nanimous support of the liberal and radical parties, only twenty
votes being cast in the negative.
The women of Norway do not propose to rest on their present success.
Miss Krog is continuing the fight to secure the right of participation
in national as well as municipal affairs, and believes that the women
will have all the political rights of men in Norway within the next
few years. She insists that public sentiment favors the cause and that
parliament will take a step further soon and amend the law by making
it broader and more general. Universities are open to women on an
equal basis with men, and many women are taking advantage of the
opportunity to secure the higher education, and if ever, like the
women of Finland, they are allowed to sit in parliament, they will be
amply fitted to do so.
Under the present law only women who pay a certain amount of taxes
can vote. An unmarried woman living at home is deprived of the ballot
unless she has an income of her own; a married woman can not vote
unless either she or her husband has a stated income. Thus many of
the most intelligent and progressive women of the country are still
outside the suffrage line. Everybody in Norway who earns a dollar pays
an income tax. It may be very small, but a certain percentage of each
day's wages of every peasant goes into the government treasury. Every
person in Norway declares that it is the least objectionable means of
raising money for national and municipal expenses that has ever been
tried there, and that it stimulates the patriotism of the people, who
realize that they are contributors to the support of their government,
and should take an active interest in its management.
Many of the wisest men in Norway consider the universal suffrage
amendment to the constitution, which was passed in 1898, a mistake
for this reason--because it removes a powerful incentive for men
to accumulate money. The Norwegian has a large and natural fund of
patriotism. He loves his country like the Swiss. Nowhere else do men
and women have to work so hard for a living, but life is the more
precious the harder one has to labor to sustain it. We value things
according to their cost. In the tropics, where no man need work, human
life is held cheaply. Men die and kill without compunction; they
excite revolutions and overthrow governments, sparing neither
themselves nor others. But in Norway, as in Switzerland, where it is
a ceaseless struggle from the cra
|