most of them were ignorant of its provisions, he would continue the cases with this express understanding, that if they would strictly obey the law in future these cases should be dismissed; but[Pg 735] if any of them violated it, these cases would be tried and the full penalty inflicted. They all agreed to this, and the "Sunday Law," as it was called, was carefully observed afterwards in Laramie City; and so great has been the change in that town in the habits of the people and the quiet appearance of the streets on Sunday, as compared with other towns in the territory, that it has been nick-named the "Puritan town" of Wyoming, and, I may add, rejoices in its singularity.
And how was this most successful experiment in equal rights received and treated by the press and the people out of the territory? The New York illustrated papers made themselves funny with caricatures of female juries, and cheap scribblers invented all sorts of scandals and misrepresentations about them. The newspapers were overflowing with abuse and adverse criticism, and only here and there was a manly voice heard in apology or defense. I copy these extracts as a sample of the rest.
"Lady Jurors."—Under this head the New Orleans Times, the ablest and largest paper in the South, said:
Confusion is becoming worse confounded by the hurried march of events. Mad theorizings take the form of every-day realities, and in the confusion of rights and the confusion of dress, all distinctions of sex are threatened with swift obliteration. When Anna Dickinson holds forth as the teacher of strange doctrines in which the masculinity of woman is preposterously asserted as a true warrant for equality with man in all his political and industrial relations; when Susan B. Anthony flashes defiance from lips and eyes which refuse the blandishment and soft dalliance that in the past have been so potent with "the sex"; when, in fine, the women of Wyoming are called from their domestic firesides to serve as jurors in a court of justice, a question of the day, and one, too, of the strangest kind, is forced on our attention. From a careful review of all the surroundings, we think the Wyoming experiment will lead to beneficial results. By proving that lady jurors are altogether impracticable—that they cannot sit as the peers of men without setting at defiance all the laws of delicacy and propriety—the conclusion may be reached that it will be far better to let nature alone in regulating the relations of the sexes.
The Philadelphia Press had the following:
Women as Jurors.—Now one of the adjuncts of female citizenship is about to be tested in Wyoming. Eleven women have been drawn as jurors to serve at the March term of the Albany County Court. It is stated that immense excitement has been created thereby, but the nature of the aforesaid excitement does not transpire. Will women revolutionize justice? What is female justice, or what is it likely to be? Would twelve women return the same verdict as twelve men, supposing that each twelve had heard the same case? Is it possible for a jury of women, carrying with them all their sensitiveness, sympathies, predilections, jealousies, prejudices, hatreds, to reach an impartial verdict? Would not every criminal be a monster, provided not a female? Can the sex, ordinarily so quick to pronounce pre-judgments, divest itself of them sufficiently to enter the jury-box with unbiased minds? Perhaps it were best to trust the answer to events. Women may learn to be jurymen, but in so doing they have a great deal to learn.
So persistent were the attacks and so malignant were the perversions of truth that Judge Howe, at the request of the editor, wrote the following letter for publication anonymously in the Chicago Legal News, every statement in which I can confirm from my own observation. The Judge, after writing the letter, consented to its publication over his own signature:
