The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-12-26

voter asked, "oh. no doubt" returned the suffragist. but she doesn't reap any personal good from it."
 Another woman, living in the tenement district of Denver, who had been telling | me that she never had voted, and to | whom I had said, Having the ballot, | should think you would consider 1t your duty to use it," replied greedily: Dc yer think could git enough out O usin' 1t ter pay fur the bother I'd have doin' | itr' '' When I spoke of both these circum- | stances to a third woman, she said, with 8 short laugh, Politics, my dear, are not conducted along aitruistic llnes-' and she quoted remark to that effect made by well known Tammany man.
 But surely found myself replying, "the women of Colorado are not in sym. pathy with Tammany methods! Most certainly not" she said hastily, Judge Jerome: do you regard his polit- ical theory and practice as so lacking in altruism?'
 "Jeromev' she exclaimed, impatientiy He Is So. extreme! And, besides" she added. "he Is so blind to obvious facts He doesn't see that the remedy New York needs is the woman's ballot!'' But I began.
 Don't talk to me about William Trav- CTS Jerome," she interrupted. He bores me-"
 | T should think he would particularly and especially interest women actively engaged in politics. I could not forbear adding.
 | No one opposed to the ballot interests women who are in favor of the ballot!' | was the rejoinder.
 Not the battle, not the battlefield, but
 the weapon, is the chief subject under discus5ion-unceasfng discussion = among
 women in Colorado. The ballot is used defense; and of attack-even more acute ly personal attack. Into every incident. | however slight, it enters. Sometimes the entrance has diverting quality. One of the very few amusing things which hap pened to me while I was in Colorado | occurred in this connection. One day, as
 I was about to buy ticket from Denver to Colorado Springs, two ardent women sufragtsts whom had met chanced to enter the railway station. They kindly recommended to me two respective routes. dwelling upon the comparative picturesqueness of each in such glowing words that I hesitated in my attempt to make satisfactory choice between such an embarrassment of scenic riches.
 Madam, said the ticket agent. in A voice which betrayed a background of many curbed impulse of exasperatjon. If you spend much more time deciding which of, these two trains you will take, you won't have any time left in which to take either of them"'
 When I repeated this to my two coun- selors. they exclaimed in one breath: He wouldn't have dared to say that to usl'' Why not?'' I asked-as they expected. "Because we have the ballot, and could revenge ourselves!
 Whether that ticket agent surmised that had not the ballot and could not revenge myself. I do not know: but I do know that he was the only ticket agent in the United States whom found guilty of rudeness. I can not censure him very severely; the waving of the ballot Is not exactly an incentive to suavity. To the end of vindicating her right to the ballot, and of assisting women in other States to secure a similar political privilege. more than one woman whom l met in Colorado felt justified in using very strange means. One woman, who, in the strongest terms, had made to me several statements in regard to condl- tlons in Denver, which statements I afterward found to be incomplete. re- piled, when I asked her why she had not more fully described to me the matters In question. Could I be expected to give you so excellent an argument against the cause for which I stand?" Truly, as I had been told in Colorado City, women change politics less than politics change women.
 An earnest advocate of woman's suf- frage, to whom very recently I was tell ing something of these things in connec- ton with the use of the ballot by women in Colorado, assured me that the princi- pie underlying the question was not thereby affected. If 1t be true that suf- frage is one of the natural rights of every human being, then It's abuse in particular instances does not make it less unalien- able right. If, on the other hand il
 De true that the ballot is a political ex- pedient. 1t becomes a menace when if is used to the i'll of the State or of the in- dividual
 However suffrage may be regarded as an abstract problem, it is not to be de- nled that in Colorado it's use by women
 has. whatever else 1t may have done or
 lalled to do. brought grave disaster upon those women. The possession of the bal lot. and the employment of that nossa.- son. have hurt the woman of Colorado as women can least afford to he burf Her ideals have been lowered: the delic- acy Of her perception of right and wrong
 mas been dulled. Whatever good she may be able to render to her State and +o tba nation by her vote, can that good how ever great. compensate for the iniurv which she has wrought to that State and to the nation by reason of the blow she
 mas dealt her own womanhood?