The Press., 1894-06-07
w. C. T. U. DEPARTMENT.
The Woman Suffrage Question Pro and Con.
 BY MAUD WILDER GOODWIN.

II.-A PLEA FOR DISAPPOINTMENT.
 As journeyed last summer on rail- road which wound ribbon-like in and out among the New England hills, noticed frequent signals bidding the engineers
 Ego slowly around curves" It was 8 wise warning. Equal suffrage for women is a curve at sharp angle, and no man can foresee whether landslides and broken bridges lie beyond the turn, or whether the road stretches smooth and clear to the gates of the ideal city. Delay is not dangerous; haste may be.
 The most successful legislation in American history has been that growing up slowly out of experience rather than any springing from the brain of statesmen or philosophers. The constitution de- vised for Carolina by Locke and Shaftes- bury proved total failure, and gave way to the body of laws found practically eff fective by the colonists. The Constitu- tion of the United States, called by Glad stone ''the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the mind and purpose of man," was, in all it's success full features, adapted from those which had been tried in one or more of the thirteen colonies; while the electoral college, which did not grow out of any root in American soil, has wholly failed to carry out the intention of the inventors.
 In all social and political changes the unforeseen and indirect consequences are the greatest. The predictions of the wisest, based upon general principles, are at the best only guesses. The only trust worthy guide is that of an actual experi- ment where theory has been put to the test of fact This test of experience we citizens of New York shall be able in the not distant future to apply to the problem EDf woman's suffrage. Our federal form of government gives us this opportunity. We have forty-four states, each engaged 1 in working out the problems of govern fnent in it's own way, and we may profit by both the successes and the failures of our neighbors.
 l It is important to the suffrage cause, as well as to the safety of the country, that ] it should be tried under the most advan- tageous conditions, in the place where the average of intelligence among women 1 is highest, and where the comprehension of American institution is most thorough. 1 New York, with its enormous foreign lspopulation and the choking masses, unen- l frightened and un-Americanized, in it's Igreat cities, does not offer favorable con- ditions. The western states, on the other Ihand, represent population drawn large l ly from the New England of former days, YFSstnd filled up with theehildren of men and women who brought to pioneer life the culture of an older civilization. Here, if anywhere, equal suffrage will be success ], full, and here it is being, or is about to be, tried. Women already vote in Wyom- ing; and Colorado and Kansas are grant ing them the franchise. New England is adopting a limited suffrage, confined at present to school-board questions; and, outside our own country, New Zealand is trying the experiment of equal franchise. In a few years, therefore, we shall be able to judge with reasonable accuracy what fruit this new plant bears in various communities and environments. Surely, twenty years is not long period for de- ] liberation over the greatest change ever