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WITH THE VOTE?

BY GEORGE CREEL

VEN more amazing than the prairiefire sweep of equal suffrage is its effect on those who champion or oppose it. It is an issue that seems to have the disturbing values of hemp or poppy, shutting out actualities and inducing dreams.

As far as the United States is concerned, equal suffrage ceased to be a theory in 1869, when Wyoming gave women the vote. Since then nine more States and a Territory have enfranchised their females, each one a potential laboratory for the ascertainment of facts.

The ten States and one Territory that have already answered in the affirmative are calling for company. Montana, Nevada, and the two Dakotas will vote on the proposition in 1914, and the legislatures of New York, New Jersey, and Iowa have taken the first steps for submitting a constitutional amendment to the people in 1915. The law-making bodies of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are on record with favorable, but not final, action, and in every State the equal-suffrage movement eclipses all others in size, strength, and iron determination.

Since an answer is inevitable, patriotism demands the elimination of prejudice and theories and sole consideration of facts and figures. Equal-suffrage leaders, as a matter of course, will dispute this point of view, insisting that woman is entitled to the ballot because she is an adult human being, and that what she does with it is no more to be considered than man's use of his vote, whether wise or unwise.

This claim has never been allowed by the majority. It is for man to say whether woman shall have the vote, and as a consequence man views the ballot not as a right that he must give, but as a privilege that he is at liberty to confer or withhold.

HOW WOMEN HAVE AFFECTED
LEGISLATURE

HAS equal suffrage made good? If so, he desires to aid in its extension. Has equal

suffrage failed? If so, he wants to fight its spread. This, in a word, is the mental attitude of the great mass of men in the thirty-eight. non-suffrage States. They are waiting to be "shown."

The first approach of the investigator who is searching for truth, and not endeavoring to obtain confirmation of previous prejudices, is through the statutebooks of the ten equal-suffrage States. These experiment-stations, with the year in which they gave the vote to women,

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What statutory enactments are admittedly due to the woman vote? In many respects this is the only fair approach. Laws speak for themselves, and that which is set down in black and white does not lend itself readily to distortion and misrepresentation. representation. Do women avail themselves of the franchise privilege? Does the "bad" woman outvote her "good" sister? Have women become inveterate office-seekers? Has equal suffrage disrupted the home?

At the outset of the inquiry, Colorado and California suggest themselves as examples that may serve all purposes of computation and comparison. One has had suffrage for twenty years, the other for two. Colorado represents the old and its evolutions; California stands for the new, with its revolutions.

There is also this postulate to be accepted: absolute segregation of the woman

vote is impossible. Men far outnumber the women in the nine Western equal-suffrage States, and the adoption of any law means that a certain portion of the male vote has given it the necessary approval. Reference to "women's laws," therefore, must be taken to mean those measures originated by women, introduced by women legislators, or else indorsed and lobbied for unflaggingly by women's organizations.

The procedure in all the equal-suffrage States is very similar. A state federation of women's clubs, at its annual convention, will discuss what it wishes in the way of legislation, and what it does not wish. Bills already in the field are indorsed or condemned, new bills are framed to meet the demands, and then everything is placed in the hands of a legislative committee that is virtually an unpaid lobby. This committee, with an elastic membership of from ten to seventy-five, attends every session of the legislature. The progress of bills is watched, care is taken to see that none of them is lost or hidden, and in the event of trouble, these Paul Reveres send out a warning that rains down scores of telegrams from every quarter of the State on the heads of recalcitrant legislators. As a result of these methods, the following "women's laws," grouped in order that development may be studied, have been adopted by Colorado:

1893 to 1900: a state home for dependent children, three of the five members of the board of control to be women; making the mother joint guardian of the child with the father; raising age of protection for girls to eighteen years; a state industrial school for girls, three of the five members of the board of control to be women; a factory inspection law; creating the indeterminate sentence, out of which Tom Tynan's wonderful "honor-andtrust" idea has been evolved; truantschools; requiring one woman physician on the state asylum board; provision for the inspection of maternity homes and lying-in hospitals conducted by private persons, etc.

1900 to 1910: juvenile court system; drastic compulsory-education law; a childlabor law taking little ones under fourteen out of factories, stores, and mines, and forbidding the employment of those under sixteen in unhealthful or dangerous trades;

making father and mother joint heirs of deceased child; providing penalties for failure to support aged or infirm parents; a traveling-library commission, consisting of five women, for the purpose of seeing that books reach the most remote mountain camp and prairie hut; making it a criminal offense to contribute to the delinquency of a child; a local-option law; and the establishment of a state free-employment bureau, with offices in all the principal cities and towns.

It is at this point that a break must be made in the recital of laws, for 1910 heard the first gun of Colorado's winning struggle for equal justice. Without entering into causes, suffice it to say that the people believed themselves outraged by a supreme court, enslaved by a "bipartizan machine,' and pillaged by a plunderbund made up of public-service monopolies, railroads, smelters, and various trusts.

Hard fighting wrenched the initiative. and referendum from a venal legislature, and a vote in Denver for municipal ownership of the water-plant marked the first defeat that the allied public-utility corporations had ever received.

In 1911 a commission-government campaign was launched at various points in Colorado, and put into operation in Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, and various other municipalities. In Denver a corrupt council consigned a petition containing 20,000 signatures to the wastebasket. A citizens' movement was formed, a full mayoralty ticket placed in the field, and on May 21, 1912, the non-partizan candidates were overwhelmingly elected by 10,000 more votes than the combined totals of the Democratic and Republican parties.

In November, using the initiative for the first time, the people wrote these statutes and constitutional amendments: an eight-hour law for working-women; a mothers' compensation act; the recall of officials, with particular emphasis on the judiciary; state-wide civil service; an eighthour law for miners; home rule for cities; the recall of decisions, providing that only the supreme court of the State shall have the power to declare laws unconstitutional, and that these decisions may be disapproved and set aside by a majority vote of the people; and the headless ballot.

In February, 1913, the long-delayed

commission-government election was held, the change adopted, and on June 1 five commissioners, elected without party designations and by a preferential system of voting, took charge of Denver's affairs.

There can be no question that women were literally the life of the revolution, bringing an even greater degree of radicalism to bear upon the various propositions than the men. Judge Lindsey, speaking for the citizens, John H. Gabriel, president of the Direct Legislation League, and the writer, as chairman of the commissiongovernment campaign, have never failed to say that the women, volunteering their services for the circulation of petitions, throwing open their homes when halls could not be hired, and as willing to trudge and drudge as to lead and sit in council, constituted the moving force of the forward movement.

THE EMPHASIS ON ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

IN considering the laws enacted subsequent to 1910, mark the new economic and industrial emphasis: creation of a minimum-wage commission, with power to act; establishment of fifty dollars as a minimum monthly wage for teachers, and doubling the length of the minimum school year; amendments putting teeth in the childlabor law, the factory-inspection law, and the compulsory-education law; a workmen's compensation act; a law putting loan sharks out of business; a strong non-support law, and a companion statute making non-support an extraditable offense; a state home for the feeble-minded; validating the wills of married women; perfecting the "honor-and-trust" system at the penitentiary in many particulars; making the "third degree" a felony, etc.

It is also important to note that a first act of the citizens' administration was the abolition of the infamous "red-light district," long protected by the bipartizan alliance.

Consideration of the case of California with respect to equal suffrage inevitably begins with the Weller recall and the campaign against commercialized vice. Foes of equal suffrage blame the women voters in toto, and accuse them of hysteria, emotionalism, and crack-brained theories. The women accept full responsibility, but plead ample justification, and both sides agree on this statement of fact as to the recall:

One Albert Hendricks had raped at young girl in peculiarly revolting circumstances. Judge Shortall, before whom he was arraigned, demanded bond in the sum of $3000; but when he left town two days later, Judge Weller reduced the bail to $1000. Hendricks promptly fled, leaving a wife and two children behind him without means of support, and the incident would have been closed but for the women of the neighborhood in which the girl lived.

At the outset of the investigation it was discovered that Hendricks had been in Weller's court before on a similar charge, and had gone unpunished. Further delving developed that in scores of cases of criminal assault the bonds ranged from $50 to $300, and that continuance and dismissal were the favorite Wellerian modes of treatment.

One particular scandal was that of a fourteen-year-old girl about to become a mother. Ten times Weller continued the case against her assailant, and the tenth time, which fell on the day the child gave birth to her baby, Weller dismissed the case because the "complainant failed to appear."

The fight on commercialized vice has been waged chiefly in San Francisco, for Los Angeles abolished its infamous "crib district" in 1909 as the result of a scandal that exposed a city administration's intimate connection with the under-world.

San Francisco's answer to the RuefFrench restaurant infamies, however, was the creation of a municipal clinic for the purpose of segregating prostitutes and subjecting them to physical examination. It was against this condition specifically, but against the whole system generally, that the women revolted.

When the men declared that prostitution was a "necessary evil," the women asked them if they were willing to let a member of their own families recruit the industry. When the men said that a "wide-open town" was a good thing for business, and that tourists would avoid a "closed town," the women answered: "If drunkenness and debauchery are necessary to make business good, then the sooner we get rid of that sort of business the better. If tourists come to San Francisco only for whisky and lust, we don't want that class of travel near the homes in which we are rearing our children."

LAWS RELATING TO WOMAN'S INTERESTS

The city was forced to sever its relations with the clinic, whole sections of the vice district were cleansed, notably the So much for results in Colorado and CaliBarbary Coast, and it was from these vic-fornia. In a general way these activities tories that the women of San Francisco joined with the womanhood of California in winning the injunction and abatement act from the legislature.

With regard to the general run of legislation, the following list was prepared by C. E. Sebastian, chief of police of Los Angeles, and read by him before the International Association of Police Chiefs as being the laws "mothered" by the voting women of California. His compilation is verified by Francis J. Heney and Judge W. P. Lawlor, who tried the graft cases. Raising the age of consent from sixteen to twenty-one; juvenile-court amendment separating dependent from delinquent children; requiring fathers to support illegitimate children; requiring certificate of freedom from all venereal diseases from men as a precedent to the marriage license; the sterilization of certain inmates of lunatic asylums and a certain class of convicts; and a drastic law against pandering.

Minimum-wage law; workmen's compensation law; mothers' pension law; teachers' pension law, granting a pension of $500 a year to teachers who have been in service thirty years; a state housing and immigration commission to prepare for the handling of immigrants with the opening of the Panama Canal; and a state training-school for girls, with the most approved correctional methods and thorough vocational training.

Joint guardianship law; requirement of a wife's signature to the assignment of a husband's wages; good milk-inspection statute; a net container law; a weights and measures law; a law prohibiting the destruction of food-stuffs fit for human consumption; and a prison reform bill.

Raising the age limit of child workers from twelve to fifteen; state-wide civil service; a billboard nuisance act; and an amendment to the liquor law hitting particularly at San Francisco's all-night sale.

The legislature that submitted the equal-suffrage amendment to the people passed an eight-hour law for women, and the new voters contented themselves at the last session by having it extended to include workers in apartment-houses and nurses in training.

denote the usual trend of the woman vote in all the equal-suffrage States. Virtually every one of the laws relating to the personal and property rights of the female are found on the statute-books of the other eight States. In none of the ten has the woman failed to free herself of notorious political disabilities and ancient injustices, or neglected to acquire what she considers her full rights.

This was to be expected. Common sense dictates such a course. The women would be fools if they did not make such first use of the ballot, nor do men quarrel with it. But-and here is an interesting study in psychology-the average man demands a larger reason than this for his gift of the vote. Consciously or subconsciously he resents the inference that women need more protection than he is willing to give. Gross inequalities persist because of the male voter's procrastination rather than his meanness or indifference. More important things, to him, push forward, and he finds difficulty in "getting around" to what the women want. Yet he hates and refuses to be put in the position of denying or resisting.

Because of this quirk, it is with such fundamentals as are social rather than personal that he is concerned. What of the social evil, the liquor traffic, working day, poverty problems, education, childlabor laws, penal reform, minimum-wage laws? How has the woman voter approached these things? How will equal suffrage affect these questions?

Taking these demands in order, the injunction and abatement law is admittedly the most effective weapon yet devised against commercialized vice, because it is directed against the owner of the property, and puts the power of action in the hands of every citizen. In addition to California, also Utah, Washington, Kansas, and Oregon possess the law. Only five non-suffrage States have it.

Of the other equal-suffrage States, Colorado's attempt to secure the measure at the last session failed, and the women will initiate the bill in 1914. Illinois, armed with the Chicago vice-commission's report, is "cleaning-up," and in Arizona,

Wyoming, and Idaho, where the evil is sporadic, a fight is being made with very good general laws. The two Carolinas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia have no state law against prostitution at all.

A referendum has prevented the operation of the California law, but even without it, Los Angeles remains a "red-lightless" city, while in San Francisco the vice district has been abolished in large measure. Seattle, Denver, Sacramento, Boise, and Salt Lake City, other equal-suffrage metropolises, have also stamped out their “bad lands,” and put an end to municipal sanction of commercialized vice.

The Seattle campaign, it may be remembered, involved the recall of Mayor Gill. As in the case of California, this first use of the ballot by the women of Washington was made the ground for charges of narrowness, puritanism, and emotionalism. The facts in the case are these:

"Hi" Gill was the open and avowed champion of the saloon and disorderly house. He insisted that they were necessary to the prosperity of Seattle. The climax of this policy was reached when two huge municipal brothels were erected in a public street. It was then that the people recalled him, 22,000 women voting, each woman an anti-Gill committee of one. Shortly afterward, Gill's chief of police was convicted of collecting thousands from the women of the under-world, and is now in the penitentiary. The "higher-ups" escaped, owing to a kindly judge who quashed the indictments because commas were omitted!

The equal-suffrage States are also far in advance of the rest of the country in the matter of the age of consent. California is the only commonwealth with twenty-one years; Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming have eighteen; Arizona has seventeen; and Oregon and Illinois have sixteen.

In Georgia and North Carolina it is ten; in Mississippi, twelve; in seven other non-suffrage States, fourteen; in fifteen others, sixteen; and only three go as high as eighteen.

According to the National Vigilance Association, every single equal-suffrage State has a "good" statute against white slaving or pandering. Georgia, Mississippi,

and South Carolina have no such law, and those on the statute-books of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee are grossly inadequate.

THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC

WITH regard to the liquor traffic, there can be no question that the voting woman is as bitterly opposed to the saloon as she is to the brothel. Kansas, of course, has had state-wide prohibition for years; and Illinois, Oregon, and Arizona, where the woman vote is scarcely a year old, cannot be fairly counted either one way or the other. All the other seven, however, have local-option laws that are drying up the liquor like some huge blotter. Wyoming is ninety per cent. dry. Colorado has fifty "dry" counties out of sixty-two. Only eighteen of Utah's twenty-eight counties. are "wet," and sixteen of these are mining-camps. Idaho, ninety per cent. dry, passed a search and seizure bill at the last session, also a law compelling an oath from patrons of drug stores, and California's list of "dry" towns has grown from 200 odd to over 600 since suffrage.

An eight-hour day for the workingwoman is a boon possessed by equal-suffrage States alone. Colorado, California, and Washington alone have gone this far, although Arizona's eight-hour law for laundries is almost as good, since that State has few other industries employing women. Washington, where the women had been begging for the law for eight years, received it from the first legislature after the adoption of the equal-suffrage amend

ment.

Utah and Idaho have the nine-hour day. In each State the women made the fight for eight, and were forced to compromise. Only five non-suffrage States can say as much. It took Massachusetts forty years to win the reform that Utah got in two.

A frequent attack along these industrial lines is to show that protective legislation for women is found in States where women do not vote, and that these similar laws have not been passed in equal-suffrage States. For instance, Massachusetts and New York have some measures relating to factory women that are not found on the statute-books of Idaho and Wyoming. Also a law providing seats for saleswomen is possessed by Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York, and not by Idaho.

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