Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Chicago’s first election since women could vote there will doubtless receive much study and doubtless excite much comment. Doubtless, also, the comment will vary as widely as do opinions regarding the propriety and the expediency of woman suffrage.

Some people, of course, will lay much stress on the fact that, of the 217,000 women who registered, only 100,000 were sufficiently interested in the election, in spite of all the talk there has been about it, to go to the polls. The fact, however, that slightly less than 50 per cent. of the women voters failed to do their duty—or to exercise their privilege, if one chooses to look at it that way—must be interpreted in the light of the other fact, that only slightly more than 50 per cent. of the registered men took the trouble to vote. This, in ordinary circumstances, would be taken as showing that popular concern about the result of the election was not keen; but the circumstances were not ordinary, and the suffragists will find it difficult to explain, and still more difficult to excuse, the conduct of their stay-at-homes.

That all the woman candidates were defeated, and with the biggest majorities by their least reputable rivals, is another mystery for which many and various solutions will probably be offered.

But what does stand clearly out of these mists of uncertainty is that Chicago has struck a heavy, perhaps fatal, blow at the belief so confidently expressed by every suffragist that the woman voters in any community would stand together and exert, whether successfully or not, all their influence in behalf of the causes that especially interested them as a sex. There is no evidence or even hint of such solidarity in these returns. The woman vote was a divided one, and evidently divided along just the lines, good and bad, with which men have made us familiar.

The stories of women who did and said foolish things at the polls could all be paralleled by like stories of men, and are without significance. The important revelation is that the women will not vote as women—a revelation reassuring or disquieting according to whether one wants them to do that or not.

Is it possible that Gov. Glynn can have kept a straight face while he was saying, writing, or dictating the statement that the vote cast on the Constitutional Convention question on Tuesday “plainly shows that the people desire a revision of the Constitution”? Who are the “people”? Can one-fifth of the legal voters of the State of New York be called the people? At the Presidential election in 1912 there were cast in round numbers 1,600,000 votes. On the constitutional issue on Tuesday there were cast in round numbers 300,000. There was nothing lacking either in the importance of the issue or in the opportunity for the voter to express his will. Certainly, few things are more important than the organic law of the State, and the polls were open during the statutory hours. Yet more than four-fifths of the voters did not take interest enough in the matter to go to the polls.

The women suffragists are welcome to all the advantage they may gain, and any taunts and gibes they may direct against the male voters because of Tuesday’s election will be freely forgiven. Women would have striven in vain to do anything sillier, and had the administration of public affairs been in the control of babes in pinafores the ordering of this election on Tuesday would have been discreditable to their intelligence.

Where limited suffrage prevails as in Des Moines, Iowa, telegrams like this in the Chicago Post of March 30, 1914, are illuminating. It is entitled “Women Prove a Factor in Municipal Vote”:

Voters were out early in the municipal election here today and by noon it was freely predicted in official circles that the largest total of ballots since the commission form of government became effective will have been cast when the polls close.

The activity of women in connection with the proposition of municipal ownership of the waterworks system was a distinct feature of the voting. Under the law, women are permitted the ballot on bond questions. In several of the residence precincts women were in line when the polls opened at seven o’clock.