We are not abler, not any broader-minded nor more intellectually
daring than those pioneers, but we have what they had not, the test of
results. Let us briefly glance at what has been the course of events
in those states and countries which were the earliest to obtain
political freedom for their women.

In none of the four suffrage states first enfranchised in this
country, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Colorado, in Australia or in New
Zealand, did any large proportion of women ask for or desire their
political freedom. In that there is nothing strange or exceptional.
Those who see the need of any reform so clearly that they will work
for it make up comparatively a small proportion of any nation or of
any class. Women are no exception. Note Australia. As the suffrage
societies there, as elsewhere, had been organized for this one
purpose, "to obtain the vote," with the obtaining of the vote all
reason for their continued existence ceased. The organizations at once
and inevitably went to pieces. The vote, gained by the efforts of the
few, was now in the hands of great masses of women, who had given
little thought to the matter previously, who were absolutely unaware
of the tremendous power of the new instrument placed in their hands. A
whole sex burst into citizenship, leaderless and with no common policy
upon the essential needs of their sex.

Except in Victoria, where the state franchise lagged behind till 1909,
the women of Australia have been enfranchised for over twelve years,
and yet it is only recently that they are beginning to get together as
sister women. Those leaders who all along believed in continuous and
organized work by women for the complete freeing of the sex from all
artificial shackles and unequal burdens are now justified of their