law be
enacted compelling registrars to use the title "Frau" (Mrs.) when
requested to do so by the person concerned. Thirty-four women's clubs have
collectively declared in favor of this petition.

Women exercise the right of municipal suffrage only in those localities
whose male population is absent at work during a large part of the year
(as in Russia). Women can be elected as members of school boards and as
poor-law administrators in the Canton Zurich; as members of school boards
in the Canton Neuchatel. The question of granting women the right to vote
in church affairs has long been advocated in the Canton Geneva by the
Reverend Thomas Mueller, a member of the Consistory of the National
Protestant Church, and by Herr Locher, Chief of the Department of Public
Instruction of the Canton Zurich. In the Canton Geneva, where there is
separation of church and state, agitation in favor of the reform is being
carried on. The women in the Canton Vaud have exercised the right to vote
in the _Eglise libre_ since 1899, and in the _Eglise nationale_ since
1908. Since 1909, women have exercised the right to vote in the _Eglise
evangelique libre_ of Geneva. The woman's suffrage movement was really
started by the renowned Professor Hilty, of Berne, who declared himself
(in the Swiss Year Book of 1897) in _favor_ of woman's suffrage. The first
society concerning itself exclusively with woman's suffrage originated in
Geneva (_Association pour le suffrage feminin_). Later other organizations
were formed in Lausanne, Chaux de Fonds, Neuenburg, and Olten. The Woman's
Reading Circle of Berne had, since 1906, demanded political rights for
women, and the Zurich Society for the Reform of Education for Girls had
worked in favor of woman's suffrage. On May 12, 1908, these seven
societies organized themselves into the National Woman's Suffrage League,
and in June affiliated with the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance.
The Report of the International Woman's Suffrage Congress, Amsterdam,
1908, explains in a very lucid manner the political backwardness of the
Swiss women: Switzerland regards itself as the model democracy; time has
been required to make it clear that politically the women of this model
state still have everything to achieve. The meeting of the Committee of
the International Council of Women in Geneva (September, 1908)
accomplished much for the movement.

The Swiss Woman's Public Utility Association, which had refused to join