ABSTRACT
Women Ruling a City.—I have just retained from a trip on the Santa Fe Road, West. Syracuse, Kansas, sixteen miles from the Colorado line, was the Mecca of my pilgrimage, because here, April 4th, they elected a city council of women, and I was bent upon seeing the town that had made this innovation, and the women who were filling the council chairs, I wanted to ask the people how it came about and how it was working. The first of these ladies introduced to me was Mrs.E. B. Barbour, a fair-faced gentle-mannered woman, with an unmistakable air of business about her. I found this accounted for by the fact that she is a business woman. Her husband does a large and complicated business; the books are entirely in her charge. Mrs. H. D. Knott is a business woman, too. I expect much of Mrs. Knott in the management of their Suffrage Society, because of her experience in Iowa as president of the Eighth District Woman Suffrage Society. Mrs. Coggeshall says they were very sorry to lose Mrs. Knott from their ranks. She is chairman of the Syracuse Aldermanic Force. Mrs. M. M. Higgles is a quiet little woman, a careful and conscientious mother and housewife. She has a way of making up her mind for herself, and standing firmly by her convictions. She has a reputation among Syracuse male citizens for being a person of excellent judgment. Mrs. S. N. Coe is a woman of excellent ability, with enough conservatism to keep her enthusiasm in proper check. No one of these women is more anxious to do exactly right than is Mrs. Coe. She is sister to Mrs. Lemert, president of the Saxon Equal Suffrage Society, organised at Dodge City by Mrs. Saxon, and named for her. She has several such namesakes 47in Kansas. Mrs. L. M. Smarfwood, the fifth member, I did not see, although I made an effort to do so. She was confined to her home by sickness; but I am told that she is a woman of ability, and that she is by no means behind her sisters in any requisite for her position. My short acquaintance with these women convinced me that sitting in council chairs and wrestling with questions of city polity have had no effect to unsex them—whatever that may be—for these were as womanly women as I have ever seen. I looked in vain for masculine tendencies. There was not a hint of it in dress or manner. Meeting them on the (street or in the cars, you would never guess that they were city officials. From conversation with them I learned that they were exceedingly anxious to make their administration a just one—one that would advance the best interests of the city; and when they spoke of advancing the interests of their city they betrayed the fact that they had in mind the city's moral as well as temporal prosperity. It is said of them that they are doing better work than the body of men who composed the previous council. Their townspeople say they were elected because " somebody proposed it and everybody was pleased with the idea; " because " it was believed that they would make excellent officers; because "the temperance people thought women wouldn't be afraid to enforce the prohibitory law;" because " we wanted to advertise our town "—this last from a member of a real estate firm; because " women would take time to do the wort well and thoughtfully." Altogether I was pleased with my first sight of a woman council. This is the only one in the United States.—Salina Letter to Memphis Appeal.
