fact that education even yet is not so generally advocated for girls as for boys among our foreign and ignorant classes of society, the census of 1900 reveals that between the ages of ten and twenty-one, representing school years, there are 117,362 more illiterate males than females. If men and women had been entitled to the franchise upon equal terms in 1900, the political parties, which always make their appeals to the young man just turned twenty-one to cast his first vote for 'the party of right and progress,' would of necessity have made the same appeal to young women, but they would have appealed to 20,000 fewer illiterates among the women than the men of from twenty-one to twenty-four. If the same conditions continue for the next twenty years—that is, if there is no restriction in the suffrage for men and women still remain disfranchised, and if the proportionate increase of women over men in the output of our public schools continues, we shall witness the curious spectacle of the illiterate sex governing the literate sex."
Mrs. Catt did not, however, attribute all the evils of universal suffrage to the ignorant vote but said: "It may be that an investigation would reveal the fact that a very important source of difficulty is to be found in the failure of intelligent men to exercise their citizenship. If this proves true it may be found necessary to turn a leaf backward in our history and adopt the plan in vogue in some of the New England colonies which made voting compulsory, and it may be found feasible to demand of every voter who absents himself on election day an excuse for his absence, and when he has absented himself without good excuse for a definite number of elections, he may be made to suffer the punishment of disfranchisement. .... " She called attention to the record that at the last presidential election more than 7,000,000 men over twenty-one years of age did not vote and asked: "What is to be done about it? Are qualified women citizens to wait in patience until influences now unseen shall sweep away the difficulties and restore the lost enthusiasm for democracy? Or shall they attempt to determine causes, apply remedies and clear the way for their own enfranchisement? That is our problem. For myself, I will say I prefer not to wait. I prefer to do my part, small as it must be, in the great task of the removal of the
