A few women have been elected to the legislatures in the suffrage States, and they have held high office in educational departments.  In suffrage and nonsuffrage States they have been elected to many county offices.  Miss Gertrude Jordan is Treasurer of Cherry County, Nebraska.  In Idaho, Texas, Louisiana, and several other States women have filled the same position.  The State of Kansas is a true believer in women office-holders, even though it refuses its women complete suffrage.  Women can vote in Kansas only at municipal elections, but in forty counties men have elected women school superintendents.  They are clerks of four counties, treasurers of three, and commissioners of one.  In one county of Kansas a woman is probate judge.  The good and faithful work done by these women ought to go a long way towards educating men of their community to the idea of political association with women.

The attitude of men towards suffrage has undergone an enormous change within the past two years.  A large number of the thinking men of the country have openly enlisted in the Suffrage ranks.  It is said that almost every member of the faculty of Columbia University signed the Suffrage petition presented to the Congress of 1909.  Well-known professors of many Western universities and colleges have spoken and written in favor of equal suffrage.  In New York City a flourishing Voters’ League for Equal Suffrage has been formed, with a membership running into the hundreds.

[Illustration:  THE “QUIET WALK” OF THE NEW YORK SUFFRAGISTS, WHOM THE POLICE WOULD NOT PERMIT TO PARADE]

To the average unprejudiced man the old arguments against political equality have almost entirely lost weight.  The theory that women should not vote because they cannot fight is now rarely argued.  Municipal governments certainly no longer rest on physical force.  The same is true of state governments, and it is probably true of national governments.  At all events we are sincerely trying to make it true.  For the rest it would be extremely difficult to prove that women would make undesirable citizens.  To the anxious inquiry, What will women do with their votes? the answer is simple.  They will do with their votes precisely what they do, or try to do, without votes.  This has been proven in every country in the world where they have received the franchise.  In Australia, New Zealand, Finland, and in the English municipalities the ideal of the common good has been reflected in the woman vote.  Social legislation alone interests women, and so far they have confined their efforts to matters of education, child labor, pure food, sanitation, control of liquor traffic, and public morals.  The organized non-voting women of this country have devoted themselves for years to precisely these objects.  Without votes, without precedents, and without very much money they instituted the playground movement, and the juvenile court movement, two of the greatest reforms this country has contributed to civilization.  They have instituted a dozen reforms in our educational system.  They practically invented the town and village improvement idea.  They have co-operated with every social reform advocated by men, and it is to be noted that wherever their judgment has been in error they have conscientiously erred in favor of a wider democracy, a more exalted social ideal.