364 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
slavery degrades the slave owner even more than the slave ; and all history teaches us 
hat those who treat women as property rather than spiritual, responsible beings, are 
Jegraded; and we do believe this advance has had a vast spiritual influence, for which 
we thank God. 
The chief leaders of this great movement ¢‘ have surely deserved well of the republic.” 
Miss Buss, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Grey, and Miss Emily Davies survive to look on a 
changed world. All has been done quietly, patiently, gradually. The old idea of a 
«lady ” is gone. To render service is felt to be the highest privilege. And it is mainly 
‘his desire that has made women contend for education and training. This passion for 
serving, as Ruskin has taught, stimulates every faculty, glorifies and gives insight into 
aature, and hallows all art. This, as our great musicians have shown, ennobles the 
smotional nature and exalts its expression. As soon as women came to feel the value of 
a higher education for themselves they longed to lift up those who had not their advan- 
iages ; a great army of unmarried have become working bees in the social hive. 
Women have taken their share in great social organizations. They have sat on school- 
boards ; they have been elected guardians of the poor, aldermen, and county coun- 
silors. Women have been appointed assistant calculators in the Royal Observatory, 
nlerks on labor commission, to say nothing of other civil service appointments. Many 
women have become speakers and writers on social topics, missioners on temperance, 
sanitary science, dress, cooking, home arts and industries, plain and art needlework, 
Slsyd, ete. 
Some took up lecturing as a profession, and are employed by the Palestine and 
fdgyptian Exploration Societies. Miss Harrison lectures at the British Museum on 
itreek art. Others have taken up physical culture, regarding it as a matter of national 
.mportance. 
It was an imposing gathering of about two thousand women at the Conference of 
Women Workers at Bristol last autumn, all of whom are engaged in some philan- 
shropic work, able to write and speak clearly, to organize and to direct. 
There are about sixty different orders of Sisters or Deaconesses, engaged in a vast 
variety of religious, philanthropic, educational, and charitable work ; in the Salvation 
Army, as in the Society of Friends, women bold equal rank with men. 
Vast organizations of many thousands have been formed and managed by women, to 
help those who are working for their bread; notably, the Girls’ Friendly Socicty, the 
Mabis, the Christian Young Women’s Association, the Young Women’s Help Society, 
the Girls’ Club Union, and the College for Working Women. The Oxford and Cam- 
bridge colleges, and the Cheltenham Ladies’ College have tried to do work in these lines, 
and have established settlements of their own in the poor parts of London. Noble 
women have been leaders in the great crusade against the most terrible evils which 
afflict humanity. The old prejudice, that for a woman to earn money was to lose caste, 
is almost a thing of the past; those who are admitted to the highest circles of society 
1ave accepted headships of women’s colleges. 
Head-mistresses rank with head-masters. Lady physicians and other professional 
women now take the place to which they are entitled. 
I believe too that the vast social work that has been carried on by women has averted, 
for a time at least, social convulsions as terrible as those of a century ago. This cannot, 
of course, be proved, and 
“The world which credits what is done 
Is blind to all that might have been.” 
The positive good all know when they see the fierce spirits tamed and the desperate 
cescued from the sloughs of despondency by the power of holy and beautiful lives, 
proving that good is stronger than evil. 
«« Amor vincit omnia.”