Fortunate Twentieth Century Girl

1901

It is indeed a good time for girls to live, and I think they should realize by whose efforts it became the "good time." Do they ever think what women and girls had to contend with before this time dawned upon the world and how much they owe to some of these same women?

Just think of it! The women breadwinners of the United States, by the report of the last census, count away up into the millions, and it is not so very long ago when not only the industrial avenues, but those of education as well, were closed to girls. Think of their lack of opportunity even half a century ago and contrast it with the present. What were the possibilities of education? Unless she happened to be the daughter of a family who believed in advance of the age that a girl had the brain and ability to learn and that education would not spoil her or make less of a woman of her and a family could afford to give her private masters she had to be content with the merest common school education, less even than children get now in the lower grades of the grammar schools, and even that was grudgingly bestowed upon them. — Sallie Joy White in Woman's Home Companion.