: Howard University, for white and colored students, is the only one which graduates women in medicine. In all of its ten departments, including law, it is co-educational. Columbian University (Baptist) opens its literary departments to women but excludes them from those of law and medicine, which are its strongest departments.[1] They were admitted to the Medical School in 1884, but excluded in 1892 on the ground that the university could not afford to have professors for separate classes and that the buildings were too small for the increased number of students.
Mrs. Ellen S. Mussey and Miss Emma M. Gillett, in 1896, established the Washington College of Law for the legal education of women. Mrs. Mussey has been the dean since its organization and is the only woman dean of a law school in the country. The Hon. Edward F. Bingham, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the District, is president of the board of trustees, and leading members of the bar have used their influence to make the college a success. The curriculum is the same as obtains in the leading institutions. There are several men among the students. Mrs. Mussey is counsel for the Red Cross Society.
The American University (Methodist Episcopal), now being organized for post-graduate work, is to be co-educational.
The great Catholic Universities, here, as everywhere, are
- ↑ In 1901 women graduates were admitted as special students to lecture courses in the graduate department, known as the National School of Jurisprudence and Diplomacy, by a special vote of the trustees in each case, but no general rule has been made.
