The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1911-01-27

men had the franchise, they vainly
used the great silent influence" In
an effort to have kindergartens made
lpart of the public-school system. AT.
ter the adoption of equal suffrage
they forced the reform within a year
Massachusetts,, where the women
keep their place in the home" and
depend entirely upon the Silent in.
fluence" worked forty-five years get
ting one little law making the mother
equal guardian of minor children
with the father. Colorado women
received suffrage in 1898, and in
1894 they put this law on the statute
books.
The fact that comparatively few
women have been elevated to high
official position in Colorado is entire
ly traceable to the voting woman's
own initial desire. After equal suff-
rage had been granted them in 1898,
there was a tacit agreement, a sort
of "unwritten law" that women
would not rush into office-seeking.
The attitude proceeded from two
causes.
In the first place, equal suffrage
came to Colorado in peace and per-
feet amity. There were no march
ings, lurid banners, freak" appeals,
brutal arrests or hysteria. The pio-
neers by virtue of that freedom from
conservatism won by life in the open,
gave the ballot because they deemed
it their duty and woman's right. AS
far back as 1870, Territorial Governor
Edward McCook embodied these
words in message to the Legisla-
ture: sour higher civilization has
recognized woman's equality with
man in all other respects save one
-equa suffrage. 1t has been said
that no great reform has every been
made without passing through three
stages-ridicule, argument and adop-
ton. 1t rests with you to say wheth-
err Colorado will accept this reform
in it's first stage, as our sister Terri
tory of Wyoming has done, or in the
last; whether she will be leader
in the movement or a follower; for
the logic of progressive civilization
leads to the inevitable result of equal
suffrage.
The measure did not become law
until 1893, but while there was Wig
orous championship in the meantime,
advocacy was purely argumentative,
and entirely unmarked by violent
agitation. Equal suffrage's majority
was six thousand. And search dis
closed these reasons as chiefly con-
tributary to the victory, that women
are equally subject to the law; that
the denial of justice to half the
human race would be a detriment
to the whole, as experience has prov
ed that under partially represent
alive government the lives and in
terests of the unrepresented always
ruffer; that it was peculiarly the
province of the woman to look after
the home, and that the modern home
could not be thoroughly looked after
except through the law; that men
alone were as unfit to legislate for
women as women alone would be
unfit to legislate for men; that it
was both insulting and degrading to
continue the classification of women
with Indians, idiots, lunatics and
paupers."
This fairness on the part of the
men combined with an absence of
,suffragetting" brought Colorado wo-
men into the new order without bit
resentment or the fanatical
zeal that brutal opposition always
AS consequence, they
we're content with the ballot, speedily |
engrossed in its good use, and en-
tirely disregardful of Office.
But while there has been no Office
seeking, women have not shirked re-
'ponsibility. When the masculine
mind came to the conclusion that |
matters called for fem
mine supervision, the women re-
,ponded, and have invariably made
splendid records. Since 1894 both
parties have nominated women for
he Office of State Superintendent of
Public Instruction, and out of the
sixty county superintendent of
schools in Colorado, forty are women.
Quite number of women have held,
md are holding, important municipal
and county offices; some ten odd
rave sat in Legislature; four women
worked masterfully on a Denver