Doctor Wuthesius, we adhered to this idea in spite of the barbarous separation ordered by the official instructions.  Thus I was enabled to gain an insight into what women were accomplishing in industrial art, which would have been impossible had I permitted myself to look only upon “fixed inner decoration.”

The exhibits made by our own country in household art were meager compared to those of several foreign countries, notably Germany and Austria.  Nor was it possible to gain information from our exhibitors as full and as accurate as from some of the foreigners.  Here again the Germans were to the front with a complete, reliable, and artistically finished catalogue, which they freely distributed among the jurors.  Only the Japanese were as perfectly equipped in the matter of literature on their exhibits and as lavish of information to the jurors as the Germans.

I have no doubt that American women are as extensively employed in industrial art as the women of Europe, but, excepting in pottery, their forward stride was not made to appear pronounced at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.  Woman’s work as a maker of laces was not so exhibited as to make it readily distinguishable from men’s, although it must have entered largely into the exhibits made, which, however, as I have just said, did not adequately represent the United States, many of the best and most renowned eastern firms having chosen to absent themselves.

Nor were foreign women, always the Germans and Austrians excepted, frequent or prominent in the showing made.  In the two countries mentioned women have been undoubtedly taken up as factors which hereafter are to count in the arts and crafts.  We found German women in a perceptible number exhibiting side by side with men, holding their own fairly well in decorative painting, as designers of rooms, of carpets and wall coverings, workers in iron and other metals, while in tapestry, weaving embroidery, and lace work their advance is nothing short of astonishing.

Wherever in the Varied Industries Building, in the German House, in the Austrian Pavilion, and elsewhere the work of German women was incorporated into the general scheme of the decorations and furnishings, wherever women, together with men, designed and planned, or wherever they carried out the designs of men, harmony was the result.  Women’s work was found to blend perfectly with men’s when both worked on a common plan to a common end.  Of course women in German art, as elsewhere, are numerically immensely in the minority, nor do they as yet often attempt the grand, the monumental, the complex.  But many of them are honest and efficient helpers, whose eyes and hands show excellent training.  They are, besides, enthusiastic supporters and intelligent abettors of the new movement which aims to achieve homogeneousness in the arts of living.

Again and again in the German exhibits