The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATE THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1913. WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE IN AMERICA

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 68, 20 November 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATE THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1913. WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE IN AMERICA

Mrs Philip Snowden, wife of the famous English Labor leader, recently gave an address on the progress of the women’s suffrage movement in America. Of the forty-eight Stales of the Vnion, she told her hearers, ten are now entirely democratic. The first State to enfranchise women had heon Wyoming, in ISG9, but until ]!)]() only three other States had given women the vote. Between 1910 and the present time women had won the franchise in six States. This pointed to a marked acceleration, and people were curious about it. Some asserted that English militancy had been the cause, but this was not so. English militancy as it. was ten years ago did something to stimulate discussion all over the world, and to that extent they were grateful for that which means willingness to suffer but unwillingness to inflict suffering on other people. She was in a. position to emphasise the fact that the latest form of militancy, involving crime and violence, had done , nothing but harm to the cause of women’s suffrage in the I'nited States. The real reasons for the acceleration of the rate in which States had enfranchised women wore to be found in the increasing interest taken in the women’s clubs of America in questions of social and political economy, in the enormously increased activity of national women’s suffrage associations, and the remarkable political upheaval in America. The gain, she thought, was most largely due to this political upheaval, which had gone right through the States, and which in the beginning had nothing to do with women’s suffrage at all. Militant suffragists who had gone to America had not advocated militancy there. She had never met an American man or woman who was in favor ( f militancy for the l 7 uiled Stales. They said

the r mi'ii were too nice or too veasonalilo. Sim 1 lionght, in n sense, flint tlm American mi'ii wre morn reasonnliln (linn tliosn in llm I’nitnd King(loin, though in nnollmr snnsn limy worn not. it was trim that llm women in tlm United States still lingered in tlm atmospimro created l»y ilm old colonial scarcity of wonmn. Tlmrn were fewer women in America tlian t!■ ->r»* were men. Sim had ventured, however, lo warn her American friends of llm dancer which was threatening them through the ahsorption of a million and a quarter immigrants annually llm majority of whom came from Southern Europe. lr was astonish-

in”; to some of iltoso new-comers that tlio police and ant limit ios would not permit a man. to beat liis own wile, At present American women could almost always approach their legislators and chooso their own time. AN omen were often invited to address their! Houses of Representatives. In two Stales she herself had the extraordinary privilege and experience of speaking from the Speaker’s rostrum to as-: scudded 'Houses oi Representatives, ami she was listened to tor an hour While she gave her most suffragist suffrage speech. She thought, howover, that if some ol the American;,women tried to do what Itnglish militants were doing they would be treated as severely as they were in Britain. Mrs Snowden went on to speak of tae good results which had followed, particularly in California, from the enfranchisement of women, and in conclusion said that there was no need to give up heart about the women’s suffrage cause here. All over the world the women's cause was gaining ground every day.