The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1894-01-19
COLOeADo's WOMAN VOTERS.
How Their Franchise Came About and

citizens" in Colorado instead of La
dies and gentlemen" for, as a Colorado
woman writes to the Chicago Tribune:
I'VE women Of Colorado have equal
suffrage, OF equal suffrage has us. ]
haven't quite figured out which. The
women who came out of the dust and
smoke Of battle with the light of vic
tory OF their faces say we have suffrage
and they ought to know, for they
studied it all up beforehand and knew
what it meant-and talk about prima-
ries and polls with an easy familiarity
that is W inspiring. But as for the
rest of us-well, we have lots to learn.
Of course we expected to get the right
to vote, but we find that carries IA
great many other rights that we thought
the men would be good enough to at
tend to just as we wanted them to with
out leaving us any bother.
Its all the other way. First of all,
in the cities we have to register under
the Australian ballot law, get under a
measuring machine, have the color of
u eyes determined and u weight
noted, and otherwise contribute to the
answering of 20 odd questions, among
which is the plump, point blank conun-
drum, How old are your Distinguish
ing physical characteristics also go
down in the book. One woman naively
told the clerk she Was a twin and has
not recovered her good temper yet. ]
don't know what awful result will fol-
low if a couple of thousand women are
challenged a week or SO before election
by the political machines.
1.-THE next thing is that il women do
not take an interest in conventions and
primaries and all that, you know, they
will find their choice restricted to two
or three men with whose selection they
had nothing to do, and that does not
seem right. We must join in the push,
my husband says, while he chuckles
away. Unless some of the dear sisters
are belied, just the same, the men will
find out a thing or two. The very day
after election, when it was certain we
had won, the discovery was made that
the wives Of several politicians, one
of them actually under an assumed
name, were members of the suffrage as
ISOLATION and had begun to swing it for
their parties and incidentally, no doubt,
their husbands. Several offers of clerk
ships under the new county officers
were made, but to the honor of the
ome who did the campaign work not
al offer was accepted, and the attempt
at influencing was exposed at the next
meeting. The association adopted a de-
cisive 70 political plank and took meas
ures for the b~lackballing of political
women. We're travelling on a high
plane, l tell you. l don't know how it
will work at the primaries, but it's
lofty.
Right after election the newspapers
took a wicked delight in pointing out
that since we had become voting citi-
zens we we're amenable to all the duties
of citizens and voters and would have
to do jury duty and militia duty and l
don't know how many other kinds of
duty. Then arose Attorney General
Engley-a very Solomon-and dug into
his books and found that, while the
state constitution made no distinction of
sex, various laws regarding jurors and
the militia contain the word male, which
lets US out of the work and leaves us all
the fun. Anyway, I'm sure We'll get
along very nicely, even at the prima-
ries, though I'm certain the men won't
think conventions are conventions at
all if they can't smoke and fight and
raise Old Ned. They have always had u
good deal more row in Denver at the
convention than on election day, and a
squad of deputy sheriffs usually sit on
the bench of the elect.
How did we carry the electioni
Well, l am blessed if l know that
either-whether we carried it at all or
not. I'm honestly inclined to believe
that the men gave us suffrage because
they thought there was no good argu-
ment against it and that we ought to
have it. The men of this part of the
world are big, broad minded fellows,
and hold, too, much of that old time
western chivalry which made the lone
woman the safest of all the creatures in
a rough frontier town-the spirit which
to this day makes the toughest old
miner ready to fight at a moments no
tice for a woman in distress. The great
bulk of the vote against suffrage was
cast by men who we're not opposed to
having women vote, but who do not
feel that women should mingle in poll
tics as politics has been. We say. and it
is on our knowledge of the man that we
base our saying, that politics in Colo
RADIO will hereafter be other than it has
been. and we will be safe in politics as
it will be. No Colorado assemblage
will tolerate ruffians who will insult
women directly or indirectly. You
will find the future showing that l
know whereof | speak. The suffrage
machinery during the campaign was
not very powerful. and if the agitation
really accomplished anything tine val
liable engine of its work was the press.
There was only n newspaper man in
the state who openly opposed suffrage.
Some were a little lukewarm and many
said nothing, hut the large dailies,
without exception. favored suffrage ed
itorially."