The kind of work the government undertakes and the way in which it does its work depend, in the ordinary course of events, almost entirely upon public opinion; that is, upon what the people think about political matters. This obvious truth will be readily admitted, and the inevitable deduction is that women, in the wide range of their interests and activities, are valuable factors in government.

By means of lectures, study clubs, and leagues for political and civic education, women now seek to educate themselves in public affairs, and learn to coÖperate with men in the extension of civic enlightenment. City Clubs exist for women, like those for men, as forums of free discussion of public questions, in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston, while the Twentieth Century Club of Boston is an organization of men and women.

Women also seek to arouse public opinion by explaining problems of government to the people. By printing and circulating ordinances, discussing charters, asking citizens what they need, and helping to show them how their needs may be met, the development of fundamental democracy is being aided by women, slowly, perhaps, but none the less positively.

Bulletins and other publications on civic matters, issued by women as individuals and associated in clubs, are as creditable as any in the field. Their studies of city budgets and budget-making are beginning to prove that even the hard technique of government now interests them as it does men. That their attitude toward some of the technique is still the woman’s attitude, however, may perhaps be shown at times; for example, when Martha Bensley BruÈre and others suggest that one prime function of public utilities should be to serve the home in order that science may supplant excessive drudgery there.

Chambers of Commerce and similar bodies of men have been prominent as volunteer associations initiating or supporting public activities. In this connection a curious fact lies in the selection of a woman as secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her first task was to straighten out the funds so that there might be a basis for work of any kind. Women serve in auxiliary groups to Chambers of Commerce and the main group often relies for the success of an enterprise upon the hard work of its auxiliary members. In Santa FÉ the women have their own Board of Trade.

It is not alone in the advancement of “general enlightenment” on civic matters that women are interested. Often, through their clubs and associations, they join actively in municipal campaigns for specific reforms. Indeed, it may be said that in every recent effort to “clean-up a city’s politics” in the United States, the enlistment of the women, as individuals and in organizations, has been a voluntary or requested factor. Sometimes we find forceful women, single-handed and alone, leading a fight for the betterment of municipal politics. Such a contest was waged by Virginia Brooks, in the town of Hammond, Indiana, and it may well be told here in her own words, taken from the National Municipal Review:

According to your request I will tell you a few of my activities in West Hammond. You have probably read of my long fight, extending over a year and a half, to rid West Hammond of a graft ring that has been assessing the Poles out of house and home for rotten improvements, which represented about 25 cents on the dollar. I might run over the incidents briefly. I was a musician by profession and knew little of business or property, when I was confronted with $20,000 worth of assessments on a little piece of property left to my mother by my father upon his death.

That November, 1910, three days after the receipt of the assessments, I put my furniture in storage and with my mother came to Hammond, feeling I must do something, but not knowing where to begin. No sooner had I stepped into the town, than I was aware that the streets were made of inferior material and poor workmanship; in fact one street was under construction, and so raw was the poor work that the Poles were threatening the lives of the workmen. This resulted in my interviewing all the inspectors and workmen on the different improvements and collecting evidence which I turned over to the state’s attorney, who would not give me any assistance.

I have stopped election after election, where the grafters tried to turn West Hammond into a city. I have stopped rotten paving and been kicked by policemen controlled by the clique and thrown into jail and persecuted by the friends of the grafters. I have had judgments against me by judges that were hired by them and almost every indignity waged against me to the naming of the worst dive here, the “Virginia” Buffet. In spite of the grafters, I have succeeded in electing to office this spring an entire active anti-graft ticket and at the coming meeting of the board will close down all of the notorious dives in West Hammond. I have saved for the Poles nearly $21,000 on reductions of over-charged assessments. I have succeeded in ousting an old clique who for years had been grafting on the school board, and being elected myself to the office of president. This means that I will introduce into the neglected school, manual training, domestic science, free night school, free kindergarten, and a playground.

I have established a settlement house in Hammond, Ind., right across the state line, where the boys and girls have night classes, and where mothers who work can take their babies for care. There are some 32,000 Poles in this region and the future looks to great achievement.

The logical outcome of the deep and intelligent interest in public affairs shown by women, the suffragists say, is the possession of the instrument which crystallizes public opinion into effective governmental action—the ballot. In as many as twelve states, nearly one-fourth of the United States, the women now have the suffrage. That they exercise their rights with as much discrimination and thoughtfulness as men, to say the least, is the testimony of more than one competent observer. Writing in The Survey, on March 21, 1914, Graham Taylor said of women in elections:

Illinois and Chicago give the country the most significant test of women’s voting....

As registration is required only in larger places, the figures for the state cannot be given at this writing, but in Chicago 217,614 women registered at their first opportunity. Added to the 455,283 men on the polling lists, these new voters increased the electorate to 672,897 voters, the largest number registered in any city in the United States.

At the primaries the women’s votes came within 1 per cent. of equaling the men’s. At the election the women polled, at the lowest count of the police returns, before the official revision, 158,686 or 73 per cent. of their registered voters, while the men’s votes numbered 328,987 or 72 per cent. of their registrations This is conceded by all concerned to be a very favorable showing for the women at their first registration and election. It ought to dispel the conjecture that few women want to vote or will not vote, if given the right, whether they seek it or not.

Next as to the test of the way they will vote. In the increased number and classification of candidates for the city council and in the decision required upon no less than twelve measures of great public importance by the “little ballot” measuring no less than 40 by 12 inches of solidly printed matter, this election exacted of all Chicago voters as great discrimination as they had ever been required to make. It therefore severely tested the interest and intelligence of all new voters, especially women who had hitherto had so much less occasion than men to consider closely such subjects. How did they stand the test?

The aldermanic candidates numbered 154, each ward having from two to seven names to choose from, and designated as Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, Prohibitionists, Socialists, Independents and Non-partisans....

The votes of the women which were awaited with equal eagerness by partisan leaders and by the rank and file of those who had hitherto constituted the non-partisan balance of power, tended decidedly toward non-partisanship. The newspapers agreed with the Municipal Voters’ League in crediting the women with electing no less than seven of the better candidates and with wielding their power either to defeat or lessen the majority of many more undesirable candidates.

While eight women were candidates for the city council no one of them expected to be elected, but each entered the lists to make an educational campaign. Two of these campaigns were especially noteworthy. Marion K. Drake led the forlorn hope in running against the notorious alderman, “Bathhouse John” Coughlin who for over twenty years has disgraced the first ward and city of Chicago by exploiting the floating vote of the lodging houses. Her spirited campaign against his character and the conditions for which he stands was well supported by many of the most influential men and women of the city, and resulted in doubling the vote cast against him as compared with that of two years ago. With 7,355 men voting in that ward, and only a few more than 3,000 women, this is a good showing although nearly 600 more women voted for the discredited man than for the worthy woman candidate, which is not surprising in view of the dependence of the underworld upon its patrons.

In the great cosmopolitan tenement house family ward, surrounding the Northwestern University Settlement, its head resident, Harriet E. Vittum, made a most effective educational campaign. Her slogans were “For the babies,” “For the school children,” “For the working boys and girls,” “For men and women,” under each of which she grouped the better home conditions and municipal policies for which she asked votes. A house to house canvass among the foreign people, rousing mass meetings with many men speaking for her in the foreign languages and a children’s parade of many hundreds of little boys and girls were some of the features of the campaign. That any woman in such a “man’s world” as this ward has been could have secured 1,421 votes, the number next highest to that of the reËlected alderman speaks highly for her candidacy.

In deciding the important public measures, including heavy bonded issues, the women showed as intelligent discrimination as the men. In proportion as these propositions were actually most dangerous or doubtful, they were overwhelmingly defeated—notably a discredited subway scheme, a suspicious county hospital bond issue, and some city bond issues for purposes for which other funds are available.

Many women served as clerks and judges of election throughout the city, with two noteworthy results—that their services were highly commended by the election commissioners and that every woman official reported the most considerate and decorous speech and conduct upon the part of the men during registration and election days. The leading election commissioner issued the following statement on the morning after election: “Chicago women are again to be congratulated as an influence for good in politics. Their presence was like oil on the turbulent waters in every precinct of every ward in which there were bitter clashes. In no precinct did the presence and activity of women in the political contest make them mannish. There was less drunkenness around the polling places than there has been in years, because the practical politicians knew that drunken workers around a polling place would drive away the vote of the women for their candidates. Today’s election really demonstrated that elections and government have been brought closer to the home. The women have shown that. Above all, the women in all walks of life and in all parties proved they are interested in and appreciate their duty.”

Mary E. McDowell who led the fight for a better candidate who almost won out in the stockyards district had this to say: “After nineteen years I thought I knew my ward. But I never really began to know it till I came to experience this great new neighborliness which has come to all of us women through the political work of the election.”

Jane Addams, who was judge of election in her own precinct surrounding Hull House, said: “I was amazed at the way the women of my own ward had informed themselves. Of the 159 women registered in the precinct, 139 voted. The women in every ward of the city showed that they had an intelligent understanding of the issues. I think it was a great thing to have women in Chicago brave enough to run in this aldermanic election and to be willing to face the probable defeat. There was something very exhilarating, something very young and courageous in the willingness of a woman to tackle the fight against Alderman Coughlin. It has undoubtedly been a red-letter day for women, this first day of voting.”

Women’s votes down state get full credit from both the politicians and the newspapers, not to say the liquor dealers, for having put out of business 946 saloons in 114 incorporated cities and villages. In 29 more the vote to remain dry rolled up a majority of 8,888, aggregating a total dry vote in these districts of 35,462. While the liquor forces carried 60 cities and villages and thus kept them “wet,” they failed to win a single township which was dry prior to the election. In some places, as at Springfield, women’s votes helped swell the majority for the saloons. But in a total vote estimated at 200,000 cast on the saloon issue outside Chicago, where the issue was not raised, the Chicago Tribune figures that 100,000 were cast by women and that 65 per cent. of these were against the saloon.

Clearly in anticipation of women’s voting in Chicago, an ordinance was passed by the Chicago City Council abolishing the “family entrance” and “ladies’ entrance” signs from saloons. This action was not opposed by the liquor interests represented by the vigilant and aggressive United Societies. To the representative women who promoted this action, one of the most notorious of Chicago’s aldermen, who for many years has led the forces for evil in the city council, once a majority and now a hopeless minority, declared: “You are doing a noble work, ladies; you should now clean-up the dance halls.”

The handwriting seems to be on the walls, the enemies of the good themselves being judges.

Lest Graham Taylor may be considered a partial witness, we submit the two following extracts from the New York Times on the Chicago women voters, for no one accuses that paper of being a feminist advocate:

Chicago’s first election since women could vote there will doubtless receive much study and doubtless excite much comment. Doubtless, also, the comment will vary as widely as do opinions regarding the propriety and the expediency of woman suffrage.

Some people, of course, will lay much stress on the fact that, of the 217,000 women who registered, only 100,000 were sufficiently interested in the election, in spite of all the talk there has been about it, to go to the polls. The fact, however, that slightly less than 50 per cent. of the women voters failed to do their duty—or to exercise their privilege, if one chooses to look at it that way—must be interpreted in the light of the other fact, that only slightly more than 50 per cent. of the registered men took the trouble to vote. This, in ordinary circumstances, would be taken as showing that popular concern about the result of the election was not keen; but the circumstances were not ordinary, and the suffragists will find it difficult to explain, and still more difficult to excuse, the conduct of their stay-at-homes.

That all the woman candidates were defeated, and with the biggest majorities by their least reputable rivals, is another mystery for which many and various solutions will probably be offered.

But what does stand clearly out of these mists of uncertainty is that Chicago has struck a heavy, perhaps fatal, blow at the belief so confidently expressed by every suffragist that the woman voters in any community would stand together and exert, whether successfully or not, all their influence in behalf of the causes that especially interested them as a sex. There is no evidence or even hint of such solidarity in these returns. The woman vote was a divided one, and evidently divided along just the lines, good and bad, with which men have made us familiar.

The stories of women who did and said foolish things at the polls could all be paralleled by like stories of men, and are without significance. The important revelation is that the women will not vote as women—a revelation reassuring or disquieting according to whether one wants them to do that or not.

Is it possible that Gov. Glynn can have kept a straight face while he was saying, writing, or dictating the statement that the vote cast on the Constitutional Convention question on Tuesday “plainly shows that the people desire a revision of the Constitution”? Who are the “people”? Can one-fifth of the legal voters of the State of New York be called the people? At the Presidential election in 1912 there were cast in round numbers 1,600,000 votes. On the constitutional issue on Tuesday there were cast in round numbers 300,000. There was nothing lacking either in the importance of the issue or in the opportunity for the voter to express his will. Certainly, few things are more important than the organic law of the State, and the polls were open during the statutory hours. Yet more than four-fifths of the voters did not take interest enough in the matter to go to the polls.

The women suffragists are welcome to all the advantage they may gain, and any taunts and gibes they may direct against the male voters because of Tuesday’s election will be freely forgiven. Women would have striven in vain to do anything sillier, and had the administration of public affairs been in the control of babes in pinafores the ordering of this election on Tuesday would have been discreditable to their intelligence.

Where limited suffrage prevails as in Des Moines, Iowa, telegrams like this in the Chicago Post of March 30, 1914, are illuminating. It is entitled “Women Prove a Factor in Municipal Vote”:

Voters were out early in the municipal election here today and by noon it was freely predicted in official circles that the largest total of ballots since the commission form of government became effective will have been cast when the polls close.

The activity of women in connection with the proposition of municipal ownership of the waterworks system was a distinct feature of the voting. Under the law, women are permitted the ballot on bond questions. In several of the residence precincts women were in line when the polls opened at seven o’clock.

In our survey of women’s varied municipal activities, we have had occasion to mention many instances of their holding official positions of one kind or another, and no one can be found who would deny the special aptitudes of women for certain municipal posts. Doubtless there are some offices for which women are specially fitted, just as there are some offices for which men are specially fitted. But office-holding in general is still under dispute. Nevertheless, there are plenty of advocates who claim that the wider participation of women in government, through the occupancy of technical positions, is for the public good.

Ten years ago in the San Francisco Bulletin there appeared the following editorial on “Why Women Should Be in Municipal Offices”:

The days of chivalry are no more, and though that means that young women no longer occupy their days at something called a lattice, embroidering sashes to tie about the middles of queer young men in boiler plate, it is probable that even they do not regret the loss, though He is now nothing more than a member in good standing of the Retail Clerks’ Union.

Men have been willing, for a wonderfully long time, that women should work—provided it was for small pay and did not imply any reputation or a possible swelling up beyond the nice, faithful limits of their sphere. And this not because men are mean—but because they are slow. They have even permitted certain emoluments and rewards of merit to accrue to certain professions—like those of nursing sick or spoiled children of larger and smaller growth, and school ma’aming—for which they had neither much taste nor aptitude.

It has also been cheerfully and generously conceded that in the matter of minor housekeeping affairs women could be trusted to get along, and the abominable lack of spirit shown by the weak provisions of the civil service, that do not seem to take natural laws into consideration, has proven that these fair creatures can so far forget themselves in their heavenand-man-appointed task of ministering angel as to actually take and pass common and vulgar examinations, and to follow up their effrontery by accepting and holding certain places of public trust and drawing their pay regularly therefor. What wonder then that when the very old story of the inch and the ell is being enacted men of tender municipal conscience tremble and turn pale.

Men expect “graft” in their city halls; they do not look for the enforcement of ordinances in disfavor with the “gang”; they expect to have the streets swept when the winds come; they bear witness that a man is a good fellow when he remembers his friends and relatives by place and power; they are accustomed to suffer with much noise and pay their taxes in silence; above all they constantly make good their calling as the sex that recognizes logic with the naked eye. For when a notorious politician follows his luck with a notorious political rÉgime in the institutions of his state they actually hold him and his appointer responsible, and strangely enough seldom say anything about his sex.

Let but another individual—a woman individual—make the mistakes inherent in human nature—in an appointive position—and the most logical and the kindest man one knows will refer the whole thing finally and forever to—her sex.

If, however, it were possible that logic was not the inborn and native possession of every man and might have to be learned, a little tale from an English schoolroom can be warmly recommended, for out of the mouth of babes and little girls cometh occasional wisdom.

The little girl was given the following proposition as a “test of her reasoning powers”:

French people are excitable, so are Italians; so all foreigners are excitable. Is this true?

And this little illogically sexed miss replied: “It does not follow that every member of a family is mad because two are.”

There is perhaps nothing a man does with such good will and in which good will counts for so little as his struggle to be fair to womankind. He often succeeds admirably when they are not his own. Freedom of opportunity, the development of the individual common fair play, all, all find shipwreck against convention and instinct when it is the wife or the daughter.

Women have not been either kind or considerate in the matter. Quite an appreciable number have wholly ceased to cry aloud about their rights or wrongs and have quietly prepared themselves for holding higher positions of trust. In rashly independent cities like Chicago, or sexless ones like Boston, they are holding them freely. They are calmly, almost judicially, inspecting factories and collecting statistics of child labor. They are inspecting tenements, garbage, streets and schools. They are sitting unmoved and silent upon boards of all sorts, almost as if they were useful and comfortable there. They are getting parks placed and playgrounds graded and drinking cups sterilized and foods purified and milk renovated and babies fed—officially. The fact of this wider employment of women in the higher municipal duties marks a certain state of growth and an emergence from crudity.

When a municipality has arrived at the stage when it really wants the best return for its money it always has employed some of the pottering sex. It does not get sentimental and expect or want any perfection. It has entirely discarded the “ministering angel—thou” attitude. It assumes that under a true democracy a part of the people who pay its taxes may have a not unreasonable wish to take an active part in its administration, and when it can get such people—fairly faithful, often amply efficient and willing—it takes them where they stand.

For five years the city of Los Angeles has had a municipal nurse. It is only justice to her to say that she neither knew nor intended it. But when three women who knew the ardent need of such a person appeared before the supervisors and asked for one they forgot to be logical and used their common-sense.

There are trained women in San Francisco who are ready today to conduct school inspection after the manner in which it has been done in New York and with like wonderful results could they be sure—not of money reward—but of simple recognition and authority. For herein is the ultimate triumph of man. He has loved to have womankind work for so long that at last she has learned her abiding task, the famous “work that is never done”—to work for love.

The hour must come when women will occupy in proportion all these higher municipal posts. They will be found ready as soon as the men are found who are ready to give them their opportunity. It is not contended that they will be better or wiser, but that they will take a more intelligent and lasting interest and that there will always be certain things where children are concerned which they will know more and care more about than men.

The chief good will come finally in the chance for freedom and for growth under a democracy where a few mistakes are counted of less moment than lack of fair play.

The prediction that women would be found in all manner of offices has come true. The following is an incomplete list of offices which women have held or are now holding:^[54]

Even in the field of technical finance, which is supposed to be somewhat outside of woman’s interest (although in view of her household budgetary experience, we know not why) we find women doing efficient and telling work. To select a single example, we may take Mrs. Mathilde Coffin Ford, of New York City, whose labors are thus described in a recent issue of The American City by Frank Parker Stockbridge:

In the government of New York, the greatest city of the western world, women play a much more important part than is known to the public—a more important part than they have in the government of any other city in this country. Their part in and influence upon the government of New York is constantly increasing, and the results are good.

A woman is superintendent of schools in Chicago, but she hasn’t a word to say about spending the taxpayers’ money upon the schools. She has to take what is voted to her. A man is superintendent of schools in New York City, but here it is a woman who tells him how much money he can have to run his schools with. And she isn’t stingy, either, because she lets him have something over forty million dollars each and every year to compete with the motion pictures.

The woman who exercises such an amazing financial power is Mrs. Mathilde Coffin Ford, examining inspector for the Bureau of Municipal Investigation and Statistics. Forty millions a year for one woman to spend—and she receives a salary of $3,500 a year! Judge Gary, head of the Steel Trust, gets $100,000 a year for spending less, and certainly accomplishing less.

Of course, strictly and legally speaking, Mrs. Ford doesn’t have the whole say-so of those forty millions a year; but in reality that is just what she does. Not one dollar is spent by the Board of Estimate upon the school system unless Mrs. Ford has looked into the proposed expenditure, studied the possible educational result, reported favorably upon it, and drafted (for the Comptroller to sign) a resolution authorizing it. Thus, you see, Mrs. Ford knows what every woman knows, how to keep the purse strings firmly and to let the man think he is really doing the spending. Mrs. Ford is the housewife of the city’s educational system, a kind of magnified housewife, simply doing on a huge scale and with marvelously sharpened feminine powers what any janitor’s wife in any schoolhouse under Mrs. Ford’s control does for her household.

Take an instance. Mrs. Ford is now drafting the corporate stock budget for the educational system. The Superintendent of Schools has asked for forty-six new buildings in the five boroughs and named the sites that he wants. His requests have been referred to Mrs. Ford. All the requests of parents and neighborhood improvement clubs on the same subject have been referred to Mrs. Ford. In three months Mrs. Ford has found time to slip out of her office and go shopping on the matter of new schools. She has gone to every one of the proposed sites. She has studied the educational need of the given neighborhoods. Her judgment outweighing the Superintendent’s, she has, with her woman’s small hands, lifted some of the proposed buildings bodily out of the proposed sites and placed them elsewhere, where schools seemed to her to be more needed. In each case she framed up a report embodying her reasons, which the Comptroller solemnly signed without more ado, and which the Board of Estimate will act upon without much ado. Thus Mrs. Ford did about twelve million dollars’ worth of shopping.

In the fall Mrs. Ford spends a great deal more money. That is the time for drafting the tax budget, or maintenance budget. Something over thirty millions of dollars are spent annually in maintaining the schools at their given efficiency. Last fall the Department of Education asked for thirty-three millions, submitting a detailed report of how they intended to spend the money. Mrs. Ford had to go over every item. When she got through she had pared down the estimate to thirty millions, and that was after she had allowed for a more liberal expenditure in some items where she thought the policy of the department niggardly.

These two instances do not begin to show Mrs. Ford’s complete range of authority. She fixes compensation for all employees of the Department of Education, save those of the teachers. She keeps track of all the funds and accounts of the Department, recommends changes from time to time in the financial arrangements for spending the money voted. She follows the course of the legislation at Albany which affects the school system in the city. In short, she more than any other person is the public school system of New York City.

Back of all this power are years of experience in school work. Mrs. Ford has headed nearly every sort of school in the country, and was for years nominally Assistant Superintendent and really Superintendent of Schools of Detroit. She has delivered over four thousand lectures to teachers’ associations, telling them then, as now she tells New York, how to run a school system. Mrs. Ford knows how. It was no fluke that gave a woman such a strategic position in the city’s administration.

Whether or not they are concerned in holding offices themselves, women have taken an interest in the character of the officers charged with every kind of public function. Civil service reform is one of the earliest changes espoused by women. Their first paths beyond the home threshold led them into fields of relief, correction, and labor where their home training in thrift was rudely shocked at the extravagance and irresponsibility which they met among officials in public institutions and in city positions.

In 1896 women appeared before the annual meetings of the National Civil Service Reform League to make addresses. In that year Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell spoke on the “Relation of Women to the Movement for Reform in the Civil Service,” and her speech helped to stimulate the belief in men that the help of women was of importance, and to inspire women to a sense of their own usefulness in this direction. Soon after that women like Mrs. Oakley of the Federation of Clubs appeared at the sessions to report work of clubwomen and carry back to them from the National Civil Service Reform League some inspiration for further effort. It was not long before women as well as men began to urge greater interest in civil service reform at conferences of charities and corrections and similar assemblies. Women’s auxiliaries to civil service reform associations are now quite common. There are also committees on civil service reform connected with the Association of Collegiate AlumnÆ, patriotic societies, and kindred associations. The Women’s Municipal League of New York and the Women’s Auxiliary of the National Civil Service Reform League have a joint committee for the promotion of education along this line and for the continual study of the problem.

A definite impetus to join in the movement for civil service reform was given to club women in 1900 at their Biennial Convention in Milwaukee when the following plea for their activity in this direction was made:

How cowardly and shallow a cry is this one we raise from time to time—“Keep out of politics our school systems, our public institutions for the dependent and unfortunate citizens of our cities and states.” What does this mean? It means, keep these great moral responsibilities out of the hands of those elected to assume such responsibility.

Is this the attitude of a people free to choose those who are to serve them?

Even if you should deliberately plan to withdraw from politics the great interests of which we have spoken, responsibility for which is the training of the individual and the race; if you could wish to condemn our political life to dry rot, you cannot do it. The tendency is to put those things more and more under the jurisdiction of governments.

Let us change our cry. Let us say, “Purify and strengthen our political life that it may be the worthy custodian of our deepest interests.”

It was such a natural, inevitable step for the women who had taken such an interest in industrial and sanitary problems to see that the enforcement of the laws relating thereto must be in the hands of competent men and women. A Committee on Civil Service was added as one of the standing committees of the general federation and it was not long until each state, as well as some of the city federations, had its civil service committee.

While individual clubs have continued to report that this movement proceeded slowly owing to the insistence of many women that civil service work meant politics, an ever-increasing number of women, whether they believe in women entering politics themselves or not, have felt that they must agitate for proper responsibility on the part of those chosen as guardians of every interest the women have developed.

While insisting upon proper civil appointments, women have not been indifferent to the need for trained men and women for public service. The Women’s Auxiliary of the Civil Service Reform Association and the New York Bureau of Municipal Research have taken up the problem of a closer relation of the public educational system and public service with a view to the development of the training for public service in municipal schools and colleges.

Naturally such movements do not ignore the opportunities for women in the public service and the necessity of providing adequate training for them. Indeed the work of women in bureaus of municipal research in New York and elsewhere is an evidence of the desire on the part of women for training in public service and demonstrates woman’s ability to adapt herself to the requirements of that training. The New York Bureau has had nineteen women in the two and a half years of its existence and its last report (1914) tells of their assignments and the positions they now fill. As city positions are generally accorded first to men, their present offices are no final estimate of comparative efficiency. The “Budget and the Citizen” by Mary Sayles and “Helping School Children” by Elsa Denison are two of the noteworthy contributions of the New York Bureau. Finally, it is to a woman, Mrs. E. H. Harriman, that the Training School for Public Service connected with the Bureau owes its origin.

With woman’s interest awakened to every need of modern municipal life and her mind trained to do high and efficient public service, may we not look forward with firmer confidence to the day when Mayor Baker’s dream shall be fulfilled: