Beside the extensive exhibit in the general Exposition buildings, women will have another opportunity of displaying work of superior excellence in a very advantageous way in the Woman’s Building, over which the Board of Lady Managers will exercise complete control. In its central gallery it is intended to have grouped the most brilliant achievements of women from every country and in every line of work. Exhibits will be admitted only by invitation, which will be considered the equivalent of a prize. No sentimental sympathy for women will cause the admission of second-rate objects, for the highest standard of excellence is to be there strictly maintained. Commissions of women organized in all countries, as auxiliaries to the Board of Lady Managers, will be asked to recommend objects of supreme excellence produced by women, and producers of such successful work will be invited to place specimens in the gallery of the Woman’s Building. Not only has woman become an immense, although generally unrecognized factor in the industrial world, but hers being essentially the arts of peace and progress, her best work is shown in the numberless charitable, reformatory, educational, and other beneficent institutions which she has had the courage and the ideality to establish for the alleviation of suffering, for the correction of many forms of social injustice and neglect, and for the reformation of long-established wrongs. These institutions exert a strong and steady influence for good, an influence which tends to decrease vice, to make useful citizens of the helpless or depraved, to elevate the standard of morality, and to increase the sum of human happiness; thus most effectively supplementing the best efforts and furthering the highest aims of all government. All organizations of women must be impressed with the necessity of making an effective showing of the noble work which each is carrying on. We especially desire to have represented, in the rooms reserved for that purpose, the educational work originated or carried on by women, from the Kindergarten organizations up to the highest branches of education, including all schools of applied science and art, such as training-schools for nurses, manual training, industrial art and cooking schools, domestic economy, sanitation, etc. When not practically exhibited, the work of all such organizations should be shown by maps, charts, photographs, relief models, etc.; but it is earnestly hoped that one, at least, the most representative institution in each of these branches, will be shown from every country, in order that a comparison may be made of methods and results. BERTHA M. H. PALMER. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE AGE OF DISCOVERY.