stalled as a regular officer. From this beginning the movement spread until in 1893 an Act was passed by the General Assembly, without a dissenting voice, requiring police matrons in all cities, the nominations in each to be recommended by twenty women residents in good standing.
The first agitation for women probation officers was started in a meeting of the State Suffrage Association in 1892. The W. C. T. U. and the leaders in rescue mission work in Providence continued the movement, and in 1898 a woman was appointed in Providence to that office, with equal powers of the man probation officer, to be responsible for women who are released on parole.
In 1893 an Act was passed as the result of a determined movement lasting several years, in which the suffrage association shared, although the principal leaders were the labor reform organizations of the State and the Council of Women of Rhode Island (to which body the W. S. A. was auxiliary). It raised the legal age of the child-worker from ten to twelve years, provided for sanitary conditions and moral safeguards in shops and factories, and for the appointment of two factory and shop inspectors, "one of whom shall be a woman," to secure its enforcement. The man and woman inspector were made exactly equal in power, responsibility and salary, instead of the woman being, as in most States, a deputy or special inspector. Mrs. Fanny Purdy Palmer was chosen for this position.
Appointive offices which women have held recently, or are holding, are assistant clerk of the Supreme Court and Court of Common Pleas; stenographer for same; clerk to State Commissioner of Public Schools; clerk to State Auditor and Insurance Commissioner; as superintendent of State Reform School for Girls, and as jailer in Kent county.
No woman has ever applied to serve as notary public, but doubtless it would not be considered legal.
Occupations: No occupation or profession is forbidden to women, but a test is soon to be made as to whether they will be admitted to the bar. Women are prohibited from contracting to work more than ten hours a day. They can bind themselves to be apprentices till the age of eighteen, men until twenty-one.
Education: Rhode Island contains only one university
