ing them across the border line, throwing them into bull pens,
declaring "to hell with the Constitution, the club is the
Constitution"? Where were the women politicians then, and why did
they not exercise the power of their vote? But they did. They
helped to defeat the most fair-minded and liberal man, Governor
Waite. The latter had to make way for the tool of the mine kings,
Governor Peabody, the enemy of labor, the Tsar of Colorado.
"Certainly male suffrage could have done nothing worse." Granted.
Wherein, then, are the advantages to woman and society from woman
suffrage? The oft-repeated assertion that woman will purify politics
is also but a myth. It is not borne out by the people who know the
political conditions of Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigotted and relentless in
her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.
Thus, in Idaho, she has disfranchised her sister of the street, and
declared all women of "lewd character" unfit to vote. "Lewd" not
being interpreted, of course, as prostitution IN marriage. It goes
without saying that illegal prostitution and gambling have been
prohibited. In this regard the law must needs be of feminine nature:
it always prohibits. Therein all laws are wonderful. They go no
further, but their very tendencies open all the floodgates of hell.
Prostitution and gambling have never done a more flourishing business
than since the law has been set against them.

In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman has expressed itself in a more
drastic form. "Men of notoriously unclean lives, and men connected
with saloons, have been dropped from politics since women have the
vote."[1] Could brother Comstock do more? Could all the Puritan
fathers have done more? I wonder how many women realize the gravity
of this would-be feat. I wonder if they understand that it is the
very thing which, instead of elevating woman, has made her a
political spy, a contemptible pry into the private affairs of people,
not so much for the good of the cause, but because, as a Colorado
woman said, "they like to get into houses they have never been in,
and find out all they can, politically and otherwise."[2] Yes, and
into the human soul and its minutest nooks and corners. For nothing
satisfies the craving of most women so much as scandal. And when did
she ever enjoy such opportunities as are hers, the politician's?

"Notoriously unclean