The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-07-03
WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND HARRISON.

Matters are somewhat mixed regarding
che Wyoming admission bill Our Wash
ington correspondent wires that the Senate
amended the bill in some slight particulars,
which would throw the measure back into
the House for concurrence, and probably to
acommittee of conference, delay being in
volved in any event. On the other hand,
the Associated Press says that Treasurer
JANE H. STAFFORD, of the Woman's SUI
frage association, the Woman's Christian
Temperance union, through its superin-
tendent of legislation and petitions, have
requested the President to sign the bill to-
morrow, when the associations named will
make the Glorious Fourth the occasion of
doubly jooyus celebration. Both the Idaho
and Wyoming bills are to be sent to Cape
May, where the President is to spend the
Fourth. We must assume from this that
the Wyoming bill was not amended in the
Senate, but passed as it came from the
House.
OF course the President will sign the
bill, and thus furnish further evidence of
the fact that party expediency is much
more powerful with MIN than individual
principe. General HARRISON is opposed
to woman suffrage, and is on record with
speeches against it; but the Republicans
nCel Wyoming, hence he will sign the bill
and announce his belief in the rightful-
ness of the female suffrage which he has
fought publicly and privately 1t is fortu-
nate that on this occasion his party will
drive him into doing right. The
rightfulness OF woman suffrage in
Wyoming has been fully estab
lished by twenty years of actual practice.
1t is not an experiment there any more
than male suffrage is an experiment. The
Wyoming women have not voted so
generally as the men, but we believe
they have voted with just as much inteli-
gence and with as good an understanding
of the issues involved. We believe that a
smaller percentage of the women go to the
polls than went there in the early and ex-
perimental days of the law; but those
who vote now are actuated by principle and
not by curiosity or desire to dc strange
and novel thing. Show it seems to vote, u
has long since ceased to be the motive in
spring the Wyoming woman to take a
ticket and go to the polls; the incentive now
actuating her is the desire to get the best
men in office, and have the public admins
tration conducted in lines which she ap
proves If she knows nothing about the
men, or principles at issues, and ha:
neither the time nor inclination to inform
herself she doesn't vote
Woman suffrage in Wyoming has alsc
overcome one of the strongest arguments o
the anti -suffragists, namely that the womel
vote as their fathers and husbands direct
without troubling their minds in the mat
ter. To our personal knowledge this is no
the case in many instances, and we believ,
it is the exception rather than the rule
We know Wyoming women who regularly
vote the opposite ticket to the one sup
ported by their husbands, and they do tbi
on principle. We know women who's
party fealty was so true that they voted TO
candidates running for office against thei
own husbands. The wife of a nominee TO
Delegate 10 Congress voted for the opposi
ton candidate because the latter had bee
nominated by her party.
Wyoming has demonstrated that i
women had the right to vote, they woul
not generally exercise it as they do no
take naturally and enthusiastically TO poll
tics, and voting is not ATTRACTIVE to them
But Wyoming has also proven that Their
is neither danger nor evil in woman sui
frage. The women who DO take interest i
questions which are settled at the poll
are quite as intelligent in their opinions
judgments and actions as the men, and cel
taiDly should be accorded equal rights wit
the men