The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1914-03-19

Jail in consequence. We are told that
politics are too corrupt for women to
enter as voters. But she lives under a
government which is dominated by
politics, and If it is too corrupt to ad-
NIT woman as a voter, then it is too
corrupt to make and administer the
laws which influence her life. Laws
are enacted requiring individuals to be
clean and upright, and yet the source
of all the lawmaking is said to be un-
clean and unwholesome. If our gov
eminent is built on moral law, it
should be clean enough for women to
have a voice in it and since there are
no better house-cleaners than women,
they are certainly needed in politics.
Third: Women could improve many
existing conditions with the aid of the
ballot. Last week in the United States
senate, Senator Ashurst of Arizona,
made a powerful speech for the suf-
frage amendment, which he concluded
as follows:
women are particularly qualified
for ard entitled to political liberty. AS
a class they always stand against
violence and fraud; they always sup
port the cause of liberty and progress,
and have been the chief handspring
which has inspired, encouraged and
consoled great and useful men. Wo-
men are especially qualified to vote
and act as a balance wheel to men in
great contests for they have demon
strated that fortitude and passive
courage are the virtues of fortune, sor-
row and defeat, while moderation,
GOODNESS and restraint are the virtues
of victory and prosperity. Women
voters are capable of as much re-
straint as men, for we do not forget
that mems passions and spirit amid
the to%rnadoes of politics rise to such
a high tide that we frequently do
things for our political parties that
we would under no circumstances do
for ourselves"
Since equal suffrage was adopted in
California, crime has materially les
sened throughout the entire state, &C.
cording to C. E. Sebastian, the Los
Angeles chief of police.
The women of New Zealand have
the full franchise, and the govern
ment prison report lately issued in
that country shows that in the thirty
years between 1881 and 1912, though
the population has doubled, the num-
Der of men in prison has increased
only from 631 to S53-a marked de-
crease in proportion to population
while the number of women in prison
has dropped from "a to "a, thus show
ing an actual, as well as proportional
decrease.
In Denver, where women have the
vote, the, amount of juvenile crime in
proportion to the school population
has declined nearly 200 per cent in
the last ten years, according to a
statement published by Felix O'Neil,
the Denver chief of police.
Women should vote because they
would study the candidate as careful
ly as they would the platform on
which he stood. 1t is practically i'm
possible to put the party yoke on wo-
men. This has been proven in the
states in which m have suffrage.
When a clean man was put up on
either the democratic or the republi-
can ticket, and a corrupt man named
on the other ticket, the woman vote
has invariably gone to the good man.
1t was the women of Denver, irrespec-
tive of party, who kept Judge Lind
say in Office after the party commit
tees had turned him down, and thus
enabled him to continue his great