It is seldom given to the historian of a significant movement to trace results and be able to point out the fulfillment of general and special prophecies; and the fact that this can now be done in regard to the woman-suffrage movement in this country gives value and interest to this unpretentious little volume and its addenda. The most general statement in the book was, that woman suffrage was inconsistent with true republican forms of government but belonged with its two greatest enemies-aristocratic government on the one hand, and Socialistic forms on the other; and the special prophecy was, that its growth would come through Socialism, and that with this growth must come the ultimate destruction of womanly ideals and womanly character. The fulfillment of this general statement and this special prophecy must now be evident to every student of history, reader of the daily press, and observer of social life and manners who is accustomed to look below the surface.

The first thing to call attention to is the fact that the entrance of woman suffrage into the five States that have adopted it since the latest edition of this book was issued has been affected through the radical Socialism which has there been carried to an extreme, and against the judgment and wish of its sound statesmen and the majority of its woman citizens. The experience of the State of Washington, with its official "recall" and its woman's vote in connection therewith, has made a farce of that form of mob rule and has revealed the character of the political efforts of woman agitators. California voted on 26 Socialistic proposals when its electorate forced woman suffrage on the State. The local catch-play with so serious a matter as temperance shows how shallow and unsafe the whole business is proving itself.

Oregon submitted 44 proposals, most of them highly Socialistic, when the woman-suffrage amendment was carried by the narrow margin of 4,000 in a vote of more than 118,000. Arizona's first vote brought in woman suffrage in connection with measures that amounted to a practical repudiation of constitutional government. Kansas also, the old battle-ground of conflicting radical politics, added the last straw to its unsound, unrepublican situation when it voted to try woman suffrage.

The Mormon church holds the balance of power in thirteen States, and the Mormon influence enters with the Socialistic into the votes for woman suffrage. In 1911 the Mormons numbered 750,000, being one to every 125 inhabitants of the country. In that year there were 39,000 Mormons in Arizona, 40,000 in California, 56,000 in Oregon, and 61,000 in Washington.

The whole country has witnessed a remarkable invasion of the same kind of Socialistic opinion and effort that has obstructed republican growth in other lands; and therefore it is all the more significant that wherever radicalism has not obtained supreme control in our States defeats of suffrage have continued as of yore, and some of these are of special importance. The Legislatures of Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Indiana, Arkansas, Delaware, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas, West Virginia, and Florida have given suffrage from one to several defeats, while the people of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan have made crushing adverse decisions.

As to the school vote, Suffragists can no longer ignore the fact that in this vitally important matter they have shown that neither education nor the true interests of women are the things sought by those who have tried to make the school vote a stepping-stone to full suffrage. Dr. Hartwell, Secretary of the Statistical Department of Boston, published in the Boston Globe, January 13, 1913: "In the whole State in 1910, out of 354 cites and towns, there were 174, or nearly half the whole number, in which not a woman voted." From a correspondence conducted with officials in the States having the school vote, I learn that the following result, gleaned from statistics for five years in Connecticut, is the rule, where any record has been kept: "It would appear that woman's interest in the school vote is decreasing; also, that the school suffrage has had no appreciable effect in increasing the interest of women in school matters." Of New York, the commissioner says: "So far as our experience goes, it shows that very few women attend school meetings unless there is some matter of more than ordinary interest before the meeting in which the community is generally aroused." The Ohio commissioner puts it in this way: "The only time that women take an interest in school elections is when some fight, caused by some local prejudice, arises. It seems to be the opinion of the best women that they do not wish this privilege, and the best women of the State of Ohio are not represented in the number that vote at these school elections."

The recent introduction into Congress of a joint resolution proposing a suffrage amendment to the National Constitution served to show two things not intended nor desired by the packed committee of suggesters from the suffrage States-namely, that the fashionable disregard of constitutional limitations was at work, and that the Congress was strongly opposed to woman suffrage. The poll taken by Representative Heflin showed that the House stood five to one against woman suffrage, and he added that, according to his advices, the Senate was as overwhelmingly opposed.

It is my absolute conviction, from study in which I have ignored hearsays, that woman suffrage, in the States where it exists, has not a single wise, sound constructive measure to its credit; nor is there, amid all its open and persistently iterated oratory, the country over, one solitary statesman-like or patriotic utterance. The welfare lobby, at Washington-like the woman's Trade Unions and a hundred other Socialistic-suffrage organizations-appear to believe that the government is a machine which, set in motion, will run on by itself and turn out money independently and continuously for pensions for "government motherhood," for the children of wives who are "economically independent," for salaried social workers, until-as one Socialist writer puts it-"everything that is now on the top shall be on the bottom, and everything that is on the bottom shall be on the top"-a most pious and unselfish programme!

The Illinois Legislature has just passed a measure under which women can vote for all except Constitutional officers! The same Socialistic body that brought it can sweep their suffrage away-an insult to women and a blot upon the State.

When the watch-cry "women first" comes from endangered humanity it is significant; but when it is shouted from the megaphone of a hiking, parading, stump-speaking female troop, led by policewomen, the manhood of the land had best beware. A movement is an entity. It springs from a germ and can only complete itself after its kind. Those who partake of it must inevitably become its victims. When the reader turns to the first pages of this book and reads that the founders of the woman-suffrage movement in this country called it "a rebellion such as the world had never before seen," then he will understand that he may look for the condoning of wanton mischief, of arson, of bomb-throwing, of murder, by women, or for subtler outrages against social morals and manners. Woman suffrage is a reversion to type-that is, it is an effort to turn backward and renew conditions that civilization has long since left behind. .......... H.K.J.

New York, June 27, 1913.

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