p. 4

4
When women were voters in the Territory
of Washington the immediate good effect
of their ballot was attested by
who [Jane Robson, Secretary of the province of
British Columbia, introduced a woman suffrage
bill in the British Columbian Parliament
as a government measure: saying
the women of Washington are voting all the
gamblers and blacklegs out of their Territory,
and if the women of Seattle have the
ballot, in self-protection we must give it to
the women of Victoria.]
It may be added
that it was because the voices of women were feared
by the vicious element that their disfranchisement
in this Territory was at last secured
by the decision of an alien judge whose
appointment had been maneuvered for
this very purpose.

Some years ago the women of Utah
were voters by Territorial law but they
were disfranchised by Act of Congress. When
the bill passed to admit Utah as a state,
the men of Utah put woman suffrage
in the new State Constitution and
carried it by a large majority, thus,
as they proudly said, giving back to their
women at the very first opportunity,
the ballot which they had used
satisfactorily for several years and of
which they had been so unjustly deprived.

From Colorado, which adopted
women suffrage by an amendment to the
State Constitution in 1893, came only good
words for woman suffrage. Hon. John F.
Shafroth, U.S. Congressman from Colorado,
represented the general opinion concerning
woman suffrage in that state when he
appeared before the United States Judiciary