if it had been necessary to wait till the majority of women asked for it. The change now under discussion is to be judged on its merits. In the light of history, the indifference of most women and the opposition of a few must be taken as a matter of course. It has no more rational significance now than it has had in regard to each previous step of women's progress.

TAXATION AND THE BALLOT.

The Remonstrance declares that the payment of taxes has no bearing upon the right to vote. United States Senator Hoar has well said:

We have driven our leading opponents from one position to another, until there is not a thoughtful opponent of woman suffrage to be found who is not obliged to deny the doctrine which is affirmed in our Declaration of Independence.

Last year the New York legislature gave tax-paying women in all the towns and villages throughout the State the right to vote upon questions of local taxation. This bill had passed the popular branch of several successive legislatures by heavy majorities-one year unanimously—before it succeeded in getting through the senate. When it finally became a law, the fact was hailed with gratification even by newspapers that had always been opposed to equal suffrage. The Chicago Evening Post voiced a very general sentiment when it said:

The question of letting all women vote on all questions may be debatable; but the question of letting all taxpayers vote for all officers concerned in taxation hardly seems to have two sides.

Even the New York Times said that the passage of the bill was "not so much a victory for woman suffrage as the perfecting of women's property rights."

The New York Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women, which fought this bill with all its might, is now largely reconciled to it, and says in its recent annual report:

As the months have slipped by we have come to feel that in neither house was the bill considered as a suffrage measure, any more than the married women's property bill.

Last year, at the legislative hearing at Albany on this bill, the spokeswoman of the "antis" said she had ascertained, by extended inquiry, that hardly any women favored taxpayers' suffrage except those who favored general suffrage for all women. At a meeting held a few weeks ago in Buffalo, the chairman of the New York State Anti-Suffrage Association, Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, was reported in the papers as saying that about half the members of the "Anti" Association now believe in suffrage for taxpaying women. In other words, within less than a year after taxpayers' suffrage became an accomplished fact in New York, its satisfactory working has converted half of the very women who were most intensely opposed to it beforehand.

ANARCHY, SOCIALISM, AND SUFFRAGE.

The members of the Massachusetts legislature have received from Chicago a quantity of documents aiming to persuade them that Massachusetts women ought not to be allowed to vote. The most consider

able pamphlet is by Mrs. Caroline F. Corbin, of Chicago, who says in substance that anarchism, socialism, woman suffrage, and the abolition of marriage are all practically one and the same thing. In proof of this she refers to the excesses of the French Revolution, and says:

The French Revolution, as everybody knows, proclaimed the abolition of marriage, and put men and women on a so-called equal basis as regarded political rights. Women were to enjoy equal rights as to suffrage and political emoluments.

The French Revolution, as everybody knows who knows anything about history, did nothing of the kind. When Paris was ringing with the cry of "Liberty, equality, and fraternity!" a deputation of women came before the Assembly and asked that their equal rights also might be recognized in the new order of things. The blood-stained revolutionary leaders ordered them back to their kitchens, with a lecture on woman's sphere that might have emanated direct from the Anti-Suffrage Association. Rousseau, who, as Mrs. Corbin mentions, sent his children to the Foundling Asylum, held views on the woman question almost identical with those of Mr. Henry T. Finck. Among the prominent French revolutionists, Condorcet was almost the only one who believed in equal political rights for women. Since the French Revolution gave suffrage to men and denied it to women, and since Mrs. Corbin wishes to give suffrage to men and deny it to women, Mrs. Corbin probably believes in the abolition of marriage and of religion, and would inaugurate a reign of the guillotine if she could. this is the basis on which she argues about the suffragists.

At least

Mrs. Corbin intimates that the second French Revolution of 1848 was another woman's rights outbreak. But the second French Republic did not give the ballot to women any more than the first. Madame de Girardin wrote in 1848:

A loyal republic is the dream of all generous and independent minds. But alas, those who have proclaimed it do not understand it. The proof that they do not understand the republic is that in their fine promises of universal enfranchisement they have forgotten woman. The stableman a voter! And the author of Consuelo and so many chefs d'œuvre, George Sand-O deputies too proud of your masculine obscurity! George Sand has not the right to trace on a ballot with her immortal pen a single one of your unknown names.

The excesses of the French Revolution are often quoted in Europe as an argument against a republican form of government for men, but it is hard to see how they constitute an argument against the ballot for

women.

Mrs. Corbin is as imperfectly informed upon philosophy as upon history. She declares anarchism to be "a phase of socialism." Socialism and anarchism represent opposite extremes. The anarchist thinks that government should be abolished; the socialist, that the powers and scope of government should be vastly extended. No anarchist believes in suffrage for anybody; hence no anarchist believes in suffrage for women. The essence of anarchistic doctrine is that there should be no government and no voting. Not long before President McKinley's assassination, at a meeting where Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the president of the National Suffrage Association, had spoken, Emma Goldman rose in the audience at the close of her address, and denounced her for her folly in seeking the ballot for women. Emma Goldman does not believe in woman suffrage, and Mrs. Corbin does not believe in woman suffrage. Does it follow that Mrs. Corbin is an anarchist?

The Empress of China has just issued an edict to permit the unbinding of women's feet. The advocates of equal suffrage also favor the unbinding of women's feet. Does it follow that the suffragists must be Boxers in disguise?

Theodore Roosevelt recommended woman suffrage in his inaugural message to the New York legislature. Are we to assume that Mr. Roosevelt is an anarchist?

Mrs. Corbin quotes arguments in favor of the abolition of marriage from a number of European socialistic writers, most of whom the majority of Americans never heard of. No doubt some European socialists hold queer and objectionable views on the marriage question. Does it follow that Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and Mrs. Mary A. Livermore wish to "emancipate women from the bonds of purity by bringing them down to the level of promiscuity," or that American women, if they had the ballot, would vote to abolish marriage? The insinuation is not only absurd, but monstrous.

The first woman in America to ask for a vote was Mrs. Margaret Brent, of Maryland, a kinswoman of Lord Baltimore, in 1647, more than a century before the French Revolution. The next was Abigail Adams, of Massachusetts, an irreproachable wife and mother, who wrote to her husband, John Adams, in 1776:

I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire that you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. We will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

THE FAMILY UNINJURED.

Equal suffrage does not injure the family. In Wyoming full suffrage was granted to women in 1869. During the twenty years from 1870 to 1890 divorce in the United States at large increased about three times as fast as the population. In the group of Western States, omitting Wyoming, it increased nearly four times as fast as the population. In Wyoming it increased only about half as fast as the population.

"An ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory."

The small number of women who protest against suffrage claim to represent "the overwhelming majority of their sex." This is totally untrue. The majority of women are neither suffragists nor remonstrants; they are indifferent. Of those who take any lively interest in the question either way, the great majority are in favor. This has been shown conclusively wherever the matter has been brought to a test.

In Massachusetts, New York, Maine, Iowa-in short, wherever during the last twenty-five years petitions for suffrage and remonstrances

against it have been sent in, the petitioners have always outnumbered the remonstrants at least 5 to 1, and oftener 50 or 100 to 1. The socalled referendum in Massachusetts merely demonstrated the same thing by an official count.

The Remonstrance says that on the referendum out of 608,500 women who might have voted yes, "only 22,204 did so." But, on the other hand, out of 608,500 who might have voted no, only 864 did so. The antis invoke "the time-honored American principle that the will of the majority should govern." The American principle is that the majority of those who care enough about a question to express themselves should govern. The indifferent are not counted on either side. According to the women's vote, every county and every representative, Congressional, and senatorial district in Massachusetts went for equal suffrage by an average majority of 25 to 1.

It is remarkable that 22,204 women in Massachusetts should have taken the trouble to cast a mere mock vote, which was to have no legal validity, and was to give the women nothing if it went in their favor. On that occasion 22,204 women were found in one day who cared enough about suffrage to go to the polls and cast a vote for it. In seven years of diligent effort the Antisuffrage Association has found less than 10,000 who care enough about opposing it to sign their names on a return postal card.

The majority of women are indifferent on the question, a minority are strongly in favor of suffrage, and a much smaller minority are strongly opposed to it. That is the situation in a nutshell.

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"MARKED FLUCTUATIONS."

The Remonstrance says that the women's school vote in Boston is subject to marked fluctuations." The men's vote in Boston also shows marked fluctuations.

At the municipal election of December, 1901, the choice of the school committee was a question of exceptional interest. Ten members were to be elected instead of eight (the usual number), and several daily papers had been for months making an active campaign against corruption in the school board and urging everyone to vote. Yet, out of 85,000 men in Boston who voted for mayor, more than 41,000 neglected to mark their ballots for school committee after they were actually at the polls. How many of them would probably have taken the trouble to register and go to the polls in order to vote for the school committee only?

When school suffrage was first granted to the women of Boston, in 1879, only 934 women voted, and for the first seven years the average was only 940. During the last seven years their vote has never fallen below 5,000, and has averaged nearly 8,000. For some years past there has been a steady increase. In 1898 5,201 women voted; in 1899, 7,090; in 1900, 9,542, and in 1901, 11,620.

In answer to the objection that the best women would not vote, Coł. T. W. Higginson says: "In Massachusetts, under school suffrage, the complaint has been that only the best women vote.”

"IN COLORADO AND WYOMING.”

The Remonstrance, referring to recent articles on equal suffrage by Professor Le Rossignol, of the University of Denver, Colo., and Professor Roberts, of the University of Wyoming, says:

These reports are the first testimony which has been given from impartial observers, and they are in marked contrast with the extravagant claims of the suffragists.

Professor Le Rossignol says: "Woman suffrage has done no harm, while it has done some good, and it has been adopted by Colorado 'for better, for worse."" Professor Roberts says substantially the same of Wyoming. This is certainly in marked contrast with the extravagant claims of the antisuffragists that equal suffrage would infallibly do no good and much harm, and that it would probably soon be repealed.

The suffragists for the past fifteen years have had a standing challenge, inviting its opponents to find two respectable men in all Wyoming who will assert over their own names and addresses that equal suffrage has had any bad results whatever. The opponents have thus far failed to respond.

NEW ZEALAND SCHOOL BOARDS.

The Remonstrance quotes an anonymous New Zealand woman as saying: "A woman in New Zealand can not legally take her seat on school boards." Women have served on school boards there for more than twenty years.

Hon. Hugh H. Lusk, a former member of the New Zealand parliament, had much to do with framing the education act of 1877, which gave women the school vote and made them eligible to membership on school boards. While visiting America for his health, he spoke at the May festival of the New England Woman Suffrage Association, and gave a sketch of the history of woman suffrage in New Zealand. He said:

The women got the school vote and used it. They did not say, "Oh, dear, no; it wouldn't be proper." They went to the polls and voted for the best men. They took so much interest that at the next election some women were elected to the school boards; and they showed so much aptitude for this sort of work that when, in 1882, the license question came up, it was proposed that women ratepayers should help choose the board of commissioners in each district who control the issuing of licenses. This met with great objection. We were told that now, indeed, we should utterly destroy the character of the ladies, for all the worst element would be brought in contact with them, and would make things very unpleasant for them. We said: "We don't believe the men of New Zealand are as bad as you think; and if they are, they are not to be trusted to vote alone for these boards of license commissioners." The women were given the license vote. To the surprise and disappointment of their opponents they voted well and met with no trouble, and certainly they greatly improved the licensing boards.

Then we felt that we could go a little further, and gave women the right to vote at municipal elections and to serve on municipal boards. I know one woman who acted for two years as mayor of a very prosperous little town, and did as well as any mayor could have done. The women used their municipal vote well, and so finally in 1893 they were given the full parliamentary franchise.