The copper era and Morenci leader., 1916-09-29
HOW MANY VOTES GAN WOMEN
 DELIVER?
Glamis thou art, and Cowder; and shalt be What Thou art promised Macbeth.
rHE WoMAN,s PARrY

How many votes can the Woman's party deliver, as a side partner, to the Republican party? Or, to fit the ques- tion to the party policy, how many votes can it divert from the Demo cratic party? asks Helen Ring Robin son, state senator of Colorado, in the current issue of the Independent.
 She answers her own question, as follows:
 The profession of the prophet is the most dangerous of all human voca- tions. But I will risk it. The number will be very small. That is not be- cause women voters are unconcerned about the suffrage issue. We women voters want votes for women in all the states. We want this for the sake of other women and we want it for our own sake, also We know that no American woman is fully enfranchis- ed till all are enfranchised, since a necessary change of residence across state boundaries may lose us our status as voting citizens. We realize moreover, we women who have so long endured it patiently, that we must continue to be targets for the soul-insulting nonsense of the hire lings of anti-suffrage forces until the suffrage question is settled and set IlOu Il6hI we are eager to write woman, as we'll as God, into the constitution of our country. But such women voters, their intel | ligence developed and trained through the exercise of the franchise, realize that the leaders of the Woman's party confuse the game of politics with mum blety peg.
 | Take. the Colorado Springs declara- | tiOn. There was the danger, in prepar ing it, of making one of two blunders | And of two evils the party leaders chose both.
 | There was, first the folly of trying | to build up a party, here in America, on purely destructive lines. Such party might, possibly, be thinkable- for men. But never for women. For women voters are far more practical in their thinking processes than are men.
 This fact was aptly expressed the other day, in published interview by Agnes Riddle, for two terms a mem 1 Der of the lower house of the Colorado general assembly and now Republ- can candidate for the state senate. Mrs. Riddle is shrewd observer with much political experience and an ar dent supporter of MT Hughes-but she has no kind words for the Wo- mans propaganda, though it will, in directly, help her candidate. ,,t | ''Spite work won't get you any where,p she says : q call it foolish, this business of the women spending their time doing spite work against a party or candidate. g And she goes on to describe the tactics" of the new party as just plain nagging" and to declare that women, to get anywhere politically, must fight definitely for a party or policy-not merely destruc- lively.
 The second folly was in assuming that the ''anti-party" policy, even if successful, could advance the suffrage cause.
 A two-thirds vote being necessary, in both houses of congress, to pass a federal suffrage amendment, it follows tthat it is unjust to hold majority party responsible for the failure of l such an amendment-unless it is a two-thirds majority party. No party in the past hundred years has con trolled such a majority in congress. It is safe to estimate that neither par ty will control such majority for some years to come.
 Even should MT. Hughes and Re publican congress be elected-let 1t be assumed through the efforts of the Woman's party-and even should the president succeed in forcing his party in congress into line for the suf- frage amendment (Yes, Senator Weeks and allD there would still be needed considerable number of Democratic votes.
 Would they be there? Chastened by the anti-party forces but eager to ob1ige?
 Maybe!
 But there are those who think it might be too exciting to ask corpse to oblige with jig at it's own wake just to please the man who made him a corpse.
 However that may be, the suffrage leaders in the free states" have al ways opposed in the methods now em- ployed by the Congressional Union alias the Woman's party. And, the many Republican women may align themselves, for strategic purposes, with the Woman's party, and many in- dependent and progressive women may vote for MT. Hughes, for this reason or for that, it is becoming in creasingly evident that very few west ern women will next November, play I-mumblety peg!