358 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



the measure begin to feel like one who has equipped his enemy for battle. This 

 was made perfectly clear during the municipal campaign at Seattle, in June and 

 July last. There is of course in every community an element which, with an 

 iron-clad system of morality, would run dovvn every ostensible vice, regardless of 

 any social or commercial interest which they might overthrow in their career. 

 Now, ordinarily, and especially in new countries this element is too feeble to be 

 feared; but nobody could estimate the strength it would gather from the female 

 vote. It therefore became necessary either to propitiate this rectilinear element 

 or to prevent its reinforcement by its natural allies, the women. 



It was a struggle of great activity in which the conservative element triumph- 

 ed by a majority of 112 in a total vote of 2,526. The total number of registered 

 voters was 2,845, about 700 of whom were women, and when it is remembered 

 that in a new country like this the number of males greatly exceeds the number of 

 females it is possible that, comparatively, both sexes were equally well repre- 

 sented. 



Whether the result of the election was due to a splitting of the female vote 

 by the influence of the male relative, or to an actual paucity of numbers is difficult 

 if not impossible to determine, but it certainly did not arise from any want of 

 interest on the part of the new voters. The strongest minded were on hand at 

 the polls dispensing tickets and electioneering; they had carriages sent to the 

 houses of their more diffident sisters, who shrank from the ordeal of going up 

 before a crowd of gawking men and " sticking a piece of paper in a hole cut in 

 the top of a box." 



Enough. transpired to teach the corrupt element of society that there was a 

 Nemesis on its track of which it would be well to beware, and to show that the 

 experiment has so far had a marked tendency to purify the political and com- 

 mercial atmospheres. In this respect it is probably a success. Again, there is 

 no doubt, (if it is conceded that punishment prevents crime) that the presence of 

 woman in the jury box, especially in those cases where domestic felicity is invad- 

 ed, will have a wholesome effect. But whether the new relations which are thus 

 created between the sexes will not damage woman more than it benefits society 

 is problematical. 



It will not do to rush too rapidly to conclusions. What would be admirable 

 here might be iniquitous in the extreme in other localities where the relative 

 numbers of the sexes are different; so that even should female suffrage prove a 

 pre-eminent success in this Territory it would prove nothing in a general sense. 

 Taken as a whole Washington Territory is a pleasant, promising spot. There is 

 none of the/w^/zVr element to menace the lives of peaceful citizens. The pio- 

 neers are, as a rule, intelligent, progressive men, and one is struck with the entire 

 absence of that link between the savage and the civilized, the unprogressive back- 

 woodsman; so that society is fully as cultured and refined and occupies as high 

 a plane as elsewhere. 'Tis true the distinctions of caste are not so finely drawn 

 as at the '' Hub," but yet are drawn full fine enough. The laws are well en- 

 forced, and the foot-pad and the vagrant are incontinently "bounced" on first 



