“WOMAN suffrage has proved such a failure in the State of Washington that thousands of those who helped to adopt it four years ago would today gladly vote for a return to male suffrage if given the opportunity, according to Judge W. H. Snell of Tacoma, who is staying at the Beaconsfield, Brookline, with his wife and family.
“In an interview yesterday, Judge Snell said:
“’I favored woman suffrage in Washington and voted for it. But in common with thousands of others who looked at the question as an abstract proposition, and hoped for the best, I am so greatly disappointed at the way it has worked out that I would today welcome an opportunity to vote for its withdrawal; and I believe if it were resubmitted to the people of Washington, and every man and woman of voting age were compelled to vote upon it, woman suffrage would be defeated by an overwhelming majority.
“’Many of us were led to support woman suffrage in Washington by the familiar argument that it would tend to purify politics and make for better government. But, after four years of experience, we are forced to conclude that it has done neither. On the contrary, it has simply added to the numbers of those who can be used in the interest of corrupt politics, and has resulted in a hodge-podge of ill-digested, sentimental, socialistic legislation, which is a menace to the welfare of the State.
“’The suffragist theory is that women are as much entitled to the ballot as men, but however this may be considered in the abstract, I am now convinced that we should have done much better for the State of Washington if, instead of extending the franchise to women, we had adopted a more restrictive franchise for men.
“’It is unquestionably true that many men have the privilege of the franchise who are clearly unfit to exercise it. This, however, as we have learned to our cost in Washington, is no reason for extending the suffrage to women. When we gave women the vote we enfranchised the wife and daughter who were no more fit to cast the ballot than the unfit husband and father from whom the ballot should have been taken away. In other words, we simply added one wrong to another and called it a right.
“’In Washington we have found that the same motives which control men in their exercise of the franchise also control women. Women are hired to do political work at so much per day, just as men are hired, except that women work cheaper. Women are [actuated] in their use of the ballot by the same selfish motives as men, and they look forward to securing political ‘plums’ for themselves or relatives in return for their political influence, just as men do – and they get their reward, too.'”
— “Suffrage in the State of Washington,” Boston Post, March 31, 1915
