n
themselves through the notion of caste which was created in the minds
of those who paid fees to the detriment of their less fortunate school
companions. And again, education that is compulsory should be free.
Other women have since become members of School Boards, but I was the
pioneer of that branch of public work for women in this State. It is a
privilege that American women have been fighting for for many years--to
vote for and to be eligible to sit on School Boards. In many of the
States this has been won to their great advantage. In this present year
of 1910 Mrs. Ella, Flagg Young, at the age of 65, has been elected by
the Chigago Board, Director of the Education of that great city of over
two millions of inhabitants at a salary of 2,000 pounds a year, with a
male university professor as an assistant. At an age when we in South
Australia are commanding our teachers to retire, in Chicago, which is
said by Foster Fraser to cashier men at 40, this elderly woman has
entered into her great power.

It is characteristic of me that I like to do thoroughly what I
undertake to do at all, and when, on one occasion I had not received
the usual summons to attend a board meeting, I complained of the
omission to the Chairman. "I do not want," I said, "to be a merely
ornamental member of this board. I want to go to all the meetings." He
replied, courteously, "It is the last thing that we would say of you,
Miss Spence, that you are ornamental!" It was half a minute before he
discovered that he had put his disclaimer in rather a different form
from what he had intended, and he joined in the burst of laughter which
followed. Another amusing contretemps occurred when the same gentleman
and I were visiting the parents who had pleaded for exemption from the
payment of fees. At one house there was a grown-up daughter who had
that morning left the service of the gentleman's mother--a fact
enlarged upon by my companion during the morning's drive. "Why is your
eldest daughter out of a place?" was the first question he put to the
woman. "She might be earning good wages, and be able to help you pay
the fees." "Oh!" came the unexpected reply, "she had to leave old Mrs.
---- this morning; she was that mean there was no living in the house
with her!" Knowing her interlocutor only as the man in authority, the
unfortunate woman scarcely advanced her cause by her plain speaking,
and I was probably the only member of the trio who appreciated the