h five thousand dollars! You needn't dodge!" she laughed shrilly.
"I'll not call your name if you keep quiet and behave. But if you men
don't stop your fuss and listen to what I have to say, I'll tell
everything I know about you."

The titters of the women became distinctly audible for the first time in
the indignant silence which followed this threat, for they knew that she
was as good and could be even worse than her word.

"Three months ago Sarah Mosely died and willed all of her property to
the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund, with the distinct command that the
interest on this fund shall be spent to get suffrage for women in Jordan
County," she began again. "The property of this Fund consists in
mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land in this county, in the
ownership of most of the business houses around the square in
Jordantown, in various loans, in 60 per cent. of the stock of the
National Bank, and in other properties, including the _Signal_. That is
to say, gentlemen, if we do not own this county, we control enough of
the property in it to have a right to say how it shall be taxed and
governed. And while there is a law against bribing voters or
intimidating voters, there is no law against foreclosing these loans and
mortgages, nearly all of which are overdue. And I give you my word as
one of the trustees of this Fund, that every one of them shall be
foreclosed as fast as we can do it if our rights as citizens are not
acknowledged with all the privileges that go with citizenship!

"And that is not all! Day before yesterday we purchased from Mr. Mike
Prim the written records of the political workings of the Democratic
party in this county during the past three years--all the letters
written by you men who control the county districts with the money you
received or were to receive for your services, and other letters even
more interesting--but not a single statement of what you actually did
with these contributions. I have not had time to go over Mr. Prim's
memoirs carefully, but as near as I can make out it has been a
blood-sucking business. Some of you have paid as high as three hundred
dollars a year to the campaign fund, and some of you have received as
much as a thousand dollars for delivering this town, say, in an
election, while your wives pinched and scraped to pay the preachers and
support missions in foreign fields! The appropriations for county
schools have been bitten into with outrageous expense a