During the Civil War, Anna Dickinson by her remarkable lecture entitled, “The National Crisis” saved New Hampshire and Connecticut for the Republicans; Anna Carroll not only gave such a crushing rejoinder to Breckinridge’s secession speech that the government printed and distributed it, but she also, as is now generally believed, planned the campaign which led to the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson and opened the Mississippi to Vicksburg.  How many men realise these facts?

The theory that politics degrade women will not find much support in such States as Colorado and Wyoming.  Here, where equal suffrage obtains, women have been treated with uniform courtesy at the polls; they have even been elected to legislatures with no diminution of their womanliness; and the House of Wyoming long ago made a special resolution of its approval of equal rights and attested the beneficial results that have followed the extension of the suffrage to women.[416] Judge Lindsey of Colorado has said that his election, and consequent power to work out his great reforms in juvenile delinquency, was due to the backing of women at a time when men, for “business reasons,” were averse to extend their aid.  “No one would dare to propose its repeal [i.e., the repeal of equal suffrage], and if left to the men of the State any proposition to revoke the rights bestowed on women would be overwhelmingly defeated.”  Experience in Colorado and elsewhere has shown that any important moral issue will bring out the women voters in great force; but after election they are content to resume their domestic duties; and they have shown no great desire for political office.[417]

Before I leave the discussion as to whether politics degrade women, it will not be out of place to consider the question whether certain women may not, if they have a vote, degrade politics.  Of such women there are two classes—­the immoral and the merely ignorant.  As to the former, much fear has been expressed that they would be the very agents for unscrupulous politicians to use at the polls.  Exact data on this matter are not available.  I shall content myself with quoting a statement by Mrs. Ida Husted Harper[418]: 

“That ‘immoral’ class,” said Mrs. Harper, “is a bogey that has never materialised in States where women have the suffrage.  Those women don’t vote.  Indeed, Denver’s experience has been interesting in that respect.  When equal suffrage was first granted, women of that class were compelled by the police to register.  It was a question of doing as the police said, of course, or being arrested.  The women did not want to vote.  They don’t go under their real names; they have no fixed residence, and so on.  Anyway, the last thing they wanted was to be registered voters.

“But the corrupt political element needed their vote, and were after it, through the police.  These women actually appealed to a large woman’s political club to use its influence to keep the police from forcing them to register.  A committee was appointed; it was found that the story was true; coercion was stopped, and the women’s vote turned out the chief of police who attempted it.  There is now no coercion, and this class simply pays no attention to politics at all.”