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from her husband some of the fine points of the game of politics, and she won her fight. She has recently secured a franchise for a telephone system in Mineral Wells, Texas, and is now engaged in promoting that undertaking.

If a woman can manage a telephone company, why not a gas company? The answer is Miss J. J. Dickerman. She has not found her sex a disqualification in acting as the manager and purchasing agent of the Benton Harbor-St. Joseph Gas Company of Michigan.

From managers of companies, the transition is easy to contractors. At the recent meeting of the National Electric Contractors' Association at Cleveland, it was found that two of the members were women. They were Miss Rose B. Richardson of Syracuse, New York, and Mrs. C. Fred Warner of Rockford, Ill. In electricity, in gas, in engineering, in sanitation, women have thus made their way into the same fields with men. It is not surprising, therefore, that they have effected an entrance into architecture, which is more or less a summary of the technical trades, with the added element of art.

Mrs. Louise Bethune of Buffalo, New York, is an architect whose place in the profession is so well established that she has been elected to membership in the American Institute of Architects. Her husband is also an architect. Like Monsieur and Madame Curie in science, and like Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Webb in economics, Mr. and Mrs. Bethune have been able to carry their

companionship from their home to their daily work.

Aice J. Hands, of New York City, has als done some interesting architectural work. She began by making anonymous designs for men architects to use. Afterwards she secured a practice of her own. She put up a model sanitarium in San Francisco and a row of model tenements in New York.

One of the most versatile of women architects is Miss Marion Mahony, of Chicago. This young woman not only did all the architectural work for the Unitarian church in Evanston, Illinois, but rounded the job out by doing the stained-glass windows and the mural painting.

Passing from the professions for a moment to the handicrafts, it is interesting to observe that women are capable, not only of the intellectual effort needed in architecture and in engineering, but also of the manual strength and dexterity required for the actual work of rough construction. Miss Nellie Patterson, of Mount Carmel, Connecticut, for instance, is a full-fledged machinist. She handles the file, the drill, and the planer, standing at her place before her lathe and turning out tools with as much knowledge of the tricks of metalwork as the men who labor by her side.

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FIRST WOMAN PATENT-ATTORNEY IN THE UNITED

STATES.

Miss Florence King, of Chicago.

In the field of invention, the work done by women has long been recognized. And the number of women inventors is steadily increasing. The United States Patent Office makes the calculation, that,

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A SUCCESSFUL EXPERT IN PATENT CASES. Miss Edith Julia Griswold, of New York.

Another woman inventor who does not allow advancing years to interfere with her inventive activity, is Amanda T. Jones of Junction City, Kansas. This unusual woman seems to divide her time between writing poems which have received high praise from the literary journals, and inventing machines which pass the scrutiny of the Patent Office. has five patents on vacuum-preserving devices, and she is just now taking out a patent for a furnace in which the use of oil as a fuel is said to be provided with several new conveniences.

She

With so many women inventors, it is natural that women should become interested in the field of patent law. There are at least two women who have found this field both lucrative and fascinating. One of these women is Florence King of Chicago; the other is Edith Julia Griswold of New York.

Miss King started from the farm. She deserted agriculture for shorthand writing. After a while she became a court stenographer. From reporting law cases, she went on to the study of law. Pretty soon she had fought her way up to the point of being admitted to the bar.

But meanwhile she was taking scientific courses in local technical schools. The energy of this woman was inexhaustible. Her legal knowledge and her technical knowledge together gave her a firm hold on the intricacies of the Patent Office. She established her reputation forever in a great suit which was concerned with a patented material used for packing the axles of railroad cars, and which finally I went for decision

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to the Supreme Court of the United States. While still a young woman, this graduate of the rough work of the farmhouse argued before the judges of the Supreme Court, and won. It was undoubtedly a matter of gratification to her that her client, whose property was saved by her skill, was also a woman.

Edith Julia Griswold of New York has been equally persistent and equally successful. She opened an office in New York as a mechanical draftsman in 1886. After a while she closed up this office, and became managing clerk for the firm of Howson & Howson, patent-attorneys. Here she decided to study law. Being admitted to the bar, she hung out her own shingle, and began to use her knowledge of law and her knowledge of mechanical drawing at the same time. She has been so successful as a patent-attorney that now she has turned most of the office work over to partner, and confines herself in the main to appearing as an expert witness in patent disputes. In 1904, at the World's Fair at St. Louis, she was a member of the International Jury of Awards in the Machinery Department.

Of all industrial enterprises, however, perhaps that of building and managing

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HAS A WIZARD'S TOUCH IN THE TREATMENT OF PLANTS AND FLOWERS.

Mrs. Theodosia B. Shepherd, of Ventura, California,

MAKES DESERT PLACES BLOSSOM. Mrs. Annetta E. McCrea, of Chicago.

apeake Bay. Miss Jane Morgan of Philadelphia, the master of the Waturus, a steam vessel over 200 feet long, is another who has passed the necessary examinations for a pilot's license and who is allowed by law to undertake a pilot's responsibility for the lives of passengers on the high seas.

Is agriculture technical work? It certainly is if it is followed with intelligence. In fact, there is no other occupation in which the technical side is receiving so rapid a development.

The case of Mary E. Cutler, of Holliston, Massachusetts, is a case in point. With a farm which a few years ago cost only a few hundred dollars, this scientific woman farmer is making for herself an annual income of several thousands. She says that the reason for her success is that she does not waste an inch of ground, and that, if possible, each inch is occupied for several different purposes each year. She practices farming of the diversified kind. She grows all the ordinary crops and all the ordinary animals. She also cultivates shade trees and garden flowers for sale. She also specializes in vegetables. And, finally, she watches the markets as closely as possible for changes in values, and then changes her crops accordingly. So much skill has she shown, that she has made her "Winthrop Gardens" famous, and she is employed as a special lecturer by the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture.

The two extremes among women in agriculture are Margaret Deland and

Mrs. Richard King. Margaret Deland, when not writing fiction, grows jonquils in window-boxes and sells them. She is said to be an enthusiastic exponent of this method of profitable agriculture for women. Objection might be taken to it on the ground of its limited possibilities. No similar objection could be made to the enterprise managed by Mrs. Richard King. Mrs. King has a farm of 1,000,000 acres in the southern part of Texas. This means that she owns more land than there is in Rhode Island. She hasn't two United States senators, but she has more than 100,000 cattle. The local railroad runs for about 100 miles through her land. And she is the actual manager and business head of this enormous industry. Although she is now no longer a young or even a middle-aged woman, she still keeps all the details of the business in her own hands.

An altogether different but equally interesting piece of real estate is that managed by Mrs. Theodosia B. Shepherd, at Ventura, California. Mrs. Shepherd is known in California under the two titles of "The Female Burbank" and "The Pioneer Seed-Grower." She was the first person to see the possibility of growing seeds in California for sale in all parts of the United States. But she did not

stop with growing seeds. She began to develop new varieties. She became a specialist in such flowers as begonia, cosmos, and calliopsis. The catalogue of the "Theodosia B. Shepherd Company" is today an enormous volume, on every page of which there is convincing proof of the technical skill and commercial adroitness of the woman manager and owner of the company.

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Mrs. Shepherd is now trying earnestly to develop an absolutely pure-white nasturtium. It is a quest in which the scientist and the mystic go hand in hand. With all her scientific attainments, Mrs. Shepherd retains a strong belief in psychical phenomena. She is sure that the state of her mind has a great deal to do with the production of new species of flowers.

"If I desire a certain kind of flower," she said once, "the forces of my concentrated will and desire unite with, and influence, the forces of the flower. Nature returns to me the thought-patterns which I keep steadily in my mind."

Dairying is a species of farm work to which scores of agricultural schools year

DESIGNS DIRECT-CURRENT ELECTRIC MOTORS AND

GENERATORS.

Mrs. R. S. Feicht, of Pittsburg, Pa.

ly contribute the results of thousands of technical experiments. And the number of women who find dairying profitable is yearly increasing. Among such women may be mentioned Mrs. Scott Durand, of Lake Forest, Illinois. Her "Crab-Tree Dairy" was started not long ago on a strictly scientific basis, both in the matter of food for the animals and in the matter of cleanliness. So great has been the success of this enterprise that it was necessary last fall to move it to larger quarters.

It is, of course, in the lighter forms of agriculture that women have found their best opportunity. In England an agricultural school has been founded solely for

women who wish to devote themselves to dairying and to gardening. This school is under the auspices of the Countess of Warwick, and is located at Studley Castle. It is large and prosperous. Lady Warwick, besides managing 23,000 acres of land, besides hunting with the Warwickshire hounds, besides giving parties as an established leader of society, and besides making speeches for socialism as a member of the Social Democratic Federation, has found time to become the woman patron of agriculture in Great Britain.

Half-way between the work of the horticulturist and the work of the architect, is the field of labor developed by women like Mrs. Annetta E. McCrea. With carloads of trees, flowers, and shrubs, Mrs. McCrea goes from station to station along the right-of-way of the railroads. that employ her. Each station that she touches, she changes from a cinder-set shed to a country villa surrounded by a garden. This, at any rate, is the ideal toward which she works. Lack of money and lack of interest will long prevent any complete reformation of the railway stations of America; but the work done by artists like Mrs. McCrea is already beginning to be noticeable, and the movement will undoubtedly proceed with an increasing momentum.

It is clear that from the woman at Pittsburg, designing electric motors, to the woman at Ventura, California, developing a pure-white nasturtium, there is a range of work within which any woman of intelligence and of ambition can find a place for herself. As the president of a Western university remarked in private conversation not long ago:

"There is no longer any reason why a young woman should deny herself the pleasure of following any study that interests her, on the ground that she will never be able to put it to any practical use. A woman student who has a passion for electricity, for instance, need no longer feel that she ought to divert her attention to music in order to become proficient in something that will enable her to earn her living. To-day a woman can earn her living in electricity if she is really determined to do How this increased scope of commercial possibilities broadens the intellectual interests of the young women who are still at school or college, can easily be imagined. When women can do anything, then they can also think about anything and study anything, and the whole intellectual life of the nation is quickened."

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SO.

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