Another objection to this third party, the national prohibition party, so-called, has been the adoption of a platform favoring universal suffrage without reference to sex. This also is a question over which the congress of the United States have not heretofore exercised any jurisdiction. The question of suffrage or the right to vote has been a matter peculiarly within the control of each state of the Union and its local constitution and laws, and is not and never has been a matter of national politics. I have always believed and still believe that if the prohibitionists had confined their efforts to the several states, capturing those in which they had some prospect of success, their cause would have grown and become stronger each year. The great centers of population such as New York City, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, and such other cities filled as they are with foreign population, who have no sympathy with the manners and customs pertaining to these agricultural states, cannot in my judgment be brought under the control of prohibition at any time during the present or next generation of men, and I regard it as foolish to spend our time and our money in such quixotic efforts. My hope in inaugurating the movement that we made in 1893 was simply to teach the republicans of Iowa the lesson that success politically was not to be attained in this state by subservience to the saloon power, and that defeat in the election of that year might result in a return of the party to its better and higher purposes in maintaining that which was right and just and humane. That we were defeated in that effort at that time was most unfortunate, but the domination of the political power of the saloon, I still have faith to believe, will work its own destruction, and that the people of this state will return to their former convictions. CHAPTER XX PERSONAL INCIDENTS