For a time, women served on juries, and there is testimony to the fact that in many respects they served well. But the practice of calling them was soon suspended, and never has been renewed. The only public office of consequence held by them was bestowed by the Republicans but a year or two ago, when Miss Reel was made State Superintendent of Schools. In our late crucial election, Wyoming and its woman suffrage gave their voices for Populism and Free Coinage. The scale hung in the balance. Why, if woman is a greater political power for good than man, did she not turn it for the principles which the State had held were best? The true test of the working of woman suffrage lies in a study of the legislation connected with it, and this will be presented under its appropriate heading.
The scenes of shameful defiance of law and order in the midst of which Colorado admitted woman to the ballot are of more recent occurrence and are fresh in memory. Populism never has played in Colorado the part that it has in Kansas, but "anything for free coinage" has been the motto, and in abiding by it the State brought in, and afterward turned out, Gov. Waite, of disgraceful memory. Again, last year, there was Republican- Democratic-Populist fusion to beat the gold standard, and much Populist rule was again the result. One good authority writes me that women "have introduced an element of order and respectability upon election day that was never observed before." He says he thinks that, "as a whole, the people are very much satisfied with woman suffrage and believe that it has resulted beneficially in so far as it has made politics a little better than they were." Another says that "the influence of woman in politics did not prevent the last Republican caucus of Arapahoe Co. from being the most disgraceful in the history of the State. The Convention, though presided over by a woman, was completely in the power of the 'gang,' and sent to Pueblo the most unworthy delegate ever sent." This gentleman also says he has "heard numbers of intelligent women state that they were sorry the ballot had ever been given to them." Orderliness at the ordinary elections is expected here, without calling upon women to act as "moral police" at the polls. So quiet are they that it has been found practicable to place coffee-stands in charge of women near some of the booths, when women have requested it in the hope of preventing drunkenness. A friend said to me some time ago: "You know that I have been a Suffragist. I am most thoroughly converted. I have been three months in Colorado. It is enough to cure any one."
A Denver correspondent of the "Chicago Record," says: "The women of Colorado took no active part in the recent campaign, but they did not forget to vote…. The experiment of having women in the State Assembly did not prove satisfactory, at the last session, and it was quite generally conceded that there would be no more women sent to that body; but the Populists won in this county, and on their ticket were three woman candidates, so the coming session will again have three women as members."
Of course the effect of suffrage in new States is not a criterion of its effect elsewhere. And whether the effect could be shown to be good or bad, the main argument would not be touched. The interesting thing to trace is the affiliations of the movement.
In addition to those that have been mentioned we recall the fact that in our recent political campaign, four parties that nominated candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States, had in their conventions women as delegates and members of committees. They were the Populist, the Free-Silver, the Prohibition, and the Socialist-Labor parties. The woman-suffragists of the Prohibition party left the rock- ribbed champion that had put a Suffrage plank in every platform for years, in order to go with Free Silver and Populism of the most extravagant type. These parties also had Suffrage planks. Altgeld and Debs, Coxey and Tillman were only men, but Mary Ellen Lease furnished to the campaign that strain of exalted fanaticism that at once points out woman's glory and woman's danger.
The Suffrage indictment we have been considering is summed up as follows: "Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one half of the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."
Dr. Jacobi in "Common Sense" says: "To this very day the survivors of that group of pioneer women have an abstract way of stating their claim which, to modern ears, sounds somewhat archaic."
She is not archaic when she says: "During the long ages of class rule, which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been assigned to all men—that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit."
Mary A. Livermore is not archaic when in the "North American Review" for February, 1896, she says: "Her physical weakness, and not alone her mental inferiority, has made her the subject of man. Toiling patiently for him, cheerfully sharing with him all his perils and hardships, the unappreciated mother of his children, she has been bought and sold, petted and tortured, according to the whims of her brutal owner, the victim everywhere of pillage, lust, war, and servitude. And this statement includes all races and peoples of the earth from the date of their historic existence."
I deny the truthfulness of the archaic accusation, and denounce as an absurdity the bombastic demand. I resent, as an unwarranted insult to woman and to man, the still more bitter modern representations of woman's condition and woman's rights in this world, and especially in this Republic. They are simply false.