There are some States in the Union where women are on terms of something like equality with men.  There is one State to which all intelligent women look with a sort of envious, admiring, questioning curiosity, Colorado, which is literally the woman’s paradise.  In Colorado it would be difficult to find even the smallest inequality between men and women.  They vote on equal terms, and if any woman deserves to go to the legislature, and succeeds in convincing a large enough public of the fact, nothing stands in the way of her election.  One woman, Mrs. Alma Lafferty, is a member of the present legislature, and she has had several predecessors.

But Colorado women have a larger influence still in legislative matters.  To guard their interests they have a Legislative Committee of the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, consisting of thirty to forty carefully chosen women.

This committee has permanent headquarters in Denver during every session of the legislature, and every bill which directly affects women and children, before reaching the floor of either house, is submitted for approval to the committee.

Miss Jane Addams has declared, and Miss Addams is pretty good authority, that the laws governing women and children in Colorado are superior to those of any other State.  Women receive equal pay for equal work in Colorado.  They are permitted to hold any office.  They are co-guardians of their children, and the education of children has been placed almost entirely in the hands of women.  This does not mean that Colorado has weakened its schools by barring men from the teaching profession.  It means that women are superintendents of schools in many counties, and that one woman was, for more than ten years, State superintendent of schools.

Contrast Colorado with Louisiana, possibly the last State in the Union a well-informed woman would choose for a residence.  The laws of Louisiana were based, not on the English common law, but on the Code Napoleon, which regards women merely as a working, breeding, domestic animal.

“There is one thing that is not French,” thundered the great Napoleon, closing a conference on his famous code, “and that is that a woman can do as she pleases.”

[Illustration:  A “WOMEN’S RIGHTS” MAP OF THE UNITED STATES]

The framers of Louisiana’s laws were particular to guard against too great a freedom of action on the part of its women.  Toward the end of Mrs. Jefferson Davis’s life she added a codicil to her will, giving to a certain chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy a number of very valuable relics of her husband, and of the short-lived Confederate Government.  Her action was made public, and it was then revealed that two women had signed the document as witnesses.  Instantly Mrs. Davis’s attention was called to the fact that in Louisiana, where she was then living, no woman may witness a document.  Women’s signatures are worthless.