Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/83

 There are at present not only hundreds of thousands of women voting for the school boards but there are 276 women sitting as representatives upon those of England alone. I myself have for nine years been a member of the school board of London, sitting for one of the great divisions called Hackney, which has 60,000 voters. My election committee was composed of men and women. Men worked for me very hard indeed! ... The next great local governing bodies are the boards of guardians of the poor. These bodies spend annually about $127,000,000, which they raise from the taxpayers, men and women. 'These are huge organizations. Many of the workhouses contain over 1,000 persons; besides which, outside relief in money or food or medical aid is given. Every woman who is a taxpayer can vote for a member of these boards. Women are eligible to sit on them the same as men. There are nearly 1,000 women on the boards.

Women may vote for the municipalities, for the town councils. I can not offer you any illustration of how the women's vote has improved them for the simple reason that when those councils were instituted in 1869 the Parliament of a monarchy was sufficiently large-minded to perceive that women ought to vote for them; that they have to pay their taxes and where a woman stands at the head of a household she is not only equally entitled to representation in regard to the spending of her money but also she is as much concerned with the work that the councils have to do as any man. This was so obviously just that women were given the right to vote on them and have exercised that right ever since.The women vote as fully as the men do.

We have district, parish and county councils, which have to a considerable extent the moral and the intellectual government of the cities under them, licensing of places of amusement, public parks, technical education for young people over school age and so on. The building of homes for the poor, the oversight of lunatic asylums and matters of that kind, they have under their authority. These were established in 1884 and the women who had voted so well for many years for school boards and town councils of course were given the right to vote for the new county councils.

Mrs. Miller went fully into the work of women on borough and county councils and closed her valuable address by saying: "Gentlemen, the work of women in English public life has not only been unattended with any mischief but has been a great force for service and benefit. Surely American men can trust their sisters as our men have for the past generation trusted us, to their own as well as our advantage."

In closing the hearing to which the committee gave the strictest attention, Mrs. Catt said in part: