In 1889, after women in Wyoming had very generally exercised the full suffrage since 1869, Mrs. Clara B. Colby, editor of the Woman's Tribune, Washington, D. C., compiled a report from the census statistics. Those relating to crime, insanity and divorce were as follows:
There were 189,503 insane in the United States, but there were but three insane persons in Wyoming in 1880, all men. The preponderance of insanity among married women is usually attributed to the monotony of their lives, and since this is much relieved by their participation in politics we should naturally expect to find, as a physical effect, a decreased proportion of insane women where woman suffrage prevails.
From 1870 to 1880 the rate of divorce increased in the United States 79.4 per cent., three times the ratio of the increase of population, and in the group of Western States, omitting Wyoming, it increased 436.7 per cent., almost four times the average increase of population, while in Wyoming the average increase in divorce was less than 50 per cent. of that of the population.
Compare Wyoming with a typical Eastern State — Connecticut — the latter has one insane person to every 363 of the population, Wyoming has one to every 1,497. Nor is this wholly a difference of East and West, for Idaho, its neighbor, shows one insane to every 1,029. Especially would voting seem to increase the intelligence of women, for in Connecticut there are over seven-tenths as many female idiots as there are male idiots, while in Wyoming there are only four-tenths as many.Woman suffrage may have played no part in these statistics, but if they had shown an increase of crime, insanity and divorce, it certainly would have been held responsible by the world at large.
NEW YORK.
The History is indebted to Atorney-General John C. Davies for most of the information on School Suffrage contained in the New York chapter, and also for the opinion which follows herewith on the right of women in that State to hold office.