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Page 41
Since the beginning of equal suffrage, Colorado has fully held her own
with other States in advanced legislation, especially in social and
educational lines. Women have suffered no insult at the polls, and on
the whole polling-places have improved; but how far this is due to
women's presence no one can say. Women have occasionally held
legislative and executive offices; but they have especially
distinguished themselves as State and county superintendents of schools.
When it comes to estimating the effect of voting on the women
themselves, it is still harder to form an opinion. A large majority of
those reporting to Miss Sumner think that women have become more
intelligent and more public-spirited, but some doubt it. Morally, they
have shown themselves less corrupt than men; but a considerable number
think women as a whole have suffered some deterioration. This is a
question bound up with our deepest feelings and our most conservative
ideals; and it is inevitable that some observers should find any change
for the worse. On the whole, belief in equal suffrage seems to have
increased in Colorado during the twelve years under survey. Probably the
results are much what they would be if one were to study a group of the
most intelligent and refined men in the same community.
During the summer of 1911, I spent a month in the State of Idaho; and as
I had long been interested in the problem of equal suffrage, both in
England and America, I seized eagerly on the opportunity to study its
practical workings at first hand. On the streets and in the tram-cars,
in hotel lobbies and in lecture halls, when dining out or when making a
call, few people escaped inquisition. I interviewed working men and
women, men of affairs, ranchers, sheep raisers and miners, doctors,
lawyers, teachers, ministers and practical politicians, both men and
women.
The thing that first impresses one who has been intimately in touch with
the excited and turbulent condition of mind among the English
suffragettes, and the sustained and often impassioned feeling of Eastern
suffrage leaders, is the absence of any burning interest in the subject
on the part of men or women in Idaho. In London or New York, a suffrage
inquirer would constantly strike "live wires;" in Idaho, every one is
insulated. The subject is no more an issue than civil service reform or
state versus national control of banking systems. Most people have even
forgotten the passage of the constitutional amendment conferring equal
suffrage, in 1896. Since then, men and women have gone on voting and
holding office until the woman's right has become as commonplace as, and
no more interesting or questionable than, the vote of any busy citizen
in New Jersey.
The first question that one raises, is naturally whether women do
actually vote and hold office in Idaho. To answer this question, there
is no body of statistics available. Every one, however, declares that
they pretty generally vote. On account of long distances in the country
side, they poll less votes than men, especially if the weather is bad.
Probably about three-quarters as many women as men go to the polls.
Often I met women who said that they did not care for the vote, and
sometimes one who said she thought women ought not to vote; but these
same women often added that since they had the responsibility they felt
it their duty to cast a ballot; and no woman told me that she did not
fulfil the obligation.
In the first legislature which met after the granting of equal suffrage,
that of 1898, three women were seated, Mrs. Hattie F. Noble, Clara L.
Cambell, and Mary A. Wright; Mrs. Wright afterward became chief clerk of
the House. In 1908, another woman, Mrs. Lottie J. McFadden, was
returned; but there was no woman in the last legislature, and so far as
I can learn, only these four have taken part in law-making. When asked
why, after the first ardor of emancipation, women have taken so little
part in legislation, most people said it was because they had found the
work and conditions surrounding it unsuited to them. It seems generally
agreed, however, that a woman could be elected to the legislature at any
time if she represented a cause which needed to be brought before the
people through that body.
Theorists have always insisted that equal suffrage would greatly improve
the material conditions which surround the polls on election day. One of
the prominent political leaders in Idaho, who has been intimately in
touch with conditions for a quarter of a century, said that of course
there had been great improvement in the last fifteen years. "Things
would have improved any way," he said, "but I am sure that the women
have had a large influence. No woman has ever been insulted at the polls
in Idaho and she runs no more danger of annoyance than she would in
buying her ticket at a railway window. Men are not always sober in
either place; but if a man made a remark to a woman that was not polite,
or used annoying language in her presence, he would be mobbed by the
men even in the roughest mining camp in the State." Doubtless women have
helped to break the connection between the saloon and the polling-place,
but no one claims that women have made voting into a drawing-room
ceremony. On the contrary, women are very persistent workers at the
polls, seeking to direct doubtful voters.
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