formerly. As a rule the nominees are better morally, but it does not follow that they are always more efficient than formerly.

In Colorado the women succeeded in getting the emblems removed from the ballots, and have long prosecuted the fight for the pure Australian ballot, by the which the voter must put his mark opposite each candidate, and can no longer vote a straight ticket by writing a party name at the top of his ballot. Colorado women began working for the Initiative and Referendum 20 years ago, when most of the men knew little about it, and finally secured the passage of this amendment to the constitution and its adoption two years ago. Washington women also won this great reform for that state. The Colorado women have long worked for a primary law; finally one has been passed, and, while it is not all they desired, still it is felt that it is a step in the right direction. The recall and subsequent defeat of Mayor Gill of Seattle was a "reform due to women."

This, however, has really nothing to do with the question of the enfranchisement of women. Unless men were disfranchised, it cannot be expected that women will entirely change the political atmosphere in a few elections. It must be borne in mind that the men outnumber the women in every state in which women vote, and men will do themselves and permit others to do things in a campaign that they would not think of doing at any other time.

Woman's Journal. 43: 180. June 8, 1912.

Minnie Bronson's Fallacies. Alice S. Blackwell.

Anti-suffragists are circulating a pamphlet by Miss Minnie Bronson, in which she claims that the chief reason why protective legislation for the working woman is adopted is because she lacks the ballot, and that where she has it, “the inference is that she must give as many hours of toil per day as man." Miss Bronson affirms also that the suffrage

states are behind the majority of non-suffrage states in legislation for working women. Let us dissect this audacious assertion.

There are six suffrage states-California, Washington, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. California and Washington have eight-hour laws for women. Miss Bronson says that these were enacted "under male suffrage." As regards: Washington, this statement is directly contrary to fact. Before women got the ballot, the advocates of shorter hours in Washington had tried for eight years to secure an eighthour law for women without success. After equal suffrage was granted the Legislature promptly passed the bill.

In California, the eight-hour law was passed a short time before the ballot was granted; but, as it was passed by the same Legislature which also passed the woman suffrage amendment to the state constitution by a vote of 33 to 5 in the Senate and 65 to 12 in the Assembly, it certainly does not bear out Miss Bronson's claim that such legislation for the working woman is adopted "above all because she is not herself a law-maker."

Colorado passed an eight-hour law for women in 1903, but in 1907 it was thrown out by the State Supreme Court as unconstitutional. In the last Colorado Legislature, a more comprehensive eight-hour law for women passed the lower house with only one dissenting vote, but was blocked in the Senate, like almost all other legislation in that year, by the deadlock over the U. S. Senatorship.

Utah adopted a nine-hour law for women in 1911. Mrs. Elizabeth M. Cohen of Salt Lake City, chairman of the Industrial committee of the State federation of women's clubs, told in The Woman's Journal of May 27, 1911, how the passage of the bill was secured. It was backed by women's organizations with an aggregate membership of 50,000. Mrs. Cohen says:

"The large number of women represented was both inspiring and appalling-inspiring the women's committee to give the best that was in them, and appalling to the legislator who would like to be re-elected two years hence, and

it See i ngroh Imantas no actores where women are emploret, so the end of this law has not been fele p to a very few years 1gr Liere was not a department store in the state and the zerks n the stores were treated as "hey were in the good old lays n the East, ke members of the family The census of 2000 showed only 30 women in Idaho engaged in factory work, and only 47 in Wyoming, as against 126063 in Pennsy vania, 143,109 in Massachusetts, and 230.31 in New York.

Anti-suffragists often charge that the tendency of woman enfrage will be to take women one of the home and put them into industry. As it happens, all the states in which encrmous numbers of women are working for wazes cutside their homes are non-suffrage states. The need of protective legislation for working women, therefore, has not been nearly so urgent in the suffrage states as elsewhere; yet a much larger proportion of the suffrage states have passed eight or nine hour laws for women than of the non-suffrage states.

They have also done it with more ease. Massachusetts has just secured a 54-hour a week law as the culmination of about 40 years of effort for improved conditions for working women. The Utah women got the nine-hour law from the first Legislature from which they asked it.

Woman's Journal. 43: 117. April 13, 1912.

Suffrage Fills the Bill.

The discussion of woman suffrage by the Ohio Fourth Constitutional Convention called forth the following expressions from the Governors of five suffrage states:

Denver, Colo., Feb. 19, 1912.

I am glad that Ohio is contemplating adopting a constitution which will give equal suffrage to women. It has been a great success in Colorado; women always will be found upon the moral side of every question. It cannot be that our mothers, sisters and wives would have anything but an elevating influence on government.

John F. Shafroth, Governor.

Boise, Idaho, Feb. 21, 1912.

Am gratified to learn through press reports that Constitutional Convention will submit woman suffrage to vote of people of Ohio, and feel certain the Buckeye State will follow her progressive sister commonwealths in the enfranchisement of her women. All Idaho wishes your cause success, as experience here has justified its wisdom.

James Hawley, Governor.

Cheyenne, Wyo., March 1, 1912. In this state for many years women have had the right to vote and hold office. I have watched the operation of the law conferring these rights upon women with a great deal of interest, and I have been unable to see any disadvantages or any objection that could be raised against it. We have never had any militant suffragists in this state. Women exercises her rights to vote and hold office as a matter of

course.

We are a new state; in a certain sense a frontier state. I am satisfied that women's influence in political matters has been good. I know it has been a great advantage to

woman, as girls in school and in young womanhood make preparation to hold positions of responsibility in civil as well 'as in official life. Not two per cent of the voters would deprive woman of her rights in this state.

I think that woman has as many inherent rights in a political way as man has, and she is as fully competent to exercise those rights. There is scarcely a man who is deprived of the right to vote and hold office. In this state about the only restrictions upon those who have reached their majority and are citizens, are such as inability to read the Constitution of the United States, being a convict or insane. The same restrictions, and only the same, apply to men and women alike.

Within the last few years I have been more strongly impressed that it is right that women should vote and hold office, because of the fact that many women have come into very important and responsible positions.

Joseph M. Carey, Governor.

Olympia, Wash., Feb. 20, 1912.

During the short time woman suffrage has been in effect in this state, a profound interest has been manifested among all women in the study of civic questions and the promotion of legislation and projects designed to advance the best interest of the people of the state. They are taking their responsibility seriously and providing a powerful agency of progress. M. E. Hay, Governor.

Sacramento, Cal.

I cannot do better than to say that since the adoption of the Equal Suffrage Amendment in California, three important city elections have been held. One of these city elections, that at Los Angeles, was the most exciting and most bitterly contested ever held in this state, and, it was believed, fraught with the gravest consequences to that community. In these elections, the first test of equal suffrage with us, the women of California acquitted themselves with firmness, courage, ability, and with the very highest intelligence. If