REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE ENDOWMENT OF

FELLOWSHIPS

Christine Ladd Franklin (1908)

Classics in the History of Psychology

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Christopher D. Green

York University, Toronto, Ontario

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to the association to which it owes its existence. The mathematicians are in the habit of

admitting, among the quantities which it is their business to consider, the quantity zero and I

fear that it is only by taking advantage of this subtle device that I can today fill the rôle of

presenting to you what can pass for a report; for I am sorry to say that your committee has not

yet succeeded in collecting the $25,000 necessary for putting our plan of an endowed

professorship for women into operation. On the other hand, the times have changed to such an

extent that what seemed a few years ago rather a venturesome undertaking -- the promotion of

women to positions as lecturers in coeducational colleges -- is now so strongly fortified by

precedent that no apology or defense for it is necessary. Nothing remains to be done but to

devise the means for carrying it out. We have not proposed to collect the necessary funds in

despair of their doing so.

I will recall to your minds in a few words the character of the scheme which it is here proposed

to carry out. We have already a large number of Doctors of Philosophy [p. 144] in the country,

many of them women who have fully proved their capacity for the most exacting forms of

scientific and literary research. If they were men, the next step for them would be to become

instructors and assistant professors in colleges and universities. As they are women, the

number of positions open to them is extremely limited -- at least in the East. The women's

colleges do not offer positions enough to meet the demand (and it is not even desirable for the

students that all of these should be filled by women), and the coeducational colleges are for the

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most part closed to them. I find (from advance sheets of the forthcoming reports of the Bureau

of Education, giving statistics for 1905) that there are now a little more than one-third as many

women as men studying in the various colleges and universities of the country, and this is true

of the graduate departments as well as of the collegiate; the exact numbers are 34/100 in the

one and 35/100 in the other. (You will remember that there are three times as many girls as

publishers of books do not ask with reference to a given manuscript, "Is the author of it a

woman ?" but only, "Is what she has to offer a thing of value ?" All we ask for our sex is that

positions in colleges to which women are admitted as students should be filled in this same

dispassionate way, by the brilliant and the distinguished among existing Doctors of Philosophy

without regard to sex, or with very little regard to sex -- with the understanding, say, that

whenever the woman applicant for a position is distinctly superior to the man she shall have the

position. It is this civilized state of things that we are anxious to hasten the coming of by the

device of what may perhaps be better called, as a modest intermediate stage toward an

endowed professorship, a research fellowship and lectureship: that is, an endowed fellowship

for purposes of research, with the condition attached that the incumbent shall be allowed,

statements of interest by its vicious habit of including, for instance, the Central High School of

Philadelphia among its colleges. (It does not put in, strange to say, the Baltimore City College,

so called, a high school which meets its requirements in name if nothing more.) But, to extract

from the report that part of it which is of interest -- that which concerns the institutions of the

first rank -- we find that the University of Wisconsin has among its instructors twenty-five

women; the University of Illinois, twenty-two; the University of Chicago, nineteen; Nebraska

eighteen; Texas, seventeen; and so on down to the University of California, which has one. Or,

to give the proportion of the instructors who are women: at the universities of Nebraska and

Texas they constitute one-fourth of the teaching force, at Colorado and Illinois one-sixth, at

Iowa and Wisconsin one-ninth, at Chicago and Kansas one-tenth, and so on down to the

only say that I have found the situation entirely free from any sense of the abnormal or the

improper -- as a matter of fact, it has been delightful in the extreme. I am convinced therefore,

both from statistics and from personal experience, that there are no real difficulties in the way of

coeducational lecturing and instructing. [This argument is set forth with greater detail in my

paper of 1904, of which reprints are still to be had.] [p. 145]

Observe that our plan would not involve forcing our candidate upon a university where she was

unwelcome, or even where she was a stranger. Our most brilliant applicant will be sure to have

studied already under the most distinguished professor in her subject in the country, and he

would be far from being averse to having her return to his university, even with the condition

attached that she should give a few lectures. To fix the ideas, let us take the case of Miss

glad to have her continue her work under him, at the modest cost of allowing her to give a brief

course of lectures during each of her years (two or one) of residence. This course would

naturally be on her special, very advanced, subject, and hence of such a nature that it would

not be much missed when it came to an end -- of the nature of embroidery, a good thing to

have but not an indispensable part of the regular course of study. But it is well known that the

will at least have had one more year of, let us hope, brilliant work, and thus she will have been

brought much nearer to the time when she becomes so distinguished that she gets her position

as a matter of course and on her own merits. It is just this year or two of being assisted that

would surely in very many cases, tide our fellow over her most critical period, and make just the

difference between swimming and being obliged to sink, as regards her ever becoming a real

savante, a woman of actual distinction.

young men who receive appointments. It is true that the latest piece of wisdom which has been

uttered on this subject -- that of the Dutchman, Professor Blok -- is to the effect that women

"can be exceedingly useful as archivists, as assistant librarians, and also in the collection of

only a little determined effort on our part to modify very much: the fact that it is strange,

unusual, not the thing, not what happens in other colleges, to see a woman lecturing. But the

world moves, and public sentiment changes. Samuel Johnson thought that it would never be

possible for a woman to be a portrait painter, because for her to gaze into the face of a man

long enough to paint his portrait would be "highly immodest in a female;" so in Germany,

England, and France it would not be tolerated today that women should teach boys in the

secondary schools. But in this country women are already college instructors in the West; the

next step to take is to make them college instructors in the East as well. It needs, I am

convinced, only a slight push, a bit of entering wedge, of breaking of the ice, to change the

situation completely. And the weapon with which this can be done -- far sooner than it would

only in very slight measure, to hastening the day when women can be teachers in the colleges

as well? It is in this way -- as an object-lesson to show the entire non-abnormality of the

situation -- that I value the plan -- not at all (or not in comparison) for the sake of the girl herself

who will be benefited by it, [p. 146] important as this is when considered in itself. For it only

needs a few women professors (or a few more than we have already) to enable women to take

on quite a different attitude as regards their status in the public estimation. It takes so few

swallows to make a summer! So long as women are not admitted to the rank of being

considered, when they deserve it, good material for college professors, they are not treated, as

a sex, with that recognition of their ability which we think they deserve. It is for the sake of

overcoming these various handicaps, of adding a makeweight on the other side, that I desire to

send out a few assisted research fellows and lecturers.

of its fellows, to those women who have already taken the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and

who have made a good start in the way of becoming original investigators. There would be

nothing revolutionary in this; it happens that the holder of your fellowship this very year is a

woman of exactly this description.

reside at universities where there would be no objection on the ground of their sex to their being

invited to lecture.

After the Alice Freeman Palmer Fellowship has been secured, that might be considered to

constitute a sufficient provision for the younger graduate students, and the fund then set free

might perhaps be devoted to the furnishing, every other year, of the stipendium of a research

fellow and lecturer.

I am convinced that the most crying need of the present time is the making possible of a

greater number of women who are fully equipped for investigation of the most advanced type. It

is not that I object to as many individuals as possible becoming Doctors of Philosophy before

devoting their lives to teaching in the secondary schools, provided that they do it at the expense

and that I did not despair of their interest reaching, in some cases, the point of actual

endowment. That happy event has now occurred. Mr. Emile Berliner, of Washington, is

devoting the sum of $12,,500 to the founding of 3 research fellowship for women in the subjects

physics, chemistry, and biology. This fellowship will probably be awarded every two years,

beginning with March, 1909. A committee will be formed shortly for its administration. Meantime

I shall be glad to answer any preliminary inquiries.

CHRISTINE LADD FRANKLIN

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Baltimore, Md.