The object of the Woman Suffrage Party is organization for political work.  Last winter the party made the first aggressive move towards forcing the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly to report on the bill to give women votes by constitutional amendment.  They succeeded in getting a motion made for the discharge of the committee, sixteen legislators voting for the women.

New York is the present center of the progressive suffrage movement, with Chicago not very far behind.

In rather amazing fashion are women in many American communities beginning to realize that politics are as much their business as men’s.  In Salt Lake City when a city council undertakes to give away a valuable water franchise, or extend gamblers’ privileges, or otherwise follow the example of many another city council in bending before the god of greed, the women of Salt Lake send the word around.  When the council meets the women are in the room.  They don’t say anything.  They don’t have to say anything.  They can vote, these women.  More than once the deep-laid plans of the most powerful politicians in Salt Lake City have been completely frustrated by a silent warning from the women.  The city council has not dared to pass grafting measures with a roomful of women looking on.

[Illustration:  HELEN HOY GREELEY]

Even the non-voting woman has discovered the power which attaches to her presence, in certain circumstances.  In San Francisco during the second Ruef trial, when the decent element of the city was fighting to down one of the worst bosses that ever cursed a community, the women, under the leadership of Mrs. Elizabeth Gerberding, performed this new kind of picket duty.  The courtroom where the trial was held was, by order of the boss’s attorney, packed with hired toughs whose duty it was to make a mockery of the prosecution.  Every point against the Ruef side was received by these toughs with jeers and hootings.  The district attorney was insulted, badgered, and openly threatened with violence.

Mrs. Gerberding, whose husband is editor of a newspaper opposed to boss rule, attended several sessions, and induced a large number of women of social importance to attend with her.  These women went daily to the courtroom, occupying seats to the exclusion of many of the tough characters, and by their presence doing much to preserve order and to assist the efforts of the district attorney.  When the assassin’s bullet was fired at the district attorney a number of the women were present.

Out of the horror and detestation of this crime was organized the Women’s League of Justice, which soon had a membership of five hundred.  The league fought stoutly for the reelection of Heney as district attorney.  Heney was defeated, and the league became the Women’s Civic Club of San Francisco, pledged to work for political betterment and a clean city government.