The daily gazette., 1881-05-10
WYOMING WOMEN.

How Elections are Held I'm the Ter.
ritOry Where All Adults Vote.
From Lecture Reported in the Albany
Times.
The elections, though som etimes
closely contested and very anima-
ted, are entirely peaceful and or
derby. A lady no more hears low
language or meets rought treatment
at the polls than she does in her
home. Some ladies stay about the
polls and electioneer for votes, md
no one finds fault with this. At the
election for Delegate to Congress
Mrs. Corbett, wife Of the successful
candidate, handsome young bride
of few months, went from house
to house in Cheyenne and sent out
carriages and wagons many miles to
the country to bring the women to
the polls. Mr.. Corbett owed his ell
ection 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.--
Plucky2 Rather. There are no
towards among those women. The
most refined and stylish of them can
drive the ranch horses and ponies,
and are capital shots with pistols or
Winchester rifles. They think moth
ing of riding out, carrying rifle and
shooting prairie wolf, bear or a
mountain lion. When the hostile
Indians were roaming the country
the women who lived at lonely
ranches, where they often had to be
left alone for some time, talked free
ly about the matter, but showed no
fear. One woman that know kept
her doors and windows fastened and
her rifles within reach, but expressed
no dread and kept on with her us
ual work. One night she heard a
great noise in her corral (cattle. PEN,
and in the morning found the In
dams had been there and stolen
three or four horses and kline, but
they did not go near the house.
They had heard how we'll she could |
shoot.
In Cheyenne there are many colored |
people, and the colored servant girls vote
the same as their mistresses, and are Of |
ten brought to the polls In the same /
carriages. When lived at Chngwater
Station, on the road to the Black Hills, |
about fifty miles north Of Cheyenne, the |
poll for that district was about a mile |
south of as on that road. We were all |
wanted TO vote to help elect Frank |
Hamilton, from Baltimore, a horseback /
reporter for the Cheyenne papers, JUS
tice OF the Peace. So they took an old |
fashioned Rocky Mountain stage-coach
that was standing disused at the public
ranch CAVERN, loaded in twelve or if
teen 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
well-broken horses before them, put the
ranch in charge Of a young colored man
from Baltimore who had not lived In the
Territory long enough to be voter, and
away we bowled down the road together
70 the poll and voted. The wagons were
women to the poll for thirty
miles around, and In the evening the
people from the poll came up to the pub
lie ranch and had grand supper and
dance In honor of Frank Hamilton's
election.
Women's pay in Wyoming is as good
IS mems, or better. In Cheyenne the
waiter girls and chambermaids get S25 |
TO $50 month, while mems pay In diff
erent employments is SIS TO $25. At
Chugwater Station, where kept the
prblic ranch, collected the Black Hills
stage fares and acted as postmaster, / re-
ceived $50 to $50 month, and the stage
drivers, whose work is at times very
hard, as they have to drive through In
she face of wind, rain, hail or snow, told
nle they did not get as much as /.