HOW WOMAN SUFFRAGE HAS WORKED

That the results of applied woman suffrage may stand out the more clearly, it will be expedient to show, first, the results achieved in behalf of woman without its help. All are agreed that during the sixty-five years that have elapsed since the suffragists, led by Lucretia Mott, posted their "Declaration of Sentiments" at Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848, woman has gained certain rights and privileges. That Declaration contained a bitter indictment by woman of man who had "oppressed her on all sides." He had made her, if married, "in the eye of the law, civilly dead," having taken from her "all right in property, even to the wages she earns." He had made her "morally an irresponsible;" she could commit many crimes with impunity, "provided they be done in the presence of her husband, he becoming to all intents and purposes her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement." He had so framed the laws of divorce as to what should be the proper causes, and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children should be given, "as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law in all cases going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands."

The married woman having no rights, the single woman was "taxed to support a Government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it." Man had "monopolized nearly all the profitable employments;" and from those woman was permitted to follow, "she receives but a scanty remuneration." Man had closed to woman "all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself: as a teacher of theology, in medicine, or law, she is not known." Moreover, man had "denied to her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her." In the Church, too, she was subordinated, and apostolic authority was invoked "for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church." Men acted by a different code of morals from women, "by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in men." By such means, the indictment declared, man had discriminated against woman, endeavoring in every way he could to "destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her lead a dependent and abject life." And because of these things the drawers of the indictment demanded for women "immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

It was first of all as voters that the women should gain the rights denied them. Deprivation of the vote was the fundamental evil. The first item of their grievances named the ballot as their "inalienable right." It was primarily because this had been wrested away, the Declaration said, that man had been able to oppress woman on all sides.

But it needs only the restatement of the original suffragist grievances to show how completely woman has been emancipated since they were formulated, and chiefly without the vote. Nowhere in the United States is the married woman, in the eyes of the law, civilly dead. Nowhere is she bereft of the right in property and wages. In that year 1848 when the "Declaration of Sentiments" was drafted, New York State, still withholding the franchise from woman, expressly permitted married women to hold property for their sole and separate use. By a law of 1861, married women in New York received power to control property, including wages, and authority to will property was given them in 1867. By 1887 the property rights of married women in this State were more complete than those of their husbands, who could not convey real estate without their wives' consent. Woman now has a right of action for injuries to person or property, and she is liable for her own wrongful acts; that is, she is no longer "morally an irresponsible." Women are joint guardians with their husbands of their minor children, and, in case of divorce, the custody of the children is decreed reasonably to the innocent party without discrimination as to sex. The laws of divorce and separation, too, though differing widely in the several States, are impartial, applying equally to men and women. New York's women taxpayers have the right to vote on questions of local taxation in all towns and villages, and they are eligible to nearly all political offices, and to various positions of trust and responsibility. Moreover, all the professions are open to them.

In these respects, the case of New York is fairly typical of all the States in the Union, whether suffragist or non-suffragist. As for men's monopolizing "nearly all the profitable employments," the Federal census of 1900 showed that women were engaged in 295 out of the 303 masculine occupations. The original complaint that they were not admitted to men's pursuits on equal terms with men has changed to a demand for laws which shall discriminate in favor of women in industry because of their weaker physique. Only in Massachusetts, Indiana, and Nebraska, however, three male-suffrage States, have laws been passed prohibiting night work for women in factories and machine shops. The eight-hour law for women in California was enacted before they had the suffrage there, but it still exempts the great canning industry of that State from its operation, and it does not prohibit night work. The doubtful minimum wage act, and the maternity act for the protection of women were first copied from anti-feminist Europe by male-suffragist Massachusetts. Massachusetts, also, is generally credited by child labor experts and by woman suffragists with having the best child labor law in the Union, applied in her great textile industries. It would seem, therefore, that the added complaint of the latter-day suffragists of lack of discrimination in favor of working women may be satisfied without resort by them to the ballot.

The facilities for acquiring a thorough education are now in no State denied to woman. In the argument of Mrs. A. J. George to the woman suffrage committee of the Federal Senate on April 19, 1913, this anti-suffragist authority noted the fact that there are "to-day more institutions which grant degrees to women in this country than there are institutions which grant degrees to men." The foundation of Vassar, of Wellesley, of Smith, of Mount Holyoke, was "in no way connected with the suffrage movement," while the opening of the Harvard examinations to women and the opening of the graduate departments of Yale University to women were due to the activities of men and women who were avowed anti-suffragists. In the universal granting of this great privilege to woman, therefore, the ballot was not used or needed.

The grievance that woman is subordinated in the Church was one that, by its nature, could not be settled by the suffrage, since in this country Church and State are irrevocably separate. As a matter of fact, however, woman has steadily gained rights and privileges in most denominations of the Protestant Church, including admission to the ministry and public participation in their affairs. For example, Dr. Anna Shaw, the President of the National Woman's Suffrage Association, is a clergywoman. As in religion, so in morals. The legal prohibitions of immorality are in most cases the same for both men and women; it is only outside the domain of legislation and within the sphere of social custom that divergencies appear, and here the discrimination is exercised notoriously by woman against her erring sisters.

Up to this point results achieved and practicable without the suffrage seem to argue strongly against a continuance of the propaganda to obtain the elective franchise for the redress of aggrieved womankind. Clothed with full rights in property and earnings, held morally accountable for her acts, made joint guardian with her husband over her children, welcomed to an equal competition with men in business, industry, and the professions, after ample opportunities given for acquiring a higher education and special training, to what further extent can the exercise of the voting power by woman improve her status? The grievances set forth in the "Declaration of Sentiments" of 1848 present the "whole case for woman as comprehensively as it ever has been stated since," according to an official statement of the National Woman Suffrage Association; the document's resolutions comprised "practically every demand that ever afterwards was made for women." The civil and legal rights besought therein have been so fully recognized that the anti-suffragists, numbering many public-spirited women who have battled zealously for these rights, now contend that womanhood suffrage is not needed.

Their suffragist opponents will not be gainsaid. While the condition of woman and her children has been mitigated, much remains to do, they say, and the more quickly by the ballot. For example, while eighteen States, comprising nearly one-half the population of the Union—41,231,000, to be exact—enjoy the benefit of joint guardianship laws, and in twenty-seven more States the surviving mother is made sole guardian of her children with the same powers exercised by the father in his lifetime, six States remain—Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland, with a combined population of 9,104,000—in which the father has power to bequeath the guardianship to a stranger and away from the mother. To be sure, in this ninth of the population of the country the custom ignores the common law; husbands uniformly leave the guardianship of children to their wives, and the mother shares authority over them with the father. But here is a field for corrective legal action. The question is whether, if women had the vote, this would be the swiftest and most direct means of bringing about the reform demanded. A suffragist writer has said: "It took the mothers of Massachusetts fifty-five years to get an equal guardianship law, but after the women obtained the ballot in Colorado the very next Legislature enacted one." She forgot that New York's joint guardianship law was passed a year before the Colorado statute. Mrs. George W. Townsend of Buffalo, who as head of the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union was active in urging the passage of the joint guardianship laws in both States, says of the one in New York:

Our Union was especially careful that the Suffrage Association should not know of the Union's effort until after the law was passed. I remember that a prominent suffragist called to see me as soon as she heard of it, and said, "How did you accomplish this great good, and not let us know?" And I answered, "Because we did not let you know." I think I was justified in saying that, because many men in both houses were so opposed to woman suffrage that they would not have voted for our bills. The guardianship bill was passed without a negative vote in either house.

The work was done in a systematic manner. Circulars giving full information in regard to laws in other States, and as to what we desired to accomplish, and reasons therefor, were sent to every legislator. There was no lobbying, and, in fact, it was not necessary for me to go to Albany at all.

It should be noted in this connection that in Wyoming, while it is not among the "benighted" states that permit the father to will the guardianship of his children away from the mother, the women have had an equal voice in the State Government for more than half a century without making fathers and mothers joint guardians of their children. It is not clear, therefore, that joint guardianship laws have been passed the more quickly by reason of woman suffrage.

But other tests should be applied. The new complaints of woman that have arisen since the Declaration of 1848 deal largely with her condition in the industries which men have thrown open to her. Has the suffrage enabled her more quickly to ameliorate this condition? Around this point the strife rages between the "pros" and the "antis." Miss Minnie Bronson, who was employed from 1907 to 1909 by the Federal Bureau of Labor to investigate the conditions of labor of women and children, and who acted as the Special Agent of the Bureau to report on the strike of shirtwaist makers in 1910 has prepared a statement for the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women embodying a comparison of the laws for the protection of wage-earning women in the various States of the Union. Miss Bronson's contentions have been deemed of sufficient importance to merit a reply, with an introduction by Jane Addams, written by the two best qualified woman suffragist authorities on women in the industries, Miss Edith Abbott of Hull House, Chicago, and Professor Sophonisba P. Breckinridge of the University of Chicago. The allegations of Miss Bronson and the specific replies of her opponents thereto are marshaled below:

"Anti" Contentions	Suffragist Replies
A suffragist addressing the women shirtwaist strikers in New York declared that if the women engaged in this industry had had the ballot such a strike as theirs would be unnecessary. The speaker would have been surprised to learn that 40 per cent, of the strikers were men, 36 per cent, were women under 21 years, and 6 per cent. were women workers of voting age who had not been in this country long enough to gain a residence.	When we say that if women had a vote there would be an end of child labor, and that young girls would work shorter hours, this does not mean that we think the children in the mills and factories and workshops are going to be allowed to vote. In England conditions improved for all workingmen when some workmen got the vote; in this country when some women get the vote conditions for all workingwomen will improve.
Laws governing the labor of women are constantly improved, not because women have the ballot or want it, but because women are entering more and more into the industrial life of the country. In forty-four states the laws for safeguarding wage-earning women are better and more comprehensive than the laws for the safeguarding of wage-earning men. Moreover, a comparison of the labor laws of the various states shows that there are more and better laws for the protection of women wage-earners in the non-suffrage states than in states where women have the ballot.	Any fair-minded person need only recall the long series of statutes enacted in all the leading industrial states, covering nearly three-fourths of a century, as a result of workmen's efforts to get through laws a larger measure of justice than they could obtain through their attempts to bargain with individual employers. This legislation, although it may in a few cases protect the workingwoman as well as the workingman, represents the results of long years of earnest struggle by workingmen with votes to improve their condition. Miss Bronson ignores this, laying stress on the fact that some states have a few special provisions to protect wage-earning women from exploitation likely to injure health and endanger their children's health.
In thirty-four states laws have been passed limiting the hours of labor in which a woman may be employed. Three of the four woman suffrage states where women have voted long enough to affect legislation have no such law, and the 54-hour law in Utah was not enacted until 1911, fifteen years after woman suffrage became operative there.	No suffragist would deny that protective legislation has been obtained in states where women do not vote. It is well known that most of this legislation was obtained through the laborious efforts of suffragists. No argument that protective legislation does not exist in some of the states in which women have the ballot is valid which ignores the special needs of these states. Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Utah are all mining and agricultural states and have very few wage-earning women who are employed in factories. Massachusetts had 152,713 women in "manufacturing and mechanical pursuits" when the last United States Census of Occupations was taken; Idaho had only 681. A similar contrast might be drawn for any of the other states: thus, Wyoming had 501 women in industrial occupations while New York in the same year had 136,788.
Thirty-nine states compel employers in stores, factories, shops, etc., to provide seats for female employés. Nine states have no such laws, and one of the nine states is a suffrage state.	The one suffrage state, Idaho, that fails to provide seats for saleswomen had 153 saleswomen in all at a time when Massachusetts had 11,985, Illinois, 12,149, and New York, 30,858. In most of the thirty-nine states where voteless women have secured these laws, they have never received the means of enforcing them. The protective laws protect no one.
In forty-two states, the territory of Alaska, and the District of Columbia, the earnings of a married woman are secured to her absolutely, and cannot be required by law, as can the earnings of a married man, for the support of the family, nor are they liable for her husband's debts. Six states do not so provide, and one is a suffrage state.	No reply.
Sixteen states regulate the employment of women at night, and specifically state the hours between which women may not be employed. These laws were all enacted under male suffrage. In these sixteen states are all those that prohibit night work for girls who are minors, but who are over 16 and therefore not protected by child labor laws.	Night work for women is not prohibited in Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, for the same reason that the workingmen of Nebraska have not passed a law protecting seamen.
Twenty-four states, only one a suffrage state, restrict the number of hours of employment for women, both by the day and week, thus causing one day of rest in seven. The suffrage states of Washington and California, while limiting women's work to forty-eight hours a week, passed both laws while under male suffrage.	The same legislature of California that granted equal suffrage passed the eight-hour law for women. Massachusetts has passed a 54-hour a week law for women as the culmination of forty years of effort by indirect influence to improve conditions for women in industry. Utah in 1911 passed a nine-hour law for women after less than two years of effort by its advocates. The first legislature of which they asked it gave it to women with votes. Of the non-suffrage states not one has an eight-hour law for women, and only five have nine-hour laws.
Eliminating the manufacturing states of the east, which have the most and best remedial laws for women, the suffrage states of Idaho and Wyoming do not limit the hours a woman may be employed, while the neighboring male-suffrage states of Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska regulate the hours by law, and Nebraska prohibits the employment of women at night in all manufacturing mechanical, or mercantile establishments, and in hotels, and restaurants, and limits the number of hours per week, thereby insuring one day of rest.	The Nebraska law provides for a ten-hour day and a sixty-hour week and does not prohibit Sunday labor. Nebraska, in company with a large number of other states, has a law prohibiting Sunday labor, which applies to both men and women. The fact that Colorado has no Sunday labor law argues as much against suffrage for men as for women, since the men in the large metal-working establishments are chiefly affected by absence of Sunday laws. Anyway, such laws are rarely enforced.
An eight-hour law for women was enacted in Colorado in 1903, a very inadequate law, for it was restricted in its application to women who must stand at work, and exempted the great majority of women employed in that state in the "seated trades" of ready-made clothing, dress-making, millinery and like occupations, and in candy-making, box-making, and cigar-making. The law was pronounced unconstitutional in 1907 by the Supreme Court of Colorado, although state courts and the Federal Supreme Court have upheld similar laws in neighboring male-suffrage states. Not until 1912, nineteen years after woman suffrage came into Colorado, was a law finally secured limiting the hours of women at work.	The eight-hour day of the Colorado law, made for the majority of workingwomen of Colorado a forty-eight-hour week, in contrast with the 60-hour week in the neighboring states of Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska. It is little short of ridiculous to discuss these laws as if they were all genuinely protective through proper enforcement. The last census of occupations showed but 65 women and girls in Colorado employed in candy-making, 11 in box-making, and 30 in cigar-making, in contrast to 1,184 saleswomen, 762 waitresses, 1,599 in hand and steam laundries,—all in the standing trades.
Laws not enacted under woman suffrage are those in Massachusetts prohibiting employers from deducting the wages of women when time is lost because machinery has broken down, and prohibiting the employment of women for a fixed period before and after childbirth; the law in Delaware and Louisiana exempting the wages of women from execution, and laws in California, Illinois, and Washington, providing that no person shall on account of sex be disqualified from entering upon or pursuing any lawful business, vocation, or profession.	The Massachusetts law relating to broken-down machinery was passed to correct peculiar abuses in the textile industries. This law was not needed in suffrage states. In a few states the courts took the position that since women were not voters they could not become practicing lawyers; corrective statutes were passed. No such law would be needed in a state where women do participate in the Government.
A suffragist says that in Massachusetts the average pay of a female teacher is only one-third that of a male teacher, and in almost all the states it is unequal, whereas Wyoming and Utah give equal pay for equal work. Where teachers are doing the same grade of work no such percentage as three to one obtains in Massachusetts. Female teachers do not in the majority of cases receive the same pay as men for the work of the same grade; but here the law of supply and demand is paramount. The women teachers of New York City receive equal pay with men teachers, granted by a male-suffrage legislature.	The doctrine of the inflexibility and almost sacred character of supply and demand is outworn. The supply of child labor has been greatly reduced in many states, and is entirely cut off in others by means of protective legislation; in still other states the demand for child labor has greatly decreased as the result of inconvenient protective child labor laws and the demand for labor of men and women has correspondingly increased. To get equal pay the women teachers in New York City had to put in six years of hard and exhausting work by "indirect influence" while in the suffrage states the same result has come about almost automatically.

In this conflicting testimony it does not appear that the complaint of Lucretia Mott and her sister suffragists in 1848 that woman had been oppressed on all sides is valid to-day. Both Miss Bronson and her suffragist opponents agree that woman in industry has been protected, not oppressed. It is admitted that this is not a result of the exercise of the ballot by woman. It is unfortunate, of course, that the suffrage states are in the agricultural and mining stages of civilization, and cannot show how formidable the women's vote might be in correcting the oppressive man-made laws. It is a little deplorable, too, that the women in the male-suffrage states should have spent so much of their time proving that protective laws might be gotten by the despised indirect methods. Dr. Abbott and Professor Breckinridge have perceived this tactical error, and they note it in these words:

American women would probably have got the vote long ago if they had followed the present English method of making suffrage a paramount issue, first, last, and all the time. Instead of this, Miss Jane Addams in Illinois, Mrs. Florence Kelley in New York, and a host of other ardent suffragists have labored with the greatest devotion and self-sacrifice to secure protective legislation for women and children. How much effort they have put into it, how much time and energy it has cost, only those who have been closely associated with them know. It should not be forgotten that, as the result of their experience, they say that the ballot is the swiftest and surest way to bring about the reforms which are asked by and for the women workers of the country.

But how can that last sentence be verified? Was it not explicitly admitted that the suffrage states, by reason of their mining and agricultural status, have had little occasion to reform the laws for women workers, and that the reforms have all been worked out in the east? The male workers under male suffrage have done this for themselves, and incidentally for the women workers among them. Of course, there are fewer woman bread-winners, the proportion being five men to one woman. But women share equally in the benefits of labor legislation, besides being specially protected. The unions have even succeeded in leveling up a little the scale of women's wages, thus measurably meeting the complaint of 1848 that in her employments woman "receives but a scanty remuneration." And despite the equal pay laws for teachers in the suffrage states the average pay for women teachers is much below that of men teachers. Dr. Helen M. Sumner, the suffragist writer of the book Equal Suffrage says: "Taking public employment as a whole, women in Colorado receive considerably less remuneration than men;" and "the wages of men and women in all fields of industry are governed by economic conditions." Dr. Sumner's tables show that the pay of women in Colorado has never been quite half as much as the pay of men; while the average weekly wage of women in that state is 97 cents higher than the average in the United States, the average weekly pay of men is $3.62 higher than for the United States as a whole. Dr. Sumner frankly acknowledges that the suffrage has probably nothing to do with the wages of either men or women.

As for hours of work, the contention of the suffragists that the 54-hour a week law in Massachusetts was "the culmination of forty years of effort by indirect influence to improve conditions for women in industry," while Utah granted such a law after less than two years of effort by its suffragist advocates, merits the comment that the forty years, or one-eighth that time, were not consumed in agitating for this specific bit of legislation. The struggle for the law limiting hours of women's work in Massachusetts lasted a little longer than in Utah, chiefly because Utah is an agricultural state where manufacturers have less at stake in the passage of such a restrictive measure. It is not probable that the legislators of Utah blenched and yielded this point through fear of the women's vote, or that any but humanitarian motives dictated the legislation in either state.

Considerations of humanity, indeed, and not politics, seem to animate the legislative programs for the protection of women and children in most states, whether male suffragist or equal suffragist. Pennsylvania, for example, is one of the black states on the suffragist maps, because it has never extended the franchise to woman, even for the election of school committees. If the woman's vote is requisite, we should see the protective laws of Pennsylvania far behind those of Colorado. Colorado has had equal suffrage since 1893, and of all the woman suffragist states, conditions there are most nearly like those in the male suffragist East. For comparison, I draw on two unchallenged documents, one prepared by Mary C. Bradford and published by the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association—with some additions by Elinor Byrns and Helen Ranlett, printed in The New York Evening Post of Nov. 10, 1913—summarizing the protective laws for women and children passed in that state from 1893 to 1912; the other, a statement of similar laws in force in Pennsylvania in 1912, put forth by the Pennsylvania Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage:

Colorado	Pennsylvania
Establishing a state home for dependent children, three of the five members of the board of control to be women. A juvenile court with houses of detention in each county with population over 100,000; probation officers in counties with population over 25,000.	Dependent, delinquent, and incorrigible children fully provided for by State Juvenile court and probation officer system. Child placed in care of parents, probation officers, industrial school, or a charitable association as the Court sees best. Houses of detention in every city of first and second class, managed by board of five members, two of them women.
Requiring three of the six members of the county visitors to be women.	Visitation periodically by State Board of Charities and Board of Visitors of all agencies having custody of delinquent or dependent children.
Making mother joint guardian of children with the father.	If husband unfit, wife has same rights over child as father would have had. If wife helps support child, she has equal rights with husband; judges decide fitness of parents where question of it arises.
Raising the age of protection for girls to eighteen years.	Age of consent or protestation, sixteen years. One female physician in each state hospital or asylum with female inmates; provision for women members of board of visitors of lunatic asylums; female attendants, paid by counties or poor districts, for all insane female persons in transit; police matron in Philadelphia county prison.
Establishing parental and truant schools; a state industrial home for girls, three of the five members of board of control to be women.	Provision for institutions and societies for delinquent and dependent children, also for Houses of Refuge in Philadelphia and Western Pennsylvania; complete system of industrial schools, besides industrial education in public school system; provision for maintenance of children committed to industrial schools. Women eligible as one of two overseers of the poor in each county.
Making Colorado humane society a state bureau for child and animal protection. Compulsory education for children, between 8 and 16, except those who are ill, or are taught at home, and those over 14 who have completed the eighth grade, or whose parents need their help and support, and those children who must support themselves. [Are not some of these exemptions loopholes in the law? Ed.] Providing for examination of eyes, ears, teeth, and lungs of school children.	Humane societies throughout the state for child and animal protection. Compulsory education for all children of school age. Parents and guardians failing to comply with school attendance law are punishable for a criminal offense.
Making father and mother joint heirs of deceased child.	Father and mother hold by entireties, with right of survivorship, real and personal properties of intestate child.
Establishing state traveling library; library commission to consist of five women from the State Federation of Women's Clubs.	A free library commission created, and provisions made for free libraries throughout the state in cities of first, second and third classes and in boroughs, together with public school libraries, a state public library, and law libraries throughout the state.
Employing children under 14 in mill, factory, or underground works punishable by imprisonment and fine. Children of 16 and under forbidden to work more than six hours a day and not after 8 P. M. in any mill, factory, store, or other occupation that may be deemed unhealthful. Model child labor law passed 1912, "one of the very best in the world." Illiterate workers under 16 must go to night school. From 14 to 16 maximum is 54 hours a week, 9 hours a day.	No minor under 14, and no illiterate minor under 18, shall be employed in a factory, workshop, store, mercantile establishment, and so on. Minors under 18 shall not be employed about blast furnaces, tanneries, electric wires, elevators, railroads, vessels, or explosives. Minors over 14 who can read and write can be employed only in establishments having proper sanitation, and in which power machinery is not used, or if used is safeguarded. No minor under 16 shall be employed unless employer keeps employment certificates and complete lists of minors so employed. Meal hours of employed children regulated, as well as meal hours of all other employés. Male minors under 16 and females under 18 forbidden employment between 9 P. M. and 6 A. M.
No woman shall work more than eight hours a day at work requiring her to be on her feet; that is, in manufacturing, mechanical, or mercantile establishments, laundries, hotels, and restaurants.	Seats provided for women employed in any establishment. Sixty-hour-week and twelve-hour-day maximum for women and for minors under 16. Provisions for suitable wash and dressing rooms and lavatories for men and women in all establishments.
Employment of females prohibited in coal mines or coke offices except as clerks.	Employment of women in and about mines or coal manufactories forbidden; women and male minors under 16 forbidden employment in mines; women and male minors under 14 forbidden to be employed on outside structures of mines, except for clerical work.
Requiring joint signature of husband and wife to every chattel mortgage, sale of household goods, or mortgage of a homestead. Homestead, whether husband's or wife's, cannot be sold without the consent of both. No assignment of wages by husband is valid without wife's consent.	Chattel mortgages do not exist. Earnings of a married woman, whether as wages for labor, salary, property, business or otherwise, are her own, inure to her separate benefit and are not subject to levy by her husband. Wife must consent to conveyance of real estate by husband in order to bar her dower, and a mortgage requires her consent.
Criminal offense to contribute to delinquency of a child; law raising the delinquency age for girls.	Criminal offense to contribute to delinquency of a child; penalty of not more than $500 or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both.
Making it a misdemeanor to fail to support aged or infirm parents.	Provisions for support of every poor, blind, lame, and impotent person unable to work, by his or her relatives, either children, grandchildren, parents, or grandparents; provisions for support of the wife's relatives, either children, grandchildren, parents or grandparents, who are poor, blind, lame, impotent, or unable to maintain themselves.
Abolishing the system of binding out girls committed to the industrial school. Separate industrial school for girls created.	Provisions for binding out minors maintained by charitable institutions, asylums, or corporations, to suitable persons, without prejudicing rights of such institutions over the child.
The husband must support his wife and children under 16 (legitimate or illegitimate); non-support is made an extraditable offense. Parents liable for support of children in State institutions.	If husband neglects or deserts wife, she can have independent rights of trade by filing a petition and securing a certificate from the court. Her property is then her own absolutely and exempt from all claims of husband or his creditors. Statute requires husband to support wife, and family; desertion a misdemeanor. All policies of life insurance or annuities on the life of any person for benefit of wife or children or dependent relative are vested full and clear from all claims of creditors of such person.
Improved employers' liability law passed in 1912. Assumption of risk abolished except where remedying defect is employe's chief duty.	Employers' Liability act of 1907 allows recovery from employer for injuries of employé, doing away with the "fellow-servant" rule as a defense. A married woman has same right as unmarried person to acquire and dispose of property real and personal, with entire freedom of contract; but she may not mortgage or convey real property unless husband joins, and may not become indorser or surety for another.
Dower and curtesy abolished; neither husband nor wife may will away more than half of his or her property without the other's consent; wife's will validated.	The widow of an intestate who leaves issue has one-third of the realty for life and one-third of the personalty absolutely. If without issue, the widow has $5,000 worth of real or personal estate, besides the widow's exemption of $300. If estate exceeds $5,000, she has one-half the remainder for life, and one-half the remaining personalty absolutely.
Four deputy factory inspectors are required, one of them a woman.	Five of the thirty-nine deputy factory inspectors must be women.
Law providing for the care of the feeble minded. School for the Mute and Blind is declared to be an educational institution.	Institutions for care and treatment of feeble minded and insane maintained throughout and by the state. Institutions for care and treatment of the deaf, dumb, blind, consumptive, epileptic, aged, indigent, orphan, pauper, and so on, maintained throughout and by the state, counties or municipalities.

While minor differences exist in this comparison, the picture as a whole does not show that the legislation protective of women and children in Colorado is greatly, if at all, in advance of that in the male-suffrage state of Pennsylvania. The American Vigilance Association calls Pennsylvania's laws on "white slavery" and disorderly houses "good," and Colorado's only "fair." Colorado created in 1913 a Minimum Wage Commission, thus coming abreast of male-suffrage Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania lacks such a commission. But a law establishing a minimum wage is open to the objection that it throws out of employment all who are incapable of earning that wage. It does not protect them in industry, it simply throws them upon the streets, thence to find their way into jails and poorhouses. Designed as a protective measure, it has yet to vindicate that purpose, and it seems to be adopted irrespective of the votes of women. Aside from this it seems clear that if there is any essential difference between the protective legislation of Colorado and Pennsylvania, it must lie in the degree with which the women's votes compel enforcement of the laws.

But just how effective do the suffragists themselves feel the women's vote to be in securing redress for their injuries? Do they trust it? Their chief grievance is the deprivation of the suffrage. The American Woman Suffrage Association says of this, nevertheless, that while woman must have the ballot on every other question, she cannot be trusted to wield it in deciding this most vital question of legal privilege; that only an electorate of men is qualified to decide it. The association is convinced that every improvement in woman's position thus far has been secured "not by a general demand from the majority of women, but by the arguments, entreaties and 'continual coming' of a persistent few." In the association's Brief History of the suffrage movement it contends that the beneficial changes of the last half century in the laws, written and unwritten, relating to women have necessarily come by the influence of a few men and women. "Not one of them would have been made to this day if it had been necessary to wait until the majority of women asked for it," the association says. But that is an argument against the extension of the suffrage, which works only by majorities!

It is a valid argument, and it has historical facts in its support. Massachusetts in 1895 granted woman the right to vote on the question whether the municipal suffrage should be extended without distinction of sex. The suffragists made a vigorous campaign in that state. Only 4 per cent. of the women cared to go to the polls and record an affirmative vote. When human grievances have become intolerable, men have been willing to shed blood for their redress. This grievance of the suffragists cannot be very widespread or keenly felt, when they fail to persuade the women even to signify their protest.

She that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much. Mrs. George, speaking for the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, has presented to the woman suffrage committee of the Federal Senate the record of seventeen years' voting for school committees by the women of Massachusetts. During that time the registration showed but 4.8 per cent. of all the women of the state who were qualified to register and vote, and 2.1 per cent., less than one-half of them, actually got to the polls. Mrs. George obtained from the town clerk of Dedham, Mass., the official list of male and female voters in that town from 1889 to 1912, which shows a steadily diminishing female vote from 154 in 1889 to 1 in 1903; since 1903 not one of the fifty to seventy women registered in Dedham has remembered to go to the polls on Election Day.

If women cannot be expected to look after the interests of their children's schooling, how can they be expected to be faithful in the general field of politics? The Massachusetts State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage has compiled the total vote cast in the Presidential election of 1912 in the six woman suffrage States of California, Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho, and Utah—1,521,590 out of a total possible vote of 3,200,152—showing that only 47-1/2 per cent. of men and women in those states cared to go to the polls for the most interesting of all elections; comparing this with the 1,587,984 male votes cast out of a possible 2,295,119 votes—69 per cent. of the total—in the six non-suffrage western states of Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, Nevada, South Dakota, and Missouri. Now if 69 per cent. of the men voted in the woman suffrage states in 1912, then only 17.8 per cent. of the women voters in those states actually cast their ballots. At any rate, it is certain that the extension of suffrage to women results in a notable decrease of the actual voting strength of the electorate, as compared with the more healthy interest in voting shown by the electorates of the non-suffrage states. In that same Presidential election of 1912, Secretary of State Jordan of California reports that 802,000 men and but 180,000 women registered to vote—over 93 per cent. of the men, and a trifle over 27 per cent. of the women who were qualified to register and vote. In the election in Pasadena on March 20, 1913, deciding bond issues, some of them for parks and playgrounds, only 4,672 men and women cast ballots out of a voting population of 16,324; in Los Angeles four days later, the Citizens' Committee's vigorous campaign advocating the carrying of certain propositions and defeat of others ended in a vote of 31,000 men and women, while 130,000 qualified voters of both sexes stayed away. Although 45,665 women registered out of 121,000 women qualified to register and vote in San Francisco's local option election in 1913, the votes of only 15,087, both men and women, were cast in favor of the amendment. In all the elections of which there are records of men and women voting, the women manifest less interest both in registering and in voting than the men.

This fact has its vital bearing on the question of law enforcement. If elected officials fail to enforce the law, the only corrective is the ballot. Dr. Abbott and Professor Breckinridge, answering Miss Bronson's statement that thirty-nine states compel employers in stores, factories, and shops to provide seats for female employés, say that in most of the states where voteless women have got such laws they have never had the means of enforcing them. But if the extension of the elective franchise to the women of these states should mean the lowering of the total vote from 69 per cent. to but 47-1/2 per cent. of the possible vote, what prospect is there that the laws will be better enforced under woman suffrage? Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Colorado, himself a suffragist by propinquity, testified in 1910 that his battle with "the Beast" and "the System" in that state was begun without the help of the women leaders who at national meetings had been telling how much the women had done for the juvenile court in Denver. They dared not help him, Judge Lindsey said, and women like Mary C. Bradford and Mrs. Lafferty, a member of the Legislature, "took the platform against me and supported the System." He added:

If anyone believes that woman's suffrage is a panacea for all the evils of our political life, he does not know what those evils are. The women are as free of the power of the Beast as the men are, and no freer.... In a typical American community such as ours, where the Beast rules, the women are as helpless as the rest of us.... Their leaders in politics are politicians; when they get their nominations from corporation machines they do the work of the corporations; and there is almost no way under the Beast to get a party nomination except from a corporation machine. Women in politics are human beings; they are not "ministering angels" of an ethereal ideality; and they are unable to free us, because they are not free themselves.

Mrs. Nora Blatch DeForest has tried to show by tables that woman's voting benefits women and children in the passage of laws fixing the "age of consent" for girls; in fixing the age under which the consent of parent or guardian is necessary for marriage; the age below which employment of children in factories is prohibited; the maximum length of a day's work for children, and the hours within which women may work in factories. The tabulation includes the more recent suffrage states of Arizona, California, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington, in which most of the beneficial laws enumerated were passed under male suffrage. In them and in Utah—excepting the four other suffrage states where there are no limiting laws for women's work—the average day's labor for women is 9.2 hours in the ten suffrage states as against 9.9 hours in the nineteen partial suffrage states, and 10.1 hours in the nineteen non-suffrage states. The maximum day's work for a child is 8.6 hours in the suffrage states, 9 hours in the partial suffrage states, and 9.5 hours in the non-suffrage states, while the ages for prohibited child labor are 14.3 years, 14.1 years, and 13.3 years, respectively. In the same order, the ages at which the consent of parent or guardian is required for marriage of young women are 18.9 years, 19.3 years, and 19.1 years, respectively, and the ages at which girls may consent to their own ruin are 17.5 years, 16.6 years, and 15 years in the three groups of states.

Now, if populations be considered in these three groups, instead of political divisions merely, it will be found that only 5,193,116 people in the suffrage states of California, Colorado, Idaho, and Kansas are under the law which fixes the ideal "age of consent" at 18; that 6,229,263 people are under this beneficent law in the non-suffrage states of Florida, Missouri, and Tennessee, and 17,161,100 people have passed this law in the partial suffrage states of Delaware, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, and Wisconsin; it should be observed, too, that the women voters in the partial suffrage states—less than 5 per cent. of those women vote, by the way—have nothing to do with electing the men who passed this and the other laws discussed by Mrs. DeForest. Like proportions of population hold with respect to all the laws passed in the three classes of states; taking the best law in each case, it may be shown that more people have it under male suffrage than under equal suffrage.

Thus far this article must seem disappointing to sincere suffragists for it reads like an "anti" document. In the length and breadth of this Union there are no distinctive results of woman suffrage where it has been granted in part or in whole.

But there are abundant results of the feminist movement. In agitating for the ballot Lucretia Mott and her fellow and sister suffragists builded better than they knew. In not following the English method of making suffrage a paramount issue "first, last, and all the time," they and the latter-day suffragists have rapidly brought to pass the feminist reforms, including the extension of the suffrage to women. They have not played the shrew like the English militants, and they are making greater headway than the militants. In this country the redress of woman's grievances has come ante hoc and cum hoc—not post hoc, and hardly ever propter hoc—with respect to woman's suffrage. The cases of California and Washington, the male-elected legislatures of which gave to women workers eight-hour laws at the same time they granted them the suffrage, are fairly typical; "indirect influence" accomplished both results.

Whether the vote in woman's hands may ultimately be better utilized; whether she may use it to aid in freeing the men voters from their thraldom to long ballots and the bosses, with the result of giving both sexes the direct influence on their government that they both lack—that is a question quite beyond the scope of this article.