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246 & ••••••••• 101 • Remarks by SBA to Meeting about Coeducation at the University of Rochester Editorial note: Summer proved to be a poor season for fund raising, and female students were not admitted to the freshman class at the University of Rochester in September. A new effort began in the week of October 6, “solid with parlor & public meetings,” to raise the money required by the trustees in advance of admitting women. This meeting of sixty or seventy women was held on Granger Place in “the new & elegant home” of Mrs. George C. Hollister, wife of a university trustee and granddaughter of Thurlow Weed. Helen Montgomery and George M. Forbes of the faculty preceded SBA. (SBA diary, 19 September, 6, 7, 10 October 1898, Film, 37:604ff; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 2 July 1898,and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle,31 July,11 September 1898, all in SBA scrapbook 27, Rare Books, DLC.) [7 October 1898] Susan B. Anthony spoke on the subject in her usual forcible, witty and pointed manner. “I do not know how it happened,” she said,“that the Baptists, always so liberal to women, shut out women from their colleges. They allow women liberty in prayer meetings and to vote at church meetings. I think it is just an accident that they did not open Rochester University to her. “It has been the work of my life to bring to the women of this country the right of full-fledged citizenship. I want them to be well equipped for that day that is surely to come. “When,”continued Miss Anthony,“it comes to Rochester, my own city, whenever they have asked me about our facilities for the higher education of the daughters of our city, I have been sorry to say that our college doors are closed against her. To me this is the opportunity for every man and woman with money to realize the need of using it here.It is a cruel thing that the girls of Rochester cannot get a college education unless their fathers are rich enough to send them away. Daughters of well-to-do parents go all over the country to college. I am glad that they can go, but the number of 4 october 1898 ^ 247 girls anxious to go whose fathers are rich are small in comparison to the number of girls whose fathers cannot send them away to school. “Fifty young women from the Free Academy are qualified to enter the university this year; fully twenty-five of them have called at our home and registered their names who want to enter college, but cannot leave home to do so.” 1 Miss Anthony told of the progress she had seen regarding the women of to-day and those of when she first began her public life, and in conclusion said: “There is no female literature or no female art; no female mathematics or science; there is no different kind of soil for the rose, that is to say, different kind of education for women, one little pint cup.” Y Rochester Union and Advertiser, 8 October 1898. 1. The existence of a group of local girls qualified to enter the University of Rochester caught SBA’s attention early in the campaign to achieve coeducation. Speaking at a large public meeting in June, she said she “had heard there are now seventy-five girls in the Free Academy ready to enter the university.” Later in June, she met with girls at the Free Academy’s graduation, and in July, at another meeting, “she ask[ed] all girls who wish to go to college, and are prepared, to attend her ‘at home’ next Monday evening, and talk with her about it.” (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 24 June, 13 July 1898, and SBA diary, 30 June 1898, all in Film, 37:604ff, 38:622, 652.) ••••••••• 102 • Marietta Holley to ECS Adams, New York. October 14th 1898. My Dear Mrs. Stanton: I saw by the paper last night that you have returned to New York, so I write you at once. I did not know your summer address. I have wanted to tell you what I think of “Eighty Years and More.” It is glorious; full and running over from beginning to end with wit, wisdom and fun.You know you told me to give one book away to some one who could not afford to buy one, I am doing better than that, I loan it to people far and near whom I...

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