At the November election, 1910, the men of Washington, by a vote of
three to one, enfranchised the women of that State. Eleven months
later, in October, 1911, a majority of the voters conferred the
suffrage on the 400,000 women of California. These two elections
doubtless marked the turning-point in this country. In 1890 Wyoming
came into the Union with suffrage for women in its constitution after
they had been voting in the Territory for twenty-one years. In 1893 the
voters of Colorado, by a majority of 6,347, gave full suffrage to
women. In 1895 the men of Utah, where as a Territory women had voted
seventeen years, by a vote of 28,618 ayes to 2,687 noes, gave them this
right in its constitution for Statehood. In 1896 Idaho, by a majority
of 5,844, fully enfranchised its women.
It was believed then that woman suffrage would soon be carried in all
the Western States, but at this time there began a period of complete
domination of politics by the commercial interests of the country,
through whose influence the power of the party "machines" became
absolute. Temperance, tariff reform, control of monopolies, all moral
issues were relegated to the background and woman suffrage went with
the rest. To the vast wave of "insurgency" against these conditions is
due its victory in Washington and California. As many women are already
fully enfranchised in this country as would be made voters by the
suffrage bill now under consideration in Great Britain, so that
American women taken as a whole can not be put into a secondary
position as regards political rights. While women householders in Great
Britain and Ireland have the municipal franchise, a much larger number
in this country have a partial suffrage--a vote on questions of special
taxation, bonds, etc., in Louisiana, Iowa, Montana, Michigan, and in
the villages and many third-class cities in New York, and school
suffrage in over half of the States.