perfect Cockney accent, “Gyte, gyte, yer don’t lock gytes till visitors is off.”  This was a memorable year in the annals of our cause, for on his election to fill an extraordinary vacancy for North Adelaide Mr. Glynn promised to introduce effective voting into the House.  This he did in July by tabling a motion for the adoption of the principle, and we were pleased to find in Mr. Batchelor, now the Minister for External Affairs in the Federal Government, a stanch supporter.  Among the many politicians who have blown hot and cold on the reform as occasion arose, Mr. Batchelor has steadily and consistently remained a supporter of what he terms “the only system that makes majority rule possible.”

When Mrs. Young and I began our work together the question was frequently asked why women alone were working for effective voting?  The answer was simple.  There were few men with leisure in South Australia, and, if there were, the leisured man was scarcely likely to take up reform work.  When I first seized hold of this reform women as platform speakers were unheard of.  Indeed, the prejudice was so strong against women in public life that although I wrote the letters to The Melbourne Argus it was my brother John who was nominally the correspondent.  So for 30 years I wrote anonymously to the press on this subject.  I waited for some man to come forward and do the platform work for me.  We women are accused of waiting and waiting for the coming man, but often he doesn’t come at all; and oftener still, when he does come, we should be a great deal better without him.  In this case he did not come at all, and I started to do the work myself; and, just because I was a woman working singlehanded in the cause, Mrs. Young joined me in the crusade against inequitable representation.  For many years, however, the cause has counted to its credit men speakers and demonstrators of ability and talent all over the State, who are carrying the gospel of representative reform into every camp, both friendly and hostile.

It was said of Gibbon when his autobiography was published that he did not know the difference between himself and the Roman Empire.  I have sometimes thought that the same charge might be levelled against me with regard to effective voting; but association with a reform for half a century sometimes makes it difficult to separate the interests of the person from the interests of the cause.  Following on my return from America effective voting played a larger part than ever in my life.  I had come back cheered by the earnestness and enthusiasm of American reformers, and I found the people of my adopted country more than ever prepared to listen to my teaching.  Parties had become more clearly defined, and the results of our system of education were beginning to tell, I think, in the increased interest taken by individuals as well as by societies in social and economic questions.  I found interesting people everywhere, in every mode of life, and in every class of society.  My friends