toy had worn off." Statistics as well as the testimony of competent observers confute this claim. In all states where women enjoy full suffrage, they have shown themselves eager to vote. In Idaho the Chief Justice and all the justices of the State Supreme Court signed a statement that "the large vote cast by the women establishes the fact that they take a lively interest." In Wyoming, Colorado and other full suffrage states it has been observed that 90 per cent, of the women vote.
In Australia, in 1903, at the first national election in which women took part, 359,315 women voted; in 1906, 431,033; in 1910, 601,946.
In New Zealand the number has increased at each triennial parliamentary election. In 1893 90,290 women voted; in 1896, 108,793; in 1899, 119,550; in 1902, 138,565; in 1905, 175,046; in 1908, 190,114; in 1911, 221,858
The following is a testimonial from Sir Joseph Ward, Prime Minister of New Zealand, in regard to Woman Suffrage in practice:
Prime Minister's Office,
Wellington, Oct. 17th, 1907.
Woman Suffrage exists in New Zealand because it dawned upon the minds of thinking men that they were daily wasting an almost unlimited supply of mental and moral force. From the time their baby hands had found support and safety by holding the folds of their mother's gowns, they had trusted the happiness of their lives hourly to the common sense, the purity and the sympathy of women. Strange to say, in one department of life alone, and that perhaps the most important, viz.: the political, had they denied the right of speech and of direct influence to women. Men of different countries had for centuries preached and written of evils which deformed their systems of Government and even tainted the aspirations of statesmen for just laws within the state, and equitable relations abroad. Nevertheless these men neglected, or refused to avail themselves of the support and counsel of women's hearts and women's brains, which they accepted on other matters. Indeed, they were ready to listen to foolish arguments against the idea of women entering political life; such as: women would lose their grace, modesty, and love of home if they voted; since they could not be soldiers, they had no right to control questions of peace and war.
In New Zealand we have not found that making a "pencil mark on a voting paper" once in three years has resulted in any loss of grace or beauty among our women, or even in neglect of home duties. On the contrary the women's vote has had a distinctly clarifying effect on the process of elections. The old evil memories of election day, the ribaldry, the fighting, have been succeeded by a decorous gravity befitting
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