five or six where there is but one license. A militant antisuffragette is at present telling the world that Colorado has 24 times as many saloons as Nevada. The truth is that, with nine and a half times the population of Nevada, Colorado has only three times as many saloons. In most of the smaller towns license or no license is the main issue in the annual elections, and the number of dry towns has increased to about 75. The "drys" hope to make some gains at the coming April election.

Nearly, if not all, these states have strict legislation regarding the sale of narcotics, cigarettes and tobacco. This kind of legislation is practically always the result of the work of women, but where they do not have the vote, they find themselves unable to secure the enforcement of laws; indeed, it is not easy to do this even with the ballot, as good men have long ago learned to their sorrow.

Washington, Idaho and Colorado have pure food laws, and regulations providing for the inspection of all places where food is kept.

Utah has a nine-hour day and Washington an eight-hour day for women employees; Colorado had an eight-hour day, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Several of them, including Colorado, have laws restricting the hours of employment of children.

In Utah and Wyoming, women teachers holding the same grade certificate receive the same salary as men in similar positions. Kindergartens, manual training, instruction in physiology and hygiene, libraries in connection with schools, traveling libraries, compulsory school laws, chairs of domestic economy in state institutions, the medical inspection of school children, with proper treatment for defective sight and hearing, removal of adenoids and the care of the teeth, are among the changes brought about by the votes of wom

en.

Q. Have the women purified politics?

A. In some respects. Elections are conducted much more quietly; there is rarely any disorder at the polling places, and conventions are by no means so exciting as

And, another item of interest and importance, the percentage of registration to voting population runs higher in Colorado than in any other state. Feminine interest in public affairs has forced a keener activity on the part of men; for what head of the family would let his women folk outdo him in something that has long been considered a purely masculine prerogative? Colorado even proportionately furnishes no such figures as Boston, where 40,000 men failed to vote at one election.

There has always been outcry against the "apathy and indifference" of the man voter, and the history of male suffrage is thick with stupidities, crimes and ignorances. Why, then, is it fair to demand that women straightway vote in enthusiasm, with superhuman intelligence and unerring honesty? And yet, even though the most rigid test be applied, what fair man can deny that the seventeen years' record of equal suffrage in Colorado has not been its ample justification?

Under male suffrage there were three "dry" towns in the State of Colorado. Under equal suffrage a local-option law was put on the statute books, and there are now fifty "dry" towns and twelve "dry" counties. And it may also be mentioned that Denver is one of the few cities in the land that has no saloon-keepers in its council.

The liquor interests hate the voting woman because they can not fool her out of her antagonism. The public service corporations fear the voting woman because they can not "handle" her. And, who so blind as to deny the political partnership of the saloon and the franchise-grabbing corporations? These corrupt and malign influences have always worked together, and are working together now in the desperate endeavor to prevent the spread of equal suffrage. The gambler, saloonkeeper, macquereau and barrelhouse boss -the respectable criminals who fatten on franchises and the exploitation of the people—these are the people at the bottom of the anti-suffrage agitation! They constitute the secret influence that is inflaming conservatism and traditional prejudices!

The honest man is not vicious in his opposition to equal suffrage. At worst it is, as has been explained, no more than a matter of sex antagonism or a survival of the feudel instinct. Is it not significant that no reputable Colorado man has yet come out in denunciation of equal suffrage? Men are in the majority in Colorado, and surely, if the Colorado man is opposed to the law, and desires its repeal, a candidate could not have a more profitable platform than the law's abolition.

As a matter of fact, equal suffrage was practically resubmitted in 1901, when people voted on the proposition to strike "male" out of the constitution of the state. Equal suffrage has had an eight years' trial, and benefits were much less marked than now. Yet the proposition carried by 35,000.

Discussion of equal suffrage in other states may be governed by tradition and prejudice, but experience and practice have made the Colorado man come down to "brass tacks." Some may still retain a vague antagonism, but not one but has more sense than to advance the arguments that enjoy vogue in the East.

The chief conceded faults of women are the faults of a mind that has been cooped up, circumscribed by small household activities. The Colorado man has come to understand that the broadening influence of equal suffrage remedies these faults, and works for their elimination.

It is claimed that woman should not have the ballot because she has shown unfitness in grappling with the "servant problem."

In Colorado the "servant problem" is recognized as a "labor problem," and what man will claim that male votes have solved it? President Taft's own answer to the request for solution was "God knows!"

The attainments of culture-these "parlor accomplishments" that are urged upon women-what are they, in the last analysis, but self-adornment? The broadening of politics is different from the broadening of culture, for the one has a social and public purpose, and the other is personal and selfish.

The Colorado man has come to the recognition of this truth, and knows that the Colorado woman has grown in strength and effectiveness without loss of essential womanliness or sacrifice of valuable traits.

Woman's Journal. 43: 120. April 13, 1912.

Answers Queries Concisely.

The following are a few queries lately addressed by a Texas school girl to Ellis Meredith of the Denver election commission, together with her answers. As they are queries which have to be answered again and again in nearly all the states where the women do not vote, The Woman's Journal is glad to publish them.

Q. What have Colorado women and the women in the other states where they vote accomplished?

A. It would take a book to answer. Tracts have been printed from time to time enumerating legislative enactments secured by the women, but these show only a small 'part of what they have accomplished. It is safe to say that in every state where women have had the vote over at least one legislative assembly, they have modified, changed, amended or enacted laws so that they shall better protect women and children. They have made the liquor laws more stringent, and increased the amount of "dry territory."

In Idaho they have passed a "search and seizure law," to stop boot-legging; another making saloons outside of an incorporated town illegal, and a third requiring the would-be purchaser in a drug store to subscribe to an oath before liquor can be supplied him.

In Utah they passed a local option law for cities and towns, the counties to be "dry" unless voted "wet."

In Colorado, before equal suffrage, there were about ten so-called "dry" towns in the state, most of them dry because the sale of liquor was prohibited by their charters. Now there are twelve counties that are "dry" territory, and