A FEMININE UTOPIA.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11939, 24 March 1894, Page 2

A FEMININE UTOPIA.

VVestern women have undertaken another Btartling innovation. Ever since Kansas has allowed women to vote for all municipal offices, it has been astounding the world with the lengths to which it could go in gieing the fair sex rights to which no aspiration ever had been expressed before. Upon school boards and city councils, women have been serving for half a decade, and several Kansas towns have seen the wives and daughters take things into thier own hands and elect Mayor, police judge, and board of councilmen from their own number. It is worthy of mention, that these towns have been usually well governed under their feminine officers, and tho work of tha kitchen, nutßery, and aid society has in no way interfered with a proper management of street grading, side-walk bnildlng and the levying of fines on the unfortunate men who are tardy in paying th&ir poll taxes. So successful has this law proved in aiding tho friend 3of good government, that the last Legislature provided for a vote next fall on an equal suffrage amendment to the Constitution, giving franchise to women equally with men, and the cpmpaign is already being vigorously pushed in view of tho coming test. But such small favors as the right to voto cut a slight Ggure compared with the proud position which a community of women who made the run from the Kanline into the Cherokee strip hold. They have organized a feminine Utopia from which man is barred out as rigorously as a Christian is from Mecca. Their sottlenient has tho winning and altogether appropriate name of the Daisy community, and, according to reports, fulfills tho significance of its title. Before the opening of the strip it was announced that a woman boomor, Miss Annette Daisy, a Kentuckian, who has been prominent in Oklahama since it was given over to settlement, was camped on tho border, with forty or fifty spinsters and widows ready to make a concerted rush into the new land. It was promised that these women would secure claims close together and establish a woman's settlement. Much sport was made of the project, and it was by newspaper readers considered only a fancy of some correpondent's fertile brain. When the ononing took place, with all its excitement and crowds, Miss Daisy and her followers were forgotten and none stopped to inquire what was their fate. It appears, however, (hat they were possessed of true Western grit, and accomplished their end. A missionary who has been travelling through the strip reports that he found about thirty of the Daisy party carrying out their project on three quarter sections, a few miles west of tho new Town of Ponca, The 480 acres is owned in common, and the only disturbing element is tho fact that a big horrid man with whiskers secured the remaining quarter of the section and will not get off The women have tried to buy him out, but he says he could not think of leaving such congenial neighbours, and does not care to sell. The missionary says the women have erected two houses and four rough shelters, and have begun to improve the land. No men are employed, all the work being dono by the community. Elaborato plans for government and revonue have been drawn up and the projectors claim to have assurances that many recruits wilj join the party in the spring. Miss Daisy is an energetic, wideawake, pushing, typical western woman, and has in view a refiigo for the members of her sex who can stand no longer the fancied oppression of man. Indeed, it is to be a feminine Utopia if she carries out her plans. It is certainly a unique experiment and its progross uud the efiect of a cold winter on the Daisyites will be watchod with interest.