Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/247

Rh aging 40.7 years, and the actress and the artist stand next. They each average 44.4 years.

In the matter of education, the technical education is not considered, the object of the writer being to find the importance which general education and college training hold in the making of a successful woman. It is true, however, that most of the artists and the musicians and many of the educators studied abroad in their special lines. Where no mention whatever is made of education, the writer concludes that it must have been slight.

The table indicates that college training has played a small part in woman's success, only 148 or 15.5 per cent. The largest percentage of college bred women is found among scientists, ministers and educators, but even the number of educators who have had college training is less than half, while in all the other professions, except the ones already named, the table shows less than one fourth to be college women. Some of these women have taken more than one degree, and others have studied in one or more colleges and universities without having taken a degree in any. The question, however, is not so much what place college training has occupied in the past, as it is what the tendency toward extended study and investigation seems to be. By arranging those who gave their age in separate columns according to the date of birth, one may get a fair idea of the tendency towards a higher education, and the relative value it bears in the successful life. All those born before 1850 are classed together and the others by decades. The two columns following the date of birth show respectively the number and the per cent, of college women. Among authors there is an increase of college women who were born during the fifties, over those born before 1850. The next decade shows a further increase of ten per cent., but of those born between sixty and seventy there is a decrease of ten per cent., or from 58.3 per cent, to 47.6 per cent. Educators, as has already been said, have the largest number of college women. The last decade considered shows only four names, but they are all college bred. If, however, all the professions are considered together, the reader will see that the per cent, of college bred women born between 1860 and 1870 is less than in any preceding period.

The table also shows the chief woman's colleges represented in comparison with coeducational colleges. Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe and Bryn Mawr each count authors and educators of note among their daughters, but beyond these professions they are scarcely represented at all. The other colleges represented are with few exceptions, the coeducational colleges and state universities east of the Mississippi River. With the exception of the philanthropists, the number who were educated in coeducational institutions is in every case