gest the benefit of their incorporation into our voting force to the least observant. A woman who owns railroad or manufacturing or mining stock may vote unquestioned by the side of the brightest business men of our continent, but if she transfers her property into real estate she loses all voice in its control.
Their abilities, intellectual, physical and political, are as various as ours, and they err who set up any single standard, however lovely, by which to determine the rights, needs and possibilities of the sex. To me the recognition of their capacity for full citizenship is right and desirable, and it only remains to consider whether it is safe, whether it is expedient. To this let experience answer to the extent that the experiment has been made.
During the first thirty years of the independence of New Jersey, universal suffrage was limited only by a property qualification; but we do not learn that divorces were common, that families were more divided on political than on religious differences, that children were neglected or that patriotism languished, although the first seven years of that experiment were years of decimating war, and the remaining twenty-three of poverty and recuperation—conditions most conducive to discontent and erratic legislation.
The reports from Wyoming, which I have examined, are uniform in satisfaction with the system, and I do not learn therefrom that women require greater physical strength, fighting qualities or masculinity to deposit a ballot than a letter or visiting card; while in their service as jurors they have exhibited greater courage than their brothers in finding verdicts against desperadoes in accordance with the facts. Governors, judges,' officers and citizens unite in praises of the influence of women upon the making and execution of wholesome laws.
In Washington Territory, last fall, out of a total vote of 40,000 there were 12,000 ballots cast by women, and everywhere friends were rejoiced and opponents silenced as apprehended dangers vanished upon approach. Some of the comments of converted newspaper editors which have reached us are worthy of preservation and future reference. The elections were quiet and peaceable for the first time; the brawls of brutal men gave place to the courtesies of social intercourse; saloons were closed, and nowhere were the ladies insulted or in any way annoyed. Women vote intelligently and safely, and it does not appear that their place is solely at home any more than that the farmer should never leave his farm, the mechanic his shop, the teacher his desk, the clergyman his study, or the professional man his office, for the purpose of expressing his wishes and opinions at the tribunal of the ballot-box.
To-day—and to a greater extent in the near future—we are confronted with political conditions dangerous to the integrity of our nation. In the unforeseen but constant absorption of immigrants and former bondmen into a vast army of untrained voters, without restrictions as to the intelligence, character or patriotism, many political economists see the material for anarchy and public demoralization. It is claimed that the necessities of parties compel subserviency to the lawless and vicious classes in our cities, and that,
