Page:Theresa Serber Malkiel - Woman of Yesterday and To-day.djvu/11

 dent that the States were compelled to take notice of it. New York endowed the Troy Seminary for girls, four years later Massachusetts opened the Boston High School for girls. Private institutions increased from day to day. Women studied music and art, bookkeeping and telegraphy. In 1848 a woman received a diploma from a medical college, another was ordained into the ministry. Philadelphia opened a college and school of design for women. The latter became clerks in retail stores, cashiers, stenographers and so forth. Slowly, but steadily they wedged their way into commerce and the professions.

The year 1848 can in many respects be considered a memorable one in the history of woman's progress. It was during that year that several state legislatures enacted the ten-hour law for women. In the same year the first woman's club was organized. in America, the first Woman Suffrage convention called.

All these events, whether taken separately or otherwise, were true signs of the times. The development of woman's mind, the broadening of her field of activity demanded a reorganization of her mode of living, a readjustment of her relations to society. Working with others she acquired the desire to play, think and rule jointly with them.

Greater responsibilities called forth a feeling of self-assertion. The necessity to rely on self for support awakened woman's power of reasoning, the realization of her true relation to society.

Fulfilling life's duties on a par with man, woman commenced to demand equal rights with him. The Suffrage Convention called at Seneca Falls, N. Y.,