list of four hundred fairly
representative great men, only 10.25% ceased their mental activity
between the ages of forty and fifty; 20.75% between fifty and sixty; 35%
between sixty and seventy; 22.5% between seventy and eighty; and 6%
after eighty.[28]

[28] W.A. NEWMAN DORLAND, _The Age of Mental Virility_. New York: The
Century Company, 1908.

The recognition of such facts as these has given us a new genetic sense
of life, under the influence of which mothers and grandmothers have
joined the younger women in the pursuit of culture. They have formed
clubs--study clubs, current events clubs, camera clubs, art clubs,
literary clubs, civic clubs. They have organized courses of university
extension lectures; enrolled in Chicago University correspondence
courses; and have flocked to Chautauqua by the thousand in the summer,
when not abroad. It is not through the generosity of men that liberal
culture has come into the possession of women; they have carried it by
storm and have compelled capitulation.

Judging by the facts presented in the last chapter, women are pretty
fully in possession of formal education. If we examine this monopoly a
little more carefully, we shall find that while in the kindergarten and
in the elementary schools boys furnish 51% of the enrollment, simply
because more boys are born in civilized communities than girls, as soon
as we reach the high schools, girls increasingly take the lead. In 1910,
the girls formed 56.45% of the enrollment in high schools--or there were
110,249 more girls than boys. The proportion of girls increased through
each of the four years of the course, and of the graduates, 60.8% were
girls. In the public normal schools, 64.45% of the students were girls.

The universities, colleges and technical schools, which are massed
together in our government reports, had hardly any women students in
1870; in 1880, 19.3% of the students were women; in 1890, 27%; in 1910,
30.4%. In all these institutions we had enrolled in 1910, 17,707 women.
Of 602 institutions reported in 1910, 142 were for men only; 108 were
for women only; and 352 were open to both sexes. But here again the
influence of women increases during each of the four years for, as we
have seen, the women took 41.1% of the A.B. degrees granted in 1910. It
is surely not too much to say that, if present conditions continue,
women will soon be in an overwhelming majority in all secondary and
higher education in the United Sta