Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/588

Rh the woman suffragists in so graphic a form that it is herewith submitted:

"Woman suffrage is a very live issue in the world at present, and though voted down in many places it refuses to remain quiescent. In five states in our country—Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Colorado and Washington—the entire franchise is granted to women. School suffrage for women prevails in twenty-nine states and territories. In Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland and the Isle of Man, women have been granted equal political rights. All suffrage except the right of vote for members of Parliament has been granted in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Denmark and Sweden. Norway has granted equal political rights to women, with the exception of a slight property qualification. In Canada the same privileges have been bestowed on unmarried women and widows, while nearly all the Canadian provinces grant municipal suffrage to women. Now, what are the resulting benefits of equal suffrage? In America the states having full or partial school suffrage for women have less than one per cent, of illiteracy. (Tennessee, by the way, has 14.2 per cent.) In Colorado and some other equal suffrage states, since women have been voting, there have been established: A state industrial school for girls, parents' and truant schools, compulsory education, compulsory examination of eyes, ears, teeth and breathing capacity of children, a law giving teachers equal pay for equal work, and a law pensioning teachers after a certain number of years. All these good results have come because mothers and teachers have had the ballot. Equal suffrage has helped the home life, since there is not a department of the home that is not touched by politics. It has widened all forms of charity and philanthropy, increasing their efficiency a hundred-fold. Colorado and the other suffrage states have established a splendid pure food law, a law raising the age of consent to eighteen, the indeterminate sentence for