VERY few of those who have worked so persistently for woman suffrage seem to realize that recent elections—particularly in the state of New York—served completely to justify the enfranchisement of the sex.

The contests at the polls put an end to all "expert election betting," as a local chronicler phrased it, by revealing to the bewildered politicians the existence of a new voting element that had not previously been shepherded to the polls by the leaders of either party. The elections, since the advent of woman suffrage, have also shown that those who composed this wholly new element voted individually, rather than in droves, and, as regards at least one candidate, in a manner contrary to what had been expected of them. It appears to me, and to others better informed than myself, that woman's suffrage has given us precisely what we have long clamored for, an independent body of voters who will not adhere, with slavish fidelity, to lines laid down for them by political leaders.

Why should this determination of the women to vote as they pleased and not as they were directed prove such a surprise to those who saw only failure in the disenfranchisement of women? During the past few years, the public has changed its mind more than once in regard to what might be expected of women suffrage and not one of these changes brought us any nearer to the real truth of the matter. The mistake they have made was in not distinguishing between the woman who was known as the Suffrage Leader—usually self-styled— and the Woman Voter, who refused to be lead. The mortifying truth is that we have understood woman, as a voter, just as little as we have understood her in other rôles.

No sooner had the right of ballot been granted than the Suffrage Leader became a Woman Politician, and, seeing a promised land, comparable to a sort of political Canaan, determined to get some of the milk and honey for herself. It is from this point in the career of the suffrage leader that she should now be considered.

If the election of 1919 amazed the statesmen who had been accustomed to estimate the voting strength of each political party with great accuracy, a still greater sensation awaited them in the result of the contest of 1920, in the State of New York. As Senator Wadsworth had consistently opposed woman suffrage, it was an open boast, with the suffrage leaders, that the Senator was to be "taught a lesson." In pursuance of this object, the female suffrage leaders, or women politicians, gathered together for his defeat. In this movement, nearly every woman politician in the State of New York was associated. The result is a matter of political history. Senator Wadsworth was elected to the Senate in 1914, when women did not vote, by a majority of 68,000. In 1920, when women cast 40 per cent of the entire vote, which was in the neighborhood of 2,000,800 in the State of New York, his majority was 546,286, his opponent polling only 159,000 votes, many of which were received from those who regarded Wadsworth as a "wet."

So that, just now, the woman politician is not regarded as seriously as she was before the 1920 election. She fooled herself into a belief in her own power; she fooled the club women who were once so anxious to have her address their meetings; she fooled the old-time politicians more completely than any one else; in short, she fooled everybody, except the women voters.

Housekeeping and Streetcleaning

IT is the last named class that are now a source of anxiety and puzzlement to the statesmen who have been in the habit of herding the voters of their own sex every November and leading them to the polls like flocks of sheep. And yet not one of these men has devised any scheme that will secure the support of any large number of these women. What they will see fit to do in New York, next November, is a mystery that not even the shrewdest sachem in Tammany Hall can fathom.

It is not impossible that some wise statesman who has the good of the community at heart will essay the novel experiment of appointing women to certain offices of importance which they can fill much better than men. It would be an interesting experiment, for instance, to see the Street Cleaning Department placed in the hands of some woman possessed of honesty, executive ability, courage, and that instinct for cleanliness and good housekeeping that is the heritage of so many of the sex and which, applied in a business-like manner, would give the city the unusual luxury of clean streets.