Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/133

 this they had always been able to keep the schools on a nonpartisan basis. She showed that it paid more per capita for public schools than any other State, leaving even New York and Massachusetts behind; described its advanced position from kindergartens to training schools and colleges, with especial care in guarding the welfare of children, and continued:

In the East we hear of "the question of coeducation." It is not a question west of the Mississippi River, it never has been, it never will be. The eastern arrangement seems to us merely a curious survival of antiquated ideas, a kind of sex-consciousness which we have lost sight of in our care for the human being.The place of State Superintendent has always been held by a woman since women became eligible. The first superintendent elected was a Republican, the second a Democrat, each holding the place for one term; the third, who is now serving her third term, was nominated as a Silver Republican but has really been elected and twice re-elected without regard to politics—an example of the independence of the vote where school affairs are concerned. There are 59 counties in Colorado and 33 of them, including most of those with the largest population, have women county superintendents.

I have found Colorado women much like their sisters elsewhere save that they have a broader view of public affairs and they take naturally a more active interest in the world's work. They have learned to think and to say what they think simply and freely in gatherings where men and women meet to discuss the vital concerns of life. They have not forgotten that they are women but they have come to know that they are also human beings, and, like Terence, they find nothing that concerns humanity foreign to them. Surely had we not been faithful in the smaller things, we should not have had these large opportunities given to us.I can not help thinking that my sisters elsewhere have lost something rare and precious from their lives through the lack of that complete citizenship which has been bestowed upon the women of Colorado, and I hope the day may be near when those sisters may be made man's equal under the law of the land as they have always been under the law of God.

The Hon. Isaac N. Stevens, a pronounced suffragist, who had the topic After Ten Years, was detained elsewhere. The Hon. Alva Adams, who had twice been Governor of the State, in his strong and comprehensive speeches before the convention and the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, answered for all time the misrepresentations in regard to woman suffrage in Colorado which for years had been persistently made by the anti-suffragists, and he also answered conclusively the many ob-