Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1888-12-19
THE WOMEN WHO VOTED.

From the Boston Transcript
Such ladies 40 the Listener has met who
voted yesterday are very we'll pleased with the
movement. Some Of them do not care 30 much
for the specific result in the balloting as they
do for the demonstration that the woman's
vote can be made power in the community.
What especially delights me-" said Mrs. x,
this morning, who welded a laboring oar in
the race, lis that all the stock predictions
about woman suffrage are proved false bv yes-
terday's experience. Women won't take the
trouble to vote men have always said. .if thew
think they are going to get their bonnets vet
Now what was the result yesterday? The dsv
was an epitome Of the Deluge. and vet the
womens vote was got out very fully in
deed, and especially in the precincts
where our contemptuous male friends
bonnets to be greatest. Ward XII, on the Back
bay, contains q pretty fair proportion of the
woman -of-her-bonnet element. and vet
what was the story told in that ward? In the
nrst precinct, 81 women out Of the registry Of
the ward, for in the second precinct, 1O1 out of
registry OF lis voted; in precinct 8. 149 ont of
l54 voted, and in precinct 4, 239 out of 247. I
nave taken the trouble to see how the mems
womens, and find that in every precinct. with
the exception of the first, the proportion of
registered women who voted was considerably
greater than the proportion Of registered men,
so much Tor the Back bay. And in the fash
lonaoie part OF the West End the story was the
same. In one Of the precincts there, friend
OF mine who had registered was visited by one
OF the committee in hot haste early in the
afternoon, and told that she was the only regis
'eIed woman IN the precinct who had not
voted, and that she must come out at once. It
happened. however, that she had voted few
minutes before, after the member of the COM
mlttee had left the polling place. So that
completed the entire women's fist in that pre-
c ahS W. was there any precinct in the city
"nere the entire registration of men voted?"
This last question was addressed to Grigsby,
VINO Is well known as a scoffer on the subject
OF woman suffrage and who had come in
IN time to hear the last Of this statement
according to the figures, didn't cast but about
It,UO votes-l6,947 one paper has tout of
their total registration Of 90 16. Quite lot of
ALL" "'0'
THAT figure" said the lady, sis obtained by
subtracting the total Of Mr. Schindlers vote,
which was largest on the school committee list,
from the total Of Harris and O'Brens vote
which represented the whole of the male vote
But know perfectly well that good many
women did not vote for Mr.. SCHNEIDER. They
scratched him a good deal-don't You smile.
now, at the poor jokes that your own idle mind
suggests-and the 16, 947 total. therefore merely
represents the minimum of what the womens
vote could have been. Unfortunately there is
no way OF getting at it from the returns,
though the committees check books ought to
show II. As matter of fact suppose that
very nearly $4,000 women must have voted"
Grlgsby was about to make some cynical re-
mark but Mrs. u did not stop to listen to it.
she went on: Where the women's vote was
furthest below the registry must have been in
south Boston and at the north end and in the
other quarters where the bonnet question was
not supposed to have cut any figure, because
the women who voted we're expected to come
to the polls with shawls over their heads. SO
there is that masculine objection to woman's
voting disposed of all in one DAY. And for the
sake OF this proof l am just glad that the
%eather Yesterday was outrageous, instead of
Since this conversation the Listener has heard
OF any number of individual instances and oc-
currences from which the woman suffragists
derive satisfaction. OF course the absolute de-
corum which was maintained at all the poll
places was one OF the main sources Of cOngrat-
ulatlon. The male politicians were considera-
bly, surprised at the sagacity and ''smartness"
of the women ballot distributors in discovering
the split tickets and other electoral tricks, and
their pertinacity in circumventing them. In
one ward where diversion had been made by
putting upon the school committee ticket
the name of a man who had refused to rum and
where another name had been purposely mis-
spelled, the ladies politely pursued the voters
with the information that the ticket was fraud;
and their warfare upon this ticket was so eff
fectiye that not one of the split tickets-though
they had been prepared with a good deal Of
expense-got into the ballot-box In spite
of their newness to the polling place and
the tricks of the politicians, the women
yesterday certainly showed themselves sharp
eyed and self-possessed. Their feminine quick
ness is likely to put a new stumbling block
into the way of managers who undertake to
produce political results by pure trickery.