matter of fact, the women did not give a solid vote to any man or any principle in the election of 1893, nor have they done so since. There is as much difference of opinion among them as among men, and they scatter their votes in the same way. No party or section of a party has been entitled to lay claim to the vote of the women of the colony generally. The same may be said in regard to most candidates in the different electorates. The women have had a great deal to do with the advance of Prohibition, but even the Temperance Party cannot say that it receives anything like the entire women’s vote.
The colony has become used to women voting now. Women themselves have become used to it, and they flock to the polling-booths in large numbers, recording their votes quietly and intelligently. In 1893, however, the sight was a novel one for everybody, and men electors stood by with good-natured curiosity to see how their newly enfranchised sisters would vote. It is best to let Mr. Reeves, who was in the midst of it, fighting for his seat in Christchurch City, describe his observations and impressions, which are applicable to all election contests held since. He says:—
“The eventful morning was bright and fine almost everywhere. The women began to vote early—at about nine o’clock—and by amicable arrangement were allowed in the cities to have certain booths pretty much to themselves until noon. A New Zealand elector may vote at whichever booth in his district he pleases. In several districts the committees took care that a woman’s vote should be the first vote recorded. Workmen’s wives “tidied up” at homes, put on their best clothes, and walked to the nearest poll. Sometimes their menkind escorted them, for it was a general, though not a universal, holiday. More often the women of one or two neighbouring families made up a party and sallied out together. Between noon and two o’clock, dinner postponed politics; in the afternoon the women again thronged the booths, and had almost all comfortably voted by tea-time, when the rush of workmen, which in the colonies begins an hour or so earlier than in England, began to flood the polls. All things were done in courtesy and order, without rudeness, hustling, or hysteria. Good-natured neighbours took it in turns to look after each other’s children while the voting was being done. Each woman armed herself conscientiously with her number, and, on the whole, the novices went through the ordeal with much credit. The proportion of spoiled ballot papers was very little larger than at previous elections. When the polls closed at seven o’clock, 90,000 women had peacefully voted. In the towns, crowds of men and women stood patiently in the streets from about nine o’clock onwards, waiting to see the results not only in their own district but of the colony’s elections. The order kept by these thousands of full-fledged citizens was astonishing. They talked, laughed, and chaffed each other, and boys ran about
