To designate an institution or legal enactment as men's or women's is as difficult as to dissociate the father's and mother's influence in a harmonious household. Some measures are mothered especially by a woman's organization, but all such have their champions among the men, and men and women work together for their adoption. The term, women's measures, is an anomaly both as to purpose and history.

LEGISLATION

The catalogue of measures which have been presented to the Legislature under the tutelage of women, either individually or epresenting women's clubs, and which were persistently cared for until finally signed by the Governor as a statute, includes a public library commission and library control (there were previously no library provisions), child labor prohibition and juvenile court creation, humane society, equal property rights for men and women, equal custody of children, right of women to make their own wills, the Iowa Infringement and Abatement Law, making wife desertion an extraditable misdemeanor, pensions for mothers, nine-hour law for women, State Industrial School, Institution for Feeble-Minded, separate dormitory for women at State University, placing domestic science in the University, and appropriation for Children's Home-Finding Society. The only legislative measure which women have worked for at more than one Legislature and lost is the Civil Service Bill. phenomenal legislative record has been accomplished in the Legislatures of twenty years, in which but three women were seated. This illustrates the co-operation of the men and women. In every "women's measure " the genius of men and women has united.

Yet this

Although to a large extent intuitively and unconsciously, in their legislative methods women have been fulfilling the essential requisites of lawmaking in a democracy. It is fundamentally true under a representative form of government that the power is with the people and not the legislators. The conception of legislation in a republic is that the demand should be with the consent of the governed and should come from the people up to the lawmaking body, and not be induced from the lawmaking body down to the people.

Women's part in lawmaking has included the education of public sentiment to seek the desired measure. By educating themselves

through the women's organizations, which are largely the instruments through which such public opinion takes form, and by agitating the proposition and keeping it as a reminder in the press, the desired reforms have come in naturally and quietly. The statutes providing for a commission form of government for cities, a direct primary law, the discretionary power of judges, and the labor of convicts on State improvements outside the penitentiary walls are examples of measures which were thoroughly discussed in women's meetings and reported in the press, but which were not introduced by them in the Legislature. The anti-gambling law was passed shortly after the ballot was granted to women and before the State Federation of Clubs was organized. William Balderston, editor of the Idaho Daily Statesman," at that time wrote:

"The influence of this new voting element was felt in the Legislature in the passage of the law prohibiting gambling. It is universally conceded that such an Act could not have been passed had it not been for the fact that the members felt they would be held to account by that portion of the population which is unalterably opposed to the vice that ruins such large numbers of men. It is a significant fact that the law was passed without any organized movement on the part of the women. It was the silent influence of woman as a voter that carried it through.”

The State Federation of Women's Clubs, which is the most prominent women's organization legislatively, does not seek the enactment of a measure which has not had at least a year of State-wide discussion and propaganda. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union also has always depended upon the education of the masses rather than upon "lobbying" its bills through.

WOMEN'S ATTITUDE TO OFFICE SEEKERS

Idaho women, with meager exceptions, are not politicians. They are not to be found where political trickery and trading are in practice. They work by fostering certain measures and by doing their part in the election of officials who will uphold these measures. Sometimes a mass-meeting is called at the instigation of the women, and candidates for office are called upon before election to state their attitude on certain points. The Boisé Council of Women Voters, in union with the Good Citizenship Club, which had experienced difficulty in securing certain park

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actions in Boisé, before the next city election invited the nominees for mayor and commissioners to appear before them and express their views on parks and playgrounds. Not one of the candidates apparently considered the meeting unimportant. Ten were present, and the remaining two, who were unable to be present, sent written statements. The sentiments of the candidates were given to the public through the press. The Legislative Committee of the State Federation of Women's Clubs secures the attitude of all candidates for the Legislature before the election upon the measures which they propose to present at that session. When the legislator comes to the capital, he is sometimes confronted by his own written statement of his pre-election views.

Should an official fail to keep his promise to a woman's organization, he is advertised throughout his territory and told that he will not be further supported. These "clearings up" have been without demonstrations of malice and universally accomplished with dignity. The most notable example of the politician disappointing women and then reforming is Herman H. Taylor, Lieutenant-Governor. He came to the Legislature in 1912 as President of the Senate with a plurality of 6,403 votes. During this session he used his influence against the measures offered by the women, to which he had been thought favorable. In the election of 1914 his plurality was reduced to 464. At the Susan B. Anthony banquet that year he acknowledged publicly that the women had almost defeated him ; during that Legislature he supported the measures which had been defeated largely through him the previous session. Washington County is a strong woman's club center; in 1912 it sent a Representative to the Legislature pledged to support the Iowa Injunction and Abatement Law for the closing of houses of bad repute; he became its opponent and was chairman of the committee in which it died. He was defeated for re-election to the next session, at which the bill was almost unanimously passed.

WOMEN IN OFFICE

The women themselves are not largely office-seekers. On the ballot the only offices commonly containing their names are those of State Superintendent of Public Instruction and Treasurer, and county superintendents, treasurers, and members of the Legislature. The office of State Superintendent has been

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occupied by women for the past sixteen years, and that of State Librarian since its creation. Three-fourths of the county superintendents are women, and one-third of the treasurers. The clerkships and second deputyships held by women in State offices and the number of women employed in State institutions bring more than half of the State pay-roll to

women.

The presence of women in caucuses and political gatherings is kindly met by the men. This condition is also true in the neighboring State of Utah, as is illustrated by the following incident: A prominent Utah woman was being told the story of an Idaho woman's attendance as a delegate at the Republican State Convention, and was told that when the Idaho woman had mentioned this fact to a Far Eastern woman the Eastern woman had exclaimed, enthusiastically, "Oh, and did the women send you?" The Utah resident interrupted the story at this point. "No, the men sent her," she said. A man had placed the Idaho woman's name in nomination and another had resigned his place in her favor.

NON-PARTISANSHIP

Party lines are not held as closely by the women as by the men, which may account for the adoption of a State primary law and the commission form of government in Boisé, both of which eliminate the old-time party conventions with their trading and machine rule. The women compose part of the membership of the Hughes-Fairbanks Clubs now under State organization, and two years ago there was a woman's Democratic Club; but the organizations where the women work shoulder to shoulder for civic reforms, as the Good Citizen Club, the Council of Women Voters, and civic departments of literary clubs, are invariably non-partisan. The measures thus launched are generally indorsed by all political parties or their candidates. The recent prohibition law, springing from the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the AntiSaloon League, was placed in the platform of both political parties and passed the Legislature with but one dissenting vote. The policy of making a measure an issue in one party and asking the women to vote outside their party to support it has never been followed.

Non-partisanship in lawmaking by both men and women is shown in the activity of the Legislative League, which was in session during the last session of the Legislature.

This was organized by men engaged in various branches of business, and included in its membership by their invitation business women and representatives of every woman's civic club. The purpose was to study measures under debate in the Legislature with the aim of encouraging good and hindering immature and hasty enactment; insurance men, commission merchants, attorneys, Mothers' Congress delegates, and Federation Club workers co-operated with the Legislature and gave them the advantage of the more extensive view-point.

MEN MORE FAMILIAR WITH CIVIL
GOVERNMENT

Although the Western-trained woman takes her balloting naturally, the race training which for generations has endowed men with this responsibility is noticeable in the greater familiarity of the men with statutory technicalities. As yet the conversation and companionships of the average girl do not give her as accurate a civic training as her brother's, although she is intelligently informed. Mrs. Cynthia Mann, a teacher at the time of the adoption of suffrage, and later donor of the Idaho State Children's Home site, said in a memorandum the year following suffrage:

"Another effect that is worthy of notice is the great interest among the pupils of our public schools in the study of political economy. The girls often felt less interest in this science because they would have no voice in political affairs, while most boys said that they could vote without studying this science. Now the girls, like their mothers, look upon this new responsibility as a grave one. boys are not to be outdone, and it is delightful to see the zeal with which they attack this so-called dull study."

The

The greater part of the book work in connection with elections in Idaho, including registration and polling, is done by the women, which gives them a more intimate conception of the machinery of government. The polls are quiet and maintain somewhat the dignity of a formal social function with men and women present.

The omens are already in the sky predicting that women may become more informed as citizens than the men. The women's clubs for civic study and the practical application which is given their balloting are having a broadening and educational effect. Where is to be found an organization of men with the purpose of perfecting the members for the more efficient performance of the duties of citizenship? The history of education, which at first in the annals of mankind was restricted to the masculine sex, may be considered as a precedent, the number of women completing high school and collegiate courses now exceeding that of the men.

IS THE FEMININITY OF WOMEN AFFECTED? Has the ballot affected the femininity of women? If the charm of womanhood has escaped with the entrance of the ballot, both men and women are so blind to the condition as not to know their loss. Rare indeed would be the person found repining for the good old days when women couldn't vote. Do the women vote the same as their husbands? Some women vote to the dictation of the men, which condition will continue until every woman knows how to express her own self. The point is, the woman who is awake to her privilege of expression has it, and it is potentially possible to the unknowing one when she awakens. Some men still sleep. There has not been a record of the percentage of men and women voting, but in some precincts it is said that more women than men vote.

THE OLD AND NEW IDEALS OF CITIZENSHIP

Twenty years of the ballot in the hands of women with men in Idaho has developed that State along moral and advanced lines, with legislation which has outrun the old Puritanical States of their forefathers. The temptations of the early days-drink, gambling, and houses of ill repute―are swept away. But it is claimed by some who have watched the change of the past twenty-five years that Idaho with statutes, granting them enforced, is not as righteous as Idaho without statutes. The story of the pack-driver

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with one barrel of whisky more than he could haul up the hill is told to illustrate the former integrity. Finding it impossible to continue his journey so heavily loaded, the driver deposited the barrel of drink by the roadside with two cups, one for the passing travelers to partake of the contents and the other to receive the pay. Later he returned and took

his cup of coin. No such sense of honor is universal to day, say the story-tellers. Yet even they would hardly want to go back to the old days.

SUFFRAGE SANE IN ITS OPERATION

The intense attitude of some of the promoters of equal suffrage might have led to the belief that when the reform went into operation the commonwealth would be in a state of upheaval and that radical measures would be enacted to the disturbance of the common peace. Its practice, however, has proved that it does not carry a destructive tendency. Eighteen months after its adoption Mrs. Cynthia Mann, quoted above, wrote:

"When the Supreme Court of Idaho decided that the equal suffrage amendment had carried, it was pleasing to note how quickly

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all aggressive opposition ceased. Those who had been zealous opponents refrained from predicting the evil consequences that would be the result of women voting, and at all elections held since, primary, municipal, and school, have vied with the ardent advocates of this reform in politics in securing the presence at the polls of this new element in governmental affairs."

It has continued sane in its operation; the leaders among the women are of a high type. Its inherent policy of educating the general public to its reforms burns out fanaticism in the long journey of the proposed enactments through committees, local discussions, and press reports. The exaggeration of energy displayed in the fray for suffrage is one of the results of antagonism. When the antagonism is withdrawn and suffrage is permitted to fill its mission, its course has been found to be orderly and constructive This is the inevitable working of the metaphysical law. For equal suffrage is an expression of the principle of equality, and, as a principle in operation, can produce only harmony and satisfaction in its proper manifestation.

T

WO years and a half ago the number of consumers' co-operative clubs in this country engaged in buying food products direct from producers and big wholesalers was so small as to deserve merely passing mention. But to-day you will find over two hundred such organizations flourishing in New York, a hundred each in Chicago and Philadelphia, and thousands of others scattered among the larger cities east of the Mississippi-for it is in the Middle West and the East that the need for simplifying our present system of distributing farm products is most keenly felt. Community groups of housewives, factory workers, and employees of banks, department stores, and business offices have banded together by the thousand to develop a practical way of buying their food supplies at lower costs. It is no longer an experiment with these people; it is a weekly practice and thrifty accomplishment, for the savings of the modern buying club average twenty per cent-to say nothing of

improved freshness of quality which the direct-marketing plan affords.

The typical buying club in the East purchases its eggs from producing sections as far West as Iowa, and brings them on in quantities of a hundred dozen. Its butter, packed in easily divisible units of one-pound cartons, comes from any of the large creameries of Indiana or Ohio. Poultry, beef, pork, and lamb in handy lots of fifty or a hundred pounds are obtained from the mail-order departments of large packing-houses of the West. And vegetables, honey, fruits, nuts, and dozens of other products of the farm and orchard are bought in quantity, transported in quantity, paid for in advance by the club, and then divided up among its members. The buying club depends for its success upon the elimination of all unnecessary middlemen; it conducts what in reality is a long-distance mail-order marketing plan, with the whole country for its shopping field.

Two things are responsible for the buying

club idea and its growth: the industrial work of the express companies in linking up country producer and city consumer in an effort to recoup traffic losses caused by the parcel post, and the extraordinary sudden eagerness of many large producers of meat, butter, and other foodstuffs to sell direct to the city co-operative club. The transportation companies have brought consumer and producer into actual commercial touch by the gathering and publishing of specific price quotations, details of quality and packing, and other essentials to successful direct marketing. Reputable farmers and large wholesalers anxious to break into the new market have been sought out and educated to standardize their product and maintain that standard as carefully as the corner grocer does this for the city housewife. Weekly bulletins with definite offers by reliable producers have become an institution among thousands of consumers' clubs. The express, with its country agents on the one hand and its city agents on the other, has been able to bring buyer and seller into mutual confidence. Coupled with the sales initiative of producers to go direct to the kitchen of the consumer-an initiative which has meant the invention of new carriers and containers especially adapted to shipping direct to consumers' clubs-this industrial work has resulted in the organization of thousands of city co-operative clubs, the first real co-operative movement in the country.

The buying clubs range in size from twenty to three hundred members. In a fashionable suburb of New York one large club is operated among more than three hundred families. Its Thanksgiving turkey order runs. over nine hundred pounds. In a single winter month its "market-basket " amounted to 60 dozen stalks of celery, 1,000 dozen eggs, 700 pounds of poultry, and 2,000 pounds of other products bought direct from farmers and packers and creameries. A large club in Chicago among the employees of a business firm spends nearly $5,000 a month among the producers of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. It reckons its savings at twenty-five per cent, and is big enough to retain the exclusive services of a salaried clerk to conduct the affairs of the club. The town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, with 70,000 population, is served by fortyodd buying clubs which embrace a membership of several hundred families. In a single day the local express agent received orders for lake fish to the extent of 2,000 pounds-or

Consideration of the detailed methods of a typical metropolitan buying club in cutting the living costs of its members will make the significance of the movement apparent. In one lower New York Broadway business firm over two hundred employees are organized to buy foodstuffs direct. The secretary of the club gathers orders from the individual members early in the week, lumps them, selects the names of producers with whom he would prefer to deal from the weekly quotation lists supplied to the buying clubs by the food products departments of the express companies, and sends in an order. He can ask the transportation company to handle this order for him if he desires, leaving it at a branch office, or can himself mail the order with check. Frequently, after getting in touch with good producers, the buying clubs deal directly with them. The secretary knows that any producers quoted on the weekly bulletin. are reliable that they are better prepared than the average farmer for shipping highquality goods direct to consumers. The bulk of his " grocery list" is weekly made up of butter, eggs, and meats, although, in season, vegetables and fruits are popular.

Upon stated days the various products arrive for distribution-butter and eggs one day, meats the next, etc. Right here the buying club stands or falls. How much labor is involved in the distribution to members? Is it too much bother? For if it is, no co-operative scheme will succeed in America. The manufacturers-the country producers—have calculated upon this; they have seen that the way to make a consumers' co-operative scheme successful is to make the work at the consumers' end as easy as possible-something which has never been carefully worked out before. So the lower Broadway club secretary finds the butter, for instance, packed in sanitary, waxed-cardboard cartons of one pound each; the eggs already