Women are especially conspicuous in farming, which is one of the:greatest industries of the State.[1]
A number of women own and publish papers, and each of the large metropolitan dailies has one or more women on its staff.
Education: Women have been admitted to all departments of the State University since its foundation, and there are women professors and assistants in practically every department, including that of Political Science and the College of Engineering and Mechanic Arts. Of the four officers of the Department of Drawing and Industrial Art, three are women. The College of Medicine and Surgery also has women professors in every department, and women are on the faculty of the College of Dentistry.
The State School of Agriculture was established in the fall of 1888. In October, 1897, women were admitted to the regular course of study. In the Academic Department their class work is with the men, but instead of the especial branches of carpentry, blacksmithing and field work, they have sewing, cooking and laundering. They also have a department of home management, home economy, social culture, household art and domestic hygiene, Mrs. Virginia C. Meredith, preceptor.
All the other educational institutions are open to women, and the faculties of the Normal Schools are largely composed of women.
In the public schools there are 2,306 men and 9,811 women teachers. The average monthly salary of the men is $46; of the women, $35.
The State Federation of Women's Clubs, Mrs. Lydia P. Williams, president, is in effect a suffrage kindergarten, many of its members working on committees of education, reciprocity, town and village improvements, household economics, legislation, etc.
In Minneapolis a stock company, capitalized at $80,000, is being formed to erect a club house for the women's societies.
- ↑ The woman farmer turns up the soil with a gang-plow and rakes the hay, but not in the primitive fashion of Maud Muller. She is frequently seen "comin' through the rye," the wheat, the barley or the oats, enthroned on a twine-binder. The writer has this day seen a woman seated on a four-horse plow as contentedly as her city cousin might be in an automobile. Among the many plow-girls of Nobles County is Coris Young, a genuine American of Vermont ancestry, who has plowed 120 acres this season, making a record of eighty acres in thirteen days with five horses abreast.
