te, as an agent told Judge Lindsay when he was contesting the
governorship of Colorado, "as much chance as a snowball would have in
hell." So that reformers everywhere were eager to hear of a system of
voting that would free the electors from the tyranny of parties, and at
the same time render a candidate independent of the votes of heckling
minorities, and dependent only on the votes of the men who believed in
him and his politics. I met men and women interested in public
affairs--some of them well known, others most worthy to be known, and
all willing to lend the weight of their character and intelligence to
the betterment of human conditions at home and abroad. Among these were
Judge Maguire, a leader of the Bar in San Francisco and a member of the
State Legislature, who had fought trusts, "grafters," and "boodlers"
through the whole of his public career, and Mr. James Barry, proprietor
of The Star.

"You come from Australia, the home of the secret ballot?" was the
greeting I often received, and that really was my passport to the
hearts of reformers all over America. From all sides I heard that it
was to the energy and zeal of the Singletaxers in the various States--a
well-organized and compact body--that the adoption of the secret ballot
was due. To that celebrated journalist, poetess, and economic writer,
Charlotte Perkins Stetson, who was a cultured Bostonian, living in San
Francisco, I owed one of the best women's meetings I ever addressed.
The subject was "State children and the compulsory clauses in our
Education Act," and everywhere in the States people were interested in
the splendid work of our State Children's Department and educational
methods. Intelligence and not wealth I found to be the passport to
social life among the Americans I met. At a social evening ladies as
well as their escorts were expected to remove bonnets and mantles in
the hall, instead of being invited into a private room as in
Australia--a custom I thought curious until usage made it familiar. The
homeliness and unostentatiousness of the middle class American were
captivating. My interests have always been in people and in the things
that make for human happiness or misery rather than in the beauties of
Nature, art, or architecture. I want to know how the people live, what
wages are, what the amount of comfort they can buy; how the people are
fed, taught, and amused; how the burden of taxation falls; how justice
is executed; how much or