The New Female College

[For the Louisville Journal]

THE NEW FEMALE COLLEGE

Many of the citizens have long been impressed with the importance and propriety of establishing a first class college for young ladies in the city of Louisville. And why should it not be so? Louisville, it, is admitted, is one of the wealthiest city in the United States.

It is admitted too that the materials to build up and sustain such an institution are here. There are more young ladies, it is said, now sent away from Louisville to be educated than would sustain a first class female college at home. Nor do the young ladies along go from our city, but with them many thousands of dollars are sent annually to Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere that might be kept circulating among our own citizens, were we united to patronize and establish a female college of the right grade in Louisville.

Such an institution would not only retain the circulation that now goes to build up and sustain neighboring and rival cities, but would bring to Louisville ten, twenty, and perhaps fifty thousand dollars annually, to be expended amongst our own merchants, tradesmen, artisans, and manufacturers that now is lost to us.

It is believed that the female college in Cincinnati brings to that city in one form or another $50,000 annually, that would not otherwise find its way there, beside retaining perhaps as much more, which, but for that institution, would be sent away. Can we not do the same thing and secure similar advantages here? If so, a female college in Louisville is an important enterprise, even in a business point of view, and should be carefully sustained.

There is another consideration of still greater moment. It is the intellectual and moral aspect such an enterprise presents. Afford to the young ladies fo this or any other community increased facilities for "looking into" the sciences, and of treading the more delectable paths of the higher literature - train them up to proper mental discipline, and accustom them to investigate and reason for themselves, closely and logically, and it will give them a commanding influence in society that no language can adequately express.

And as ladies usually exert a moral power proportionate to the influence they hold in social life, the good likely to result must be, in a moral as well as in an intellectual point of view, highly beneficial. A female college in Louisville, properly arranged and judiciously managed, will not only give tone and character to the youth of our city, but tend to elevate our character abroad. If our two excellent medical colleges, our law school, and other institutions populations, that would otherwise be led in other directions. In every aspect in which we have been able to view this enterprise it appears to us in very favourable light.

Now just such an institution is to be opened here in a few days. The gentlemen concerned in the establishment of the new college in this city, and those of our citizens who are [illegible] with them, certainly deserve our kindest thanks and most ardent cooperation.

They ask no outlay of our funds, no annual tax upon our property, but simply, that, instead of sending our daughters abroad to be educated, we send them to a better school at home than can probably be found abroad, and thus keep them under your own guardianship, which is, to our minds, a material advantage, and meanwhile demands less money than most other schools of similar grade for the services rendered.

We mistake the character of the citizens of Louisville if they do no foster this college enterprise fully and freely. A Citizen.