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HE suffragists for many years have been making prophecies of the wonderful benefits which suffrage would bring not only to women themselves but to society. Before woman suffrage had been given a fair trial these prophecies could neither be proved or disapproved. but, as theories, were eagerly accepted by certain men and women. Woman suffrage has now been on trial in Wyoming for 46 years, in Colorado 23 years, in California, Washington, and Oregon for shorter periods.

How do the actual conditions in these states bear out the suffrage prophecies?

Colorado is widely known as the most corrupt state in the Union. Judge Lindsey, its best known citizen, says that Colorado has made a science of corrupting its public men. He says women are no freer from evil influences in politics than men. He says they neglect their political duties. In an address made before a suffrage association last February at a dinner in honor of Susan B. Anthony's birthday, he said:

"When we asked for the employe compensation bill, where were the women voters of Denver? When

protests were entered, I looked around for some of our women voters to plead for the poor women and children who would be benefited by this bill, but there was not a woman present. Where is our adult probation law? We are a suffrage state. Massachusetts is not, but they have an adult probation law. Where is our home finding society? We have suffrage, but our dependent children in this state are put in homes for dependent children instead of being given the rights of family ties. We are 20 years behind Massachusetts in spite of suffrage."

Labor troubles in Colorado in the autumn of 1913 brought on civil war. The state government completely broke down and for ten months it was necessary for Federal troops to remain on guard and maintain martial law. The government of Colorado has twice broken down since women got the vote—something which has happened in no male suffrage state.

The suffrage movement has deteriorated womanhood, and has injured the state. After twenty-two years of it Colorado remains a welter of corrupt politics, of demoralizing social conditions, and of disorganized and ineffective government.

What has suffrage done for Washington?

Last year while the legislatures in various male suffrage states were passing enlightened and humane laws for social betterment, in Washington the legislature (according to "The Survey" of July 10, 1915) adjourned without having taken any forward step in social step in social legislation. The Mothers' Pension Law was amended so that it is no longer applicable to mothers abandoned by their husbands. An amendment to the workman's compensation act providing first aid to the injured was defeated, as were also a bill to establish a state labor exchange similar to that in New York, and a bill providing for one day's rest in seven in mechanical and mercantile establishments. The uniform child labor bill was indefinitely postponed and the Washington White Slave Act adapting the Mann act to traffic within the State, was denied a place on the calendar for the house. A bill making schools social centers was also indefinitely postponed. It is probable that only a threatened exercise of the veto power of the governor prevented the

passage of certain bills not conducive to public morals.

What has woman suffrage done for prohibition?

Until last fall not one woman suffrage state had adopted prohibition. At the November elections, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, all woman suffrage states, voted to do away with saloons; but already Denver, the only large city in Colorado, has voted not to abide by the state law, but to remain wet, and in Washington and Oregon every citizen, according to the "New York Times" is to be allowed to purchase thirty-six bottles of beer and two quarts of whiskey every four weeks.

California, another woman suffrage state also voted on prohibition last year, and defeated it by nearly 200,000 majority. Mrs. Lloyd Osborne, the wife of the step-son of Robert Louis Stevenson, speaking at the Suffrage Shop on Fifth Avenue, said: "Prohibition would have ruined the saloon keepers, and we did not want them ruined. I think the women must have voted solidly against prohibition." San Francisco, which is only two-thirds as large as Boston, has, according to Senator Works, 3500 saloons, while Boston, under male suffrage, has only 700.

while

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell in the Woman's Journal has called attention to the fact that the Liquor Interests in California admit that they were mistaken in fearing woman suffrage. What are the moral conditions in San Francisco?

A report of the American Social Hygiene Association, issued last spring stated that questionable dance halls had increased, and the city's moral condition gave cause for anxiety. A later report by Bascom Johnson, counsel of the American Social Hygiene Association, reprinted in the "Congregationalist" for Sept. 23, says: "In spite of announcements of officials to the contrary, San Francisco remains one of the few large cities of this country where

prostitution is frankly and openly tolerated. The natural and inevitable result has been that San Francisco has become the Mecca of the underworld, and that for every such addition to her population the problem is rendered that much more difficult."

These are the conditions in a city where women vote! Mr. Johnson also says that the Y. W. C. A., the W. C. T. U., and other organizations of the kind have tried to improve these conditions, but have failed, as they have received "little or no support from the city officials." This fact is directly in opposition to the suffrage theory that women must have the vote in order that city and state officials shall pay heed to their wishes. If California were still under male suffrage, if the thousands of dissolute women in San Francisco who will vote as the party in power dictates did not have the vote-the moral influence of the ladies of the Y. W. C. A. and the W. C. T. U. would be much more likely to be a factor in the situation. If these ladies vote at all—and many of them do not-their vote is divided between the Democrats, Republicans, Progressives and Socialists, and is therefore of much less importance than the big vote which can be controlled.

On Nov. 4, the day after election, the "San Francisco Examiner" says: "McDonough Brothers had several automobiles busy all day long hauling Barbary Coast dance hall girls and the inmates of houses on Commercial Street to the different booths, and always the women were supplied with a marked sample ballot."

Evidently woman suffrage does not bring improved legislation; it does not bring prohibition; and it does not purify politics.

To what does woman suffrage lead?

A direct outgrowth of the suffrage movement is the Feminist movement. From the days of Mary Wollstonecraft to the present, the leaders of the suffrage movement have with

few exceptions been Feminists, and at present the movement is spreading rapidly. Feminism teaches that a woman's only duty is to herself; that she must "lead her own life" regardless of all duties to husband and children or to society; that marriage should not be binding.

Gertrude Atherton, the well known California writer, says in the Yale Review for April 1913, that "owing to their political and economic awakening" girls in western towns are leading perfectly "free" lives, and laugh at all efforts to restrict them to the old American code of morals.

At the recent National Suffrage Convention, Prof. W. I. Thomas, of Chicago University, told his hearers that "any girl mentally mature has a right to motherhood, and that woman's assertion of her right to motherhood is a revolution that is coming and no one can stop it." Such teaching as this is a commonplace among Feminists.

Two fine, self-respecting working girls of my acquaintance have told me recently of their amazement at hearing this doctrine advanced and defended by young girls among their customers, who were suffragists and who had accepted this doctrine from suffrage sources. Is it not time that the thinking public opens its eyes to the peril in such teaching? Many a young girl caught by the movement will undoubtedly be led wrong before she has the maturity and intelligence to understand the falseness of these doctrines, and to realize that a child, too, has some rights, one of them being to have two parents.

Judge Lindsey in an interview in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune for Jan. 17, 1914, says that the trouble with equal suffrage is that women will not stop there-that it leads to Feminism, which means looser women, and that the cases coming before his court on sex charges had increased 300 per cent. He says "In a single stroke she (the Feminist) would break down the barriers that have protected the

legitimacy of our children for centuries. It is time to call a halt."

The Feminist scheme of substituting free alliances for monogamous marriage menaces our civilization. The unmarried mother sins not only against herself, but her child and society. The Feminist is pulling down the institution of home and family regardless of the fact that the injury to children and to society will be irreparable.

When Prof. Thomas made the statement quoted above, before the National Suffrage Convention, Dr. Anna Shaw, the president of that association, instead of condemning it, said: "The address has set every woman who heard it thinking, and they are thinking women who will consider both sides of the proposition. Political emancipation is not the only emancipation. I believe Prof. Thomas took the proper place to present his views." Feminist teachings lead to emancipation also from the principle of Christianity and monogamy.

Ellen Key, the great Swedish Feminist, says in Harper's Weekly of Jan. 31, 1914, that one of the results of the Feminist movement is the immoral lives lead by many wives. and by many girls with splendid possibilities. "The early Feminists,' she said, "did not foresee these results, but if they had they would no more have desisted from their teachings than would Jesus if he had foreseen the Inquisition."

A California Feminist writing to "The Forum" of April 1915, looks forward to a time when "there will be no husbands and no marrying, but every woman will be a law unto herself, and there will be free mothers in a free world.”

Occasionally a suffragist attempts to deny that there is any connection between Feminism and suffrage. In so doing she merely proves herself uninformed. It is to be remembered that Feminists are engaged as officers in suffrage organizations, and as speakers on suffrage platforms; that