WOMEN’S PART IN ELECTION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 26, 30 December 1925, Page 7

WOMEN’S PART IN ELECTION.

CANADIAN EXPERIENCE. VOTES SWAYED BY PREJUDICE. TORONTO, Dec. 21. Women, according to the political leaders, were a greater factor in tho Canadian elections last month than ever before. The statement may seem surprising in view of the fact that out of 600 candidates only four were women, and only one was elected. But the politicians discovered more effective means of rouging the women voters’ interest and securing their votes and influence. . They not only voted in increased numbers, but they were more active in telling their menfolk how to vote. In Ontario the appeal to women was "to bring our boys and girls back home from the United States.” One Liberal candidates relates that one of his women electors said to him: "I understand this election is a plebiscite on whether we are to bring our boys homo, and that you are opposed to tho proposal.” During the last two or three days of the campaign it is related that tho Conservative organisation sent out in towns and cities hundreds of women canvassers, whoso argument addressed to tho housewives ran as follows: "If the Government is returned the factory your husband works in will be closed. You do not want your husband to be out of work this winter, do you?” Liberal candidates testify that in the last 48 hours thousands of votes slipped away from them on this appeal. In Quebec it is said that it was the Liberal canvassers who were effective with women. There, war was made an issue. Mr Meighen’s "Ready, aye ready” proposed response to Mr Churchill’s appeal against Turkey three years ago was recalled. According to Conservative observers a fresh unrest in Europe was pictured; the implications of the Locarno pact were given a sinister colouring; the spectre of a new European war was created and the probability of Canadians being impressed for cannon fodder emphasised. Whether theso allegations are true, it is said that in Conservative committee rooms there was not a single inquiry or offer of support from a single woman voter. Woman suffrage sceptics, with the evidence of the recent election at hand, deliver a harsh judgment. They declare that the advent of women has lowered the pltne of political discussion, and that it has increased the influence of demagogues and of appeals to prejudice.