accomplished in the
Nineteenth Amendment. It in effect strikes out the word "male" from the
suffrage provisions of state constitutions. It overrides state policy
and interferes with the right of states to manage their own affairs.
From the theoretical standpoint a more serious inroad on state
prerogatives would be hard to find. Control of the suffrage is one of
the fundamental rights of a free state. It belonged to the North
American states before their union, and was not surrendered to the
National Government when the union was effected. Moreover, the
encroachment has a very practical side. To confer the suffrage on the
educated women of Connecticut was one thing; to confer it on the Negro
women of Alabama was quite a different matter, involving different
considerations. The amendment took no heed of such differences but
imposed a uniform rule on all the states, regardless of local prejudices
or conditions.

It is true that a somewhat similar encroachment on state power had been
made by the Fifteenth Amendment, designed to enfranchise the Negroes.
That amendment, however, had its origin in conditions growing out of the
Civil War, and claimed its justification in the necessity for protecting
the freed slaves against hostile state action. It was avowedly an
emergency measure, and the success with which it has been nullified in
some quarters testifies to the unwisdom of forcing such measures upon
reluctant states.

The conditions surrounding the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment were
altogether different. Few people take seriously the alleged analogy
between the women and the slaves. The constitutional method--action
through the separate states--was being pursued with signal success. The
states were rapidly falling in line. Most of them had already granted
woman suffrage or were ready to grant it. There was no overmastering
need for coercing the states that were not yet ready. An impartial
student of the period will be apt to conclude that the Nineteenth
Amendment was the product of impatience rather than necessity.

Someone may ask, "What effect will the granting of votes to women have
on the problem of preserving the constitutional equilibrium?" The
ultimate power lies with the voters, and the women with votes now equal
or outnumber the men. What is the reaction of women voters likely to be
toward questions of political theory?

Ours is a governmental scheme of extreme complexity. As with animal
organisms so wi