"Mrs. Feasance"

When women first got themselves into politics, their cry was, "Watch us clean house." Now, when women politicians get into trouble, an inevitable echo comes back, "Let women clean house at home."

Fairminded persons who try to ignore such cries and echoes, last week pondered the case of Mrs. Florence E. S. Knapp, an ambitious, grey-haired matron whom New York elected as its first woman Secretary of State in 1924.

One of Mrs. Knapp's duties in office was to take a census. The people of New York were by no means all counted when Mrs. Knapp's term ended in 1926. Mrs. Knapp, not reelected, was functioning placidly last autumn as Dean of the College of Home Economics at Syracuse University when, abruptly, she was accused by an erstwhile subordinate of "misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance" as Secretary of State; of having misspent some $200,000 of a $1,250,000 state census fund; of giving sinecures to her relatives, of destroying official records, of doctoring expense accounts, of writing false endorsements on checks and otherwise acting in a manner which suggested either un- scrupulousness bordering on criminality or domineering, unmethodical inefficiency of a peculiarly feminine sort.

Governor Smith of New York ordered an investigation by a member of Mrs. Knapp's own party (Republican). Last fortnight the investigator reported that the charges against Mrs. Knapp were so substantial that she must be prosecuted. Prosecution was also recommended for Mrs. Knapp's accuser, a portly census expert named Dr. Walter Laidlaw, to make sure Mrs. Knapp had not been victimized and to discover why the accusations had been so long withheld.

Mrs. Knapp resigned as a home economist at Syracuse University "until such time as my good name is cleared before the world." While her trial pended, friends and foes of women-in-politics joined in the hope that her sex would not be allowed to alter judgment upon her; that "misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance" would be made to mean the same for a Mr., Miss or Mrs.