Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1881-05-19
WYOMING WOMEN.

How Elections Are Held il the Territory
Where all Adults Vote.
From Lecture Reported in the Albany Times.
The elections, though sometimes closely
contested and very animated, are entirely
peaceful and orderly. A lady no more
hears low language or meets rough treat
ment at the polls than she does in her home.
Some ladies stay about the, polls and cleo
tioneer for votes, and no ono finds fault
with this. At the election for delegate to
congress Mrs. Corbett, wife of the success
full candidate, handsome young bride of
a few months, went from house to house in
Cheyenne and sent out carriages and wag-
ons many miles into the country to bring
the women to the polls Mr.. Corbett owed
his election largely to the efforts of his wife
and the women whose aid she enlisted.
No one found any fault with her; every
one felt her action to be necessary and
creditable. Plucky? Rather. Tkere are
no towards among these women. The
most refined and styli7h of them can
drive or ride the ranch horses and ponies,
and are capital shots with pistols or Win
chester rifles. They think nothing of ri
ding out, carrying rifle and shooting
prairie wolf, bear or mountain lion.
When the hostile Indians were roaming in
the country the women who lived at lonely
ranches, where they often had to be left
alone for some time, talked freely about the
matter, but showed no fear. One woman
that I know kept her doors and her win
dows fastened, and her rifles within reach,
but expressed no dread and kept on with
her usual work. One night she heard
in the morning found the Indians had been
nd nj md
kline, but they did not 60 near the house.
They had heard how well she could shoot.
In Cheyenne there are many colored people,
and the colored servant girls vote the same
as their mistresses, and are often brought
to the poles in the same carriages. When
lived at Chugwater Station on the road
to the Black Hills, about fifty miles north
of Cheyenne, the poll for that district IVES
about mile south of us on that road. W
were all wanted to vote to help Eelec
Frank Hamilton, from Baltimore
a horseback reporter for the
Cheyenne papers, Justice of the peace. So
they took an fashioned Rocky Noun
tain stage coach that was disused at the
public ranch (tavern), loaded in twelve or
fifteen men who worked about the ranch,
three ladies and the colored servant GIRL
put to the coach pair of wild horses they
wanted to break in, harnessed two we'll
broken horses before them, put the ranch
in charge of a young colored man from Balti-
more who had not lived in the Territory
long enough to be a voter, and away we
bowled down the road together to the poll
and voted. The wagons were bringing
women to the poll for thirty miles around,
and in the evening the people from the
poll came up to the public ranch and had q
grand supper and dance in honor of Frank
Hamilton's election.
Women's pay in Wyoming is as good as
mems or better. In Cheyenne the waiter
girls and chambermaids get $25 to $50 a
month, while mems pay in different en-
pigments is $1S to $25. At Chugwater
Station, where kept the public ranch, COL
lected the Black Hills stage fares and acted
as postmaster, I received $35 to $50 a
month, and the stage drivers whose work
is at times very hard, as they have to drive
through in the face of wind, rain, hail or
snow, told me they did not get as much as I.