The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1916-11-18

New 1Ork, New Jersey dnQ MASSACHUSETTS,
voted it down, and the men voted as they believed a ma
iority of their women wanted them to vote.
The difference in method proposed by the Woman's
party and that proposed by Mr.. Wilson and the two great
party conventions is that the conventions and Mr.. Will
son would proceed state by state, permitting the people
of these states directly and by their own ballots to decide
the issue, whereas, under the other method, not the peo-
pie but the members of the several state legislatures would
decide. And these several state legislatures would become
the targets of the same threats and the same influences
that led Mr.. Hughes, Mr.. Pittman, Mr.. Platt and other
candidates to disregard their party platforms and the
pledges and assurances that their parties had given to
the people of the nation. The legislator in Ohio and IN
Michigan would be forced to face these banners and listen
to these threats and entreaties, regardless of the fact that
he held, in trust only, a commission from the very people
who had voted against the very thing for which these ban
ners, threats and entreatles stood.
The legislator in Georgia and in Alabama, where in
many communities from one-half to three-fourths OF the
voters already entranch1sed are denied the vote because
they would, without education or experience, control the
state legislatures, state and city governments, as they
once did, and regardless of what the voters who elect
victions-he would see these banners and listen to these
threats. Leave it to the ballots of the people, cast in
the voting BOOTH said the conventions and Mr.. Wilson.
Leave it to the legislator, subject to the woman's lobby,
say the friends of the amendment.
The constitution of the United States is now I25
years old, the greatest document written into the worlds
history; the broadcast, the most liberal charter of liberty
the world has known; written with a full recognition Of
and after full and free discussion Of-the fact that the
several states might have to deal with varying conditions
in relation to the franchise. And these conditions were
left to be dealt with by the states themselves.
In these I25 years there has been but one amendment
affecting the franchise. This was done in a period of pas
sion. Few men believe that if Lincoln had lived it
would have been done, either at the time or in the manner
in which it was done. Millions of men who helped to
do it lived long enough to regret their action and confess
their error. This federal amendment was possible only
because no intelligent Campaign of education pre-
coded it.
A woman of note who has given years of service to
humanity, an advocate of suffrage, recently expressed to
the writer the fear that the women of the suffrage states
would not rise to the situation in the recent campaign
that their love of peace, their horror of war and blood
shed, would cloud their judgment as to the causes that
lead to war, and that the men of other states who be-
leve that preparation for defense is the surest safeguard
of peace would be all the more reluctant to confer the
franchise upon the sex that would by its ballots withhold
the means necessary to national defense. Such a result,
she believed, would be the greatest blow that the suffrage
cause in other states could possibly receive. Was this
woman right or was she wrong? Future suffrage cam
paigns will tell.
In the meantime the women who have the vote, let
it be said to their everlasting praise and glory, are not
going to be herded to themselves by self-appointed bosses
of their own sex and offered, en- masse, to the "highest
and best bidder