importance of investigating and, if possible, ameliorating the conditions of industrial life.

One of the noteworthy reforms undertaken by the women has been the establishment of schools of domestic training throughout the country-schools intended to teach young girls to become efficient and capable wives and mothers. These schools are of great importance, especially in the country districts and among the poorer class of people. They are becoming most valuable factors in the cultured development of the country, and are doing more than could perhaps be done in any other way to raise the general standards of living.

Thus the women have succeeded in materially bettering their own position; but they have done much more, for they have also carried through reforms of wide-reaching importance to the moral and social life of the whole community. A striking proof of this may be shown by the fact that in the church synod held in 1908 it was decided to grant women the elective suffrage for sundry church offices.

This motion was brought before one of the most conservative bodies in the country by a member of the synod who had previously been opposed to granting the political suffrage to women, and who introduced the motion of his own accord, saying that since the women had proved themselves such efficient social and political workers, he felt that it would be an advantage to the church if they should be made eligible to many church offices.

The experience of three years of woman suffrage in Finland has proved, I think, beyond doubt that the emancipation of women is not a thing to be feared or dreaded, but merely a natural step in the evolution of modern society.

When the suffrage was extended to the women they responded with interest and enthusiasm, and have shown themselves capable of serving on all the various legislative committees. They have not disturbed the political balance of power, but have maintained it precisely as before, uniting as women only for the furtherance of social and legal reforms of importance to women, but also of very vital im

portance to the welfare and prosperity of the community at large.

Families have not been broken up by the woman's vote; rather have they tended to become more united by a strong bond of common interest. Instead of lessening the interest that women have in the education and the welfare of their children, the suffrage has greatly intensified that interest by making it possible for them to regulate and, in some degree at least, to improve the schools to which their children are sent and the different branches of work which they later undertake.

Experience has shown, too, that when the doors are opened, not all women rush madly into political life, but only those who are specially qualified for it; that for the vast majority of women the duties of the franchise consist in little more than casting their ballots, and that even the women who participate actively in political life devote no more time to it than they devoted previously to their extra domestic occupations or professions-that is, that even the small number of women who actually sit in Parliament need not neglect their homes unduly. But last and most important of all, it has shown that the cause that women have most at heart is the care and welfare of children.

NEGATIVE DISCUSSION

Forum. 43: 495-504. May, 1910.

Some Facts About Suffrage and Anti-Suffrage.

Mrs. Gilbert E. Jones.

What is wanted in politics is real work, thorough work, honest and more efficient work, not mere sham. Are women ready for better work, than men are now doing? Hardly, and women will find it no easy task to do sufficiently well to outstrip the best class of political workers. The man is in constant contact with men, and face to face with events. He is in the larger world; he is everywhere, and he has become familiar with the workings of the political machinery. Woman will always take observation from some protected quarter. She will generally obtain such fragments of legislation and activities, as appear on the surface. But of the vital, fighting political struggle which constantly goes on, and not generally in public view, the woman necessarily will learn what she knows only by hearsay or from some male informer. Women are not concerned equally with men in the character of government, and they very rarely have an equal knowledge of political events, even when their fathers, husbands and brothers are statesmen or politicians.

Woman suffragists proclaim that women need the ballot for their own protection, and that men make laws for women which are unjust and oppressive, and that women must have the law-making power in their own hands in order to secure fair play. American women do not need a law-making power, for on the whole, the laws are even far more favorable to women (in many states) than they would have been if women, with their smaller understanding of vital conditions, had made the laws for themselves.

Have we come to the point when women must defend themselves against men or women? One man is generally stronger than one woman! And do women propose to fight laws into existence to protect them? The voting power is based on force. The rule of the majority is at the bottom the rule of force. Sixty thousand voters yield to a hundred thousand voters, not because they believe them to be wiser than themselves, but because they know them to be stronger. When they do not believe them to be stronger, they do not yield, they resist, and we have a rebellion. Women who ask for the ballot do not know the real meaning and significance of universal manhood suffrage, or they would never use the term "equal suffrage."

Constitutional government is not a haphazard, unformed, shapeless institution, as many women seem to think. It has distinct form, established restrictions, and a very valid reason for not asking woman to have a voice in government.

A republic vests the power of the government in the will of the people. But if that power rests in a portion of the people that cannot sustain their will,-if the voting power is in the hands of an aristocracy or a favored class, that cannot uphold or retain that power unto themselves-then we are entertaining a false state of affairs, which is contrary to the fundamental principles of our constitutional govern

ment.

All voting at the polls must ultimately feel the pulse of a national and vital force back of it, and women cannot be that force. Men not only can, but must be that, if they accept the privileges of the franchise. Their allegiance to the state is a guarantee for its safety, its stability, and its maintenance in time of war and of peace.

The reason why men vote in this country is because they can be made liable for the continuance of law and order, and can be called upon for state duty and service. Uncle Sam permits a full-grown man of the age of twenty-one years to be a voter, with only a few qaulifications such as age, place of residence, etc. Women are within the age and residence qualifications, and they offer morality, intelligence and tax

paying qualifications besides. Government, however, does not impose these qualifications on men, and men do not vote because they are moral, intelligent, or taxpayers only. Government asks the man to accept the responsibility of maintaining it, of preserving its very existence. Man forms the ONLY basis on which any government can rest. In a democracy this is, and must be, the keynote of the whole structure. The man is the rock on which the government is built, whatever its form. The woman never was and never will be. Giving the man the vote is nothing more than a recognition of this fact. Giving women the vote would be to deny it.

Citizenship is a granted right, not a natural one, derived and regulated by each country or state according to its ideas of government. The argument of the suffragist that a voter and a citizen should be one and the same is incorrect. Citizens can be and have been disfranchised, but can still remain citizens and have all of a citizen's privileges.

Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court decided that citizenship carried with it no voting power or right, and the same decision has been handed down by many courts in disposing of other test cases. A citizen of the District of Columbia has all the privileges of citizenship, but he cannot vote, since that is a state right and the District of Columbia is not a state.

Citizenship merely, does not entitle a man to vote. Government grants that privilege and enrolls on its lists of voters those who must be made liable for the state's safety and stability. Government does not let a man vote just to express his viewpoints by dropping a bit of paper in the ballot box. It demands the service and allegiance of a voter to the point of giving his life, as 500,000 men did during the civil war.

Men and women could not enjoy our present civilization if government had not that backing. In time of peace citizens must have a guarantee for life and property; it is just this force of the male voter that can be called upon when needed. This is a part of our strong constitutional, democratic government.