Thus far we have made a few crude experiments in double suffrage, but nowhere has _equal_ suffrage been tried. Equal suffrage implies a fair field with favor to none--a field where woman, stripped of legal and civil advantages, must take her place as man's rival in the struggle for existence; for, in the long run, woman cannot have equal rights and retain special privileges. If the average woman is to be a voter, she must accept jury service and aid in the protection of life and property. When the mob threatens, she must not shield herself behind her equal in government. She must relinquish her rights and exemptions under the law and in civil life, if she is to take her place as a responsible elector and compete with man as the provider and governor of the race. Such equality would be a brutal and retrogressive view of woman's rights. It is impossible, and here we have the unanswerable answer to woman suffrage theories. No question of superiority or equality is involved in the opposition to votes for women. The test of woman's worth is her ability to solve the problems and do the work she must face as a woman if the race is not to deteriorate and civilization perish. The woman's suffrage movement is an imitation-of-man movement, and as such merits the condemnation of every normal man and woman. Doubtless we can live through a good deal of confusion, but it is not on any lines of functional unfitness that life is to be fulfilled. Woman must choose with discrimination those channels of activity wherein "what she most highly values may be won." Are these values in the department of government or in the equally essential departments of education, society, and religion? The attempt to interpret woman's service to the state in terms of political activity is a false appraisal of the contribution she has always made to the general welfare. All this agitation for the ballot diverts attention from the only source from which permanent relief can come, and fastens it upon the ballot box. It is by physical, intellectual, and moral education that our citizenship is gradually improved, and here woman's opportunities are supreme. If women are not efficient in their own dominion, then in the name of common sense let them be trained for efficiency in that dominion and not diffuse their energies by dragging them through the devious paths of political activity. Equal suffrage is clearly impossible; double suffrage, tried under most favorable conditions in sparsely settled western states has made no original contribution to the problem of sound government. On the other side of the ledger we find that the enfranchisement of women has increased taxes, added greatly to the menace of an indifferent electorate, and enlarged the bulk of unenforced and unenforceable laws.