Woman Suffrage in Territories

Woman Suffrage in Territories.

[S. F. Alta.]

In the Act which has been adopted by Washington Territory to abolish the dis[tinc]tion of sex in the right of electoral suffrage, the word "woman" does not occur. The language of the Act is as follows:

"All American citizens above the age of twenty-one years, and all American half-breeds above that age, who have adopted the habits of the whites, and all other inhabitants of this Territory above that age who shall have declared on oath their intention to become citizens, at least six months previous to the day of election, and shall have taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and the Organic Act of the Territory at least six months previous to the day of the election, and who shall have resided six months in the Territory and thirty days in the county next preceding the day of election, and none other, shall be entitled to hold office and vote at any election in this Territory."

The succeeding section declares that wherever the word "his" occurs in this enactment it shall be interpreted to mean "his" or "her." This Act widens the basis of suffrage in a way which must be considered very liberal. It allows women, half-breeds and their foreigners who have declared their intention of becoming citizens to vote at local and Territorial elections. Women now possess the right to vote in three Territories—Utah, Wyoming and Washington. Political privileges once granted can with difficulty be withdrawn. We have recently seen that the statements of a newspaper correspondent, pronouncing woman suffrage a failure in Wyoming, stirred up a hornet's nest, and elicited the emphatic declaration that any politician in that Territory who should propose the abolishment of the electoral privilege for women would seal his own doom. It is not likely that in any Territory where the right of suffrage has been extended to women it will be hereafter withdrawn by the action of its own people, and whenever these woman-suffrage Territories are admitted to the Union they will carry this institution with them. Wyoming and Utah have no present prospect of acquiring the dignity of Statehood, but Washington is already better qualified than some new States have been, and will no doubt be admitted after the next Presidential election.

The opposition to the limitation of suffrage, after it has once been made general, does not always spring from a conviction that the experiment has been a complete success. Not even intelligent Republicans will deny that in the Southern States, immediately after the war, the blacks made a wretched use of the electoral franchise, and by plunging States into bankruptcy and anarchy proved their unfitness for the duties of electors. But in spite of all that, nobody proposes to take away the right of suffrage so unwisely granted. It is rare, even, to hear any one speak regretfully of the Fifteenth Amendment and deplore its adoption. Negro suffrage is accepted as an accomplished fact, and, to correct the injustice it formerly did, the only remedy which is looked to is the progress of education and political enlightenment. In the same way, whether woman suffrage in the Territories works well or ill, once granted it is unlikely ever to be withdrawn. The only condition under which the right of suffrage is likely to be withdrawn from a numerous class of persons is when that class displays a total indifference and neglects to exercise the right. Vermont some years ago gave women the right to vote at school elections, but so little has the privilege been regarded that hardly one woman out of a hundred, who is qualified to vote, has done so. In this case the legal right could probably be withdrawn without much opposition. But woman suffrage in the Territories stands upon a different basis. Political parties are more evenly balanced, making the woman vote an element of importance; and, furthermore, in the rough, unorganized state of society on the frontiers there are numerous social questions in which women take an interest and which inspire them with a desire to appeal to the ballot. In pioneer communities women, as well as men, have a stronger individuality than in the older portions of the Union, where society has settled down into quiescence in the forms in which it was originally developed. This is the explanation, we take it, of the enfranchisement of women in three out of the eight Territories before a single one of the thirty-eight States has taken such a step. It can hardly be supposed that this result is a mere accidental coincidence, and if it has a rational explanation, it must be found in a difference of the kind we have indicated between the relations of woman to civil society in the older and in the newer portions of the country.