What is this text about?
"The undersigned has just received the official returns of the total of crimes in the whole country, as ascertained by the census of 1890. These figures throw a most striking light on the practical working of woman suffrage, and show very strongly why the house of representatives and the governor of Wyoming this year so strongly approve of that institution. It is often said by visionary and unpractical people that the enfranchisement of women tends to every kind of bad morals. Woman-suffragists, on the contrary, say that the purest society is the one with the largest liberty for women.
The census returns show that Wyoming has a remarkably small ratio of criminals to the population. While the northeastern states, which are supposed to be most civilized, and with the least number of criminals, have just 1,600 prisoners to the million of people, Wyoming has only 1,200 to the million — one-fourth less. The states and territories from Nebraska to the Pacific average 2,200 prisoners to the million; but Wyoming scarcely more than half this. Idaho has 1,700 to the million; Colorado, 2,200; California, 2,800 — more than double; Montana, 3,300 — nearly three times as many. Nevada, with one-fourth less population than Wyoming, has 3,300 — two and three-fourths times as many; Arizona, with about the same population as Wyoming, has 4,200 — three and one-fourth times as many offenders as Wyoming.
These brief figures show most strikingly the progress that Wyoming has made as the effect of woman's participation in public affairs. When organized, the territory was the most barbarous and murderous on the continent.
Geographical comparison is equally striking. Wyoming is larger than Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and District of Columbia. While these communities had, in 1890, 23,000 prisoners, Wyoming had only 74. Wyoming is larger than Maine, Pennsylvania and Maryland together, yet, while these old, well-settled states had 7,000 criminals, all that great new region had but one hundredth part as many. Even little Delaware had nearly double the number of criminals that Wyoming had, and little Rhode Island, about one-ninetieth the size of Wyoming, had over seven times as many. Massachusetts had seventy times as many; New York, 1,400 times as many.
The returns also reveal a fact which is amazing. In all the prisons of every kind in Wyoming, not one woman was imprisoned for any offense whatever! This speaks volumes. The air of liberty breeds purity. After a quarter of a century of woman's freedom, not one woman criminal is found in that great state.
This being so, the figures above cited apply solely to the men of Wyoming, and the effect of woman suffrage on them, in so reducing the rate of crime, is something to which no words can do justice. In ten years, from 1880 to 1890, the rate of crime to population fell off more than half, though it is said to be increasing in the rest of the country. As the Wyoming house of representatives has declared — "under woman suffrage the jails of the state have become almost empty." Hamilton Willcox."
