12/25/2005:
At this time in 1916, North Dakota was experiencing a severe teacher shortage. To address the problem, voters had just approved a constitutional amendment to create Dickinson Normal School, which would offer a two-year program to train more elementary and secondary school teachers. Leading up the election, the Bismarck Daily Tribune published an article that colorfully illustrated why the need for teachers was so great. This is how it read:
“The life of the average North Dakota school ma'am is only four years. School teaching, for instructors of the fair sex is one of the most hazardous occupations listed in the state. School teaching for the ladies, especially the young and winsome ones, is especially fatal west of the Missouri. If they're young and good-looking, an infectious malady known as matrimonitis is bound to get 'em, sooner or later, usually sooner. To date no preventative measures have proven satisfactory...
“Of course, as the world’s greatest advertiser of coffee says, ‘There’s a reason.’ There’s several of ‘em, in fact. First and foremost, the average young woman who leaves her home in Indiana, or Iowa, or wherever it may be, and comes to North Dakota to teach the young [broncho] how to shoot, is of an adventurous disposition. Adventurous young women are most liable to matrimony.
“Secondly, wages paid North Dakota schoolma’ams, an average of $54.92 per month for 8_ months out of the year, isn’t the most attractive stipend on earth.
“Thirdly, the average young woman who teaches a rural school must travel from one to three miles to secure half-way suitable accommodations, and when she gets there she probably shares her room with little Maggie and Bonnie Belle, and her reception room is the general family ‘parlor,’ and her study the dining room and kitchen, after the dishes have been cleared away.
“And probably the food is better calculated to put pep into a railsplitter (sic) than a splitter of infinitives, and all in all, after four and half years of it, she’s ready for most anything, and most anything usually bobs up in the shape of a clean-faced, good-looking young homesteader or rancher who has a nice little house and a bank-account all his own...
“At present, about one teacher in fifteen has normal school training. The normal schools now in operation are doing little more than to take care of the vacancies created by the dropping out of experienced teachers. Every fourth year practically the entire teaching force of the state, whichmeans a body of between 7,000 and 8,000, must be replaced. There is a demand, the board of regents believes, for more normal schools and for more teachers with normal school training.
“Then, there is a demand for teaching and living conditions, and something better than day-laborer wages, which will keep the instructors on the job... In many communities the best families do not care to open their homes to the teacher. She is forced to find accommodations where she can. Often they are not as good as she has been accustomed to...Occasionally, she finds that she is expected to ‘pitch in and help with the work,’ or to ‘look after the young’uns’ during her spare moments.
“[The teacher] has little society and small means of entertaining a beau, should she be fortunate to find a suitable one. And she knows there is little use in applying for another school, for conditions vary only slightly in rural school districts everywhere. So she turns her attention to stenography, or accepts the first eligible who pops the question.”
Again, that was a 1916 article from the Bismarck Tribune explaining why it was of such importance Dickinson Normal School be opened – young teachers succumbing to matrimonitis
.Sources:
North Dakota School Ma’am’s Occupation is Mighty Hazardous. Bismarck Daily Tribune. 19 Oct 1916, p. 4.
Historical Sketch. Dickinson State University. http://www.dickinsonstate.com/Catalog_02/university.htm
Dakota Datebook written by Merry Helm