ides with mine; and the best explanation
thereof that I can offer is that while he knows certain parts of the
country and some institutions better than I, I know certain parts of the
country and some institutions better than he. And we will "let it go at
that."

As for the rest, for the general economic advantages of the
co-educational system to the community, I think I am prepared to go as
far as almost anyone. I am even inclined to follow Miss M. Carey Thomas,
the President of Bryn Mawr College, who attributes the industrial
progress of the United States largely to the fact that the men of the
country have such well-educated mothers. It seems to me a not
unreasonable or extravagant suggestion. I am certainly of the opinion
that the conversational fluency and mental alertness of the American
woman, as well as in large measure her capacity for bearing her share in
the civic labour, are largely the result of the fact that she has in
most cases had precisely the same education as her brothers.

At present I believe that something more than one-half (56 per cent.) of
the pupils in all the elementary and secondary schools, whether public
or private, in the United States are girls; and that the system is
permanently established cannot be questioned. What are known as the
State universities, that is to say universities which are supported
entirely, or almost entirely, by State grants, or by annual taxes
ordered through State legislation, have from their first foundation been
available for women students as well as for men. The citizens, who, as
taxpayers, were contributing the funds required for the foundation and
the maintenance of these institutions, took the ground, very naturally,
that all who contributed should have the same rights in the educational
advantages to be secured. It was impossible from the American point of
view to deny to a man whose family circle included only daughters the
university education, given at public expense, which was available for
the family of sons.

Co-education had its beginning in most parts of the United States in the
fact that in the frontier communities there were often not enough boy
pupils to support a school nor was there enough money to maintain a
separate school for girls; but what began experimentally and as a matter
of necessity has long become an integral part of the American social
system. So far from losing ground it is continually (and never more
rapidly than in recent yea