Government was so stable, so strong, so democratic, that these conditions
must thus find fit expression. [Footnote: The Australasian colonies are
taking steps toward the formation of a Federal Union. While this book is
in press news comes that the Federal Convention, by a vote of 23 to 12,
has refused to allow women to vote for members of the House of
Representatives.]

South Australia not only gives women full suffrage, but makes them
eligible to a seat in Parliament. The colony is a vast, mountainous,
largely unsettled region, with a high proportion of native and Chinese,
and, in 1894, had but 73,000 voters, including the women. The Socialistic
Labor movement, which has played a large part in Australasian politics,
here succeeded in dominating the government. There was an attempt to
establish communistic villages with public money, a proposal to divide the
public money _pro rata,_ and one to build up a system of state life-
insurance; and taxes were to be levied on salaries, and on all incomes
above a certain point. It was found that the sixty thousand women who were
authorized to vote throughout Australia assisted the socialistic schemes
that are hindering progress and that tend to anarchy and not to
republicanism. There is a royal Governor, and suffrage is based on
household and property qualifications. It is an aristocratic and social
combination, not a triumph of democratic ideas or principles. Dr. Jacobi,
in her "Common Sense applied to Woman Suffrage," says: "The refusal to
extend parliamentary suffrage to women who are possessed of municipal
suffrage, does not mean, as Americans are apt to suppose, that women are
counted able to judge about the small concerns of a town, but not about
imperial issues. It means that women are still not counted able to
exercise independent judgment at all, and, therefore, are to remain
counted out when this is called for; but that the property to which they
happen to belong, and which requires representation, must not be deprived