Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1169

 provision and refused to submit the question to a separate vote by a large majority. The continuance of the measure for nearly a quarter of a century, and the determination to incorporate it in the fundamental law, even at the risk of failing to secure Statehood, are the strongest arguments of its benefit and permanency.

2. It has tended to secure good nominations for the public offices. The women as a class will not knowingly vote for incompetent, immoral or inefficient candidates.

3. It has tended to make the women self-reliant and independent, and to turn their attention to the study of the science of government — an education that is needed by the mothers of the race.

4. It has made our elections quiet and orderly. No rudeness, brawling or disorder appears or would be tolerated at the polling booths. There is no more difficulty or indelicacy in depositing a ballot in the urn than in dropping a letter in the post office.

5. It has not marred domestic harmony. Husband and wife frequently vote opposing tickets without disturbing the peace of the home. Divorces are not as frequent here as in other communities, even taking into consideration our small population. Many applicants for divorces are from those who have a husband or wife elsewhere, and the number of divorces granted for causes arising in this State are comparatively few.

6. It has not resulted in unsexing women. They have not been office-seekers. Women are generally selected for county superintendents of the schools — offices for which they seem particularly adapted, but they have not been applicants for other positions.

7. Equal suffrage brings together at the ballot-box the enlightened common sense of American manhood and the unselfish moral sentiment of American womanhood. Both of these elements govern a well-regulated household, and both should sway the political destinies of the entire human family. Particularly do we need in this new commonwealth the home influence at the primaries and at the polls. We believe with Emerson that if all the vices are represented in our politics, some of the virtues should be.

In 1902 Justice Corn, of the State Supreme Court, made the following public statement:

Women of all classes very generally vote. Bad women do not obtrude their presence at the polls, and I do not now remember ever to have seen a distinctively bad woman casting her vote.,

Woman suffrage has no injurious effect upon the home or the family that I have ever heard of during the twelve years I have resided in the State. It does not take so much of women's time as to interfere with their domestic duties, or with their church or charitable work. It does not impair their womanliness or make them less satisfactory as wives and mothers. They do not have less influence, or enjoy less respect and consideration socially. My impression is that they read the daily papers and inform themselves upon public questions much more generally than women elsewhere. Woman suffrage has had the effect almost entirely to exclude notoriously bad or immoral men from public office in the State. Parties refuse to nominate such men upon the distinct ground that they can not obtain the women's vote. . '; The natural result of such conditions is to increase the respect in which women are held, and not to diminish it. They are a more important factor in affairs, and therefore more regarded. It is generally conceded, 1 think, that women have a higher standard of morality and right living than men. And, as they have a say in public matters, it has a tendency to make men respect their standard, and in some degree attempt to attain

it themselves., a I have never been an enthusiastic advocate of woman suffrage as a cure