I copy from the "Salt Lake Herald" a few sentences taken from an interview with Mrs. Cannon, State Senator elect. When asked if she was a strong believer in woman suffrage, she answered: "Of course I am. It will help women, and it will purify politics. Women are better than men. Slaves are always better than their masters." "Do you refer to polygamy?" was asked. "Indeed I do not," she answered. "I believe in polygamy. My father and mother were Mormons, and I am a Mormon.... A plural wife isn't half as much of a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every single month.... Of course it is all at an end now, but I think the women of Utah think, with me, that we were better off in polygamy.... Sixty per cent. of the voters of this State are women. We control the State.... What am I going to do with my children while I am making the laws for the State? The same thing I have done with them when I have been practicing medicine. They have been left to themselves a good deal.... Some day there will be a law compelling people to have no more than a certain amount of children, and the mothers of the land can live as they ought to live." This is the character and opinion presented by the highest State official that woman suffrage has as yet given to the United States. Comment upon it seems unnecessary, so far as it would be needed to express the disgust of the majority of American women at such sentiments and such a situation. But has any Suffrage speaker or meeting denounced them, or deprecated the result of the election? I have heard of none. The National Suffrage Convention, which was held in Iowa, in January, 1897, had the newly-elected Populist women as guests of honor, and held a jubilation over the two new Suffrage States--Utah and Idaho. Idaho has elected a Populist woman or two. The vote in that State in favor of the gold standard and that against woman suffrage tally within forty-two votes.
The instinctive alliance of the Woman Suffrage movement with the uncertain and dangerous elements in our political life is well exemplified by the campaign in California in connection with the late presidential election. Mrs. Barclay Hazard, who was almost the sole woman to express publicly the opposition which the majority of women felt, to the Suffrage idea, has given me the following clear account of the conditions and result. She says: "If the advocates of Woman Suffrage give a really frank and truthful answer to the question, 'What caused the defeat of the movement in the late campaign in California?' they must reply, 'Public sentiment was against it.' In all fairness, there is no other reason. Let us consider the conditions under which the campaign was carried on. In the first place, the Suffragists were most fortunate in choosing a time when the whole country, as well as the State of California, was torn by a question of such vital importance to continued life and well-being that all other matters were in danger of going by default.
