The elective system has silenced a host of objectors to co-education. All people who entertain vague notions that women are intuitional creatures, that their perceptions are quicker, but their reflective powers less developed than those of men, and who hold the consequent conviction that women cannot so well conform to prescribed lines of study, all of this class are reconciled to co-education by the elective system. The following quotation supports this view. A father writes: “My daughter has entered Michigan University. Under the old régime I should not have permitted it, for I do not believe in a woman’s undertaking a man’s work; but under the elective system she can take what she likes, can take just what she would in a woman’s college, in short; and as all of the professors are men, the subjects will be much better taught.” This letter is written by an intelligent but rather old-fashioned gentleman, and the sentiments here expressed and implied concerning the elective system are entertained by a still numerous class. The influence of the introduction of co-education at State universities upon the policy of smaller colleges has been irresistible. Although, as has been shown, State universities did not take the initiative in co-education, the influence of the admission of women into such universities as those of Michigan and Wisconsin, has secured a similar change of policy in a large number of denominational and smaller non-sectarian colleges, founded for men only. Appendix B., Table II., will show the relative number of colleges opened to women prior and subsequent to 1870, the year of the admission of women into Michigan University. GENERAL ARGUMENT. On the appearance of Dr. Clarke’s book, “Sex in Education,” in 1873, the controversy, which up to that time had been limited to the localities where co-education was being introduced, at once became general. For the next ten years this subject was discussed in the press, in the pulpit, in meetings of medical societies, and on the platform. In a large collection of old programs there is proof that every phase of the question was considered by all kinds of organizations of teachers, from national conventions to township institutes. Young teachers advanced their opinions, old teachers recited their experience, and the press everywhere gave the widest publicity to these discussions. At the end of a decade the public mind had fully expressed, and, through expressing, had gradually formed its opinion, which was in general favorable to co-education. In 1883 the whole question was opened in a new form by the attempt to exclude women from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University, which had already been open to them for twelve years.