r the question whether certain women
may not, if they have a vote, degrade politics. Of such women there are
two classes--the immoral and the merely ignorant. As to the former, much
fear has been expressed that they would be the very agents for
unscrupulous politicians to use at the polls. Exact data on this matter
are not available. I shall content myself with quoting a statement by
Mrs. Ida Husted Harper[418]:

"That 'immoral' class," said Mrs. Harper, "is a bogey that has never
materialised in States where women have the suffrage. Those women don't
vote. Indeed, Denver's experience has been interesting in that respect.
When equal suffrage was first granted, women of that class were
compelled by the police to register. It was a question of doing as the
police said, of course, or being arrested. The women did not want to
vote. They don't go under their real names; they have no fixed
residence, and so on. Anyway, the last thing they wanted was to be
registered voters.

"But the corrupt political element needed their vote, and were after it,
through the police. These women actually appealed to a large woman's
political club to use its influence to keep the police from forcing them
to register. A committee was appointed; it was found that the story was
true; coercion was stopped, and the women's vote turned out the chief of
police who attempted it. There is now no coercion, and this class simply
pays no attention to politics at all."

The doubling of the number of ignorant voters by giving all women alike
the ballot would be a more serious affair. A remedy for that, however,
lies in making an educational test a necessary qualification for all
voters. In this connection the remarks of Mr. G.H. Putnam are
suggestive[419]: "If I were a citizen of Massachusetts or of any State
which, like Massachusetts, possesses such educational qualification, I
should be an active worker for the cause of equal suffrage. As a citizen
of New York who has during the last fifty years done his share of work
in the attempt to improve municipal conditions, I am forced to the
conclusion that it will be wiser to endure for a further period the
inconsistency, the stupidity, and the injustice of the disfranchisement
of thousands of intelligent women voters rather than to accept the
burden of an increase in the mass of unintelligent voters. The first
step toward 'equal suffrage' will, in my judgment, be a fight for an
educational qualification for a