Women -- Employment -- United States; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women in politics -- United States
In the first legislature which met after the granting of equal suffrage,
that of 1898, three women were seated, Mrs. Hattie F. Noble, Clara L.
Cambell, and Mary A. Wright; Mrs. Wright afterward became chief clerk of
the House. In 1908, another woman, Mrs. Lottie J. McFadden, was
returned; but there was no woman in the last legislature, and so far as
I can learn, only these four have taken part in law-making. When asked
why, after the first ardor of emancipation, women have taken so little
part in legislation, most people said it was because they had found the
work and conditions surrounding it unsuited to them. It seems generally
agreed, however, that a woman could be elected to the legislature at any
time if she represented a cause which needed to be brought before the
people through that body.
Theorists have always insisted that equal suffrage would greatly improve
the material conditions which surround the polls on election day. One of
the prominent political leaders in Idaho, who has been intimately in
touch with conditions for a quarter of a century, said that of course
there had been great improvement in the last fifteen years. "Things
would have improved any way," he said, "but I am sure that the women
have had a large influence. No woman has ever been insulted at the polls
in Idaho and she runs no more danger of annoyance than she would in
buying her ticket at a railway window. Men are not always sober in
either place; but if a man made a remark to a woman that was not polite,
or used annoying language in her presence, he would be mobbed by the
men even in the roughest mining camp in the State." Doubtless women have
helped to break the connection between the saloon and the polling-place,
but no one claims that women have made voting into a drawing-room
ceremony. On the contrary, women are very persistent workers at the
polls, seeking to direct doubtful voters.
Advocates of equal suffrage have pretty generally held the belief that
if women were given the ballot their superior moral standards would lead
to a marked change in the handling of such problems as the liquor
traffic and the control of red light districts. Of woman's superior
moral standards there can be no doubt; of the actual effect of her vote
upon these questions there is a great deal of doubt. While I was in
Idaho, the question of local option came up before the voters of Salt
Lake City, in the neighboring equal suffrage State of Utah, and the
"wets" won by a vote of 14,775 to 9,162. Thousands of women must have
voted for license to bring about this result. In April, 1911, the
question of license or no license was voted on in Boise. In this case
again the "wets" won by a considerable majority.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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