tative system. With such a basis, it is difficult to
understand how woman, as a political factor, would benefit either
herself or the rest of mankind.

But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and States
where female suffrage exists. See what woman has accomplished--in
Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and in
our own four States, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Distance
lends enchantment--or, to quote a Polish formula--"it is well where
we are not." Thus one would assume that those countries and States
are unlike other countries or States, that they have greater
freedom, greater social and economic equality, a finer appreciation
of human life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle,
with all the vital questions it involves for the human race.

The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the
laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in
England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle?
Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children
than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex
commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double
standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the
ordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions in
the affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to
Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage
accomplishments.

On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real political
conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enacting
the most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction of
an arbitration committee a crime equal to treason.

Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman suffrage is
responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that
there is no reason to point to Australia as a wonder-worker of
woman's accomplishment, since her influence has been unable to free
labor from the thralldom of political bossism.

Finland has given woman equal suffrage; nay, even the right to sit in
Parliament. Has that helped to develop a greater heroism, an
intenser zeal than that of the women of Russia? Finland, like
Russia, smarts under the terrible whip of the bloody Tsar. Where are
the Finnish Perovskaias, Spiridonovas, Figners, Breshkovskaias?
Where are the countless numbers of Finnish young girls who cheerfully
go to Siberia