Woman Suffrage.

But by far the most interesting experiment yet attempted in any community under the Crown is about to be tried in New Zealand.

If the extension of the franchise in England was for one party a leap in the dark, the extension of the franchise to women for both parties in New Zealand is a purely problematical experiment. Few dare foreshadow the result of the election to be held next month. All that we know is that the electorate is now nearly doubled.

Will women be able to exercise their newly acquired privilege, or does the cradle indeed lie across the door of the polling booth?

Will the ladies with the long hair and gentle faces vote as well as those with the short hair and the hard faces?

Will the men be allowed to prolong the hardships of industrial strife, or will the new electors compel resort to a tribunal of arbitration?

Will the temptation to spend the weekly wages afforded by the glare of the public-house be any longer allowed to tempt the homecoming workmen?

Will the Bible continue, rigidly banished from the public elementary schools?

Will they pursue any policy with fixity of purpose, or is the saying a true one that between a woman's "Yes" and her "No" you may insert the point of a needle?

Lastly, when the married man can count on the votes of his wife and adult children in addition to his own, will the political influence of the single loafer, here to-day but gone to-morrow, without any permanent stake in the country, be of the value that it is now?

I have now given you a review of the rise of the Labour party in New Zealand, of the manner in which it has attained to power in Parliament, and of the legislative and administrative acts of a Government dominated by the votes of the working classes. I have shown reasons which have given power and influence to that party in New Zealand, while in New South Wales it has failed to secure a hold upon the majority in Parliament.

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The result has been a rapid development of State Socialism, a Socialism which has been inaugurated, not, as in bureaucratic Governments on the European continent, for the purposes of administration, but by the people themselves to satisfy their own wants.