Nevertheless, many refuse to acknowledge this claim of equalization by pronouncing woman inferior to man concerning intellectual abilities. Daily experience and the records of the past, however, demonstrate sufficiently that many modern industrial pursuits have successfully been carried on by female activity. Not only the occupations, which require manual dexterity and good taste, also the higher branches of various sciences and arts have been excellently mastered by educated ladies, performing professional duties, whose execution demands a vast amount of intelligence and learning. Thus the official U.S. census of 1890 contained the enumeration of 2,438 doctresses; 110 female lawyers; 2,136 architectresses; and 155,000 lady teachers in public schools. Among the students, attending the diverse colleges in the Republic, more than 18,000 are young ladies. Even as inventors, women have distinguished themselves, as we may judge from the fact that during the last three decades, about 2,500 patents have been granted to female claimants, and scientific papers published--in 1884--a list of contrivances deriving their existence from the inventiveness of females. Of the uncountable evidences of woman's inventive genius, the enumeration of the following devices and improvements may suffice: a chain elevator; an appliance for lessening the noise of elevated cars; a lubricating felt for diminishing friction (very useful for railroad cars); a portable water-reservoir for extinguishing small fires; an apparatus for weighing wool (one of the most sensitive machines ever invented, and of incalculable advantage for the wool industry); a rotary loom (performing thrice the work of an ordinary one); furthermore, manifold improvements to the sewing-machine, such as a device for threading the needle while the machine is in full operation; an appliance for sewing leather--contrived by a woman in New York who runs a saddlery business there--; and many others. To the sensational inventions, originated in female brains, belong--the sea-telescope devised by Mrs. Mather, an instrument for the purpose of examining the keel of a ship without requiring her being put into the dry-dock--and a complicated machine for manufacturing paper bags, a very intricate affair which many eminent mechanicians have made but unsuccessful efforts to contrive. Since then, Miss Maggie Knight, the inventress of the machine above mentioned, has found out another; namely for folding paper-bags. The latter performs the work of thirty men, and has been put up under that lady's personal supervision in Amherst, Mass. The wonderful achievements made by women in America, have not been attained by females of any other country on the globe. This circumstance is mainly due to the fact that the public school as well as the college system in the United States--contrary to that of other nations--makes a finished education accessible to both men and women.