very bad thing. She proposes to substitute the authority of the ballot in place of influence, but still without responsibility. If influence without responsibility is dangerous, authority without responsibility must be a thousand times more dangerous. It is, in fact, the most dangerous thing on earth. The logic of the suffragists is not always equal to that of Aristotle.

IV

The second basic principle against woman suffrage that one voter cannot claim maintenance from another voter would deprive married women of any claim for support from their husbands; and in all questions concerning women, wives and mothers must be considered first. From the beginning of representative government it has been recognized that when a man acquires a vote he gives up all claim to maintenance except upon public charity. On attaining his majority, a man loses all claim to maintenance, not even his own father being called upon to maintain him for another day. In the case of daughters, the unwritten law, which is always much more strictly obeyed than the written law, has decreed that the father, if able, shall maintain his adult daughters as long as they remain unmarried. The exceptions to this law only prove the rule. Under the present dispensation, the status between husbands and wives is, practically, that the husband has the vote and the wife has the property. In lieu of a vote, the law has given the wife enormous property privileges which, of course, are totally inconsistent with the possession of a vote. The law of property between husband and wife may be broadly stated as follows:

The wife on her marriage does not become responsible for any debts owed by her husband before marriage; the husband on marriage becomes in many

states responsible for every debt owed by the wife before marriage. The wife is the sole possessor of her own estate; the husband is not, and never has been, the sole possessor of his own estate unless there is a pre-nuptial contract. He cannot alienate his wife's dower, either in his lifetime or by his will. A husband's courtesy-right in his wife's estate by no means corresponds in value with the wife's dower-right in his estate. A wife is not liable for her husband's debts; a husband may not excuse himself from paying his wife's debts, even on the ground that they were contracted without his knowledge, or even against his prohibition.1 The law compels him to pay those debts of his wife which are reckoned justifiable and in proportion to the husband's income and station in life. A married woman is entitled to her own earnings; a married man is not, and never was, entitled to his own earnings. The law compels him out of them to give adequate support to his wife and minor children. The woman seeking divorce from her husband can compel him to pay her counsel fees, and to give her alimony if she be the innocent party, even if he marry again, and this alimony continues until the former wife's death or remarriage. She can also compel her former husband to provide for the support of the minor children. A husband seeking divorce from his wife cannot force her to pay his counsel fees or secure alimony from her, or, if she be guilty, force her to support the minor children, although the wife may be wealthy and the husband may be penniless.

It may be said in passing that this over-indulgence on the part of men toward women in divorce laws is to a great degree responsible for the divorce evil. In most states, the laws

1 Provided such debts are contracted for necessities of life. - THE EDITORS.

concerning the property privileges of women seem to be embodied sentimentalism; and in some, the husband appears to have no rights which the wife is bound to respect. In Georgia, a recent legislature proposed to add to the gift of all of a man's property to his wife, that it should be a felony in the State of Georgia for a man to 'defame' a woman. These delightful Knights of La Mancha omitted to define what constitutes defaming a woman.

One fact is admitted, however, by every person familiar with the rudiments of the common law that all property privileges must be resigned at once by every woman who acquires a vote. This must be done as a matter not only of justice, but of necessity, for no voter can claim maintenance from another voter who may cast a vote which may not only impair, but even destroy, the power of the first voter to support the second voter. The wife, for example, may be a freetrader, and the husband a protectionist. The wife may, by her single vote, cause tariff changes that would enormously impair the husband's power of supporting her. This impairment may be done in a more direct manner by the wife of an official. She may by her vote reduce his salary, or even cause his office to be abolished entirely, thereby leaving him without an income. To say that wives would always vote for their husbands' financial interests is to accuse women of absolute and complete corruption. So it will be seen that, following an unbroken precedent which is founded upon a basic principle, a wife, on acquiring a vote, would have to give up all claim to maintenance upon any one whomsoever, except upon public charity; or she may be compelled, as in Utah, to support her husband.

But how can a woman, the mother of minor children, do without main

the rule.

tenance from her husband? It is the law of nature, as well as of custom, that the man should be the breadwinner of the family; and he is, ninetynine times out of a hundred. The few instances to the contrary only prove the rule. How many mothers with young children are capable of self-support? If, however, she becomes a voter she must take her place with all the voters, and abandon all claim to maintenance upon anybody. Where would the rights of the children come in? Who would be responsible for the support of minors?

In the attempt to adjust the property rights between a husband and wife, both of whom are voters, and the minor children, chaos must result. It is a problem never before presented upon a considerable scale, and is practically incapable of adjustment; that is to say, the litigation which would result would swamp ten times as many courts as exist in the United States today. It would present unknown complications in the transfer of property, in the making of contracts, in the carrying on of business, in every transaction in which a married man or a married woman was a party. It would be necessary to wipe out most of the common law, 'the world's most copious fountain of human jurisprudence.' No lawyer or financier living would undertake to prophesy the result, except stupendous loss to women and a cataclysmal confusion and destruction of values.

At this point comes in the most startling feature of the suffragists' campaign. It might be imagined that the very first thing to be settled is: 'How does the acquisition of a vote affect the property privilege of women?' Until the suffragists are prepared to answer this question satisfactorily, it is difficult to see how they can ask votes for women. Now, so far as

their printed utterances go, not one single word on this vital and stupendous point has been spoken by any suffragist. At their annual meetings, this subject has never been mentioned.

As a matter of fact, women in the suffrage states have their property privileges very much curtailed, and are liable for the support of their husbands in certain contingencies—a thing unknown in states without woman suffrage. Whether these facts and questions are kept in the background for fear lest, if they are brought forward, the whole suffrage body may be stampeded, or whether the suffragists themselves do not know that the inevitable consequences of acquiring a vote mean a loss of property privileges, cannot be stated. Judging, however, from this indifference to basic principles, the suffragists do not know that they will lose any property privileges by becoming voters.

The suffragists, however, have adopted as a principle a strange fallacy, not found in any system of government on this planet, that the payment of taxes entitles the taxpayer to vote. The phrase "Taxation without representation is tyranny' has been wholly misunderstood by them. It is indeed a misleading phrase, especially to persons unfamiliar with governmental principles. But it was never meant or taken in the sense that the payment of taxes carried with it a vote. It did not refer to individuals at all, or to an enlargement of the electorate. There is not the smallest evidence to show that the colonies ever sought or desired parliamentary representation, and the subject was never mentioned except to be dismissed. As Sydney George Fisher says, in his Struggles for American Independence, 'It is to be understood that they [the American Colonies] did not ask for representation in Parliament. They declared it to be

impossible. . . . They always insisted that representation was impossible.'

The phrase, as originally used, referred to what were really international relations. The suffragists think it meant that nobody should pay taxes who had not a vote. This notion would have made the founders of the Republic smile - for, as a justice of the Supreme Court once calmly reminded an indiscreet advocate, ‘It may be assumed that the Supreme Court of the United States knows something.' It knows there is no essential relation between taxation and representation. It knows that, if this principle proclaimed by the suffragists were adopted, the public income would stop.

It must be remembered that taxation, in its inception, meant protection; that is to say, property-owners paid in order to have their property protected. In any event, a woman's property as well as a man's must be protected by a man. If her rights are infringed, she has the same redress that men have the power of the courts, with men to carry the mandate into effect, because no woman can carry any law into effect. The property is taxed, and not the individual. Nobody has proposed that the property of minors should be exempt from taxation. In the District of Columbia with its 343,005 inhabitants, no man has a vote, but no man has had the assurance so far to ask exemption from taxation. The entire Army and Navy of the United States, including the officers, the best educated body of men in the country, are practically disfranchised through difficulty in establishing domicile, and for other reasons. Yet army and navy men are required to pay taxes just as much as civilians.

The idea that taxation carries with it a vote is peculiarly ludicrous when employed by suffragists from the South. There is probably not one

of them to be found who advocates restoring the franchise to the two million Negro voters, increased by two more millions of ignorant Negro women-voters; but the Southern suffragists have not so far proposed to exempt the ten million Negroes in the South from taxation. But if no one should be taxed who has not a vote, then these ten million Negroes should be exempt from taxation; also all lunatics, minors, and criminals; all army and navy officers and men; all the inhabitants of the Territories and of the District of Columbia.

The twelve hundred thousand foreigners who are added annually to our population would also be exempt from taxation for at least five years the shortest time, under our present naturalization laws, in which an alien may become a voter. But this would only be the beginning of the exemption. Citizenship cannot be forced upon any man, and immigrants might choose to remain aliens, and no doubt would, in order to escape taxation. Sad to say, great numbers of American citizens would cross the Canadian border and become loyal subjects of King George, and exchange their citizenship for exemption from taxes. If Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Rockefeller, and Mr. Pierpont Morgan should choose to become aliens, they would be exempt from taxation. Vast foreign corporations would be represented by a few individuals, who would remain aliens and pay no taxes. There are a few states where an alien cannot hold real estate, but there are many other forms of property which are taxed, and in most of the states a foreigner may own anything he can pay for, and he is taxed from the moment he acquires it. To differentiate between voluntary and involuntary aliens would be to call the whole popu-, lation of the United States into court.

The proposition that taxation with

out representation is an injustice would no doubt be enthusiastically supported by every scoundrel among men in the United States of America. If a man by reason of crime were deprived of his vote, or by not having the educational qualifications which are usually required, he would also be exempt from taxation. In fact, if taxation without representation be adopted as a prin- ' ciple of government, nobody need pay taxes who does not want to, and the number of persons who really want to pay taxes is, unfortunately, small.

There can be no doubt that a wave of suffrage has swept over the world in the last few years. Besides what has been done in America, Australia and Finland have adopted full suffrage for women; and Sweden, Denmark, and New Zealand have limited suffrage in various forms. It is alleged that full suffrage in Australia and Finland has not worked well, but the experiment is too recent to be very valuable. And it must be remembered that no women have the property privileges of American women. In England, it would be unjust to confound the section of lawabiding and dignified, if mistaken, suffragists with the shrieking and savage mobs that make one shudder at the thought of intrusting them with the vote. It brings to mind the stern words of the late Queen Victoria, the first sovereign on earth who ever understood, maintained, and observed a constitution, and who in the sixty-four years of her reign had more governmental mental experience, more practical knowledge of politics than any woman who ever lived, - 'The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write in checking this mad, wicked folly of "Woman's Rights' with all its attendant horrors.'

This illustrious lady was celebrated for knowing what she was talking about.

The present Liberal Government has shown a singular vacillation concerning the frenzied English women who rioted for suffrage. Less than a year ago the London police were using dog-whips upon them. Now, the nonpartisan committee appointed by Prime Minister Asquith has reported a bill giving the franchise to women-householders in their own right, and those occupying at their own expense domiciles of a certain value. The bill has already passed its second reading, and may possibly be adopted at the present session of Parliament. With the example of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States before us, there is no reason to suppose that the British Parliament may not do something equally irrational. As in that case, Parliament may yield to the clamors of a frantic mob; but when a legislature does that, it always has to pay a fearful price. Also, Parliament is as likely as any American legislature to mistake a minority for a majority. For it must not be forgotten, that according to the suffragists' own showing, woman suffragists are in a minority in every one of the twenty-six states in which they have full or limited suffrage, except in Utah. In that still polygamous state, woman suffragists have a majority.

VI

It must be said, however, of American suffragists in the past, that their course has generally been one of dignity and decorum. A few painful absurdities have been committed, like Miss Anthony's Woman's Bible, which was an effort to edit the Bible so that it might become a suffragist document. This attitude of dignity on the part of

the suffragists has been recently disturbed by that strange psychic law which makes violence contagious. The shocking conduct of a part of the English suffragists has not been without its evil effect on American suffragists.

At the forty-second annual meeting of the Woman Suffrage Association, in Washington in April, 1910, the suffragists carried on a street campaign which was not without humorous aspects. Women, standing up in motors, would represent pathetically their miserable situation without the ballot, and make passionate appeals for a vote to men who themselves had no votes. The official proceedings and speeches showed a lamentable want of legal and governmental knowledge. One lady announced, 'We will make a noise until we get a vote.' This singular sentiment was applauded, in apparent forgetfulness that the only creature who gets what it wants by making a noise is a baby. Another delegate publicly advocated race-suicide, giving the perfectly logical reason that women could not attend properly to public affairs and look after their families as well. On the day when their petition was presented in the Senate, the galleries were crowded with suffragists, who became so noisy that the presiding officer, Senator Kean of New Jersey, was obliged to announce that if the disorder did not cease the galleries would be cleared.

The most shocking impropriety of all was the public insult to President Taft when he was their invited guest. The President yielded to strong pressure, and on the evening of April 15 made a short address to the suffragists assembled at the Arlington Hotel. The President spoke with courtesy and dignity, but on his making some guarded reference to the dangers attending the extension of the franchise, the suffragists proceeded to make history