be more complete, unless we add the amazing fact that political leaders in Congress and legislatures are willing to drive their wives and daughters to beg the consent of these men to their political liberty.

The makers of the Federal Constitution foresaw the necessity of referring important and intricate questions to a more intelligent body than the masses of the people and so provided for the amendment of the Constitution by referendum to the legislatures of the several states. Why should women be denied the privilege thus established? The United States is one land and one people. All the states have the same institutions, customs and ideals.

Woman suffrage has been caught in a snarl of state constitutional obstructions, inefficient election laws and the misapplied theory of States Rights. It is a combination which has so far retarded the normal progress of the movement in this democratic land that other countries have already outstripped it. Under these circumstances Congress should extricate the woman suffrage question from this tangle by way of honorable reparation for the injustices unintentionally put upon the only unenfranchised citizens left in our Republic, and women should insist upon their enfranchisement by amendment to the Federal Constitution as their self-respecting duty.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STORY OF THE 1916 REFERENDA

Constitutional amendments were submitted to the voters of three states in 1916, namely, Iowa, where the vote was taken June 5th on Primary Day; South Dakota and West Virginia, where the vote was taken at the general election in November. More than one influential newspaper editorially discussed the returns with the comment that "the people" of three states had refused to extend the suffrage to women. An investigation unveils some ugly facts and raises significant questions.

In 1882 a prohibition constitutional amendment was adopted by a large majority in Iowa and was promptly set aside by the supreme court upon a technicality. The wet and dry question has been a vexed political issue ever since. The state now has prohibition by statutory enactment. A constitutional amendment is pending, having passed the Legislature of 1914, and is due to pass the Legislature of 1916. The "wets" believing that women would generally support the proposed prohibition amendment were extremely active in opposing the suffrage amendment. Although the suffragists kept their question distinctly separate from prohibition, the wet and dry issue, it was generally admitted, would prove a determining factor.

Every judge of the Supreme Court, the United States Senators, the Governor, most of the men prominent in Republican and Democratic politics, most of the clergymen, most of the press and every woman's state organization espoused the suffrage amendment.

Men familiar with Iowa politics advised the suffrage campaigners early and late and all the time between that it was unnecessary to conduct an intensive campaign as "everybody believed in it."

Yet despite this omnipresent optimism thousands of women gave every possibility of their lives for months before to arouse public sentiment, instruct and acquaint the men and women of the state concerning the question.

The amendment was lost by about 10,000 votes. Were four of the ninety-nine counties (Dubuque, Clinton, Scott and Des Moines counties) lying along the Mississippi River, not included in the returns, the state would have been carried for woman suffrage. It is instructive to inquire what kind of population occupied the four counties which defeated it. The following table gives the answer:

========================================================
| | | | | Total |
| | | | Total | German, |
| | Total | Total | Foreign |Austrian,|
|Iowa Counties| | Native | and | Russian |
| |Population|Parentage| Foreign | and of |
| | | |Parentage| such |
| | | | |Parentage|
+——————-+—————+————-+————-+————-+
|Dubuque | 57,450 | 24,024 | 33,426 | 14,566 |
|Clinton | 45,394 | 19,116 | 26,278 | 11,494 |
|Scott | 60,000 | 24,104 | 35,896 | 20,119 |
|Des Moines | 36,145 | 17,769 | 18,376 | 7,828 |
========================================================

The vote on woman suffrage was 162,679 yes and 173,020 no. The "yes vote" of the above four counties was 8,061; the "no vote" 18,941. Subtract these totals from the totals of the state vote and 154,618 "yes" and 154,079 "no" remains, giving a majority of 539 for woman suffrage.

Once more in the history of suffrage referenda a foreign and colonized population decided the issue. Was the election an honest one? That is a question of interest to Iowa just now. The returns revealed some suspicious facts. Nearly 30,000 more votes were cast on the suffrage proposition than in the primary. Where did they come from? The president of the W.C.T.U., Mrs. Ida B. Wise Smith, employed a detective after the election. His investigation covered forty-four counties and was not confined to those wherein woman suffrage was lost. The findings have not been given to the public in their entirety, but they were conclusive enough to cause an injunction suit to be filed against the Board of Elections and the Legislature to restrain them from accepting the official returns.

Registration was necessary for the amendment, not for the primary, yet thousands of unregistered votes apparently were cast upon the amendment. All good election laws provide that a definite number of ballots shall be officially issued to each precinct; that the number of those deposited in the ballot box, the number spoiled and those unused shall not only tally with the number received, but the unused ones must be counted, sealed, labelled and returned with the certificate recording the count. This is the law of Iowa; but the report of the investigation, as given to the press, shows that in thirty-five counties out of the forty-four investigated no tally list was used and there was nothing by which to check in order to determine the correctness of the number on the certificate. In many cases no unused ballots were returned. The poll lists did not tally with the number of votes and even a recount could not reveal whether fraud or carelessness had led to irregularity.

Despite the fact that the Iowa law provides that a definite number of ballots and the same number of each kind is to be distributed to each precinct, the separate suffrage ballots in a number of cases were reported by election officials as not having arrived until the voting had been in progress for some time; and in others they gave out an hour before the polls closed.

Forty-seven varieties of violations of the election law are alleged to have been committed. Do these indicate wilful fraud or mere ignorance and carelessness? Just now no one seems prepared to answer. Meantime Iowa, one of the most intelligent and progressive states in the nation, stands at the bar of public opinion accused of incapacity to conduct an honest election. How she will defend herself, what reparation she will make to her women, and what steps she will take to insure clean elections and better enforcement of her election law in the future are problems which await the Legislature. That body cannot refuse to take action of some kind without inviting the suspicion that her legislators prefer conditions which lend themselves to the base uses of election manipulators whenever they may care to avail themselves of them.

On November 7, 1916,