ute was one which gave the father the right to appoint by last will a guardian for his minor children and this guardian was to have the authority of the father over them and by common law usage, might even remove them from the mother's custody if she remarried.216 This was amended to give the mother also the right to appoint a guardian by her will, if the father were dead, and to provide that no guardian should deprive either surviving parent of the persons of their minor children.217 The mother has been made the legal guardian of the children also, when the father is not dead but is legally incapacitated or fails to provide for the children under fifteen years of age.218

In court decisions concerning the custody of minor children of divorced persons, Oregon judges seem to have taken a uniformly humane, wise attitude. The child has been left with the mother even though a relative of the father was better able financially to support it,219 and with the mother when the child was a daughter in preference to the father, where both parents were responsible, fit persons, but the father was financially better able to care for her.220 An infant son who with other children had been given to the mother who married again and later called for aid in support of the children from her former husband, was declared by the court as rightfully belonging to the father, now that the child had attained a safer age if the father were going to support him.221 And a mother, to whom an infant son had been given, having died, the father was allowed to take the child from his maternal grandmother.222 A mother who defaulted when the juvenile court took charge of her child as an abandoned child and maintained it in an institution and later allowed it to be adopted, was refused the person of the child after her marriage, when she instituted action to recover it.223 And finally, in a suit by a father to recover damages for the death of his four year old son by the fall of tiling the court said: "Under our statute the right and responsibility of the parents in regard (to the care and custody of a minor child) are equal and the mother is as fully entitled to the care and custody of the children as the father" 224

The mother, however, of an illegitimate child is its natural guardian, and its putative father is not legally bound to support it even though he had promised to do 80.225

THE RIGHT TO FOLLOW CERTAIN PROFESSIONS.

The right to follow a particular profession may prop erly be classified as a property right; but exclusion from a certain kind of work might be in the nature of a restriction of personal liberty; hence the discussion of the subject here.

Oregon has not had at any time any statute which expressly forbade women to enter upon the professions formerly considered as prerogatives of men, such as the practice of medicine, law and dentistry. Women physicians have practiced in the state since 1869.228 Women attorneys sought admission to the Oregon bar in 1878, through a bill intended as an enabling act, but the bill did not emerge from the Committee and the matter rested until 1885.27 In that year a Mary Leonard who had been admitted to the Supreme Court of Washing. ton Territory asked to be admitted as a member of the bar in Oregon. The action on her application and the attitude of Oregon's Supreme Court on the question of "lady lawyers", is given in the decision of the Court on the motion from which we quote. "The application is somewhat unusual.228 The applicant has produced a certificate of admission to the courts of Washington Territory, which .. would ordinarily be regarded as sufficient to entitle a person to admission as an attorney, but the applicant being a woman, the Court is in doubt whether it has a right to admit her. The question is not free from embarrassment and the Court would gladly avoid the responsibility of determining it. Courts, however, have no discretion in such cases. They are compelled to follow precedents as they are evidence of what is law.

"In a very able opinion of the Chief Justice of Massachusetts, it was held that an unmarried woman was not entitled, under the then existing laws of the commonwealth, to be examined for admission as an attorney

and counsellor of that court. Oregon's statutes do not differ materially from Massachusetts in regard to the civil and political status of women, and it follows therefore, that the same construction of the latter statutes would render women ineligible to become attorneys in the state. This is the first application of the kind in this state that the court has any cognizance of, and it is very generally understood that women are disqualified from holding such positions. The legislative assembly has not manifested any intention by any act it has adopted to confer such a right upon them, and it would be highly improper for the courts of the state to take the initiative in so important a movement. The court is of the opinion that it has no authority under the existing laws of the state to admit women as attorneys of this court and the application is denied." The legislative assembly therefore at a special session that same year passed an act declaring: "Hereafter women shall be admitted to practice law as attorneys in the courts of the state upon the same terms and conditions as men'' 229

PROTECTION BY DENIAL OF RIGHT.

One "right" formerly granted to men which was denied women under twenty-one years of age, by a law of 1905, was that of entering a saloon or any place where intoxicating liquor was sold. Such young woman might not be given or sold intoxicating liquor, except at a penalty for the giver, upon conviction, of a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $1000, or imprisonment in the county jail for not less than three months nor more than one year. An exception was made for a female accompanied by husband or parent, and the act did not apply to any open and public restaurant or dining room. The interesting feature of this law is that it applied to persons who were adults in the eyes of the law, since eighteen years is the age at which a female is deemed to have reached her majority. Nevertheless, the courts upheld the validity of the law and emphasized it by declaring that the purpose of the visit had no ameliorating influence on the presence of the young woman there.230

8. WOMEN IN EDUCATION.

One of the first and most frequently expressed aspirations of the builders of the State of Oregon was that their children might enjoy the privileges of a good education. "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged', proclaimed the First Organic Law of the Provisional Government,231 taking the words of the Ordinance of 1787. The Act of Congress creating the Oregon Territory generously provided that sections 16 and 36 in each township of the Territory were to be withheld from settlement that they might later be used for schools232 and again in the Don tion Land Law of 1850, Congress granted to Oregon the "quantity of two to wnships of land west of the Cascade Mountains, and to be selected

bly

by the legislative assemto aid in the establishment of a university in the territory of Oregon". Charles H. Carey remarks233 that Oregon was the first American commonwealth to receive this double grant. The constitution of the state in the article on Education and School Lands required that the "legislative assembly shall provide by law for the establishment of a uniform and general system of common schools" and "for the distribution of the income of the common school fund among the several counties of the state, in proportion to the number of children resident therein between the ages of four and twenty years" 234

There seems to have been no inclination to exclude girls from the privileges of the schools, elementary or advanced. The first school west of the Rocky Mountains was that started in 1832 by Dr. John McLoughlin, with John Ball as teacher, for the boys of Fort Vancouver.2 235 With the coming of the Protestant Missionaries in 1833 and the following years,236 and the Catholic Missionaries in 1838,237 schools came into existence at Mission Centers as part of the evangelizing work. Jason Lee had established one near Champoeg by 1835 with Philip Edwards in charge 238 Dr. and Mrs. Marcus Whitman had another near Walla Walla where Indian boys and girls were accepted.239 Though the first school of the Catholic mis

sionaries, St. Joseph's, at Willamette (St. Paul) in 1842 enrolled boys only,240 as soon as religious women could be obtained, St. Paul's Mission Seminary for girls was opened in 1844 by six Notre Dame Sisters from Namur, Belgium;241 when these Sisters left Oregon in 1853, their work was taken up in 1859 by Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary who came from Montreal for that purpose.242

An active zeal for incorporating seminaries or academies, "institutions of learning in science and literature", took possession of the Oregon residents as soon as the territory was created. In the years between 1849 and 1858 at least twenty-five such institutions were incorporated by the territorial assembly.243 Several were chartered as Female Seminaries, but in most instances no reference was made to discrimination of sex in students, while in others the title of the act expressly declared that the school was to be an institution of learning for the instruction of persons of both sexes. Nearly all of these were denominational and private schools. As a matter of fact, schools supported solely by general taxes were not in favor with Oregon pioneers and their followers, who thought "that every man should educate his own children and not tax others to do it" 244

The proclamation of the organization of Oregon Ter ritory was issued by Governor Lane on March 3, 1849. Between that date and the following July 17 when the territorial legislature assembled, a public meeting was called at Oregon City to discuss matters of importance. One question debated was "Shall we organize a system of free schools?'"245 The vote stood thirty-seven in favor and six against. In response to a message from the Governor,246 the legislature on September 5, 1849, passed an act establishing a System of Common Schools.247 The provisions in it which were of particular interest to women were three. (1) All children or youth between the ages of four and twenty-one were to be embraced by the system.248 (2) All persons who wished to become teachers might take the teacher's examination.249 Either male or female teachers might be employed.250 (3) The