Morning journal and courier., 1883-11-01
wOMEN WHO WT71. N0T -,

vermont IS not one of the conspicuoua
 States. yet two interesting experiments in
 public affairs have been going on there dur
 ing the last two or three years. One Is the
 new tax law, which appears to have worked
 well, for it has tended to equalize taxation
 and lower the rate. The other is an experi.
 ment in woman suffrage, which has not work
 ed well.
 For three years the taxpaying 70 men of
 Vermont have enjoyed the right to vote for
 school officers and to hold educational offices.
 The law giving them the right WAS passed by
 the legislature of 1880, and provided, simply,
 that s'Women shall have the same right to
 vote as men have in all school district meet
 ings and in the election of school commis-
 sioners in towns and cities, and the same
 right to hold offices relating to school af-
 fairs" There was some doubt as to the
 meaning of this law and the advice of several
 eminent lawyers was sought. They gave it
 as their opinion that the law conferred the
 right to vote on those women only who paid an individual tax, and this opinion has been
 followed throughout the State. Under this construction of the law there gre about 15,- 900 women in the State who are entitled to
 vote in school matters
 The result of this law has not justified She expectations of those who secured it's pas- sage. A correspondent of the Boston Adver- tiser, writing from Burlington, says: In the three years it has been in operation ample proof has been afforded that the women of Vermont, however they may stand on the gem eral question of female suffrage, do not care to exercise the limited right extended them. The figures for the city Of Burlington are worth quoting, because it confessedly leads the State in intelligence, culture and public spirit, and because it has large proportional number of taxpay- ing women. At the first election after tue passags of the law only sixteen women voted for school commissioner, though the number entitled to vote and enrolled on the checklist was two hundred The second year only five voted of the sixty-four entitled to vote, and tho present year only eight voted, though three hundred and fourteen had the right. And of those who voted it may not be unjust to say that ali, or nearly all, were women who had long been prom inently before the public iu connection with the Womer's Christian Temperance union or other reformatory work. As it was in Bur- ington, so was it throughout the State. The experience was so novel a one for Vermont that it gave rise to very general discussion and comment and every woman interested must have been made fully aware of her rights and privileges. They refrained from voting not from ignorance, but from lack of desire to vote. In some of the larger towns a few female voters have been seen at the polls, but in the great majority of places the women have stayed quietly as home; and for the entire three years the number who have voted forms but an insignificant percentage of the fifteen thousand who may vote if they please.
 Of the two hundred and forty-one towns in the State twenty have this year chosen women for superintendent of schools, but in no case, 1t is believed, has such choice been brought about by the votes of women. Of the twenty the majority are clergymen's wives, and the rest are maiden ladies who have spent their lives in teaching. It is evil dent from all this that the women of Vermont are not anxious to vote. It has also been made plain that the women of Boston, whom everybody expected to jump at the chance do not want to vote. There must have been some mistake about the fervent appeals we used to hear from the women who made it appear that their suff fering sisters were only restrained from voting by the tyranny of Man.