o 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--Brown--founded
in 1764. In 1883 Miss Helen McGill and Miss Annie S. Peck, college
graduates, addressed a meeting at Providence on the higher education
of women. Arnold B. Chace was requested at this time to report at the
next regular meeting of the State Suffrage Association the prospects
for the admission of women to Brown University, as he was treasurer of
the university corporation. At a later meeting the Rev. Ezekiel Gilman
Robinson, then president of the university, by request addressed the
association and declared his views, saying in substance that he was
not in favor of their admission, especially in the undergraduate
departments, as the discipline required by young men and women was
quite different and all social questions would be