Western States of
America, and the reply always is: "Oh, that is all very well for
thinly populated countries." Now I am going to tell you a little
of the suffrage question in England, not a thinly populated
country, with its 20,000,000 of people crowded in that small
space.

Gentlemen of the committee, I would like to draw your attention
to one thing, which is true in America as well as in
England--that nothing has been given to women gratuitously. They
have had at each step to prove their ability before you gave them
anything else. In 1870 England passed the Education Act, which
gave women the right to sit on the school boards and to vote for
them. It was the first time they had had elective school boards
in England; before that all the education had been controlled by
church organizations, who had appointed boards of managers. Women
had been appointed to those boards and so admirable had been
their work that when the law was passed in 1870 many women stood
for election and were elected, and in three cases they came in at
the head of the polls. Five years after that a verdict was passed
upon the work of those women as school officials, for in 1875,
women were allowed to go on the poor-law boards. In 1894 the law
was further modified so that it contemplated the possibility of a
larger circle of poor-law guardians. Before that there had been a
high qualification--occupation of a house of a certain rental,
etc., but now that was all pushed aside. What was the result?
Nearly 1,000 women are now sitting on the poor-law boards of
England; 94 on the great board of London itself.

These local boards deal with the great asylums, with the great
pauper schools, with the immense poorhouses and, more than that,
they deal with one of the largest funds in England, the outdoor
and indoor relief. What has been the verdict upon the work of
those women on the poor-law board? In 1896 there was the
question, when this law was extended to Ireland, whether women
should be put on those boards. The vote in Parliament was 272 in
favor of the women and only 8 against. Eight men only, so unwise,
so foolish, left in the great English Parliament, who said it was
not for women to deal with those immense bodies of pauper
children, not for women to deal with this ou