Monday, February 9, 2015

Banks, Schools, Electricity, and Women Not Allowed to Practice Law, 1904

From the Cherokee Scout, Murphy, N.C., published Tuesday, February 23, 1904

The 1,782 national banks throughout the country, which have been organized since March, 1900, have a combined capital of $104,000,000. It must be remembered that this capital is cash—not a drop of moisture. This is almost the only class of corporations of which that can be said

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It is a surprising fact that more than one-fifth of the entire population of the United States was enrolled in 1902 as pupils in the common schools. The exact number is 15,925,887; nor does this include all who attended school, for when the number of pupils in private schools is added, the grand total reaches 18,080,040. Is it any wonder that the public school system of this country is the admiration of nearly all the rest of the world? Inquires a writer in the New York Tribune. The amount of schooling that each individual of the population is receiving on average is a matter of general interest. In 1850, in the days of Horace Mann and his disciples in New England and elsewhere, each person received a schooling, all told, of 420 days; in 1902 each person’s education occupied 1,032 days, or 612 more days than the average person received in 1850. This means, of course, that the general average of intelligence is far higher than in former years.

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Says the Chicago Tribune: Some idea of the magnitude of the lighting branch of electrical development may be gained from a recent bulleting issued by the Bureau of the Census, which gives the statistics of central electric light and power stations in the United States from 1881 to the end of June, ???. At the time of the enumeration there were 3,620 electric stations in operation, representing a total cost of $504,740,352 for constructing and equipment. These stations furnished employment to 23,330 wage-earners, who received $14,983,112 during the year. While the details of power plant equipment are of interest to electricians and engineers, public interest will attach chiefly to the significant fact that 22.5 per cent of the total number of stations were operated under the control of municipalities, supplying 50,759 arc lamps and 1,577,451 incandescent lamps. The municipal plants represented a total cost of $22,020,472, and gave employment to 2,467 wage-earners, who were paid $1,422,341 in wages. The private stations operated 334,903 arc lamps, and 16,616,593 incandescent lamps. The gross income from private plants was, for the year ending June, 1902, $78,735,500.

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If the women of England are smarting under the refusal of the lord chancellor to admit them to the practice of law they must wring balm from the compliments and hopes quite generally tendered them from the opposite sex, declares the Boston Transcript. Almost every one of these consolers calls to mind the fact that 50 years ago it would have been extremely difficult if not impossible for a woman to be admitted to the practice of medicine in England and this alone, although it may not be strongly encouraging to the present fair petitioners, should buoy them up considerably since it seems to prove that in 50 years, at the outside, members of their sex will be as plentiful in the law as they are now in medicine. And incidental to citing the considerable struggle that women had to secure the coveted M.D., these purveyors of consolation relate any number of facts and circumstances as lights along the way of women’s progress that may convince them the time is coming when it will be theirs to grant or refuse to men the privileges for which they sue, and sometimes in vain in these days. Perhaps these chivalrous soothers of wounded ambitions have gone to unwarranted extremes in allowing that this may come to pass, but it should be said of them that “they mean well.” They are enthused, carried away it may be said, but their subject, or subjects, to bounds which they didn’t sight when they began their mission of sympathy.

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