Lady Holder, the wife of Sir Frederick W. Holder, K. C. M. G., Speakerof the House of Representatives of Federated Australia, contributed thefollowing article to the N. Y. Independent, of June 9, 1904. Lady Holderhas taken a leading part in philanthropic work in South Australia. She says:
"The women of South Australia were placed in a position of politicalequality with men several years ago. Accordingly, everybody has becomeaccustomed to the arrangement, and it seems perfectly natural. It hasnot produced any marked effect on female character, or made anyparticular difference to domestic life. Women are more interested inpublic affairs than they used to be, and politicians deal more earnestlywith home and social questions, but no neglect of private duties on thataccount can be laid to the women's charge. We are well supplied withhigh-class newspapers, the same sources of information are open to womenas to men, and the questions that arise are not by any means beyond thescope of their intelligence. At election meetings there is commonly agood sprinkling of women voters in the audiences. It is said that their[Pg 2]presence tends to prevent disorderliness, and I have never heard of alady at any meeting being rudely treated.
"Voting, with us, is one of the simplest things in the world. When anelector's mind is made up, there is less difficulty in expressing itthrough the ballot-box than in matching a ribbon, and the one act is notconsidered more unfeminine than the other. Our freedom has not developeda class of political women, we have no "shrieking sisterhood," but weknow and use our power. We can do a great deal toward securing membersof good character in the Parliament and influencing their votes, and aregenerally content with the results of our enfranchisement.
"I have described the conditions in my own State thus fully because,though it is one of the smaller States in the Australian Commonwealth,in this matter it is further advanced than most of the others. Whenfederation came, adult suffrage was the law only in South Australia andWestern Australia; it has since been adopted in New South Wales andTasmania, but it has not yet been granted, so far as the StateLegislatures are concerned, in the other two. The Federal Parliament,however, had to make its own electoral laws, and to establish uniformitywas obliged to adopt the broadest existing basis, because theconstitution forbade the outrage and anomaly of disfranchising personsby whom some of its members had been elected. Accordingly, the women ofNew South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania were somewhatsuddenly placed in the same position of political equality, so far asthe Commonwealth[Pg 3] is concerned, as their South Australian and WestAustralian sisters. They were legally qualified to act in the Federalelections of last December, and as they had not been allowed a similarprivilege at elections for their legislatures, of course the eventproduced considerable sensation and wore an air of strangeness andnovelty. The newspapers gave special attention to the new voters, andteemed with exhortations as to the way they should go, and it wasamusing to observe how some candidates who had fought against woman'ssuffrage with all their might tried to show their supreme regard andesteem for the voters whose rights they had previously refused. By thetime polling day arrived,