THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 1909. BAULKING THE SUFFRAGETTES

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3152, 1 April 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 1909. BAULKING THE SUFFRAGETTES

The proposal to establish adult suffrage in Great Britain is in the nature of a "large order," which very probably accounts for the Bill passing its second reading in the House of Commons. Not that there is necessarily a majority of the House favourable to extreme reform. On the contrary, those who object to change would be likely to vote for this in the hope that by do* ing so they would help to give reformers a fatally heavy dose of their own medicine. The "suffragettes" perceived that clearly enough, and repudiated the bill, whose victims they ars intended to be. The women who are clamoring for votes in England only want them on the same conditions as men are enfranchised—conditions which look strange indeed to colonials accustomed to a broad ard simple definition of a voter. In the counties and some of the boroughs there are property qualifications, which are not precisely the same in England, Scotland and Ireland. Occupation of a tenement that pays poor rates constitutes a qualification in counties, but in {boroughs this is conditioned by a residence qualification. Inhabitant occupiers and lodgers are also qualified under certain conditions; and there are certain special franchises, such as those of the liverymen of the City of London companies and the universities. Altogether there were in 1908 7,514,481 : electors, and as the women similarly qualified would assumedly be fewer in proportion, it se&ms a fair estimate that to enfranchise them on the same terms as men would not add more than two or three millions, at most, to the number of capable voters. One estimate puts the number as low as 1,250,*000. On the other hand, the estimated adult population was given last year at slightly over ? 24,500,000, so that adult suffrage would add to the voting population at one stroke. It stands to reason that to involve woman's suffrage with such a revolutionary scheme as that would be to endanger it. Whether through that or any other cause the woman's movement is dragging, is difficult to say. What is fairly ciear is that the

"suffragettes'" leaders have not helped it by their methods of advocacy, the effect of which has been not only to make theoretical sympathisers doubtful about the cause, but also to raise up an anti-suffrage association, in which Mrs Humphrey Ward is a prominent figure. Mrs Ward, Lady Jersey, and the other repudiators take the familar ground that if all the women were enfranchised—as it is argued they would be —they would outnumber the men, I and create an intolerable position; j that the respective spheres of men '"and women, "are neither antagonistic nor identical, but complementary;" and that women are physically incapable of enforcing a law which they might consider it their duty to pass against the advice of the men. Women who argue for the vote are able to offset against these possibilities the reality of the suffrage operative in other countries without inducing any of the apprehended consequences. Apart from the prime examples in Australia and in New Zealand, the women of Norway and Finland have the complete franchise, and are eligible for election to Parliament. The municipal franchise is possessed by women in Sweden and Denmark, who, it is believed, will also have the Parliamentary franchise within the next few years. On paper, therefore, there is something to be said for xhe protest that Britain lags behind in this matter—Britain and the United States. It is a strik- , ing fact that these two countries, sojdemoratic in their general professions and tendencies, are so much slower to liberalise their franchise than others which in every respect outside this are conservative. The United States, which practically orginated the woman suffrage movement, has absolutely dropped it, except that it has had an isolated suncess here'and there among the States.