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Committee asking for the passage of a
woman suffrage amendment to the Federal
Constitution. In the course of his remarks he
said:
"We have had what we think is a determination
that woman suffrage is a success,
and a complete refutation of the arguments
that are made that woman suffrage
will have a tendency to degrade or lower
the standard of woman. It is often claimed
by those who are against woman suffrage
that as quick as you give the power to vote
to woman, immediately she will be contaminated
by having to go to the polls. Now I
want to say that in Colorado the direct opposite
has been the experience. Instead of
the caucus for the primary being held in
questionable places, they are held in the
parlors of the most fashionable people in
Denver. Instead of those caucuses being
attended by a few persons, they are public,
and are attended by all of that political
party.

In the election of 1894 a greater per cent
of ladies voted than men; and instead of
their being contaminated by anything of a
bad nature at the polls, the effect has been
that here are no loafers, there are no drunkards,
there are no persons of questionable
character standing around the polls."

Women have possessed in Wyoming the same political
rights as men, both as to voting and
holding office, since 1869. From that
day until the present every Governor
of the Territory and later of the State
has given his official testimony as to
the success of woman suffrage. To quote
from the official message of but one
Gov. John W. Hoyt in 1882 said:

Elsewhere objectors
persist in calling this honorable statute
of ours, 'an experiment." We know it is not;
that under it we have better laws, better officers,
better institutions, better morals and
higher social conditions in general than
could otherwise exist -- that none of the predicted
evils such as loss of native delicacy
and disturbance of home relations, has followed
in its train; that the great body of
our women, and the best of them, have accepted
the elective franchise as a precious
boon and exercise it as a patriotic duty - in
a word, that after twelve years of happy experience,
woman's suffrage is so thoroughly
rooted and established in the minds and
hearts of the people that among them all,
no voice is ever uplifted in protest against
it or in question of it."

As this is
Republican testimony I will quote from
a Democrat, Hon. U. L. Andrews, Speaker