orm an opinion. A large majority of
those reporting to Miss Sumner think that women have become more
intelligent and more public-spirited, but some doubt it. Morally, they
have shown themselves less corrupt than men; but a considerable number
think women as a whole have suffered some deterioration. This is a
question bound up with our deepest feelings and our most conservative
ideals; and it is inevitable that some observers should find any change
for the worse. On the whole, belief in equal suffrage seems to have
increased in Colorado during the twelve years under survey. Probably the
results are much what they would be if one were to study a group of the
most intelligent and refined men in the same community.

During the summer of 1911, I spent a month in the State of Idaho; and as
I had long been interested in the problem of equal suffrage, both in
England and America, I seized eagerly on the opportunity to study its
practical workings at first hand. On the streets and in the tram-cars,
in hotel lobbies and in lecture halls, when dining out or when making a
call, few people escaped inquisition. I interviewed working men and
women, men of affairs, ranchers, sheep raisers and miners, doctors,
lawyers, teachers, ministers and practical politicians, both men and
women.

The thing that first impresses one who has been intimately in touch with
the excited and turbulent condition of mind among the English
suffragettes, and the sustained and often impassioned feeling of Eastern
suffrage leaders, is the absence of any burning interest in the subject
on the part of men or women in Idaho. In London or New York, a suffrage
inquirer would constantly strike "live wires;" in Idaho, every one is
insulated. The subject is no more an issue than civil service reform or
state versus national control of banking systems. Most people have even
forgotten the passage of the constitutional amendment conferring equal
suffrage, in 1896. Since then, men and women have gone on voting and
holding office until the woman's right has become as commonplace as, and
no more interesting or questionable than, the vote of any busy citizen
in New Jersey.

The first question that one raises, is naturally whether women do
actually vote and hold office in Idaho. To answer this question, there
is no body of statistics available. Every one, however, declares that
they pretty generally vote. On account of long distances in the country
side, they poll less vote