NAWSA SUBJECT FILE Creel, George [*Centenary Magazine About March 1914*] WHAT HAVE WOMEN DONE WITH THE VOTE? BY GEORGE CREEL EVEN more amazing than the prairie-fire sweep of equal suffrage is its effect on those who champion or oppose it. It is an issue that seems to have the disturbing values of hemp or poppy, shutting out actualities and inducing dreams. As far as the United States is concerned, equal suffrage ceased to be a theory in 1869, when Wyoming gave women the vote. Since then nine more States and a Territory have enfranchised their females, each one a potential laboratory for the ascertainment of facts. The ten States and one Territory that have already answered in the affirmative are calling for company. Montana, Nevada, and the two Dakotas will vote on the proposition in 1914, and the legislatures of New York, New Jersey, and Iowa have taken the first steps to submitting a constitutional amendment to the people in 1915. The law-making bodies of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are on record with favorable, but not final, action, and in every State the equal-suffrage movement eclipses all others in size, strength, and iron determination. Since an answer is inevitable, patriotism demands the elimination of prejudice and theories and sole consideration of facts. and figures. Equal-suffrage leaders, as a matter of course, will dispute this point of view, insisting that woman is entitled to the ballot because she is an adult human being, and that what she does with it is no more to be considered than man's use of his vote, whether wise or unwise. This claim has never been allowed by the majority. IT is for man to say whether woman shall have the vote, and as a consequence man views the ballot not as a right that he must give, but as a privilege that he is at liberty to confer or withhold. HOW WOMAN HAVE AFFECTED LEGISLATURE Has equal suffrage made good? If so, he desired to aid in its extension. Has equal suffrage failed? If so, he wants to fight its spread. This, in a word, is the mental attitude of the great mass of men in the thirty-eight non-suffrage States. They are waiting to be "shown." The first approach of the investigator who is searching for the truth, and not endeavoring to obtain confirmation of previous prejudices, is through the statute- books of the ten equal-suffrage States. These experiment-stations, with the year in which they gave the vote to women, are: Wyoming . . . . . 1869 Colorado . . . . . . 1893 Utah . . . . . . . 1896 Idaho . . . . . . . 1896 Washington . . . . . 1910 California . . . . . . 1911 Oregon . . . . . . 1912 Kansas . . . . . . 1912 Arizona . . . . . . 1912 Illinois . . . . . . 1913 Alaska . . . . . . 1913 What statutory enactments are admittedly due to the woman vote? In many respects this is the only fair approach. Laws speak for themselves, and that which is set down in black and white does not lend itself readily to distortion and misrepresentation. Do woman avail themselves of the franchise privilege? Does the "bad" woman outvote her "good" sister? Have women become inveterate office-seekers? Has equal suffrage disrupted the home? At the outset of the inquiry, Colorado and California suggest themselves as examples that may serve all purposes of computation and comparison. One has had suffrage for twenty years, the other for two. Colorado represents the old and its evolutions; California stands for the new, with its revolutions. There is also this postulate to be accepted: absolute segregation of the woman 663 664 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE vote is impossible. Men far outnumber the women in the nine Western equal-suffrage States, and the adoption of any law means that a certain portion of the male vote has given it the necessary approval. Reference to "women's laws," therefore, must be taken to mean those measures originated by women, introduced by women legislators, or else indorsed and lobbied for unflaggingly by women's organizations. The procedure in all the equal-suffrage States is very similar. A state federation of women's clubs, at its annual convention, will discuss what it wishes in the way of legislation, and what it does not wish. Bills already in the field are indorsed or condemned, new bills are framed to meet the demands, and then everything is placed in the hands of a legislative committee that is virtually an unpaid lobby. This committee, with an elastic membership of from ten to seventy-five, attends every session of the legislature. The progress of bills is watched, care is taken to see that none of them is lost or hidden, and in the event of trouble, these Paul Reveres send out a warning that rains down scores of telegrams from every quarter of the State on the heads of recalcitrant legislators. As a result of these methods, the following "women's laws," grouped in order that development may be studied, have been adopted by Colorado: 1893 to 1900: a state home for dependent children, three of the five members of the board of control to be women; making the mother joint guardian of the child with the father; raising age of protection for girls to eighteen years; a state industrial school for girls, three of the five members of the board of control to be women; a factory inspection law; creating the indeterminate sentence, out of which Tom Tynan's wonderful "honor-and trust" idea has been evolved; truant- schools; requiring one woman physician on the state asylum board; provision for the inspection of maternity homes and lying-in hospitals conducted by private persons, etc. 1900 to 1910: juvenile court system; drastic compulsory-education law; a child- labor law taking little ones under fourteen out of factories, stores, and mines, and forbidding the employment of those under sixteen in unhealthful or dangerous trades; making father and mother joint heirs of deceased child; providing penalties for failure to support aged or infirm parents; a traveling-library commission, consisting of five women, for the purpose of seeing that books reach the most remote mountain camp and prairie hut; making it a criminal offense to contribute to the delinquency of a child; a local-option law; and the establishment of a state free-employment bureau, with offices in all the principal cities and towns. It is at this point that a break must be made in the recital of laws, for 1910 heard the first gun of Colorado's winning struggle for equal justice. Without entering into causes, suffice it to say that the people believed themselves outraged by a supreme court, enslaved by a "bipartizan machine," and pillaged by a plunderbund made up of public-service monopolies, railroads, smelters, and various trusts. Hard fighting wrenched the initiative and referendum from a venal legislature, and a vote in Denver for municipal ownership of the water-plant marked the first defeat that the allied public-utility corporations had ever received. In 1911 a commission-government campaign was launched at various points in Colorado, and put into operation at Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and various other municipalities. In Denver a corrupt council consigned a petition containing 20,000 signatures to the waste-basket. A citizens' movement was formed, a full mayoralty ticket placed in the field, and on May 21, 1912, the non-partizan candidates were overwhelmingly elected by 10,000 more votes than the combined totals of the Democratic and Republican parties. In November, using the initiative for the first time, the people wrote these statutes and constitutional amendments: an eight-hour law for working-women; a mothers' compensation act; the recall of officials, with particular emphasis on the judiciary; state-wide civil service; an eight-hour law for miners; home rule for cities; the recall of decisions, providing that only the supreme court of the State shall have the power to declare laws unconstitutional, and that these decisions may be disapproved and set aside by a majority vote of the people; and the headless ballot. In February, 1913, the long-delayed WHAT HAVE WOMEN DONE WITH THE VOTE? 665 commission-government election was held, the change adopted, and on June 1 five commissioners, elected without party designations and by a preferential system of voting, took charge of Denver's affairs. There can be no question that women were literally the life of the revolution, bringing an even greater degree of radicalism to bear upon the various propositions than the men. Judge Lindsey, speaking for the citizens, John H. Gabriel, president of the Direct Legislation League, and the writer, as chairman of the commission- government campaign, have never failed to say that the women, volunteering their services for the circulation of petitions, throwing open their homes when halls could not be hired, and as willing to trudge and drudge as to lead and sit in council, constituted the moving force of the forward movement. THE EMPHASIS ON ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN considering the laws enacted subsequent to 1910, mark the new economic and industrial emphasis: creation of a minimum-wage commission, with power to act; establishment of fifty dollars as a minimum monthly wage for teachers, and doubling the length of the minimum school year; amendments putting teeth in the child-labor law, the factory-inspection law, and the compulsory-education law; a work-men's compensation act; a law putting loan sharks out of business; a strong non-support law, and a companion statute making non-support an extraditable offense; a state home for the feeble-minded; validating the wills of married women; perfecting the "honor-and-trust" systems at the penitentiary in many particulars; making the "third degree" a felony, etc. It is also important to note that a first act of the citizens' administration was the abolition of the infamous "red-light district," long protected by the bipartizan alliance. Consideration of the case of California with respect to equal suffrage inevitably begins with the Weller recall and the campaign against commercialized vice. Foes of equal suffrage blame the women voters in toto, and accuse them of hysteria, emotionalism, and crack-brained theories. The women accept full responsibility, but plead ample justification, and both sides agree on this statement of fact as to the recall: One Albert Hendricks had raped a young girl in peculiarly revolting circumstances. Judge Shortall, before whom he was arraigned, demanded bond in the sum of $3000; but when he left town two days later, Judge Weller reduced the bail to $1000. Hendricks promptly fled, leaving a wife and two children behind him without means of support, and the incident would have been closed but for the women of the neighborhood in which the girl lived. At the outset of the investigation it was discovered that Hendricks had been in Weller's court before on a similar charge, and had gone unpunished. Further delving developed that in scores of cases of criminal assault the bonds ranged from $50 to $300, and that continuance and dismissal were the favorite Wellerian modes of treatment. One particular scandal was that of a fourteen-year-old girl about to become a mother. Ten times Weller continued the case against her assailant, and the tenth time, which fell on the day the child gave birth to her baby, Weller dismissed the case because the "complainant failed to appear." The fight on commercialized vice has been waged chiefly in San Francisco, for Los Angeles abolished its infamous "crib district" in 1909 as the result of a scandal that exposed a city administration's intimate connection with the under-world. San Francisco's answer to the Ruef-French restaurant infamies, however, was the creation of a municipal clinic for the purpose of segregating prostitutes and subjecting them to physical examination. It was against this condition specifically, but against the whole system generally, that the women revolted. When the men declared that prostitution was a "necessary evil," the women asked them if they were willing to let a member of their own families recruit the industry. When the men said that a "wide-open town" was a good thing for business, and that tourists would avoid a "closed town." the women answered: "If drunkenness and debauchery are necessary to make business good, then the sooner we get rid of that sort of business the better. If tourists come to San Francisco only for whisky and lust, we don't want that class of travel near the homes in which we are rearing our children." 666 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE The city was forced to sever its relations with the clinic, whole sections of the vice district were cleansed, notably the Barbary Coast, and it was from these victories that the women of San Francisco joined with the womanhood of California in winning the injunction and abatement act from the legislature. With regard to the general run of legislation, the following list was prepared by C. E. Sebastian, chief of police of Los Angeles, and read by him before the International Association of Police Chiefs as being the laws "mothered" by the voting women of California. His compilation is verified by Francis J. Heney and Judge W. P. Lawlor, who tried the graft cases. Raising the age of consent from sixteen to twenty-one; juvenile-court amendment separating dependent from delinquent children; requiring fathers to support illegitimate children; requiring certificate of freedom from all venereal diseases from men as a precedent to the marriage license; the sterilization of certain inmates of lunatic asylums and a certain class of convicts; and a drastic law against pandering. Minimum-wage law; workmen's compensation law; mothers' pension law; teachers' pension law, granting a pension of $500 a year to teachers who have been in service thirty years; a state housing and immigration commission to prepare for the handling of immigrants with the opening of the Panama Canal; and a state training-school for girls, with the most approved correctional methods and thorough vocational training. Joint guardianship law; requirement of a wife's signature to the assignment of a husband's wages; good milk-inspection statute; a net container law; a weights and measures law ; a law prohibiting the destruction of food-stuffs fit for human consumption ; and a prison reform bill. Raising the age limit of child workers from twelve to fifteen; state-wide civil service; a billboard nuisance act; and an amendment to the liquor law hitting par- ticularly at San Francisco's all-night sale. The legislature that submitted the equal-suffrage amendment to the people passed an eight-hour law for women, and the new voters contented themselves at the last session by having it extended to include workers in apartment-houses and nurses in training. LAWS RELATING TO WOMAN'S INTERESTS So much for results in Colorado and California. In a general way these activities denote the usual trend of the woman vote in all the equal-suffrage States. Virtually every one of the laws relating to the personal and property rights of the female are found on the statute-books of the other eight States. In none of the ten has the woman failed to free herself of notorious political disabilities and ancient injustices, or neglected to acquire what she considers her full rights. This was to be expected. Common sense dictates such a course. The women would be fools if they did not make such first use of the ballot, nor do men quarrel with it. But-and here is an interesting study in psychology-the average man demands a larger reason than this for his gift of the vote. Consciously or subconsciously he resents the inference that women need more protection than he is willing to give. Gross inequalities persist because of the male voter's procrastination rather than his meanness or indifference. More important things, to him, push forward, and he finds difficulty in "getting around" to what the women want. Yet he hates and refuses to be put in the position of denying or resisting. Because of this quirk, it is with such fundamentals as are social rather than personal that he is concerned. What of the social evil, the liquor traffic, working day, poverty problems, education, child-labor laws, penal reform, minimum-wage laws? How has the woman voter approached these things? How will equal suffrage affect these questions? Taking these demands in order, the injunction and abatement law is admittedly the most effective weapon yet devised against commercialized vice, because it is directed against the owner of the property, and puts the power of action in the hands of every citizen. In addition to California, also Utah, Washington, Kansas, and Oregon possess the law. Only five non-suffrage States have it. Of the other equal-suffrage States, Colorado's attempt to secure the measure at the last session failed, and the women will initiate the bill in 1914. Illinois, armed with the Chicago vice-commission's report, is "cleaning-up," and in Arizona, WHAT HAVE WOMEN DONE WITH THE VOTE? 667 Wyoming, and Idaho, where the evil is sporadic, a fight is being made with very good general laws. The two Carolinas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia have no state law against prostitution at all. A referendum has prevented the operation of the California law, but even without it, Los Angeles remains a "red-light-less" city, while in San Francisco the vice district has been abolished in large measure. Seattle, Denver, Sacramento, Boise, and Salt Lake City, other equal-suffrage metropolises, have also stamped out their "bad lands," and put an end to municipal sanction of commercialized vice. The Seattle campaign, it may be remembered, involved the recall of Mayor Gill. As in the case of California, the first use of the ballot by the women of Washington was made the ground for charges of narrowness, puritanism, and emotionalism. The facts in the case are these: "Hi" Gill was the open and avowed champion of the saloon and disorderly house. He insisted that they were necessary to the prosperity of Seattle. The climax of this policy was reached when two huge municipal brothels were erected in a public street. It was then that the people recalled him, 22,000 women voting, each woman an anti-Gill committee of one. Shortly afterward, Gill's chief of police was convicted of collecting thousands from the women of the under-world, and is now in the penitentiary. The "higher-ups" escaped, owing to a kindly judge who quashed the indictments because commas were omitted! The equal-suffrage States are also far in advance the rest of the country in the matter of the age of consent. California is the only commonwealth with twenty-one years; Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming have eighteen; Arizona has seventeen; and Oregon and Illinois have sixteen. In Georgia and North Carolina it is ten; in Mississippi, twelve; in seven other non-suffrage States, fourteen; in fifteen others, sixteen; and only three go as high as eighteen. According to the National Vigilance Association, every single equal-suffrage State has a "good" statute against white slaving or pandering. Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina have no such law, and those on the statute-books of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee are grossly inadequate. THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC With regard to the liquor traffic, there can be no question that the voting woman is as bitterly opposed to the saloon as she is to the brothel. Kansas, of course, has had state-wide prohibition for years; and Illinois, Oregon, and Arizona, where the woman vote is scarcely a year old, cannot be fairly counted either one way or the other. All the other seven, however, have local-option laws that are drying up the liquor like some huge blotter. Wyoming is ninety per cent. dry. Colorado has fifty "dry" counties out of sixty-two. Only eighteen of Utah's twenty-eight counties are "wet," and sixteen of these are mining-camps. Idaho, ninety per cent. dry, passed a search and seizure bill at the last session, also a law compelling an oath from patrons of drug stores, and California's list of "dry" towns has grown from 200 odd to over 600 since suffrage. An eight-hour day for the workingwoman is a boon possessed by equal-suffrage States alone. Colorado, California, and Washington alone have gone this far, although Arizona's eight-hour law for laundries is almost as good, since that State has few other industries employing women. Washington, where the women had been begging for the law for eight years, received it from the first legislature after the adoption of the equal-suffrage amendment. Utah and Idaho have the nine-hour day. In each State the women made the fight for eight, and were forced to compromise. Only five non-suffrage States can say as much. It took Massachusetts forty years to win the reform that Utah got in two. A frequent attack along these industrial lines is to show that protective legislation for women is found in States where women do not vote, and that these similar laws have not been passed in equal-suffrage States. For instance, Massachusetts and New York have some measures relating to factory women that are not found on the statute-books of Idaho and Wyoming. Also a law providing seats for saleswomen is possessed by Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York, and not by Idaho. 668 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE The validity of these criticisms cannot be allowed. While Massachusetts and New York have 152,713 and 136,788 factory girls respectively, Idaho and Wyoming have 681 and 501. In saleswomen the same absurd disparities are noted. Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York have 12,149, 11,985, and 30,858, while Idaho comes forward with 153. One might as well blame Idaho and Wyoming for failure to adopt statutes for the protection of deep-sea fishermen. LAWS RELATING TO POVERTY In the matter of taking poverty out of the list of crimes, the equal-suffrage States lead easily. Colorado, California, Washington, Illinois, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah have mothers' pension laws that stop the cruel business of kidnapping children because the mother cannot earn enough to keep the wolf from the door. Only six non-suffrage States have adopted this humane measure. Idaho and Utah carry off first honors for generosity, both awarding ten dollars a month for the oldest child, but Utah allowing seven dollars per month for each additional child against Idaho's five dollars. Child labor seems also to be a first consideration of the voting woman. Arizona is the one State in all the Union to adopt the model law framed by the National Child Labor Committee. California sets fifteen as the working age, and Washington, Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Illinois, and Oregon have well-nigh perfect laws. Fourteen years is the dead-line, fifteen years during the school term, and sixteen years in all dangerous trades. Idaho lets down the bars to children of twelve,—fourteen during school term,— and Wyoming establishes the age limit of fourteen only for certain occupations, and then makes an exemption for poverty. These are the two rotten spots, and even the fact that child labor is not a pressing problem in either State will not serve as an excuse. They shine white, however, by comparison with the sordid tragedies of Alabama, South Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia, and Mississippi, where babes of twelve are permitted to work incredible hours for incredible pittances. Or side by side with the cranberry bogs of New Jersey, the glass factories of Pennsylvania, and the canneries of the Northern States. THE FIGHT AGAINST ILLITERACY Every one of the equal-suffrage States has a complete compulsory-education law, splendidly safeguarded and bulwarked by truant-schools and truant-officers, parental- delinquency provisions, etc. Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas have no such law, and in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia the laws are utterly worthless. It is distinctly noteworthy that in the list of the ten most illiterate States in the Union—Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia—there is not an equal-suffrage State. Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon are the three great experiment-stations for penitentiary reform, and have demonstrated the absolute practicability of the "honor-and-trust" plan. California women have just secured an extension of the indeterminate sentence to all crimes except murder, and also a provision for the payment of wages to working convicts and for assistance to discharged prisoners. Illinois, since equal suffrage, is experimenting with the "honor-and-trust" plan, and Idaho and Utah have sent committees to Colorado to study Tom Tynan's methods. Of the non-suffrage States, only Iowa has bettered penal conditions, the others resting content with prison methods that are stupid and wasteful when they are not cruel and barbarous. Minimum-wage laws are almost entirely peculiar to the equal-suffrage States. California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Utah have them, and at work. Massachusetts is the only non-suffrage State in their class. The slightest analysis of these summaries, and their comparisons with the non-suffrage States, develops certain facts instantly. The woman vote is definitely against the saloon, against commercialized vice, and against the theory that an "open" town helps business. It is for more schools and better schools and compulsory education, for the home in preference to the institution, and for the dignity and protection of motherhood in WHAT HAVE WOMEN DONE WITH THE VOTE? 669 any and all circumstances. It is against the exploitation of the child, and for almost entire emphasis upon the corrective note in punishment rather than the punitive or deterrent. In taking up stock objections, the charge that women do not avail themselves of the right to vote must necessarily be approached through typical instances. The following table is furnished by the Seattle election that recalled Gill: WARD MEN WOMEN PERCENT. 1st Ward . 1873 345 17 2nd Ward . 2570 1162 44 3rd Ward . 4178 2320 55 4th Ward . 3938 1334 34 5th Ward . 2848 981 34 6th Ward . 1815 610 34 7th Ward . 5852 3674 63 8th Ward . 3839 2025 53 9th Ward . 3291 2088 63 10th Ward . 2475 1633 66 11th Ward . 2185 1457 67 12th Ward . 2773 1426 51 13th Ward . 2543 1367 54 14th Ward . 3309 1385 42 ----- ----- ---- Total . . 43,489 21,807 48 By way of explanation, the first ward was the vice district, the fifth and sixth wards constitute the heart of the business section, and the seventh, ninth, and tenth, and eleventh wards are residential. From the 1912 election in Los Angeles the following figures are gleaned: WOMEN PER MEN WOMEN CENT. Highland Park . . 1556 1504 49 Hollywood . . . 1348 1350 50 Angeleno Heights . 2104 1429 40 East Side . . . . 3154 2127 40 Boyle Heights . . . 3619 2485 41 Down-town and Industrial 10907 4827 31 Westlake . . . . 4201 3567 46 Edendale . . . . 1313 1011 43 Wilshire Northwest . . 3706 3079 46 West Adams . . . 7456 5842 47 Southwest . . . . 6551 5096 44 Southeast . . . . 7290 4389 38 Wilmington -- San Pedro . . 1420 693 32 ------ ------ ----- 54,625 37,399 41.3 The percentage of registered men voting was 54.2, and that of women, 50.2. Further comparisons are made possible by these facts: Hollywood, Westlake, Wilshire, and West Adams are prosperous, fashionable districts, while the others are given over to the moderately circumstanced or poor. A very interesting survey of the Berkeley election returns establishes similar conclusions: the larger woman's vote was cast in the so-called "exclusive" neighborhoods, the smaller woman's vote in the poorer districts, and the average in the precincts inhabited by people of modest means. THE RATIO OF VOTING MEN AND WOMEN In Idaho, according to tables prepared by Mrs. Burton French and Mrs. Frederick Dubois, about seventy-six per cent. of the women voted at the least election, and about eighty-four per cent. of the men. Mrs. Frank Mondell of Wyoming and Mrs. Sutherland of Utah are authority for the statement that every election calls out the same proportion of women as men. While no large election has been held in Illinois since equal suffrage, various small-town elections have been held, and the figures are rather interesting: MEN WOMEN Carpentersville . . . 172 155 Carthage . . . . 540 423 Rosiclare . . . . 106 107 Mt. Auburn . . . 102 118 Benton . . . . 414 422 Geneva . . . . 180 227 Seattle and Denver furnish figures with regard to the claim that "bad women" have a way of controlling elections in equal-suffrage States. As will be seen, 345 women voted in the first ward, where Seattle's red-light had its being at that time. In Denver the "bad lands" were confined to Precincts 1, 2, and 3 of the fourth ward prior to abolition. The election commissions presents this table: REGISTERED VOTED Precinct 1 . . . . 54 46 Precinct 2 . . . . 61 53 Precinct 3 . . . . 61 45 ------ ---- 176 144 670 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE Assuming that every one of these votes represented prostitutes, what of it? Compare 345 with 21,807, or 144 with 38,000. As a matter of fact, the assumption is grossly false. The writer, out of his experience as newspaper man and police commissioner in Denver, is willing to assert that not ten per cent, were prostitutes. The majority of these women are girls under the voting age or foreigners, while the remainder, practising their sorry trade under assumed names, are unwilling to expose their identities by registration. In both Denver and Seattle, a large percentage of the vice-ward vote probably represented the wives of the day-laborer class, since segregation is invariably practiced at the expense of those whose poverty makes resistance impossible. As a bit of further information, Idaho has a law prohibiting persons of lewd life from voting. WOMEN AS OFFICE SEEKERS Do women become inveterate office- seekers? In Wyoming, where equal suffrage is forty years old, there are two members of the legislature and a number of women serving as county superintendent of schools. Mrs. Miller, one of the legislators, is the mother of two grown sons, one of whom preceded her in the office; and the other, Miss Truax, a teacher, was petitioned to become a candidate as a protest against legislative delay in connection with school measures. In Colorado, where the women have voted for twenty years, virtually all the educational offices have been turned over to them. Since 1895 the state superintendent of public instruction has been a woman, and to-day forty-three out of sixty- two counties have women for county superintendents. Denver has a woman president of the election board, a woman member of the school board, and, prior to commission government, had another able woman as clerk and recorder of deeds. A member of the board of regents of the state university is a woman, and throughout the State there are these women office-holders: two city auditors, eight city treasurers, three city clerks, ten county clerks, one county commissioner, twice as many as at any previous period in the twenty years. In the state legislature at the present writing there are two women in the lower house and one in the senate, the latter elected in 1912. Mrs. Riddle is a German epitome of common sense who enjoys a competence through years of dairy farming. Mrs. Lee is the mother of grown children, and Mrs. Robinson, the senator, is an ex-college professor and a very brilliant writer. In addition to these, two women serve on the state board of charities and corrections. Ms. Helen Grenfell, as a member of the penitentiary board, has made penal reform possible, and there are women on the boards in charge of the various industrial homes. Utah has three women in the legislature, and in Idaho the state superintendent of public instruction is a woman, twenty-five out of thirty counties have women superintendents, a woman is on the board of regents, and there are about twenty county treasurers and auditors. Washington has two able women i nthe legislature. Instead of being inveterate office-seekers, there is far more ground for a charge that the voting women have entirely failed and absolutely refused to show the interest in office-seeking and office-holding that is entailed by her percentage of the vote. THE INFLUENCE OF EQUAL SUFFRAGE UPON THE HAPPINESS OF HOME Has equal suffrage disrupted the home? As far as divorce statistics may be trusted, these show that Wyoming has 118 to every 10,000; Colorado, 158; Utah, 92; and Idaho, 120. It is questionable, however, whether they amount to anything. Utah has the lowest divorce rate in the Union, which might easily be turned into an argument for Mormonism. It is much more to the point that there is not an instance on record of a divorce arising from anything concerned with the vote. This statement is laid down as a challenge. There is now only the one remaining question to consider: Has the vote coarsened or cheapened women? In Colorado, most attacked along this line, there is an Equal-Suffrage Aid Association composed of the most prominent men in the State, organized for the sole purpose of denying falsehoods and refuting slanders. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.