large proportion of the women vote when you take into consideration, first, that it is a new privilege, against the exercise of which stand the customs and tendencies and teachings from St. Paul to the present day; second, that it is a privilege still rejected and the use of which is still criticised by many good women in the land, which both discourages and discredits its use. If those women who speak disparagingly of the privilege or of those who choose to exercise it should be found defending the right and encouraging the use of it by those who have a chance to use it, there would be little complaint in a few years of the failure to exercise it.

But what shall we say of the thousands of men among the most prosperous citizens of the community who, election after election, fail to vote? It is no unusual thing to find a hundred thousand men absent from the polls in a single state even at a presidential election. Shall we take from the more active, the more patriotic, the right of franchise because the surfeited or business-ridden or politically discontented remain away? I hold it to be the duty of every citizen to take an active interest in politics, to study measures and to vote. Instead of its being an evidence of purity and patriotism to remain out of politics, it is generally an evidence of utter selfishness or political disappointment or an ostentatious display of modern Phariseeism.

The good women surrounded by all the comforts and culture of prosperous and happy homes may feel a reluctance to enter the arena of politics even to the extent of exercising the right of franchise. But the thousands of women who stand alone and must depend upon their own efforts in the struggle for existence; who feel the injustice of laws or the cruelty of politics; the thousands of women who must join with their husbands in seeking homes and educating families, these ought not to be deprived of a voice in selecting those who are to determine politics and make laws.

The next startling argument which those good women advance is that woman suffrage would confuse the functions of men and women and would lay heavy burdens of responsibility upon women which men now chivalrously await an

opportunity to assume. It is a little difficult here to determine whether this argument arises out of sympathy for the women or out of a desire to protect the chivalry of men in these modern days. This is the statement, though in a different and more cultured way, which was used in the debates at the country school. The young orator opposing woman suffrage, with a fine sense of the climax so essential in all oratory, reserved until the last the clinching, consternation-spreading argument that if women vote they must work on the roads and go to war.

But truly, "Summer is not so bad as painted." We find no such evil effects flowing from the exercise of the right of franchise. The functions are not confused-far less confused, indeed, than already in the business world. The mother is no less a mother, the home no less a home, the husband no less a husband, and even often more a husband. It is absurd, perfectly absurd, to suppose that woman will change her sphere in life by reason of an increased opportunity to enlarge and ennoble that peculiar sphere in which she is by nature placed and from which all the laws and politics of the world will never take her. This is the same doctrine that woman has had to meet in every single initiative of her fight for a higher and broader sphere of action. I know, everybody who thinks knows-that the woman who deals in care and sincerity with those questions which lighten the burdens and adjust the equity of humanity is a noble, stronger, more womanly woman than the woman who sits in enforced idleness, sips her tea and discusses the decline and retirement of some departed social queen.

The suggestion, that, should the ballot be given to women, the less desirable class of women would avail themselves of this right and the desirable remain aloof, is not sustained in practice or experience. The argument having been called to the attention of the public some time ago, a public expression was was secured from a number of women of my state. I quote from their published utterances. An elderly lady, long most active in matters connected with the suffrage cause and one of our oldest and most highly respected families,

said: "The majority of the women of the state exercise the right of suffrage and it is only on rare occasions that I have heard of the undesirable class voting at all."

A young lady who has taken a most efficient and active part in state politics for several years, who had to do with the public service, who is familiar with all parts of the state and thoroughly qualified to give an opinion, said: “In my experience of seven years in politics in Idaho, which has taken me over the entire state, I have found the thinking women alive to every issue." And she added: "I believe there is a class of men who are just as unfit for the ballot as are Hottentots."

The mother of a fine family, who has been interested in educational work, said: "I do not think it is true that the desirable women do not vote and the undesirable do; emphatically no." Another, a former regent of our state university, universally respected and loved, with as beautiful a home as may be found in the West, said: "I am sure that the majority of the intelligent women in this state vote. I think the undesirable class vote at times, but never any more as a unit than any other class of women." I think these expressions convey the opinion of practically all who have observed the effect of woman suffrage in Idaho.

The most startling doctrine, however, comes to me in a bulletin published in Chicago. It asserts that woman suffrage means socialism, and it is part and parcel of the worldwide movement for the overthrow of the present order of civilized society, and the establishment in its place of a revolutionary scheme based upon principles that have been tried and found wanting and which are unalterably opposed to those that form the foundation of the free government under which we live. How it could be effected, what part woman suffrage would have in the movement, is not made clear. This is all left to the imagination, already well aroused and somewhat bewildered by the promised catastrophe.

We can not help recurring to a former argument against woman suffrage so often advanced and which indeed is ad

vanced in this same bulletin, to-wit: that she does not want suffrage and would not exercise the right if she had it. Unless woman is going in earnestly and zealously to use this right, to take hold of affairs and exert continuously and persistently this power, it does not seem possible that she would have any considerable part in this revolutionary wreck of things so forcefully described. I do not see how this movement is any kin to socialism or to revolution, unless it is that peaceful revolution by which a large portion of the intelligence and patriotism of the country moves up to a place of influence in accordance with every principle of equity and justice. With the corrupt hungry, dissolute mob of political satellites voting in our great cities, bought and delivered like cattle, could we not safely place against this the woman in her home devoted to its preservation against every evil that threatens its existence?"

If these women could see the ease, the imperceptible methods by which a state confers woman suffrage and the people take up the duties under the new regime, the unrevolutionary way in which all things continue to exist, they would at least discard such prophecies as those above. They can go into those states where women vote and have been voting for years, and while they will find good and noble women who are not enthusiastic about the privilege or zealous at all times in its use, they will find, on the other hand, thousands of refined, homeloving, family-rearing women who do exercise the right to the advantage of all and in no wise to the detriment of themselves.

Harper's Weekly. 55: 6. December 2, 1911.

Objections to Woman Suffrage.

Another familiar method of coping with the subject is to ask why women should demean themselves to demand political rights when it is perfectly simple to get anything they want for the mere asking. Accepting that

statement—which is, of course, not in the least borne out by the facts-one might submit that one serious objection to the asking method is that it consumes too much valuable time and takes a women out of her home too much. It takes a great deal of time to serve on committees and plead one's cause before legislatures. Secondly, it is not dignified to ask of strange men as a favor that which is felt to be the inherent right of any sane adult. To be forced to get by cajolery or personal influence what is in the natural order right is harmful to character. Moreover, the facts do not bear one out that it is as easy to get what one needs by asking as by voting. The women of Australia had sent committees to legislature for years to try to get the wages of the women teachers in the public schools made the same as the men's in the same grades, but it was all without avail. The year after the suffrage was granted to women this bill was passed. To be true, the women of New York have accomplished the same end without the vote, but how many times have they appeared before the legislature without results first? Indeed, we have every reason to believe that the natural way is both quicker and more effective.

One great fear of the adult-suffrage opponents is that the vote unsexes women. Surely those who indulge in so ungrounded a fear may rest easy. Sex is older than our civilization, and the sex of woman is as solidly grounded as that of man. There is no more reason to fear that a change of method will unsex women than to fear that a man who sews will become a woman. One might as well fear that if a woman votes she will develop a bass voice.

Another superstition that ought to be faced is the one which takes it for granted that women in the mass are supported by men and have no need of representation other than that offered by their natural protectors. As a matter of fact, when Lloyd-George recently raised objection to the conciliation bill granting suffrage to the taxpaying women of England, on the grounds that it would admit only a few well-todo ladies, it was found on taking the census that eighty-five per cent of the women of England were taxed either as