ONE WOMAN ONE VOTE.

White Ribbon, Volume 7, Issue 81, 1 February 1902, Page 3

ONE WOMAN ONE VOTE.

L)kak Madam. —Will you be good enough to allow me a few lines on the subject of “ One woman one vote.” There are one or two points that I should like to lay before the Unions before they instruct their delegates, and I wish to speak, not as New Zealand Presi* dent, but simply as a member of long standing, and an attendant at many W.C.T.U. Conventions. I am aware that there is much to be said from a democratic standpoint in favour of the proposed change, but I think it is one that we may wisely postpone for some years to come. It is one of the acknowledged weaknesses of democracy that it “ counts heads without taking account of what is in them,” and 1 think nobody will deny that, probably, a woman who has been long enough at work to be chosen District President or Superintendent of a Department or two, is likely to be more conversant with the work of the New’ Zealand Union, than the delegate of a newly formed country Union attending her first Convention. Then the proposed change would leave without voice those small Unions who are unable to be represented except by the President of their District. It is said that the remedy for this would be for them to arrange for a proxy among the mcmliers of the inviting Union ; we have at present fifty-six English Unions; we shall be in a flourishing condition when thirty of these send delegates ; this leaves twenty-six to apply to the inviting Union for suitable women to act as proxies; our largest Unions do not contain nearly so many with the leisure to attend the daily Convention, quite apart from other qualifications. As Recording Secretary I have often had three or four requests to arrange proxies for Unions, and in no case have 1 found even so few without considerable difficulty, ant? on more than one occasion I have failed altogether. The system of plural voting, with all that has been said against it, has proved useful in the past in more than one important matter; older memb3rs will recall, for instance, the trouble that agitated Convention for two or three years, when it was proposed to introduce’ into the Convention a doctrinal test of membership; it is universally acknow-

ledged in the Union now that such a test would have been a fatal mistake that must have seriously crippled the woik, but liaJ tiler j not been provision tor local Unions to vote through their District Officer, that mistake would certainly have been made, and the standing of the Union to-day would have been a very different thing from what it is. I have, etc., L. M. Atkinson. Feb. 3rd, 1902.