While there was formerly something to be said on each side of the question of separate exhibits, the extent to which women now enter into all departments of industrial and professional activities, renders it not only difficult, but in some instances almost impossible, to make a separate exhibit of the part they perform.  It is true, if women were to-day eliminated from the employments in which they are now engaged and relegated to those of forty years ago, the exhibits of the nature of man’s work would be in no wise affected, and women have not sufficiently taken the initiative (from lack of capital and adverse competition), in establishing large manufacturing plants to be enabled by these means to make exhibits on similar lines; but where women now work by the side of, and the quality of their mental and manual labor competes satisfactorily with that of men, it is now her right to receive unqualified recognition and consideration as an economic factor, and her work should not only be accorded the consideration and respect it deserves, but insure to her the receipt of equal compensation for equal services performed.

It is to be regretted that the example of other expositions was not followed in requiring manufacturers to indicate by means of some device placed upon their exhibit what proportion or percentage was “in whole or part the work of women,” and it is urged that this be done in all future expositions, large and small, that all who are interested in this matter may ascertain the facts, and that the record of the kind of industries in which women share, and which portion of them they perform, may be available at all times as statistical information.

In selecting the jurors it is desirable and necessary that the most careful discrimination be used, in order to secure the best and most skillful women to represent each special department, and those well versed in the requisite technical knowledge.

At the meeting of the board of lady managers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, held April 29, 1903, the following resolution was offered by Mrs. Daniel Manning, and accepted by the board: 

Resolved, First, it shall be the duty of the committee on awards of the board of lady managers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, through its chairman or otherwise, to ascertain definitely in regard to every exhibit in the exposition, whether or not the labor of women was employed in its production.

Second, it shall be the duty of this committee to take any and all action to secure and appoint competent jurors of awards in every class and group of the classification where woman’s labor has been engaged in the production of any articles exhibited therein.

A copy of this resolution, under date of May 2, was sent to the secretary of the local company, and the following reply received: