cities, have multiplied rapidly. Most of them are concentrating on the municipal franchise, which those of Prussia claim already belongs to them by an ancient law. In a number of the states women landowners have a proxy vote in communal matters, but have seldom availed themselves of it. In Silesia this year, to the amazement of everybody, 2000 exercised this privilege. The powerful Social Democratic party stands solidly for enfranchising women.

The Netherlands and Belgium

A few years ago when the Liberal party was in power it prepared to revise the constitution and make woman suffrage one of its provisions. In 1907 the Conservatives carried the election and blocked all further progress. Two active suffrage associations approximate a membership of 8000, with nearly 200 branches, and are building up public sentiment.

Belgium in 1910 gave women a vote for members of the Board of Trade, an important tribunal, and made them eligible to serve on it. A woman suffrage society is making considerable progress.

Switzerland and Italy

Switzerland has had a woman suffrage association only a few years. Geneva and Zurich in 1911 made women eligible to their boards of trade with a vote for its members, and Geneva gave them a vote in all matters connected with the state church.

Italy has a well-supported movement for woman suffrage, and a discussion in Parliament showed a strong sentiment in favor. Mayor Nathan, of Rome, is an outspoken advocate. In 1910 all women in trade were made voters for boards of trade.

France

The woman suffrage movement in France differs from that of most other countries in the number of prominent men in politics connected with it. President Fallières loses no opportunity to speak in favor and leading members of the

ministry and the Parliament approve it.

Committees have

several times reported a bill, and that of M. Dussaussoy giving all women a vote for municipal, district and general councils was reported with full parliamentary suffrage added. Last year 163 members asked to have the bill taken up. Finally it was decided to have a committee investigate the practical working of woman suffrage in the countries where it existed. Its extensive and very favorable report has just been published, and the woman suffrage association states that it expects early action by Parliament. More than onethird of the wage-earners of France are women, and these may vote for tribunes and chambers of commerce and boards of trade. They may be members of the last named and serve as judges.

Portugal, Spain, and Other Countries

The constitution of the new Republic of Portugal gave "universal" suffrage, and Dr. Beatrice Angelo applied for registration, which was refused. She carried her case to the courts, her demand was sustained and she cast her vote. It was too late for other women to register, but an organization of 1000 women was at once formed to secure definite action of Parliament, with the approval of President Braga and several members of his cabinet.

The Spanish Chamber has proposed to give women heads of families in the villages a vote for mayor and council.

A bill to give suffrage to women was recently introduced in the Parliament of Persia but was ruled out of order by the president because the Koran says women have no souls. Siam has lately adopted a constitution which gives women a municipal vote.

Several women voted in place of their husbands at the recent election in Mexico. Belize, the capital of British Honduras, has just given the right to women to vote for town

council.

Throughout the entire world is an unmistakable tendency to accord women a voice in the government, and, strange to say, this is stronger in monarchies than in republics. In Eu

rope the republics of France and Switzerland give almost no suffrage to women. Norway and Finland, where they have the complete franchise; Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Great Britain, where they have all but the parliamentary, and that close at hand, are monarchies. New Zealand and Australia, where women are fully enfranchised, are dependencies of a monarchical government.

Independent. 71: 967-70. November 2, 1911.

Woman Suffrage in Six States. Ida H. Harper.

When on November 8, 1910, the state of Washington, by a very large majority vote of its electors, gave the complete franchise to women citizens the subject of woman suffrage passed from the stage of academic discussion to that of a live, practical question; and when on October 10, 1911, California fully enfranchised the women of that state it became one of the political issues of the day. This fact was evident at once in the attitude of the press, which in its news reports gave woman suffrage equal if not superior place to the referendum, recall and other important constitutional amendments which were passed upon at this recent California election. It was equally noticeable in the editorials, especially of papers heretofore opposed, such, for instance, as the New York Tribune, which said: "Now that Washington with 1,142,000 population, and California with 2,377,000, have shown their desire to put the political equality idea into practice, the pressure behind it will become more acute and the larger and older states will have to take more serious notice of its existence."

The experiment heretofore in the United States has been made in the four comparatively new and sparsely settled states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, where women are greatly outnumbered by men and no large cities exist with their complicated political and social problems. While it is true that human nature is the same everywhere, yet it must be admitted that in these four states there has not been

an opportunity for such a real test of woman suffrage as would be necessary to influence the older and more thickly populated ones. Denver, with a little less than 214,000 inhabitants, has afforded the most conspicuous example for study.

Now that the question of woman suffrage is to receive more attention it may be of interest to examine its history in the United States up to date. The very first demand for it was made by women of Eastern States, which will be the last to grant it-Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, of New York; Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia; Lucy Stone, of Boston, and a score or two more of the most distinguished women of sixty years ago. The first recognition of the principle by any state was made by progressive Kansas, which came into the Union in 1861 with school suffrage for women in its Constitution. No further advance was made until 1869, when the first legislative council was in session after the organization of Wyoming as a territory. Mrs. Esther Morris, who with her husband had gone out from New York as a pioneer, appealed to the president of the council Col. William H. Bright, for a bill enfranchising women. She was sustained by his wife, and he succeeded in having the bill passed. The council was Democratic and it hoped to embarrass the Republican Governor, John A. Campbell, whom it expected to veto the bill. On the contrary, he signed it; and when two years later the council repealed it he vetoed the repeal. The council was unable to pass it over his veto and no effort to abolish woman suffrage was ever again made in Wyoming. Mrs. Morris was appointed justice of the peace, and of the nearly forty cases she tried none ever was appealed to a higher court. Women sat on juries from the beginning and have continued to fill various offices down to the present day.

In 1889 a convention composed entirely of men met to form a constitution for statehood, and after twenty years' experience they adopted unanimously as its first clause "equal political rights for all male and female citizens." The constitution was ratified by more than a three-fourths ma

jority of the people and sent to Congress for approval. That body, always hostile to the enfranchisement of women, fought for three days to have this first clause eliminated and the territorial delegate telegraphed to Wyoming that it looked as if this would have to be done. The Legislature, which was in session, wired back, "We will remain out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without woman suffrage." The same struggle took place in the United States Senate and pages of the Congressional Record were filled with awful senatorial prophecies as to what would happen to the country if Wyoming should come into the Union with women voters. After days of oratory they were obliged to face the calamity, and President Harrison signed the bill admitting the new state in June, 1890. Thus Wyoming bebecame the first commonwealth in the world's history to grant to women the same rights in the government that men possessed. The official statistics show that about 90 per cent of the women qualified cast their votes at the annual elections. Not one man of prominence has ever voiced publicly the slightest opposition, while volumes of favorable testimony from those eminent in all departments of the state's activities have been published. Again and again the Legislature has adopted resolutions expressing the highest approval of woman suffrage, urging other states to adopt it and calling upon Congress to submit an amendment of the National Constitution to the various legislatures.

We come now to the second state which has fully enfranchised women-Colorado. When it made its constitution for statehood in 1876 it refused the entreaties of the women to provide in this for their enfranchisement, but it gave them school suffrage. The curious provision was made that the Legislature of the new state might at any time by a majority, instead of the two-thirds required for amendments, enact a law to extend the suffrage without amending the Constitution, but the law must be approved by the majority of the voters; and it was ordered that such a law should be submitted at the first election after the state came into the Union. This was done in 1877 and the men, glorying