The State universities numbered 30 in 1890, having 12,846 students and 964 instructors. The value of the grounds and buildings aggregated $15,146,588, and the productive fund $10,411,964. The total income for the State schools reached the handsome sum of $2,176,250. These State universities have become fixed factors in our civilization, and give promise of accomplishing a great work for the people. What the character of the work shall be, remains with the American people to decide. This century has witnessed in the United States the beginning and growth of _Colleges for Women_. This is the fruit of the increasing development of the idea and sentiment in favor of women sharing with men in the privileges of the highest culture and all rational enjoyment. Exclusive privileges and distinctions on account of sex are contrary to the character and genius of a free people. "If," says President Dwight, "education is for the growth of the human mind--the personal human mind--and if the glory of it is in upbuilding and outbuilding of the mind, the womanly mind is just as important, just as beautiful, just as much a divine creation with wide-reaching possibilities as the manly mind. When we have in our vision serious thought as the working force and end of education, the woman makes the same claim with the man, and her claim rests, at its deepest foundation, upon the same grand idea." The history of the movement in favor of the collegiate education of women is interesting and instructive. One of the first steps in this direction was taken by Mrs. Emma Willard, who opened a school for girls in Middlebury, Vermont, in 1808, which in 1819 was removed to Waterford, New York. Two years later she founded the Troy Female Seminary. Education for women received a new impulse through Miss Catharine E. Beecher, who, in 1822, opened at Hartford, Conn., an academy for girls, and it met with excellent success. Further efforts were made to extend education to young women of more mature years and give them the advantages of an intellectual training equal with that of colleges for men. The Wesleyan Seminary for women was founded at Kent's Hill, Maine, in 1821, and Granville College for women in 1834. Through the earnest effort of Miss Mary Lyon, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary was incorporated February 10, 1836. The Elmira Female College was founded in 1855. These colleges multiplied rapidly and now there are more than two hundred institutions of higher learning devoted exclusively to the education of women.