comprising the latter district, the women's vote averaged 36 per cent of the men's, or 30 per cent of the total vote, while the averages for the east-side precincts were 62 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively. In individual precincts the latter group showed a women's vote as high as 84 per cent of the men's, while in the west-side group the highest percentage was only 44 per cent and the lowest was II per cent. Like differences are found in other wards. The precincts bordering on the stock yards in ward 30 average 39 per cent as many women as men voters, while further south and west, in the better residence section, the average of seven precincts is 66 per cent, with individual precincts ranging as high as 78 per cent.

According to the above figures, the readjustment of political power among the social groupings, so far as they may roughly be distinguished by outward economic conditions, seems plainly to have been toward a concentration of control in the intelligent middle-class element and a cutting-down of the power of the illiterate, poorer and uneducated groups. A rough division of the wards into three sections according to the economic status of the population will show the relative proportion of the voters in the different social classes.

DISTRIBUTION OF VOTERS IN CHICAGO IN ELECTION OF APRIL 6, 1915

As a matter of practical politics these figures carry little significance, for the alignment of voters in parties and in election districts, rather than the distribution according to social classes, determines the real allocation of political power. It is evident that the upper social groups have the preponderance of numbers, but whether they are so organized, so united in viewpoint and so distributed as to make their numbers count effectively is

a question that bears more pertinently in the matter of everyday politics. We shall give this some consideration under the following head.

C. The effects on local city government. In order to appreciate the untrustworthy rôle actual numbers may play it must be remembered that our present system of representation consists of two broad types-district representation and representation or election at large. Chicago is governed municipally by a common council of 70 aldermen-two from each of 35 wards and a chief executive or mayor. As part of Cook County, it is governed by a board of county commissioners, ten of whom are chosen by the city through election at large. Various minor officials are also elected in both city and county on a general ticket. In municipal matters the dominant authority is the council, its powers being broad and extensive and its functions numerous. In view of these powers and functions considerable weight attaches to the control of a majority in this body, or, to come more directly to our problem, to the control women actually exercise over its membership.

According to the figures quoted above, 50 per cent of the women's strength as a voting body is concentrated in one-third of the 35 city wards. This means that under any circumstances one-half of the women voters have a voice in electing only onethird of the city council. Not only that, but the 50 per cent which have a voice in the election of the other two-thirds of council members comprises the poorest, least intelligent and least Americanized portion of the population. Of course, differences existed in the voting strength of the wards prior to the adoption of woman's suffrage, but with the inauguration of the latter plan these disparities were increased, as may readily be observed from the following figures:

AVERAGE NUMBER OF VOTES CAST IN DIFFERENT ALDERMANIC ELECTION DISTRICTS: MAYORALTY ELECTION OF APRIL 6, 1915

From this table it appears that in one group of six wards

the average number of male votes cast in the mayoralty election was 16,694, and in another group of six wards the average was 6176, or in the ratio of 2.7 votes in the average ward of the first group to I vote in the average ward of the second group. The average numbers of female votes cast in the same groups were 10,648 and 2872, respectively, or in the ratio of 3.7 votes in the average ward of the first group to I vote in the average ward of the second group. With the combined vote, male and female, the ratio was 3.0 votes in the first group to I vote in the second group, showing a considerable increase over the ratio of 2.7 to 1 which would have prevailed under single manhood suffrage.

When the women who may reasonably be counted upon to express an intelligent, independent choice of candidates for public office are denied the voting power commensurate with their numbers, as is most evidently the case in the ward system of representation, women's influence as a whole toward better government is seriously curtailed and limited. To some extent this condition might be alleviated by a redistricting of the city. Proportional representation, in theory at least, would likewise overcome this objection and would afford each political group a weight in the selection of public officers strictly in accordance with its numerical voting strength. However, without questioning the validity of the theory of ward or district representation, the fact remains that under such a system much of the dynamic force in the woman's movement for better government is dissipated, and the matter of minority control is raised to a problem of serious proportions.

Concerning those officers elected for the city at large, conditions of a different sort prevail. In the twelve wards containing approximately 33 per cent of the population and 50 per cent of the voters, these representing the best elements in the community, 68 per cent of the votes cast were for the Republican candidate Thompson, giving him in round numbers 209, 000, or two-thirds enough to establish an absolute plurality for the city over Sweitzer, the Democratic candidate. The following figures on the distribution of party votes will give an index to the center of actual political control. The three groups are the same as those referred to in the table on page 115.

DISTRIBUTION OF REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC VOTES ACCORDING TO DISTRICTS IN THE MAYORALTY ELECTION OF APRIL 6, 1915

DISTRIBUTION OF REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC VOTES AS PERCENTAGES OF THE COMBINED VOTE IN EACH DISTRICT

The preponderance of sentiment toward Republicanism in the twelve wards of Group A, combined with the fact that these wards contain approximately fifty per cent of the active voters of the city, places in those districts, or in the social group therein, virtually the power of control over all officers chosen for the city at large. This, of course, rests upon the assumption that the voters of these districts act more or less in concert, or as a conscious, single, political group, striving toward common ends and accomplishments. An examination of former election returns would seem to justify this assumption. Republicanism, almost invariably in local elections, has derived 'its main strength from the Group A wards, or the so-called "upper middle-class" elements, while aligned against it have been the foreign elements of the river or Group C wards, preponderantly Democratic. With the entrance of women into politics an evident strengthening of the former or Republican group has taken place, while the alignment of forces along the above social lines has become even more pronounced. Fifty per cent of the total women's vote comes from the Group A wards. Of this fifty per cent, seventy-two per cent or approximately threequarters are Republican and one-quarter Democratic. With the normal scattering of votes throughout the rest of the city,

the Republican women of Group A are able to command an absolute majority of the total women's vote. As long, therefore, as these "upper middle-class" women are united into a socially and politically cohesive group, as in a large measure they are at present, they possess a preponderant voice, on the feminine side, in the selection of officers for the city at large. Considering the combined vote, both male and female, the effect of this distribution, where elections at large are concerned, is to strengthen the upper middle-class political power relatively to that of the lower economic classes and foreign elements. The center of political control thus tends to be shifted upward in the scale of social classes. This tendency holds both in theory and in practice so far as the present election is concerned. We shall not attempt to predict that the condition will persist or will hold for other localities. It is merely a statement of fact in regard to the Chicago situation.

III

There still remains one fact in this connection worthy of special attention, that is, the measure of woman's response to the newly-created ballot privilege. In the mayoralty election the women's vote was 36 per cent of the total cast. The Century for March, 1914, gives the following figures for California cities:

In the recall of Gill in Seattle in 1913, the women's vote averaged 32 per cent of the total. The figures giving Chicago's percentage show that the women there constituted a greater proportion of the electorate than in San Francisco and Seattle but a considerably smaller proportion than in either Los Angeles or Berkeley. Comparisons of this sort are very inadequate unless the actual number of eligible voters is known. In Chicago, (not including Morgan Park) the school census of 1914 showed 765,171 adult males, twenty-one years and over, and 717,942 adult females. Of these approximately 180,000 males were unnaturalized, leaving 585,171 eligible as