HOW TO RUN THE UNIVERSE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue II, 13 January 1900, Page 69

HOW TO RUN THE UNIVERSE.

AS TO VOTING. Mr Editor: — If I were boss— The man who had six children would have six votes, and the man who had no children would have no vote. A government by the people ought to include all the people, and children

are people when it comes to taking a census. Let voting be based on children and the women will be satisfied. They will get all the representation they want. A government in which the man with three children gets three votes ami the man with ten children ten votes will be a good government. Fathers of families want good schools for their children to go to. clean streets for them to play in, moral surroundings for them to grow up in.

prosperous times so that they can get plenty to eat. Fathers of families are generally too busy earning a living to decide the fate of a nation in the corner ginmill. They have too much to do to be chasing the band waggon of every political agitator that comes along. Fathers of families are not the "floating vote” that makes campaign expenses count up. Indirectly voting by children will work still greater wonders.

Men desert their families now and leave their wives to struggle over the washtub to support six small children. Now. if every one of those children means one vote, what father is going to

desert them? Throw away his six votes? Not much. There are widows now by the thousand, left unprovided for. with hungry little mouths to feed. Let the children count as votes, and the more "encumbrances” the widow has, the more men she will find ready and willing to marry her. Only the bachelors would lie unrepresented. and that would be their own fault. If they wanted to vote, let them go and get married. If they were anxious to get into politics, let them marry a widow with a ready-made family. That’s how it would lie if I were boss.

SOLOMON SLOAN.