Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1904 — “PURIFYING POLITICS." [ARTICLE]

“PURIFYING POLITICS."

When it was reported that the recent election frauds in Denver were committed mainly by women, the opponents of equal rights aaid this proved that women ought not to vote. When it turned out that the frauds in question were committed by men, with only a very small sprinkling of women, the opponents shifted their ground and now say that equal suffrage is a failure because the women have not prevented all men from cheating and completely “purified politics.”

Politics might be purified completely by adding to the electorate a body of angels who not only never cheated themselves but were able by magic power to keep everybody else from cheating. That would be very convenient, but unluckily it is impossible. On the other band, politics may be purified to some extent by adding to the electorate a large body of voters among whom cheating is comparitively rare. > That is what happened in Colorado. The female population of Colorado is 244,368. Daring the first ten years after equal suffrage was granted, only one woman was convicted of illegal voting, while a great number of men indulged in it. In the recent Denver case, ex-Gov. Adams of Colorado says in the New York Sun that out of 5,000 fraudelent votes, only about 100 were caßt by women. And yet the canard has been spread broadcast that “the women did it!” The “indirect influence” of women is much vaunted as a purifying power by the opponents of equal rights; but it has not completely purified politics in the States where women do not vote. The election frauds in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, etc., have been much bigger and more chronic than in Denver. In Colorado, woman suffrage has not completely purified politics, bat it has had a good influence as far as it has gone, and no one bears more emphatic testimony to this than Hon. John L. Shafroth himself.

Ellis Meredith of Denver, at the recent National Suffrage Convention illustrated the situation by a story. She said, “A chronic tqper was brought to the hospital with a bad case of delirium tremens. The doctor examined him carefully. The man asked, ‘Can you cure me?’ ‘No, answered the doctor, ‘but I can reduce the size of the snakes.’ Equal suffrage has not cured the corruption of politics, but it has distinctly reduced the size of the snakes.” Alice Stone Blackwell.