district gives the enrolled two males, five females, and average attendance fifty-two; so you can figure on this. Some clerks report more money paid out than they receive, including what was on hand, and have a balance left to begin next year with. You can also figure on this. Patriotism and philanthropy without compensation is a sublime spectacle! But salary necessary for the duties imposed is a powerful auxiliary in obtaining all the needed reforms suggested and desirable in our public schools" 271 The state superintendent evidently did "figure on it" for his report of that year gives 9,033 males in attendance and 8,182 females.272 In 1921-22, in the elementary and secondary schools 83,148 males were reported and 81,312 females, a total of 164,460 of whom 30,196 were in the high schools.273 In the latter period there were also 5,878 males and 6,331 females in private and parochial schools. The Fourteenth Census reported a school population of 179,601 children ranging from five to eighteen years of whom in 1920 there were 151,028 enrolled.*274

Women were enrolled in institutions of higher learning in 1920 in the departments of Theology, Law, Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy. In the School of Theology, the proportion of women to men was nearly equal, 90 women to 106 men; in Pharmacy, the proportion was not quite half, 113 men to 43 women; the Law Schools enrolled 102 men and 9 women; the Medical Colleges, 93 men and 11 women; the Dental School had not reported, but Occupation Statistics of the Fourteenth Census gave 36 women as practicing dentists in 1920. Women greatly outnumber men as students in nurses' training courses, the same census reporting 48 men to 1,348 women nurses.275 In the vocational training schools, pupils in teacher training courses in Agriculture were 43 men and 3 women; in Trade and Industry,

*School Census of persons over four and under twenty years of age 1921-22-116,230 males, 111,916 females, total 228,146. Twenty-fifth biennial report of Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1923. p. 22. The difference in the age groups accounts partially for the difference in the total number in the school population.

27 men and no women, but in Home Economics, 113 women and no men.

For the literacy of her general population Oregon ranks high in the United States. In 1920, the state stood fourth from the top of the list for literacy among males with a percentage of 1.6 of her population ranked as illiterates, and second from the top for literacy of females, with a record of 1.3 of illiteracy in the female population ten years of age and over.276

WOMEN TEACHERS, NUMBER AND SALARIES.

Women teachers began to appear in Oregon almost as soon as school masters did, for teaching was an occupation to which any moderately "lettered" woman could turn for a livelihood, and as the population was sparse, and settlements isolated, each little locality needed its own teacher. In many districts, too, school "kept" only from three to five months; (indeed not until 1917277 was a law passed raising the minimum school year from six to eight months). Teaching in pioneer days did not oblige a person to follow this occupation to the practical exclusion of all others and the chief qualification necessary for it in early Oregon, was a good moral character. Literary accomplishments were prized when attached to the good character, but the anxiety to start schools, made entrance to the teaching career altogether too easy. As late as 1885 one county superintendent suggested that the minimum age for issuing certificates to women teachers should be eighteen. He had issued a good many to sixteen year old girls, he wrote, and they had almost without exception, failed as teachers. In 1911 such a law, making eighteen the minimum age for the issuance of a certificate to any teacher in the state, was passed.278

The proportion of women to men teachers in the Public Schools has grown from 328 women and 437 men employed in 1876-77279 to 5,804 women and 1,096 men in 1921-22.280 In the institutions of higher learning, the university, colleges and professional schools, exclusive of normal schools, there are 364 male teachers and 137

female teachers. The one state normal and two private normals have 17 male teachers and 70 female teachers.281

SALARIES.

There seems to be ample evidence that up to recent years, women were discriminated against on account of sex in the payment of salaries. In 1876-77, the average wage paid to men teachers per month was $47.24, to women, $34.87.282 The larger sum to men may be accounted for partly by the fact that men were the principals where several teachers were employed and by reason of the greater responsibility, that position carried a higher salary. The youth of women teachers undoubtedly would affect their remuneration in some instances, but there could hardly have been enough of them "under eighteen years" to make the difference in salary, for the reason of youth alone, amount to an average of thirteen dollars a month. In 1914, the difference in the average salary of men and women in Oregon high schools was twenty-three dollars a month; men teachers in that year received an average of $86.05; women teachers, an average of $62.98 a month,292 and the very youthful teacher had been eliminated before that time, by legislative enactment.293 In 1915, the legislature ordered that in the employment of teachers, the District Boards should not discriminate between males and females and the same compensation should be paid, taking into consideration the years of successful teaching experience in the district where the teacher is employed.294 Four years later the minimum salary which the board of any district might pay to a teacher in the public schools was set at $75 a month and the county superintendent was instructed to examine contracts to see that this law was obeyed.295

WOMEN EXECUTIVES IN EDUCATION.

Women having been given the opportunity, are tak ing an interest in executive positions connected with school administration. The large number who were elected as county superintendents after equal suffrage

was granted, has been mentioned earlier. In 1901, a woman was elected one of the five members of the Portland School Board, a position which she held by re-election until 1911.296 By 1914, the Portland School Board had appointed six women among its 43 school principals.297 In 1917, after the Federal Vocation School Bill had been passed, two women were appointed by the Governor to act on the State Board for Vocational Training. One of these was still serving in 1922 with the three appointive men members,208 who with the ex officio state official members, make up the entire board of seven. In 1922-23, of five rural supervisors, three were women, and the Superintendent of the State Industrial School for Girls was a woman. There were no women city superintendents.300

9. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.

Marriage as a social institution came within the regulatory province of the little group of men which in 1843 drafted the First Organic Law in the Oregon Country. This act made fourteen the lowest age at which a young woman, sixteen the lowest age at which a young man might contract marriage, but if either party had not attained the age of majority, the consent of the parents was necessary to make the marriage valid. The Legislative Committee of 1844 required that the parents' consent should be given before the marriage of a minor could be solemnized, but did not make such consent necessary to the validity of the marriage; at the same time, the Committee permitted little girls of twelve and youths of sixteen to marry.301

This act was practically unchanged until 1854 when an Act Relating to Marriage and Divorce provided most of the usual regulations on the two subjects. This stated that "marriage so far as its validity in law is concerned, is a civil contract" 302 Every male person of eighteen years and every female of fifteen years was declared capable of contracting marriage, if competent. But a proviso made certain that nothing in the act should be construed to make the issue of any marriage illegitimate. A former marriage in which both parties were living, or relationship to the intended partner, "nearer than first cousinship" was a bar to marriage. Consent of parents was required when either party was an unmarried minor, the prospective husband under twenty-one, or the future wife under eighteen years. Marriages contracted with the consent of the parties when their residence was remote from a person duly authorized to solemnize them, were made valid when no legal impediment to them existed, but the contracts were to be made in writing, witnessed, and recorded in the office of the recorder of deeds within sixty days after their execution. Marriages prohibited by law for the reasons already given, or for want of age, or contracted through force or fraud were declared void without divorce proceedings.

Divorce might be obtained from the bonds of matri