side
groups. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International
Suffrage Alliance, stopped in Copenhagen on her way to its congress in
Stockholm in June and addressed a mass meeting under the auspices of
the two large associations.

With all parties in favor of giving the full suffrage to women and
public sentiment favoring it the bill was caught in the maelstrom of
agitation for a revised or new constitution and the Rigsdag refused to
consider it separately. Finally the bill for a new constitution
including woman suffrage passed the Lower House by a vote of 95 to 12.
It was sent to the Upper House, referred to a committee and there it
remained while the controversy raged over the constitution. This was
still the situation when the World War broke out in 1914 and it was
April, 1915, before an entire new constitution passed both Houses by
an enormous majority. It provided for universal suffrage with
eligibility for men and women, no taxpaying qualifications, the age to
be 29 with gradual reduction to 25. A general election at once took
place on this issue, the new Rigsdag immediately adopted the
constitution the required second time and on June 5 it was signed by
the King. The women voted for the first time at a general election in
1918 and nine, representing all parties, were elected to the Rigsdag,
five to the Upper and four to the Lower House. They voted a second
time in 1920 and eleven were elected. They have obtained laws for
equal pay, the opening of all positions to women and equal status in
marriage.

ICELAND.

Iceland was a dependency of Denmark with its own Parliament, the
Althing. In 1881 a bill was passed, presented by Skuli Thorvoddsen, a
member and an editor, giving to widows and spinsters who were
householders or maintained a family or were self-supporting, a vote
for parish and town councils, district boards and vestries, at the age
of 25, which became law in 1882. In 1895 the Woman's Alliance was
formed and a petition of 3,000 women was collected and sent to the
Althing asking it to consider suffrage for married women and increased
property rights, which it ignored. In 1906 Mrs. Briet Asmundsson, the
leader of the woman's movement, attended the congress of the
International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Copenhagen, and, returning to
Reykjavik, the capital, organized in January, 1907, the Association
for Women's Rights. In four months 12,000 signatures had been obtained
to a petition for full su