including members of the legislature. In Siam women enjoyed municipal suffrage; in India and Burmah there were cities where women property owners had the right to vote on municipal questions; in Russia, women landowners could vote for members of the village council; and in the Canton of Berne, Switzerland, real estate owning women had the local suffrage. It is quite possible that other places ought to be included in a complete list.

It is of course too early to appraise the influence of the world war and woman's part therein upon the suffrage movement. The first effect appears to have been a check upon the movement in Sweden. A government measure giving women the parliamentary franchise had passed the lower branch of parliament when the war came on and caused the measure to be laid aside. At the same time a bill was passed making women eligible to all offices for which they had the right to vote. In 1915 Denmark granted full suffrage to all citizens of good reputation and twenty-five years of age, who were not paupers, at the same time making women eligible to all offices. The same year Iceland gave complete suffrage to all women.

For some time before the war, Holland permitted women to vote in proceedings of the dike associations, if they were taxpayers or owned property adjoining the dike. In 1916 a constitutional amendment was passed authorizing parliament to extend complete suffrage to women and make them eligible for provincial councils, for parliament and for the council of state. The necessary legislation to make this grant of power effective has apparently not been enacted. The same year Norway made women eligible to the national council of state. But the most important gains in 1916 occurred in western Canada and seem largely due to the war. Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia granted full, provincial suffrage to women. In Alberta women were made eligible to all offices for which they might vote, but in Manitoba they are still ineligible for the municipal council. and parliament, although eligible for school boards. In 1917, Ontario extended the full provincial suffrage to women, but they are still ineligible to seats in the provincial legislature.

Before the election of 1917, the Dominion parliament conferred the parliamentary franchise on certain classes of women. The Military Voters Act (ch. 34) gives the right to vote to every person, whether male or female, who being a British subject, whether or not ordinarily resident in Canada and whether or not an Indian, has gone on active

service in the Canadian naval or military forces, or has while within Canada joined the British aviation or motor boat patrol service. The War Times Elections Act (ch. 39) gives the right to vote to every female who has the provincial qualification as required in the case of males and is the wife, widow, mother, sister or daughter of any person, male or female, who is serving or has served with the naval or military forces of Canada or Great Britain in the present war.

The greatest suffrage victory of all has come early in the present year (1918) and is directly traceable to the important part played by the women of the United Kingdom in the prosecution of the war. In February Parliament enacted a new suffrage law which extends the parliamentary franchise to about six million women. The age qualification for the newly enfranchised women is fixed at thirty years. Women of that age who come within any of the following classes are granted the right to vote for members of the house of commons, although without the right to sit therein themselves: (1) women who already enjoy municipal suffrage; (2) women who are wives of men having municipal suffrage; (3) women who are graduates of a university; (4) women who are engaged in Red Cross or similar work, or in nursing or other national service, either at home or abroad, and who but for the war would have been qualified to vote. This closes one of the longest and most dramatic chapters in the history of the equal suffrage movement.

Altogether at the present time there are eleven foreign countries or places in which women may vote in municipal or other local elections, and twenty-one countries or states-counting the United Kingdom as one-in which women may vote for members of the provincial, state or national legislative body; and in Sweden, Holland and France, it seems probable that the parliamentary franchise will be extended to women in the near future.

Northwestern University.

P. ORMAN RAY.

JUDICIAL DECISIONS ON PUBLIC LAW

ROBERT E. CUSHMAN

University of Illinois

Appropriations to Sectarian Schools-Constitutionality. Trost v. Manual Training School for Boys (Illinois, February 20, 1918, 118 N. E. 743). The plaintiffs in this case asked for an injunction to restrain the payment of county funds to certain Catholic institutions to which the county courts in accordance with the statutes have committed dependent children. Both Catholics and non-Catholics are sent to the schools; and while all the children are taught the Catholic catechism, only the Catholic children are required to attend the regular Catholic religious services. It was alleged that these appropriations were in violation of the clause of the state constitution forbidding the appropriation of public funds in the aid of sectarian institutions. The court decided that since the amount of money paid by the county to the schools in question for the support of each child was less than the actual cost of maintaining that child at a state institution the appropriations could not be said to be in aid of the sectarian school. The court seems to have been influenced in part by the fact that there were available no other suitable institutions to which these dependent children could be sent and that such schools could be erected and maintained by the county or state only at great expense. The case seems to be in conflict with the earlier Illinois case of County of Cook v. Industrial School for Girls (125 Ill. 540; 18 N. E. 183).

Compulsory Taking of Private Property for Use in Work on Public Roads. Galoway v. State (Tennessee, March 23, 1918, 202 S. W. 76). This case holds that persons who have wagons and teams may be compelled by law to allow their use by the county for work upon the roads for a specified number of days each year. Such compulsory use of property is justified upon the same principle as that which underlies the time-honored custom of compelling the citizen to give his labor directly for the same purpose. Laws which make service upon the roads compulsory have frequently required the citizens to provide

the tools with which to do that work. The law in question is a less drastic exercise of governmental authority than such a law. The long line of cases sustaining the compulsory service acts and culminating with the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Butler v. Perry (240 U. S. 328; 36 Sup. Ct. 258) are, therefore, authorities in support of the statute involved in this case. The property thus taken for use on the roads cannot be said to be taken by the taxing power, nor by the power of eminent domain, but by the police power of the state. That portion of the act, however, which compelled the owners of the teams so commandeered to feed them while they were being so used was held void as a taking of private property for public use without just compensation. The taking of the feed was distinguished from the taking of the horses on the ground that the latter taking was merely temporary and in the nature of a loan which would not work severe hardship, while the feed thus provided was entirely appropriated by the public authorities.

Congressional Districts Power of Legislature to Reapportion Frequently. People v. Voorhis (New York, February 15, 1918, 119 N. E. 106). In this case the New York court of appeals lays down the interesting rule that when the legislature of a state reapportions the congressional districts of that state after a decennial census it does not thereby exhaust its power or completely discharge its duty. It is under a continuing obligation to keep on redistricting the state as often as the shifting of population may make it necessary or advisable. The state of New York was redistricted in 1911. In 1916 a congressman was elected to represent the seventh district and he resigned in January, 1918. In June, 1917, the legislature redistricted the state, altering the boundaries of the seventh district in the process. The governor issued a call for a special election to fill the vacant seat. Should the election be held in the seventh district as constituted by the apportionment of 1911 or in the new seventh district created by the act of 1917? The court upheld the validity of the last apportionment and declared that the seventh district marked out by the statute of 1911 no longer existed. It was pointed out that when Congress in 1911 called upon the states to create new congressional districts based upon the census of 1910 it used the words "the representatives to the SixtyThird and each subsequent Congress shall be elected by districts composed of a contiguous and compact territory, and containing as nearly as practicable, an equal number of inhabitants." This shows clearly

that "Congress in its enactment took into consideration the fact that after a state had once been divided into 'congressional districts, by reason of shifting population, it might become necessary to redistrict it in order fully to comply with the intent and purpose of the act."

The position of the majority of the court was vigorously attacked in two dissenting opinions. It was pointed out that ever since 1842, when Congress first directed the creation of congressional districts based upon the federal census, state legislatures have assumed that such districts were to be changed only when a new census had been taken. This, it was urged, was the clear intention of Congress. To hold that congressional districts must be continuously reshaped to conform to the rapid shifting of population would make necessary the frequent enumeration of the population of the state in order to determine the amount and character of such shifting. It was not the purpose of Congress to lay upon the states any such obligation to take frequent censuses. It was further urged that even if such frequent reapportionments were legitimate they could be made to apply only to the regular elections held after their enactment. Otherwise a man might be elected to Congress only to find himself representing a "migratory" district, or perhaps a district which, by some act of redistribution, had ceased entirely to exist. Such a result is clearly contrary to the intention of Congress.

If the New York court of appeals has correctly interpreted the congressional act governing the decennial reapportionment of congressional districts it would seem highly important that that law be modified to prevent the enormous increase of gerrymandering which the rule in this case would make possible.

Criminal Law Criminal Syndicalism-Advocacy of Sabotage. State v. Moilen (Minnesota, April 19, 1918, 167 N. W. 345). This case involved the question of the constitutionality of the Minnesota statute of 1917 defining and punishing the crime of "criminal syndicalism." Criminal syndicalism was declared to be the doctrine "which advocates crime, sabotage (this word as used in this bill meaning the malicious damage or injury to the property of an employer by an employee), violence or other unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political ends." Teaching this doctrine by spoken or written words or attending, instigating or aiding meetings for the purpose of advocating it was made a felony with a maximum penalty of ten years imprisonment, five thousand dollars fine, or both.