in their own newly-acquired rights, defeated the measure by a vote of two to one. The women were discouraged and the matter rested till the early '90's, when there were many more of them, and they began to organize their forces. In1893 the Legislature was in entire control of the Populists and a woman suffrage bill was again sent to the voters. Men, too, had progressed during these years and at the November election it received a majority in favor of 6,347.

The women entered at once upon their new duties and the official records show that during all the past eighteen years they have voted in quite as large a proportion as men. They have evinced no especial desire for office, but more than a dozen have been elected to the Legislature and scores to the various county offices. The office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction has always been filled by a woman. They serve on state boards and commissions and are eligible to jury service. The testimony in favor of the way they have used their ballot is overwhelming and from the highest sources—justices of the Supreme Court, governors, presidents of colleges, clergymen, editors. Not one Colorado man or woman of prominence has ever given public expression to a derogatory word. The strongest proof of the success of woman suffrage in this state, however, came ten years after it had been in operation. The suffrage clause in the Constitution permitted immigrants to vote on their first papers and six months' residence. An amendment was submitted in 1903 requiring a year's residence and using the words "he or she." It was adopted by 18,000 majority and it safely intrenched woman suffrage in the constitution of the state. With the Populist party eliminated the vote for it was three times as large as before it had been tried. If this increase was due to the women it showed they appreciated their voting power and wished to make it secure; if it was due to men it proved they were satisfied. In either case the result was decisive.

In 1895, two years after the Colorado victory, a convention of Utah men assembled to make a constitution for statehood. The Legislature in 1870 had given full suffrage

to women-as it had power to do in a territory-and they had used it largely until 1887. That year Congress, thru some inscrutable logic, took away the franchise from all the women, Gentile as well as Mormon, to stop the practice of polygamy! This convention was composed of both Gentiles and Mormons, and after a thoro discussion a strong woman suffrage plank was put into the new Constitution. At the November election it was submitted to Gentile and Mormon voters and carried by 28,618 ayes, 2,687 noes. This was the answer of Utah men after an experience with woman suffrage of seventeen years. This Constitution received no objection by Congress. The women of this state were far better organized and worked much harder for their political freedom than those of any other up to that time. They have used their franchise generally and wisely; no complaints or criticisms have ever come from Utah to the contrary. Women have been sent to both houses of the Legislature, have filled state, county and city offices, served on many boards and gone as delegates to Presidential conventions.

The story of Idaho is short and there is no great struggle for the ballot to record. It was admitted into the Union in 1890. Before and after that year Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, the pioneer suffragist of Oregon, had canvassed territory and state and appealed to the Legislature and constitutional convention. She was strongly supported by individual men and women of Idaho, but there was no organized effort until 1893. The Republicans were in full control of the Legislature in 1895 and the resolution to submit an amendment was almost unanimous. The next year Republican, Democratic, Populist and Free Silver party conventions endorsed it and it was carried at the November election by a vote of almost two to one. At the next election three women were sent to the Legislature; one State Superintendent of Instruction; fifteen county superintendents, four county treasurers elected. This proportion has been kept up and there have been a number of deputy sheriffs elected. There is nothing but the highest testimony as to the part of women

in the politics of the state. They constitute 42 per cent of the population and by the official statistics they cast 40 per cent of the vote in Boise, the capital, and over 35 per cent in the rest of the state. The hardships of getting to the polls thru the snow and over the mountains can hardly be described. Women sometimes ride twenty miles on horseback to vote.

After this gain of four states in six years by the suffragists the opponents took active measures to prevent the submission of the question in other states. In the few cases where this was done the combination of corporations, liquor interests and party "machines" was impossible to overcome. The domination of politics by these forces was so complete that there was no chance for any moral questions, and nothing was left but the slow process of educating public sentiment to demand that the voice of women should be heard in this wilderness. Then came the great "insurgent" movement in the western states and, as the direct result, the submitting of a woman suffrage amendment in 1910 by almost unanimous vote of the Washington Legislature. Here again there had been practical experience. In 1883 the Territorial Legislature gave to women the full rights of the ballot and at the spring election and again in the autumn they cast one-fourth of the votes, altho there were less than one-third as many women as men in the territory. During the three and a half years that they possessed the suffrage the official returns several times showed a larger percentage of women than of men voting, even with all the physical handicaps of these pioneer days. In 1886, some question of constitutionality having arisen, the Legislature strengthened the act. In 1887 the vicious elements secured a court verdict that the bill was not properly titled and the Legislature passed it a third time perfect in every respect.

. A convention was about to prepare a constitution for statehood and these elements were determined it should not include woman suffrage. It was arranged that at the spring election of 1889 the vote of a certain saloon keeper's wife should be refused. Her case was rushed thru to the Supreme

Court, and two out of three members decided that the equal suffrage law was void because a territorial legislature had no right to extend the suffrage! The very act under which Washington was organized specifically gave it this right, and under a similar act women had voted twenty-one years in the territory of Wyoming and seventeen in that of Utah. This decision is only matched by that in the Dred Scott case in 1857. The women were illegally disfranchised, they were excluded from the new Constitution and all they could obtain was the submission that year of woman suffrage as a separate question. They were not themselves allowed to vote on it and it was said to be defeated by over 19,000. Nine years later, in 1898, the women summoned courage to make another campaign and then the majority against them was announced to be considerably less than 10,000. Years afterward a man who had taken part in them stated publicly that the most barefaced frauds were committed and that the amendment really had been carried.

In 1910 came the political revolution in Washington, where the voters threw off the "machine" yoke and honest men of all parties secured a free election and a fair count. The women made the ablest campaign for the suffrage ever known, with the splendid result that it was carried in every county in the state and received a majority of nearly three to one the largest victory ever achieved. The way in which they registered by the tens of thousands in Seattle the following month, "recalled" the Mayor, turned out the council and chief of police and regenerated the city-and later performed the same service for Tacoma-this is of too recent date to need extended mention. It advanced the cause of woman suffrage thruout the whole country and across the ocean on either side.

The first results were seen in California, which in the state at large had been swept clean of its corrupt political forces by the great wave of insurgency. The press representatives who had been going to Sacramento for years said they never had seen so able, sincere and upright a body of men as the legislators who submitted the reform amend

ments, all of which were adopted at the recent election, including woman suffrage. The women remembered with anguish of spirit the magnificent campaign they had made in 1896 only to be betrayed and sold by the political leaders. With largely augmented numbers and full of faith in the new order they made the fight, but it required the decent men of the whole state to overcome the corrupt vote of San Francisco and Oakland. Now in a state that has been in the Union over sixty years, and in several big cities, we shall have the supreme test of woman suffrage. Will another year see victory in Oregon and women enfranchised on the entire Pacific Coast?

Harper's Bazar. 46: 148. March, 1912.

Votes for Women: Victory Coming in Sweden.

Ida H. Harper.

In opening the new Parliament the King has announced that the government will present a bill for this purpose [total enfranchisement of women], and as the government means the party in power, this bill is sure to pass. At the elections last fall the Conservatives were voted out of office and the Liberals and Social Democrats were voted in. The women of the Suffrage association worked very hard to achieve this result, as the Conservatives had defeated their bill more than once and intended to keep on doing so, while the other parties were pledged to its support.

No women more fully deserve the franchise than those of Sweden. They have worked for many years to obtain it, and it is said that a larger proportion are enrolled in the Suffrage association than in any other country. In their never-ceasing efforts they have used always the most orderly and dignified methods, appealing to man's sense of justice and standing on their right to a voice in their own government. For half a century tax-paying widows and unmarried