Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/730

 714 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE ninety days thereafter. It declared the elective franchise extended to such women as had the qualifications required of male electors. The Alaska Code had permitted women to vote only at School elections. The new law gave them the privilege of voting for the officers in incorporated towns and cities ; for members of the Ter- ritorial Legislature and for Territorial Delegate to Congress. It is estimated that there is a white population of 30,000 of whom between 5,000 and 6,000 are women. Probably not 500 native women are voters. Indian men have a vote if they have "severed tribal relations," which is interpreted to mean that if an Indian moves to a white man's town or lives on a creek or in a camp in such a way that the missions or the marshals think he has left his tribe, he can vote. Indian women have a vote if they marry white men who have a vote; if they are unmarried and have "severed tribal relations"; if they are married to an Indian who has "severed tribal relations." The original code said defi- nitely that Juries should be drawn from the male citizens and it has never been changed. With this exception the rights of men and women are the same. Two other bills of importance passed by the first Legislature provided for the compulsory education of white children and for Juvenile Courts to look after dependent children and create a Board of Children's Guardians. This board consists of the District Judge and U. S. Marshal in each judicial division, to- gether with one woman appointed by the Governor, thus creating four such boards in the Territory, one for each division. The interest of Alaska women in questions affecting local' or Territorial conditions is intense and their efforts effective, as their work in the prohibition campaign of 1916 proved. This was essentially a woman's campaign, so well handled that at the pleb- iscite held at the time of the general election in November, 1916, the vote was about two to one in favor of prohibition. As a result, Congress enacted the Bone Dry Prohibition law for the Territory Feb. 14, 1917. It is believed that about three-fourths of the qualified women vote but there is no means of knowing. The percentage of illiteracy among white women is negligible and the young native women taught at the Government and mission schools can read and write.