WOMAN'S PROGRESS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1037, 28 January 1911, Page 11

WOMAN'S PROGRESS.

. "ENCYCLOPAEDIA" CONTRIBUTORS. PUTTING AUTHORS STRAIGHT. The last of the scries of dinners ■ to celebrate tho completion of the eleventh edition of tho "Encyclopaedia Britannica"{ was pre-eminently a woman's affair. For tho liist timo in tho history of tho "Encyclopaedia," women have taken a real part in preparing it, sbmo forty or fifty being engaged as contributors or- as members ,ot tho editorial staff. Madame Curie, Mrs. Hum-phry-Ward, and Mrs. Henry. Sedgwick aro all-,contributors, and,among other distinguished woolen present at the dinner wero Mrs. Fawcett and Miss Philippa Fawcett, Dr.- Sopliie Bryant, and representatives of Girtou, Nownham, Soinorville. and Holloway Colleges,

Mrs; Hinkson (Kath'aririo, Tjha'iv),'-arid many well-known women writers. Miss Janet. Hogarth,' head of the .: fem'ajo; staff of tho "Euc,yelopaedia,"ihreply to the. toast of .women's work, made a witty and amusing speech. Tliey. were .celebrating, ;-,sho. said, the . work ■of wom'en,'represcntilig-education, scholarship, literature, travel, sociology, science, philosophy, medicine, and his-' tory,: who. had all contributed, to tho, great book, arid whoso fitness to do so would receive instant acknowledgment. Tho wide -range of their'activity, showed that into tho last . four decades women had compressed.tho work of four centuries. In 1875, when ,tho ninth edition of -tho "Encyclopaedia" was beginning, there wero no women's colleges at Oxford and only two. very small experimental institutions- at Cambridge. Women had then only just'got into the post office; now they were, thore in thousands. Even at that most conservative ol institutions, tho Bank of England, there were now sixty'women, v Woriicu clerks wero now everywhere ; they practically V monopolised secretarial.'work; they were bookkeepers in all the great shops. Seventeen years ago there.were no Women inspectors; now they were both a power and a terror in the land. Twenty years' ago women journalists could be counted on tho fingers—to-day they were' everywhere. In connection with' tho Index to /tho. "Encyclopaedia", tho women had been busy fulfilling their feminine function of keeping men straight. . There were 1500 contributors to , look after, all eminent, and no one was so careless about his references or so prono to leavo mistakes in his proofs as a really eminent author. One distinguished archaeologist put a battle nearly a_ century wrong. Another very eminent' contributor mixed up, tho toad and tho serpent, and misquoted Shakespeare to provo tho prevalence of serpent worship. Tho Women, wero worrying- tho editors all the time, and ' when they nodded—as even tho 'greatest cdrtors must sometimes—they insisted on walking thorn. Not only had women dono much for the "Encyclopaedia," but it had done much.for them —giving them a chance" such as they had never had before to. show what they could do to help learning. Mrs. -Fawcett, Miss A. M. Anderson, M.A., (principal lady, inspector'of factories), and the' Mistress of Girton also spoko .