New York Women as Voters

They are Preparing Themselves for November

FREDERICK JAMES GREGG

THE women voters of New York, who cast their first ballots at the special elections held on March 5th to fill vacancies in the Seventh, Eighth, Twenty-third and Twentyfourth Congressional Districts, proved themselves to be different from the men inv'one very significant particular,—for, of those who had registered, more than 91 per cent turned up at the polling places to do their duty. This is a much higher proportion than is ever scored in the case of the male sex.

No credit is due to the masculine politicians for this result. Being quite in the dark as to what the women might do, the regular "statesmen" politicians kept their hands off and trusted to luck. In the meantime the leaders of the New York City Woman Suffrage Party got very busy. Under the leadership of Mrs. Charles L. Tiffany, the chairman of the Manhattan Borough Branch; Miss Adelaide Stirling, the Corresponding Secretary, and Mrs. John Blair, Secretary of the Woman Voters' Council, plans were made to get out the vote. Classes for instructors were held by Miss Mary Garrett Hay, at headquarters. These instructors, at small classes in one hundred Election Districts, gave practical demonstrations to the women on how to register and how to mark their ballots, while four large forum meetings were held to give the women and the candidates a chance to meet.

ON Election Day, Mrs. Tiffany, Mrs. Blair and their aids were all over the town in districts scattered between Coney Island and the Bronx, They took the place of the women who had nobody to look after small shops, or to mind their small children. The leaders could not have worked harder if they had been themselves aspirants to the House of Representatives, instead of being mere exponents of a principle.

Many persons were very much afraid that the ladies, as soon as they got the vote, would flock by themselves, nominate their own candidates, and start a sex war. But this was a false alarm. The Woman Suffrage Party of the City of New York is now a strictly non-partisan body. It has no intention to nominate candidates of its own or to endorse any candidates. It announces that it will not work for any party. It will not try to influence the vote of any woman. But what it is doing is this: it is trying to spread information as to the machinery of the political system among all the women of the metropolis, working from headquarters in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Richmond. Those who want to know have only to turn to the telephone book and get in touch with the experts who have ail the necessary information. At the same time the organization is in favor of having every woman voter favor some part}'.

NO pains are being spared to impress on all the women of New York the fact that next November it will be their individual duty to vote for a governor of the state, a representative in Congress, a state senator, an assemblyman, and candidates for other important offices. They are invited to learn how elections are held in this state, and when; what are the legal regulations for voting; the general regulations for casting a ballot; to familiarize themselves with the details of a sample ballot; to find out how candidates are nominated; what are the departments of the state government and of the city government, and to get some working knowledge of the laws as they apply to the throng and the difficult question of naturalization, which is all the more serious on account of the limitations introduced through our participation in the Great War.

Hundreds of women, who used to go on the theory that their husbands, brothers and sweethearts knew everything about public affairs, have had a rude shock since they obtained the suffrage. When they got down to details and wanted to learn from the famous lords of creation about primaries and elections, about nominations, about law-making, about party platforms and what they meant, they speedily made the surprising discovery that men who had been voting for years were often in a condition of hopeless ignorance, being in the habit of considering that they had done all that was requisite and necessary when they went into a booth on Election Day and marked their ballots with as little thought on the subject as possible. Indeed, they were content, for the most part, to leave all the details to the "practical politicians," whose business it was to attend to such things.

It was because so many of the new feminine voters were persistently curious about details and determined to know, that the Women Voters' Council of the Woman Suffrage Party of the City of New York decided not to go out of business, but to turn itself into a sort of School of Political Science, with a special course for business women. Attention is also being paid to the relation of the voter to the President, to Congress and, through them, to the conduct of the war.

THE local Democratic organization, popularly known as Tammany Hall, was the first to wake up to the new situation. It has decided that, after the next primary election, its New York County Committee shall contain an equal number of men and women members! In the meantime an Auxiliary County Committee is to be appointed to consist of as many women in each election district as there are now members of the County Committee in that district. Women are also to be represented on the Executive Committee. The Republicans are preparing to follow suit. Plans are being made to change the club houses of the two great political parties so that they may be used by women voters. It is expected that the presence of the latter will have as beneficial an effect on these places as on the general condition of voting places in the city, which the new element has already planned to reform into a condition of at least comparative decency.

The most interesting thing about the situation is that a lot of the men will have to learn a lot of things if they don't want to be put to open shame by the quicker and more alert sex.

There was a fear that the women might try to upset the State by favoring violent interference with the freedom of the individual, that they might be for sudden measures, like Prohibition. But confidence in their good judgment and clearness of vision is growing stronger every day, even among those who were most sceptical about doubling the electorate.