southern states, as already
hinted in the case of South Carolina. Local taxation for school
purposes has also been established in Kentucky and Tennessee, in both
Virginias, and elsewhere. There has thus begun a most natural and
wholesome movement, which might easily be checked, with disastrous
results, by the injudicious appropriation of national revenue for
the aid of southern schools. It is to be hoped that throughout the
southern, states, as formerly in Michigan, the self-governing school
district may prepare the way for the self-governing township, with its
deliberative town-meeting. Such a growth must needs be slow, inasmuch
as it requires long political training on the part of the negroes and
the lower classes of white people; but it is along such a line of
development that such political training can best be acquired; and in
no other way is complete harmony between the two races so likely to be
secured.

[Sidenote: woman suffrage.]
Dr. Edward Bemis, who in a profoundly interesting essay[13] has called
attention to this function of the school district as a stage in the
evolution of the township, remarks also upon the fact that "it is in
the local government of the school district that woman suffrage is
being tried." In several states women may vote for school committees,
or may be elected to school committees, or to sundry administrative
school offices. At present (1894) there are not less than twenty-one
states in which women have school suffrage. In Colorado and Wyoming
women have full suffrage, voting at municipal, state, and
national elections. In Kansas they have municipal suffrage, and a
constitutional amendment granting them full suffrage is now awaiting
ratification. In England, it may be observed, unmarried women and
widows who pay taxes vote not only on school matters, but generally in
the local elections of vestries, boroughs, and poor-law unions. In
the new Parish Councils Bill this municipal suffrage is extended
to married women. In the Isle of Man women vote for members of
Parliament. In Australia they have long had municipal suffrage, and in
1893 they were endowed with full rights of suffrage in New Zealand.

[Footnote 13: Local Government in Michigan and the Northwest, J.H.U.
Studies, I., v.]

The historical reason why the suffrage has so generally been
restricted to men is perhaps to be sought in the conditions under
which voting originated. In primeval times voting was probably adopted
as a