back convictions, he actually voted the Republican ticket in order to represent his daughters. It was the nearest he could come to representing them under this theory. But did it give that family any accurate or adequate representation? Evidently not. The Greenback candidate was entitled to one vote from that family, and he did not get it; and the Republican candidate was entitled to three ballots, and he got only one. And then, in order to represent his daughters, that chivalrous father had to go without any representation himself. It is evident that the only fair way to get at public sentiment in such a case is for each member of the family to have one vote, and thus represent himself or herself.
Another proof that women are not virtually represented is to be found in the laws as they actually exist. These one-sided laws were not made because men meant to be unjust or unkind to women, but simply because they naturally looked at things mainly from their own point of view. It does not indicate any special depravity on the part of men. I have no doubt that if women alone had made the laws, those laws would be just as one-sided as they are to-day, only in the opposite direction.
It is said that if women are enfranchised, husbands and wives will vote just alike, and you will simply double the vote and have no change in the result. Then, in the next breath, it is said that husbands and wives would vote for opposing candidates, and then there would be matrimonial quarrels. If they vote just alike there will be no harm done, and this good may be done—the women will be broadened by a knowledge of public affairs, and husband and wife will have a subject of mutual interest in which they can sympathize with each other. In cases where husband and wife do not think alike as to who will make the best selectmen, for instance, you will admit that is hardly sufficient to cause them to quarrel; but if they should think differently on very many other points, they would quarrel anyway, so that politics would not make much difference with them.
Then it is said that women do not want to vote, and in proof it is said they do not vote generally for school committeemen where allowed to do so. We all know that the size of the vote cast at any election is just in proportion to the amount of interest that election calls forth. At a Presidential election nearly all the voters turn out; in an ordinary State election only about half; at a municipal election only a small fraction of the men take the trouble to vote. The Troy Press states that at a recent election in Syracuse for a board of education, out of about 3,000 qualified voters only 40 voted.
Then, it is said that this movement is making no progress; that while the movements along other lines are largely succeeding, there has been no advance along this line. Twenty-five years ago, with insignificant exceptions, women could not vote anywhere. To-day they have school suffrage in twenty-three States, full suffrage in Wyoming, municipal suffrage in Kansas, and municipal suffrage for single women and widows in England, Scotland and most of the British provinces. The common sense of the world is slowly but surely working toward the enfranchisement of women.
