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Explanatory.
"WHAT is your W.C.T.U. doing?" is my most natural question to the dear women who welcome me on almost each new day to some new locality.
"Well, we — are — waiting" is the very frequent answer, quickly followed by the earnest inquiry: "What can be done?"
We only know what we have lived; and in the last five years I have witnessed a cheering march of public opinion along a road always open to our feet, but not mapped upon our usual plans of the campaign as clearly as I am convinced it ought to be.
The Right of Petition, its purpose and its power, will be treated of, in the pages that follow, with emphatic but not exclusive reference to the temperance ballot for woman.
We want that ballot because the liquor traffic is entrenched in law, and law grows out of the will of majorities, and majorities of women are against the liquor traffic. But as steam can be applied to locomotion only through an engine, and as electricity can be utilized only through a battery, so, in a Republic, we can condense the opinion of this majority of women into law only through the magical little paper which falls
But executes a freeman's will
As lightnings do the will of God."
Some of our sisters have feared lest attention to this branch of work might interfere with our holding Gospel meetings, circulating temperance literature, and training the children to right habits. But we invite comparison between states active in the petition battle for the temperance vote and those which have excluded this method of work, and claim that activity along this line would be an incalculable blessing to communities where, though the legalized dram-shop never closes its doors and politicians work steadily to advance its interests, our W.C.T. Unions are "waiting."
F. E. W.
Chicago, September, 1879.
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Home Protection.
What, Why, and Where it is.
HOME PROTECTION" is the general name given to a movement already endorsed by the W. C. T. Unions of eight states, the object of which is to secure for all women above the age of twenty-one years the ballot as one means for the protection of their homes from the devastation caused by the legalized traffic in strong drink.
In Illinois and Massachusetts the ballot on the single question of license is all that has been asked; but Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota ask for the ballot in general; while Ohio desires it "on all temperance questions." Maine and Rhode Island have both endorsed the Illinois phase of the movement, though the women of Maine (where prohibitory law is in full force) did this rather as a token of sympathy than with a view to active work. Several other states have signified their purpose to take up the new method ere long. It will be seen that, while the reason for seeking this added weapon in women's hands is in each case that it may be used against the rum power, in defense of Home, there is much latitude in the methods by which it is sought, as also in the extent to which the idea is carried out and in the progress which different states have made. None has as yet achieved its purpose; but Massachusetts secured a majority of one in the Senate last winter and Illinois lacked one of a majority in the House (two-thirds being essential to success). Both are making active preparations for the second campaign; and, with the same end in view, Ohio and other states are also doing preparatory work.
About Petitions.
Persons of small thoughtfulness are wont to say, when our petitions are not granted: "How much time and money have been lost." But they forget the reflex influence of such work; the entire change in public sentiment which a thorough canvass has often wrought in a locality and the indirect results achieved. If we mean that crowds shall gather, there must be something for them to rally around, and a petition to which their signatures are sought affords this nucleus. Our Home Protection campaign in Illinois has crystallized the thoughts of the people around the idea of a law against the liquor traffic. Sermons and speeches by the score have reached and convinced them by the thousand, and the louder voice of the press, coming with cogent and oft-repeated arguments, has changed the views of tens of thousands. The quiet house-to-house canvass of an army of women who could not speak in public has brought home to the fireside and the wife and mother, with little time to read, reasons enforced by practical illustrations taken from every-day life; and thus hosts of friends for woman's temperance ballot have been raised up where all were passive and inert before. Of the 832 towns that voted on the question of license while our campaign was in progress, 645 declar for no license — a much larger number than ever before; and experienced men say it was largely due to the Home Protection Petition work of the W. C. T. Unions. It has also reacted most favorably on all departments of our work, greatly extending the knowledge of our methods, multiplying our organizations, and bringing out an army of helpers of whom we had not known before.
Similar results would attend the circulation of a petition to the county or municipal authorities on any phase of our manifold cause. Let us remember that, in giving prominence to this branch of work, we are but transferring the crusade from the saloon to the sources whence the saloon derives its guaranties and safeguards. Surely, this does not change our work from sacred to secular! Surely, that is a short-sighted view which says: "It was womanly to plead with saloon-keepers not to sell; but it is unwomanly to plead with law-makers not to legalize the sale and to give us power to prevent it." No wonder the Ohio Crusaders, who have spent hours in the stifling atmosphere of the saloons, do not deem it indelicate to enter airy council-rooms and stately legislative halls; and they, like the W. C. T. U. of Illinois, have enlisted for a seven years' campaign, or one of fourteen years, if need be, not expecting immediate success, but going forth in the crusade spirit of dependence upon God and consecration to his service. "The letter killeth; but the spirit giveth life." Methods constantly change, but motives must have their spring in everlasting truth and righteousness.
Days of Prayer.
The "Home Protection Crusade" for woman's temperance ballot is the natural successor of the Temperance Crusade of 1873 — 4, and simply changes its objective point. If rightly understood and faithfully pursued, the new movement will do much toward fulfilling the sacred prophecies of its divine forerunner. Then let all our work be begun, continued, and ended in prayer. Let every document prepared or sent out, every address delivered, every name asked for the petition be accompanied by breathings of the soul to God for a right spirit in ourselves and a heavenly blessing on our endeavor. Let not the noon-hour of united prayer for our W. C. T. Unions and their work be overlooked, and let stated days of prayer be appointed by the officers of the State Union, at the opening of the campaign, and on the day when the committee present the petition to the Legislature. Evermore, as our growing hosts move forward, may our watchword be:
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"Home Protection."
Once more will the time-honored declaration be made to-day, by a thousand Fourth of July orators, that "the Americans are a free people." But I insist that we are governed by the most powerful king whose iron rule ever determined the policy, molded the institutions, or controlled the destinies of a great nation.
So pervasive is his influence that it penetrates to the most obscure and distant hamlet with the same readiness, and there wields the same potency as in his empire's capital; nay (with reverence be it said), he is like Deity in that his actual presence is coextensive with his vast domain. Our legislatures are his playthings, our congressmen his puppets, and our honored President the latest child of his adoption. We do not often call him by his name, this potentate of million hands and myriad voices; but. to my thinking, nothing is to day so vital to America as that we become better acquainted with our ruler. Let me then present to your thought his Majestic Highness KING MAJORITY, Sovereign Ruler of these United States.
Permit me now to introduce a different character, who comes to the court of King Majority as chief ambassador from the empire of his Satanic Majesty. Behold! I show you the skeleton at our patriotic banquet. It has a skull with straightened forehead and sickening smile; but bedecked with wreaths of vine, clusters of grape, and heads of golden grain — King Alcohol, present at court in radiant disguise. With a foaming beer-mug at his lips, he drinks the health of King Majority; and, placing at his feet a chest of gold labeled "Internal Revenue." he desireth conditions of peace.
Behold in these two figures the bewildering danger and the ineffable hope of the Republic! How can we rouse the stolid giant, King Majority? How light in those sleepy eyes the fires of a holy and relentless purpose? How nerve once more, with the resistless force that smote African slavery to death, the mighty sinews of the Republic's sleeping king?
How? Only by "sweet reasonableness"; only by ceaseless persuasion; only by noble examples: only by honest hard work based upon fervent and effectual prayer. Human heads and hearts are much alike. I remember that the great Temperance Crusade of 1874 found me with a beer keg in my cellar, a fatal haziness in my opinions, and a blighting indifference to the temperance reform upon my will. But how did its intense pathos melt my heart; how did its mighty logic tune the lax cords of opinion to concert pitch; how did its miracle of prayer bring thousands to their knees, crying: "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" For myself, I could never be the same after that. As woman, a patriot, a Christian, my heart is fixed in deathless enmity to all that can intoxicate. The same influences which so transformed one brain and heart are steadily at work to-day in a thousand quiet ways.
The sober second thought of the Woman's Temperance Crusade was organization. The voice of God called to them from the lips of his prophet: "Make a chain, for the land is full of bloody crimes and the city is full of violence." And so in every town and village we are forming these chains of light and of loving helpfulness, which we call "Women's Christian Temperance Unions." We have already twenty-three states organized, with thousands of local auxiliaries. Every day brings fresh accessions of women, translated out of the passive and into the active voice on this great question of the protection of their homes. Of the fifty-four thousand papers published in this country eight thousand have temperance facts and figures regularly provided by members of our societies. Temperance literature is being circulated; Our Union, the official organ of the Women's National Temperance Society, has a large subscription list; Sabbath-schools are adopting our plans of temperance instruction; and hundreds of juvenile societies are inscribing on their banners: "Tremble, King Alcohol! We shall grow up." Friendly inns and temperance reading-rooms are multiplying; Gospel meetings conducted by women are reaching the drinking class in hundreds of communities; the Red and Blue Ribbon Movements have attained magnificent proportions; and all this many-sided work is fast concentrating its influence to place the ballot in the hand of woman, and thus capture for the greatest of reforms old King Majority. Magnificent is the spectacle of these new forces now rallying to the fray. Side by side with the 500,000 men whose united energies are expended in making and selling strong drink, we are working day by day. While they brew beer we are brewing! public sentiment; while they distill whisky we are distilling facts; while they rectify brandy we are rectifying political constituencies; and ere long their fuming tide of intoxicating liquor shall be met and driven back by the overwhelming flood of enlightened sentiment and divinely aroused energy.
"To be sure, King Majority gave prohibition to Maine; but prohibition doesn't prohibit," interrupts Sir Sapient, whose remark furnishes a striking illustration of the power of the human mind to resist knowledge. Just take the spyglass of observation, and behold from Kittery to Calais the gleaming refutation of your error.
Less than thirty years ago they had four hundred open hotel bars and ten miles of saloons. To-day Dr. Hamlin, of Constantinople, tells us that, coming home, after forty years' absence, he finds his
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native state thoroughly renovated from the liquor traffic. Gen. Neal Dow testifies that the law has absolutely driven the sale of strong drink out of all rural districts; and in the larger towns, instead of the free, open sale of former years, it is crowded into secret places, kept by the lowest class of foreigners. Ex-Govs. Dingley and Perham and Senator Blaine and Representative Frye declare that it is as well enforced as the law against stealing; and even sensational journalists have not told us that thieves flourish in the Pine Tree State. Mr. Reuter, of Boston, president of the National Brewers' Convention, held in St. Louis four weeks ago, says: "Formerly Maine produced nearly ten thousand barrels of beer annually; but this has fallen to seven barrels, in consequence of the local enforcement of prohibitory law." Surely, this gentleman should be considered as good authority on this subject as a convict is of the strength of his prison-bars!But you say "Maine is different from any other state." Why so? Are not its citizens of like passions with other men? Turn your glass upon a panorama of Maine as it was in former days. See yonder stalwart workers in the harvest-field paying vigorous addresses to the little brown jug; observe its ubiquitous presence at the logging bee, the "raising," the wedding, and the funeral; see it pass from lip to lip around the fireside circle; observe the Gospel minister refreshing himself from the demijohn of his parishioner and host; and be assured that within the memory of men now living these were every-day events. I have this testimony from the most honored residents of Maine, whose recitals involved the words "all of which I saw and part of which I was." But, as gallant Neal Dow hath it, "Maine was sown knee-deep with temperance literature before we reaped the harvest of prohibition." Let us note the evolution of this seed-planting. Land-owners found that two-thirds of their taxes resulted from the liquor traffic (largely in cost of prosecuting criminals and taking care of lunatics and paupers); so they concluded that legalizing saloons for the sake of the revenue was penny wisdom and pound foolishness. Businessmen discovered that the liquor "traffic is a pirate on the high seas of trade, that the more the grog-shop is patronized the fewer customers there are for flour and fuel, boots, shoes, and clothes; and so, in self-defense, they declared for prohibition. Church people found that fifteen times as much money went to the dram-shop as to the church, and that the teachings of the one more than offset those of the other with the young men of the state; so they perceived they could not conscientiously ally themselves with the liquor traffic by their votes. Those interested in education learned that enough money was swallowed in drinks that deteriorate the brain, to furnish a schoolhouse for every fifty boys and girls, and to set over them teachers of the highest culture; and they saw it was unreasonable to defend the liquor traffic. In short, the majority came to believe that, between the upper and nether mill-stones of starving out saloons, on the one hand, and voting them out, on the other, they could be pounded to death; and they have so pounded them. The question of selling as a beverage the drinks which we know by centuries of demonstration will so craze men that they will commit every crime and show the subtlest cruelty to those they, love the best, is not today in Maine an open question with either party, any more than trial by jury or imprisonment for theft. True, the people had a thirty years' war before the declaration of this blessed peace; but what are thirty-years when crowned at last by the surrender of King Alcohol to King Majority?
"Ah! but," pursues our doubting friend, "Maine is a peculiar state, in this: it has few foreigners, with their traditions of whisky and of beer."
I grant you, there we are at disadvantage. But go with me to the Cunard wharves of Boston and to Castle Garden of New York, and, as the long procession of emigrants steps across the gangway, you will find three times as many men as women. How can we offset their vote for free liquor, on Sundays and all days? Surely, the answer to this question is not far to seek. Strengthen the sinews of old King Majority, by counting in the home vote to offset that of Hamburg and of Cork, and let American customs survive by utilizing (at the point where by the correlation of governmental forces "opinion" passes into "law") the opinion of those gentle "natives" who are the necessary and tender guardians of the home, of tempted manhood and untaught little children.
Hands which have just put aside the beer-mug, the decanter, and the greasy pack of cards are casting ballots which undermine our Sabbaths, license social crimes that shall be nameless, and open 250,000 dram-shops in the shadow of the church and public school. I solemnly call upon my countrymen to release those other hands, familiar with the pages of the Book of God, busied with sacred duties of the home and gracious deeds of charity, that they may drop in those whiter ballots, which, as God lives, alone can save the state!
Kind friends, I am not theorizing. I speak that I do know and testify what I have seen. Out on the Illinois prairies we have resolved to expend on voters the work at first bestowed upon saloon-keepers. We have transferred the scene of our crusade from the dram-shop to the council-room of the municipal authorities, whence the dram-shop derives its guaranties and safeguards. Nay, more. The bitter argument of defeat led us to trace the tawny, seething, foaming tide of beer and whisky to its source; and there we found it surging forth from the stately capitol of Illinois, with its proud dome and flag of stripes and stars. So we have made that capitol the center of
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our operations; and last winter, as one among the many branches of our work, we gathered up 175,000 names of Illinois's best men and women (80,000 being the names of voters), who asked the legislature for a law giving women the ballot on the temperance question. In prosecuting our canvass for these names, we sent copies of our "Home Protection Petition" to every minister, editor, and postmaster in the state; also to all leading temperance men and women, and to every society and corporation from which we had anything to hope.In this way our great state was permeated, and in most of its towns the petition was brought before the people. The religious press was a unit in our favor. The reform clubs of the state, with ribbons blue and red, helped us with their usual heartiness and efficiency. And what shall be thought of the advance in public sentiment, when (as was often done) all the churches join on Sabbath night in a "Union Home Protection Meeting," and ministers of all denominations (Presbyterians included) conduct the opening exercises, after which a woman presents the religious duty of women to seek and men to supply the temperance ballot; and, to crown all, conservative young ladies go up and down the aisles earnestly asking for signatures, and the audience unite in singing
Ye soldiers of the Cross;
Lift high His royal banner,
It must not suffer loss."
Friends, it means something for women of the churches to take this radical position. America has developed no movement more significant for good since the first dawning of the day we celebrate.
The State of Indiana stands with us; only there the temperance women have worked out the problem of deliverance further than we, and asked the ballot on all questions whatsoever. They do the same in Minnesota and in Iowa; while at the East the W. C. T. U. of grand old Maine endorses the temperance vote, and Rhode Island sends to Illinois resolutions of approval, while Massachusetts, under Mary A. Livermore, has declared for Home Protection and is preparing for the fall campaign; and within a few days Ohio, the Crusade State, which is the mother of us all, has fallen into line. The most conservative states are Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York; but in each of these there are many brave women, who but bide their time for this same declaration, and the whole twenty-three states already joined in the Woman's National Christian Temperance Union will ere long clasp hands in the only work which can ever fulfill the glorious prophecy of the Crusade. History tells us that on the morning of December 23d, 1873, when in Hillsboro', Ohio, the pentecostal power fell on the "praying band" which first went forth, the leading men of that rum-cursed town went out from the church where their wives and mothers had assembled, saying: "We can only leave this business with the women and the Lord." History has repeated itself this winter in our Illinois crusade. Men have placed money in our hands to carry on the Home Protection work, saying: "The women of America must solve this problem. Our business relations, our financial interests, our political affiliations and ambitions have tied our hands; but we will set yours free, that you may rid us of this awful curse."
Yet a few men and women, densely ignorant about this movement, have been heard to say: "Who knows that women would vote right" I confess that nothing has more deeply grieved me than this question from the lips of Christian people. Have distillers, brewers, and saloon-keepers, then, more confidence in woman's sense and goodness than she has herself? They have a very practical method of exhibiting their faith. They declare war to the knife and the knife to the hilt against the Home Protection Movement. By secret circulars, by lobbyists and attorneys, by the ridicule of their newspaper organs, and threats of personal violence to such women of their families as sign our petition, they display their confidence in womankind.
The only town in Illinois which sent up a delegation; citizens openly to oppose our petition was Belleville, with its heavy liquor interest and ten thousand German to three thousand American inhabitants; and among our 204 legislators there were no other dozen men whose annoyance of the Home Protection Committee was so persistent and so pettv as that of the senator who openly declared he was there to defend the vested interests of his Peoria constituents, who in 1878 produced eight million dollars' worth (?) of ardent spirits. Nay, verily, woman's vote is the way out of our misery and shame, "our enemies themselves being judges"; and none see this so clearly as the liquor dealers, whose alligator eye is their pocket-book, and the politicians, whose Achilles heel is their ambition. The women of the Crusade must come once more to judgment — not, as aforetime, with trembling lip and tearful eye; but reaching devout hands to grasp the weapon of power and crying with reverent voice: "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!"
But, after all, "seeing" is a large part of "believing" with this square-headed Yankee nation; so let us seek the testimony of experience.
In Kansas the law provides that the signatures of women shall be requisite to a petition asking for a dram-shop before that boon shall be conferred upon any given community. This arrangement wrought such mischief with the liquor dealers that they secured an amendment exempting large towns from such bondage. But in small towns and villages it has greatly interfered with the traffic, and has so educated public sentiment that prohibition can — with impunity! — form the theme of a governor's in ...
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(text missing) ... a law hardly less stringent than that of Maine.In Des Moines, Iowa, a few weeks since, as a test of popular opinion, the women voted on the license question; twelve declaring in favor of saloons and eight hundred against them. In Newton, Iowa, at an election ordered by the council, 172 men voted for license to 319 against — not two to one against it; while the women's vote stood one in favor to 394 against licensing saloons. In Kirkville, Mo., ten women favored the liquor traffic, twenty declined to declare themselves, and five hundred wanted "no license." In our Illinois campaign, which resulted in 95,000 names of women who expressed their wish to vote against saloons, not one woman in ten declined to affix her name to our petition.
The attitude of the Catholic Church was friendly to our petition, many priests urging their people to sign. Irish women, as a rule, gave us their names, and saloon-keepers' wives often secretly did so. Scandinavians were generally enthusiastic for the petition. Germans opposed us; but the reply of one of them indicates the chivalric nature which will come to our aid when our invincible argument against beer shall be brought in contact with German brain and German conscience. He said: "If it is not the pledge, I will sign it. I cannot give up my beer; but I want to help the ladies." To be sure, German saloon-keepers were universally and bitterly antagonistic, and had much to say about "women keeping inside their proper sphere."
But the convictions which supply me with unalterable courage and unflagging enthusiasm in the Home Protection work are not based upon any proof I have yet given. No argument is impregnable unless founded on the nature of things.
The deepest instincts and the dearest interests of those who have the power to enact a law must be enlisted for its enforcement before it will achieve success. For instance, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is going to be enforced by the ballots of colored men who once were slaves, just so long as those men retain their reason and their color. By parity of reasoning, if you can enlist in favor of a local option or prohibition law the dearest interests of a class in the community which in all the ages of wine and beer and brandy drinking has not developed (as a class) the appetite for them nor formed the habit of their use, you will have something trustworthy on which to base your law. We temperance people have looked over at the rum power very much as the soldiers of Israel did at Goliath of Gath. We have said: "He has upon his side two of the most deeply-rooted instincts of human nature — in the dealer the appetite for gain, and in the drinker the appetite for stimulants — and we have nothing adequate to match against this frightful pair."
God has provided in Nature an antidote to every poison, and in the kingdom of his grace a compensation for every loss, so in human society he has ordained against King. Alcohol, That worst foe of the social state, an enemy beneath whose blows he is to bite the dust. Take the instinct of self-protection (and there is none more deeply seated): What will be its action in woman when the question comes up of licensing the sale of a stimulant which nerves with dangerous strength the arm already so much stronger than her own, and which at the same time so crazes the brain God meant to guide that manly arm that it strikes down the wife a man loves and the little children for whom when sober he would die? Dependent for the support of herself and little ones and for the maintenance of her home, upon the strength which alcohol masters and the skill it renders futile, will the wife and mother cast her vote to open or to close the rum-shop door over against that home?
Then there is a second instinct, so much higher and more sacred that I would not speak of it too near the first. It is as deep, but how high it reaches up toward Heaven — the instinct of a mother's love, a wife's devotion, a sister's faithfulness, a daughter's loyalty! Friends, this love of women's hearts was given for purposes of wider blessing to poor humanity than some of us have dreamed. Before this century shall end the rays of love which shine out from woman's "heart shall no longer be, as now, divergent so far as the liquor traffic is concerned; but through that magic lens, that powerful sunglass which we term the ballot, they shall all converge their power, and burn and blaze on the saloon, till it shrivels up and in lurid vapors curls away like mist under the hot gaze of sunshine. Ere long our brothers, hedged about by temptations, even as we are by safeguards, shall thus match force with force; shall set over against the dealer's avarice our timid instinct of self-protection, and match the drinker's love of liquor by our love of him. When this is done you will have doomed the rum power in America, even as your doomed the slave power when your gave the ballot to the slave.
"But women should content themselves with educating public sentiment," says one. Nay, we can shorten the process; for we have the sentiment all educated and stored away, ready for use in brain and heart. Only give us the opportunity to turn it to account where in the least time it can achieve the most I Let the great guns of influence, now pointing into vacancy, be swung to the level of benignant use and pointed on election day straight into the faces of the foe! "No: but she should train her son to vote aright," suggests another. But if she could go along with him. and thus make one vote two, should we then have a superfluous majority in a struggle intense as this one is to be? And then how unequal is her com- ...
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(text missing) ... yonder saloon. See them gathered around their fiery or their foamy cups, according to the predominance in their veins of Celtic or of Teuton blood. What are they talking of, those sovereign citizens? The times have changed. It is no longer tariff or no tariff, resumption of specie payments, or even the behavior of our Southern brethren that occupies their thought. No. Home questions have come elbowing their way to the front. The child in the midst is also in the market-place, and they are bidding for him there, the politicians of the saloon. So skillfully will they make out the slate, so vigorously turn the crank of the machine, that, in spite of churches and temperance societies combined, the measures dear to them will triumph and measures dear to the fond mother heart will fail. Give her, at least, a fair chance to offset by her ballot the machinations which imperil her son."But women cannot fight," you say, "and for every ballot cast we must tally with a bayonet." Pray tell us when the law was promulgated that we must analyze the vote at an election, and throw out the ballots of all men aged and decrepit, halt and blind? Do not let the colossal example of Judge David Davis so fill our field of vision that we cannot perceive brain, and not bulk, to be the rational basis of citizenship. Avoirdupois counts greatly among the Zulus; but is a consideration far less weighty with the Americans than it was before" the Geneva Arbitration. I venture the prediction that this Republic will prove herself the greatest fighter of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; but her bullets will be molded into printers' type, her Gatling guns will be the pulpit and the platform, her war will be a war of words, and underneath the white storm of men's and women's ballots her enemies — state rights, the saloon, and the commune — shall find their only shroud.
Of the right of woman to the ballot I shall say nothing. All persons of intelligence, whose prejudices have not become indurated beyond the power of logic's sledge-hammer to "break them, have been convinced already. For the rest there is no cure save one — the death cure — which comes or soon or late and will open more eyes than it closes. Of the Republic's right to woman's ballot I might say much. Well did two leaders of public thought set forth that right when Joseph Cook declared that "woman's vote would be to the vices? in our great cities what the lightning is to the oak"; and when Richard S. Storrs said: "If women want the suffrage they will be sure to have it, and I don't know but when it comes it will turn out to be the precious amethyst that drives drunkenness out of politics?"
"But women do not care to vote." This is the "last ditch" of the conservatives. The evolution of temperance sentiment among argument; yet I confess there are many who an not yet perceive their duty. But Jack's beanstalk furnishes only a tame illustration of the growth of women in this direction in the years since the Crusade. Of this swift growth I have already given abundant proof. It is, in my judgment, the most solid basis of gratitude on this national anniversary.
During past years the brave women who pioneered the equal suffrage movement, and whose perceptions of justice were keen as a Damascus blade, took for their rallying cry: "Taxation without representation is tyranny." But the average woman, who has nothing to be taxed, declines to go forth to battle on that issue. Since the Crusade, plain, practical temperance people have begun appealing to this same average woman, saying, "With your vote we can close the saloons that tempt your boys to ruin"; and behold! they have transfixed with the arrow of conviction that mother's heart, and she is ready for the fray. Not rights, but duties; not her need alone, but that of her children and her country; not the "woman," but the "human" question is stirring women's hearts and breaking down their prejudice to-day. For they begin to perceive the divine fact that civilization, in proportion as it becomes Christianized, will make increasing demands upon creation's gentler half; that the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are voted up or voted down upon election day; and that a military exigency requires the army of the Prince of Peace to call out its reserves.
The experience which opened the eyes of one cultured conservative in Illinois is here in point.
Mrs. Pellucid was my companion at the Capitol, where, with other ladies, we spent several weeks in the endeavor to secure legislative support for our Home Protection measures. One of the members, when earnestly appealed to, replied, with a rueful grimace: "Ladies, when I tell you the leading towns in the district I represent, you will see that I cannot do as you wish," and he rattled off such names as "Frankfort, Hamburg, and Bremen," wished us "the success that our earnestness merited," and bowed himself out.
"Why — what — does — he — mean?" inquired my lovely Conservative, in astonishment.
A committee clerk stood by, who answered, briskly: "Why, ladies, Mr. Teutonius represents a district in which German voters are in the majority; therefore, he cannot support your bill."
"Why, I thought a lawmaker was to represent his own judgment and conscience," murmured the sweet-voiced lady.
"His judgment, yes; for that tells him on which side the majority of votes in his district is located. His conscience, no; for that would often cost him his chances for a political future," answers the well-instructed youth.
" O-o-oh!" softly ejaculated Mrs. Pellucid, in the key of E flat, minor scale.
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By this time Mr. Politicus entered; in response to our invitation, of course — he never would have come on his own motion. After a brief conversation, he pledged himself to vote for our bill and to make a speech in our favor. Nevertheless, if you should glance over the list we are carefully preserving and industriously circulating in Illinois, of men who voted against us, you would find his name. But he is an honest fellow in his way, and we owe it to a motion made by him that women were, for the first time in history, allowed to speak before the legislature of Illinois. He explained his desertion of the temperance cause on this wise: "I tell you, ladies, I've got to go back on you. I'm leader of my party in the House, and they've cracked the party whip mighty lively around my ears. The long and short of it is, I've got to represent the men that voted me in."
Poor Mrs. Pellucid! How appealing was her voice, as she replied: "But I am sure your better nature tells you to represent us." Mr. Politicus brought his great fist down on the table with a stalwart thump, and said: "Course it does, Madam: but, Lord bless you women, you can't stand by a fellow that stands by you, for you hain't got any votes." Just here a young lady of the group piped up: "Oh! but we would persuade our friends to vote for you." "Beg pardon, Miss; but you couldn't do nothin' of the kind," said he. "Don't you s'pose I know the lay o' the land in my deestrict?" The young lady now grasped the other horn of the dilemma, saying, desperately: "But we will get the temperance men in your district to vote against you if you desert us in this manner." His rejoinder was a deplorable revelation to our simple-minded company: "Never a bit on't, Miss. The temperance men are an easy-going lot, and will vote the party ticket anyhow. Old dog Tray's ever faithful! We've ignored them for years; but they come up smilin' and vote the Republican ticket all the same. You'll see!" "But won't you stand by us for God and home and native land!" pleaded Mrs. Pellucid, with a sweetness that would have captured any man not already caught in the snares of a gainsaying constituency. The worthy politician thumped the table again, and closed the interview by saying: "You women are altogether too good to live in this world. If you could only vote, you'd have this legislature solid. But, since you can't, I'm bound to stand by such a conscience as I've got, and it tells me to stick to the fellows that voted me in Good-morning!" And he got speedily out of the range of those clear, sad eves. Mr. Readyright (an ex-senator) came in. With all the vehemence of his Irish nature he anathematized the "weak-kneed temperance men." "Sure as you're living, Politicus told you the truth," said he. "The temperance men are the foot-ball of parties. There's none so poor to do 'em reverence. Where are the plucky young fellows that were here when we gave Illinois her present (text missing)-tion law?" (By the way, that law bears the name of this valiant senator, who is, by the same token a Democrat.) "Where are they? Out in the cold, to be sure. Did the temperance folks remember their services and send 'em back? Not a bit of it. But the whisky men didn't forget the grudge they owed 'em, and they're on the shelf to-day — every last man of 'em." "I tell you," and the wise old gentleman gesticulated wildly in his wrath, "until you women have the power to say who shall make the laws and who enforce 'em, and to reward by re-election them that are faithful to your cause and punish by defeat them that go back upon it, you may hang your bonnets on a very high nail, for you'll not need 'em to attend the funeral of the liquor traffic!" "Why," exclaimed one of the ladies, confusedly, "you don't mean to say that the temperance ballot is not enough, and that we must follow in the footsteps of Susan B. — ?" The sturdy old gentleman walked to the door, and fired this Parthian arrow back at us: "Susan could teach any one of ye your a-b-abs. This winter's defeat'll be a paying investment to ye all, if ye learn that a politician is now and ever will be the drawn image, pocket edition, safety-valve, and speakin'-trumpet of the folks that voted him in."
The ladies drew a long breath. I begin to see men as trees walking," slowly murmured sweet Sister Pellucid.
"But we must bide the Lord's time," warningly uttered an old lady, who had just arrived. To her the brisk committee clerk ventured this answer: "But Senator Readyright says you'll find the Lord's time will come just about twenty-four hours after the women get their eyes open!"
A temperance member of the House is the last caller whom I will report. He spake in this wise: "Ladies, I pretend to no superior saintship. I am like other men, only I come from a district that would behead me if I did not stand by you. I have pocket full of letters, received to-day from party leaders at home, assuring me I run no risk." At the close of three weeks of such a school as this, one of our radicals asked Mrs. Pellucid, chief of conservatives, this pointed question: "Are you still for the Home Protection vote alone, or for the ballot on all questions?" She replied, in thrilling tones and most explicit words: "Any woman who could have shared our bitter experience here without desiring to vote on every officer, from constable to President, would be either a knave or a fool."
This lady reasoned that, since we are solemnly bound to he wise as serpents, we must harness self-interest to our on-moving chariot. The great majority of men who are in office desire to be re elected. By fan means, if they can; but to be re-elected anyhow. Only in one way can they bring this to pass by securing on their side old King Majority. If we furnish them with a constituency committed to the proposition "The saloon must go," then go it will, and on the double quick. Let the city council know that women
12
have the ballot, and will not vote for them if they license saloons, and they will soon come out for prohibition. Let the sheriff, marshal, and constable know that their tenure of office depends on their success in executing the law thus secured, and their faithfulness will leave nothing to be desired. Let the shuffling justice and the truckling judge know that a severe interpretation of the law will brighten their chances of promotion, and you will behold rigors of penalty which Neal Dow himself would wince to see.There is also great force in the consideration that, if women, not themselves eligible to office, had the power to elect or to defeat men (who will alone be eligible for a long while yet), the precise check might by this arrangement be supplied which would keep politics from forming with the worst elements of society that unholy alliance which is today the grief of Christians and the despair of patriots. Belonging to no party ourselves, we might be able to lift the Sabbath, the temperance movement, and kindred moral questions out of the mire of merely partisan politics into which they have fallen. It is, at least, worth trying. Into the seething caldron, where the witch's broth is bubbling, let us cast this one ingredient more. In speaking thus I am aware that I transcend the present purpose of my constituency, and represent myself rather than "the folks that voted me in!"
Our temperance women in the West are learning that, while the primary meetings are the most easily influenced, they are the most influential political bodies in America. Ere long the W. C. T. Us. will attend these, beginning in the smaller and more reputable communities. We are confident that nothing would be so effective in securing the attendance of the respectable voter as the presence at the primaries of "his sisters and his cousins and his aunts." To be "in at the birth" of measures vital to the well-being of society seems to us, in the light of last winter's experience, a more useful investment of our influence than to be "in at the death." At Springfield we found the enemy entrenched, while in the primaries his soldiers are not yet even recruited. We intend also to open in each locality books of record; and, by thorough canvass, to secure an informal registration of all men and women — the former as to how they will and the latter as to how they would (mournful potential mood!) vote on the question of permitting saloons. Every such effort helps to obliterate party lines; or, more correctly, to mass the moral elements by which alone society coheres, against the disintegrating forces, which of themselves would drive us into chaos and old night.
New England must lead. Let not the West outstrip you in this glorious race. I appeal to the women of the East. Already New Hampshire and Massachusetts have placed in your hands the educational vote, which has a direct bearing on the temperance question, since by its use the mothers of this land can place on the school committees those who will make the scientific reasons for total abstinence a regular study of the children. I beg you, by its use, to testify your fitness and desire for the more powerful weapon it foretells. It comes to you as the gift of a few earnest, persistent women, who steadily asked your legislators to bestow it, even as they will the larger gift, if you as diligently seek it. Your undertaking will not be so gigantic as ours in Illinois, for with us 34 in the senate and 102 in the house must first agree to a constitutional amendment, and then the concurrence of two-thirds of our voters must be secured. Another contrast further illustrates the favorable conditions here Negro suffrage at the South was forced upon wide areas occupied by a voting population bitterly hostile to the innovation. Here woman's vote must first be granted by free consent of a majority of the representatives chosen directly by those who are already citizens; and by operating over the small area of a single state at a time it would arouse no violent upheaval of the opposition. Besides, the large excess of women here makes this the fitting battleground of a foregone victory. Women of New England! among all the divisions of our great White Ribbon Army you occupy the strategetic position. Truly, your valiant daughter, Illinois, earlier flung down the gauge of the new battle; but your blood is in our veins, your courage nerves our hearts, your practical foresight determines our methods of work. I come from the prairies, where we are marshaling forces for a fresh attack, and solemnly adjure you to lead us in this fight for God and home and native land. Still let dear old New England take her natural place in the forefront of the battle; and from an enemy more hateful than King George let the descendants of our foremothers deliver Concord and Lexington, and wield once more in Boston, with its eight miles of grog-shops, the sword of Bunker Hill! To chronicle the deeds by which your devotion shall add fresh luster to names renowned and hallowed, the Muse of History prepares her tablet and poises her impartial pen.
Friends, there is always a way out for humanity. Evermore in earth's affairs God works by means. To-day he hurls back upon us our complaining cry: "How long? O Lord! how long?" Even as he answered faint-hearted Israel, so he replies to us: What can I do for this people that I have. not done! "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward."
There's a fount about to stream,
There's a warmth about to glow,
There's a flower about to blow.
There's a midnight blackness
Changing into gray;
Men of thoughts, of votes, of action,
Clear the way!
Aid it, hopes of honest men;
Aid it, for the hour is ripe,
And our earnest must not slacken into play.
Men of thoughts, of votes, of action,
Clear the way!"
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Plans for Petition Work.
HOME PROTECTION PETITION TO THE NATIONAL OR STATE LEGISLATURE.
This will include the following methods:
1. A committee to be appointed by the State W. C. T. U. and called the "Home Protection Committee." (As a rule, the president should be its chairman.) The petition is to be drafted by this committee, acting under legal advice, and every detail relating to its circulation and presentation controlled by them.
2. A special committee, to be chosen also by the State Union, whose duty it is to secure a separate Home Protection Fund (by private subscription) to pay for documents, printing, postage, and amanuenses bills, also a clerk, who will send out all documents and receive and classify all letters and signatures. This committee will report through the press all funds received and to the treasurer of the State Union — with satisfactory vouchers — all disbursements and receipts. [N.B. — We found it easier to raise money for this work than for any other ever undertaken by our Unions.]
3. Petitions and documents (this Manual furnishes a sufficient variety) containing facts and arguments for Local Option and Home Protection to be sent out from the central office to every editor in the state, with a printed letter, carefully prepared by the committee, urging him to publish the petition and extracts from the documents and to give the movement his personal endorsement. As the campaign progresses, notes, incidents, news, etc. to be sent, on printed slips, to every editor and leading newspaper correspondent. [Send 30 cents to Geo. P. Rowell, New York, for list of all the editors in any state.] The leading journalists to be personally visited by influential delegations of men and women and their support requested. This "press work" must be carefully assigned to capable women in all leading towns of the state.
4. The petition and documents to be sent to each minister of every church, to the president of every temperance organization and of every society in the state, and to each postmaster, separate forms of printed letters being prepared for each leading class. The endorsement by published resolutions of all religious and philanthropic bodies is to be sought; and to this end the best men and women are to be specifically delegated to address ministers' meetings and societies in every locality, also conferences, synods, and conventions of county, district, and state. The names of all these persons can be readily obtained in large cities from directories or at the publishing houses of their respective organs, and for the smaller towns by calling at the city headquarters of the various organizations, as indicated in the directories. Tens of thousands of petitions will be required. [For forms of all sorts, general and local and on various subjects, see following pages.] The back of each copy may be utilized to print the most pithy arguments and best endorsements.
5. Conventions in every congressional district, and, if possible, in every county: as many first-class speakers in the field as the people will support; special sermons (for which in the "Letter to Ministers" earnest and respectful request has been made); Union meetings on Sabbath evenings; parlor meetings for the more conservative in towns and cities.
6. Delegations to visit Catholic bishops and priests, urging their co-operation. Translations of best arguments into German, and addresses to German audiences, based on the text: "Come, let us reason together." No harsh words ever to be spoken of any class. It is easy to tear down; more than easy to scold; but we are building up and using the "sweet reasonableness" demanded by Christ's Gospel.
7. Each town and village to be districted, and women to go from house to house, store to store, and office to office. This enlists most brains, hearts and hands, and, hence, this is the right arm of the service. Nothing will compensate for neglect here. All other agencies are means to the success of this end. Let the women go with prayer, as they went to the Crusade; and their visits, multiplied by tens of thousands, will work a mighty revolution. The "Home Protection" documents, copies of "Our Union," "Miss Colman's Leaflets," arid "The Juvenile Temperance Banner," and other temperance literature, must be furnished, to be distributed according to their discretion.
8. Vice-presidents of congressional districts are the ablest helpers in this work when their abilities, health, and home cares permit them to work. They must be chosen carefully, with all these considerations in view. District conventions are to be held by them, documents of all sorts sent out local unions through their hands, and the canvass superintended by them.
9. There must be but one "Headquarters," one person to whose address all orders for petitions and documents and all the signatures obtained are sent. State precise date when all petitions must be returned, with signatures, to headquarters, and not change that date. These signatures must be at once and gratefully acknowledged by printed postal. Addresses of all persons who gather up signatures or specially interest themselves in the work must be kept in the Home Protection Directory at headquarters, and will be invaluable for present reference and in future work. The autograph signatures to the petition may be pasted and ironed smooth on white cloth, half a yard wide, bound on one side with blue and on the other with red braid, wound on a roller, and tied with white ribbon. If practicable, classify by towns, and keep a tabulated book account of them.
10. At the Capital. — Before the legislature assembles a committee of gentlemen and ladies, residents of the capital, will be required to prepare for the coming of Home Protection Committee. They will provide for their entertainment, notify the press, stating their mission, and arrange a meeting for them in
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the Hall of the House of Representatives; another in a large church; and a third, especially for ladies, in the afternoon; and, if possible, one for children. It will be well to improve the occasion by a district convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Unions (see Plan), in which case the committee will remain three days, instead of two. The petition and the bill it calls for should be presented on the first day of the session, a special effort being made to have it the very first bill presented. This cannot be too strongly emphasized. Let the same bill be presented simultaneously in the Senate and House, and let the great petition be presented by the ladies, within a week or two after the opening of the session. To this end the petition campaign ought to begin in the autumn and last about eight weeks. The processes of legislation are so slow that every day's delay after the session opens drives a nail in the coffin which is being industriously prepared for our measures by the liquor interest.The resident senator and a resident member of the House will introduce resolutions asking for your committee the use of the respective halls of the capitol for your public meeting. Wednesday is the best evening, since members are more likely to be absent the first and last of the week. Front seats should be reserved for members of the legislature and ushers (chosen by chief janitor of capitol from his assistants to whom the faces of the members are familiar) should be stationed at the doors, to conduct them to their seats.
The meeting in Representatives' Hall (which may be festooned with the petition) will be carefully prepared for by the local committee, printed invitations being sent to every member of the Senate and House; also to the State Executive and Judiciary and to the press. Music, religious and patriotic, should be furnished by orchestra and chorus; the Bible read (Psalm cxlvi, "the Crusade Psalm," and Darts of Joel ii are excellent selections, also Ps. x); prayer offered; and, after brief addresses (timed by the chairman) and an expression of the opinion of the audience on the temperance ballot, taken by a rising vote, the audience dismissed with the benediction.
Among songs suited to the occasion, or to any Home Protection meeting, may be mentioned: "America," "Lift up thy voice with Singing" (Gospel Songs No. 2). "The World is Moving On," "Song of the Ribbons," "Save that Tempted Boy," "The Home that Used to Be," "Home Protection Hymn," "Carry Me Back to My Mother's Home." "Hear the Call, O Gird your Armor On," etc.
"Home, Sweet Home," sung by chorus or played by band while the audience disperses, is marvelously effective and leaves an impression most helpful to the cause.
No attempt should be made to gain a hearing which would not be accorded to men; but the ladies will, of course, be present when the senator and representative they have chosen present their petition in the two houses, and, if invited, will he ready to give to the people's representatives reasons for the work they have wrought.
If practicable, have your meetings at the capitol stenographically reported, published in some well-known state paper, and copies sent out as a "campaign document." Make special efforts to enlist the mothers, wives, and daughters of the legislators in your movement. The majority of them have enough good sense, liberality, and earnestness of spirit to sympathize with you, and can enforce your arguments in the most influential quarters, by the persuasive influence of life's tenderest affections.
Through leading members of Senate and House secure the appointment of a "Committee on Temperance," to whom your petitions may be referred, rather than to the Judiciary Committee, which is usually the burial-place of progressive temperance measures.
Having presented your petition, with due ceremonies, to Senate and House (separately), follow it to each committee to which it is consigned, making to each your argument and plea. But let the appropriate senator and member receive a duplicate of each petition from any locality, with a certified copy of the autograph signatures which have been sent to your committee, and let these be handed in from day to day in the legislature, that the subject may be kept in mind.
The bill which your petition calls for must be presented by a committee or a member; must be placed on file; may be referred to various committees; and must be read three times before it can be passed. All this takes several weeks, at best; and, if not rapidly advanced from point to point by the persistence of its friends, the bill never reaches third reading, and members avoid what they most dread and we most desire — "going on record." This "record" should be a matter of the utmost publicity, being printed in all the papers and sent to each local temperance society, for reference. By working up public sentiment and attending primary meetings, women must do their utmost to defeat those men who defeat our Home Protection measures.
Among the hundreds of bills before the legislature, yours is likely to be forgotten by the good and delayed or killed by the bad; so it is important "that you appoint a wise and cautious sub-committee to remain, and by careful canvass of members ascertain your strength and by thoughtful counsel learn to seize the moments of opportunity to advance the bill. The members of your sub-committee, on "advancing the bill" at the capitol, should never appear as hangers-on in corridor or gallery: but should have a room, easy of access, in the building itself, and should by visiting card request the presence of "servants of the people," who will always respond with the courtesy to which American mothers have educated their sons. But great tact and considerateness should be used in asking only brief interviews with those who have so many to meet. Three to five ladies is the best number to be in attendance at a time.
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Forms of Documents for a Home Protection Campaign.
Rev. — :
Dear Sir: — To you, as a minister of Christ, we venture, as members of the Church, to make a special appeal. You have noticed the noble stand of the religious press for "Home Protection." This encourages us to hope that you will make an address in its favor, and present the enclosed petition to your largest Sabbath audience, in the manner described in the circular, and send all names so obtained to be pasted on the roll.
We want at least 100,000 names, and, with the co-operation of good and influential people, we can get them. Also please have the petition published in your local paper, with the request prefixed to it: "Please cut out and circulate this in audiences (according to the plan described), and privately also, and send all autographs, stating where they were obtained and when, to — — , — , — , by — date." Through your influence may not other ministers be induced also to present the petition to their audiences?
We also count on the W. C. T. U., on the Reform Club and all temperance societies to aid us, that, by all working together, ours may be the pioneer state to secure the temperance ballot in woman's hand as a means of Home Protection. Your influence with members of the legislature is, in conclusion, earnestly asked. May God bless this endeavor made in his name. Sincerely yours,
— — ,
Pres't State W. C. T. U.
To — :
Dear Sir: — Will you not secure for us signatures to the enclosed Petition of all eligible names in your establishment, and return to me before the — day of — ?
It will greatly help our cause.
You will be glad to know that the Petition is meeting with a high degree of favor from pulpit, press, and people. We will forward more Petitions, if desired.
Sincerely yours,
-------------.
To — :
Dear Sir: — In view of the well-known fact that the misery which your efforts help to mitigate is largely caused by strong drink, I appeal to you to give the enclosed Petition a careful circulation in your establishment, returning it to me not later than the — day of — , hearted by names of the managers and officers of the institution.
---------------
Pres't State W. C. T. U.
We will gladly send more Petitions, if desired.
Dear Sir: — Will you not see that the enclosed Petitions are placed in the hands of some lady or gentleman who will at once secure a house-to-house visitation canvass for names?
The press, pulpit, and people are warmly endorsing it, as indicating the shortest road to a better protection of homes and tempted loved ones.
I appeal to you as a patriot and enlightened citizen to give us this aid. I will gladly send more Petitions, if desired.
Sincerely yours,
— — .
Please secure the passage by your society of the following form of Resolution, and return at once to — , at — . Prompt attention to this request may save the day for our Petition.
Resolved, That the — of — [name of State], most respectfully pray the Honorable Legislature to pass promptly and speedily the bill now pending in the House known as the — Bill, in conjunction with the Home Protection Petition, and providing for the right of all residents, men and women, to petition [or to vote, as the case may be] for or against the granting of license to keep dram-shops.
Resolved, Also, that we likewise, in conjunction with the Home Protection Petition, pray for the submission to a vote of the people of a resolution to so change the constitution as to grant to women the right to vote on temperance questions.
Please return immediately to
at — — , — .
Signed by President and Secretary — (name of the Temperance or other society adopting the Resolution).
Give number of membership of society.
Plan for Local Campaign "To Carry No-License."
1. Complain all the preceding year of the utter failure of no-license and do nothing whatever to secure its enforcement, though you voted (or worked) for it at the last election.
2. Tell (in private) what astonishing "dead letter" tokens you see every time you go down-town; but never give your evidence, influence, or money to help convict the law breakers.
3. Never speak in pulpit or prayer-meeting about the law. Treat it as a Gentile, that has no place in the courts of the Lord.
4. Let it be generally understood that the best people in town are utterly discouraged and disgusted with Prohibition and ready to return to license, "since it helps to keep up the sidewalks, at least."
5. Aroused by the straightforward arguments of an earnest temperance worker, imported by somebody three days before election, come out brighter than ever — perhaps because of this temporary eclipse — and declare that it's a shame to let the town go by default. Induce the temperance sojourner to remain. Whisper softly whenever convenient that there are to be meetings held; but don't mention the fact out loud. Light up the church dimly; gather in a couple of hundred excellent people who need no repentance;
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furnish no music, save as Deacon Fugue "raises" "Old Hundred" higher than the church-gable; and expect the dead community to be galvanized into ghastly and imbecile motion at the eleventh hour.Forget that the rum party held secret caucuses while you were asleep; selected their candidates while you were scolding at the law; and canvassed for votes while you were busy getting reconverted! In brief, though you are harmless as a dove, don't on any account allow yourself to be wise as a serpent.
1. The W. C. T. U. co-operated with other temperance societies and with the churches in raising a fund by private subscription and public pledges.
2. This was placed in the hands of an Executive Committee or "Home Protection Alliance," and by them invested in securing speakers and circulating prohibition documents. [See List, with prices.]
These were given out at all public meetings, left in all stores and offices, hung up on lamp-posts, in street-cars, and everywhere, and carried to all homes by judicious sub-committees. Tracts in their own language are sure to gain the attention of Germans and Scandinavians. A column of carefully-selected facts and arguments was supplied every week in the year for the weekly press by women specially appointed, who used their scissors to excellent purpose on the teeming columns of the temperance papers furnished them by the Executive Committee.
When, as has been computed, a million words of temperance logic can be had for the price of a drink, and the cost of a yoke of oxen invested in such words will so revolutionize public sentiment that local option is carried in a whole county, where is the sense or grace in temperance people who complain that "they don't know what to do" and are "only waiting" for work?
3. Temperance meetings were regularly held throughout the year, "to work up public sentiment." The first six months they were held every fortnight; the next three, every week; the last two, several times a week; and the last month, every night. These meetings were handsomely placarded through the town and thoroughly advertised in press and pulpit. The managers of a theatrical company could hardly have taken more pains to invite people to come than did this temperance committee. During the last month a band of music played every night in front of the hall where the best interests of the community were to be discussed by earnest, practical men and women, devoted to the cause. Often speakers were met at the depot by the White-ribbon Brigade and the Reform Club. All speakers were instructed to "use no bitter epithets nor harsh personal allusions. Facts, logic, persuasion, embellished by narratives, brightened by wit — these were their sufficient stock in trade. Ministers of the Gospel bore a prominent part in this work, speaking from their pulpits on Sunday and steadily lending their influence to the work. Children from the public schools recited selections, witty and sad; young men declaimed; young women read and sang. There was a place for everybody, and grandly were those places filled.
4. Two or three weeks beforehand, at a large public meeting, the People's Ticket was announced, having been agreed upon by the Executive Committee, appointed at the beginning of the campaign and consisting of a member from each church and two from each temperance society. The men chosen as municipal officers were remarkable for something besides their devotion to the temperance cause. They stood well in the community; had thoroughly practical and liberal views concerning town affairs; were thorough financiers; and hard-headed men of business could pick no flaw in their integrity. They were not the sort of nominees whom you can pick up the evening before to "fill a gap," which will be wider the day after election than at any previous date. They were solid citizens, who would never have come forward thus save on the call of of a committee which had shown skill equal to its earnestness, and common sense no whit behind the clear grit it had exhibited.
The candidates made brief addresses, and, from mayor to constable, pledged themselves to a faithful execution of the laws. Now came the seething of the caldron, which had been heated long.
The town, already districted by the committees on circulating documents, was thoroughly canvassed once more — this time with a petition similar to that which follows:
"We, the undersigned, voters and women of legal age within the corporate limits of the town of — , do respectfully and earnestly petition all persons who will support the following
to affix their signatures to this paper: women's names being a promise to use their influence in favor of the ticket, and men's names being a promise to vote the said ticket on election day."
Thus every signature was not only a personal agreement, but had also the force of a request to all other residents of the community. This canvass was conducted chiefly by women carefully chosen for their discretion and their gentleness. The results of it were published in the local papers, figures being given, but not names.
5. Election day arrived. The ladies had secured permission to decorate the engine-house with wreaths, flowers, and patriotic mottoes. They furnished a toothsome free lunch next door, to which everybody was
17
invited, and where the temperance pledge was offered and the People's Ticket and a buttonhole bouquet furnished to all who would accept them. Hundreds of voters were fed and won, and scores of homes were brightened by new resolves that day; and toward night the church-bells rang out the tidings of a victory that had been earned, a success that had been organized, as all true successes are.6. But the Executive Committee did not stop here. The headquarters were still kept open, and a secretary employed who kept a bright lookout for opportunities to strengthen the hands of the authorities in that enforcement of law which alone makes it respected and enduring.
To the W. C. T. Us. which are "waiting for work" this plan is recommended for study. Its most important suggestions may be universally applied and its campaign lasts all the year round.
Other Methods of Influencing Local Legislation.
In a quiet Eastern town there is a noble lady who is shut out from our general work by deafness. But her earnestness and success are a reproach to most of us who hear so much we do not heed. Determined to do her best, this lady induced her brother, an influential business man, to invite two or three gentlemen to his home on Saturday night, to devise means of carrying no-license at the next election. They talked the matter over, and, as must always be the case, became more deeply interested as they did so. The next Saturday night each brought another friend to the discussion, and so it went on, until all the best men had agreed upon a plan and a ticket, which was triumphantly elected.
What one woman accomplished by indirection another may and many surely will by wise concerted action.
In many towns the municipal authorities could, if they would, adopt a special ordinance, by which women might vote on the question of license. A petition asking for this should be thoroughly circulated, every person of legal age being given the opportunity to sign, and should be presented to the council by a strong delegation, after having first been read and expounded at a great public meeting of the people. The following may serve as a form of petition:
To the Mayor and Council of — :
We, the undersigned, men and women of — , believe that women should be granted a voice in deciding whether we are to have dram-shops among the institutions of our village; and we earnestly desire that provision shall be made, by special ordinance, for a vote on the question of legalizing the liquor traffic, and that in such vote women be invited to share.
NAMES OF MEN OVER 21. NAMES OF WOMEN OVER 21.
[with slight changes, this will apply to counties and states under local-option laws.]
If they will not grant this, do not say, in dolorous accents, "It was of no use, and we'll not try again"; but faithfully use your two best weapons, the printed and the spoken word, seasoned with prayer. Throng the primaries where city fathers are again chosen; work up the sentiment; toil on the election day; and place men in their stead who will grant What your petition asked. Or, if not successful the first year, try again the second. With the motto "The W. C. T. U. never surrenders," success is sure.
A modification of this form of work is explained in the following, adopted by several district conventions in Illinois:
"Resolved, That we recommend to local unions in towns where the question of license is pending a thorough canvass, with the following petition: ‘We, the undersigned, voters and women of legal age within the corporate limits of the town of — , do respectfully and earnestly petition our municipal authorities to order a popular vote, to be participated in by all men and women over 21 years of age, within the corporate limits, on the question of license or no license; and we voters whose names are here affixed pledge ourselves to cast our ballots at the next regular election of municipal officers for such men only as will pledge themselves faithfully to execute the will of the people, manifested by the aforesaid local-option vote by men and women, when said vote decides in favor of no license.&rsqio;"
This petition might serve as an educator in localities where the vote could not or would not be rendered of legal, rather than of merely moral significance.
Good work can be done with the following, especially in cities:
To the Honorable Mayor and Board of Aldermen:
We, the undersigned, respectfully and earnestly request the adoption of an ordinance requiring saloon-keepers to take the paint off their window-panes and the screens from before their doors; also that the front door shall be their only means of entrance or of exit, and that no chairs or tables shall be allowed within their walls; and, further, that this ordinance shall be faithfully executed.
To the foregoing might be added the banishing of all games and billiard-tables from the saloons, also the prohibiting of the sale of liquor to minors and closing on the Sabbath. If thought best, some one specification might be made the subject of petition.
Norwich, Conn., a city of 17,000 inhabitants, is a valuable object-lesson for local-option states. Through the heroic work of Rev. Hugh Montgomery and the statesmanlike utterances of Rev. Dr. L. T. Chamberlain, the people have been aroused as never before, and have voted no-license. Take the following figures:
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Last autumn, when this vote was taken, they had two hundred open dram-shops. They have now (August, 1879) had ten months of prohibition. Under license their jail average was twenty-nine; under no-license it is ten. The board of these prisoners costs the taxpayers $2.25 per week. Hence, they have saved $45 per week; or, as compared with the same time last year, $2,340. Each prosecution of a prisoner to jail costs $15, and when appealed to a superior court, $50; making the average at least $20.
Thus at least $6,000 have been saved on prosecutions. The selectmen say that $400 have been saved in cost of "outside poor"; or a total of $5,000. The city court has received from illicit dealers, in fines, costs, and forfeited bonds, $1,500, instead of a loss of $4,000, as in former years; and the clerk of the superior court states that the costs of prosecutions have been fully covered by forfeited bonds, etc.
But the mayor and other municipal officers, police force, etc. of Norwich are all friends of license. How, then, could enforcement be secured? Here is the invaluable lesson of Norwich. "They won their first battle at the polls; but their second and even more significant victory was wrung from the executive officers, who had taken their oath as servants of the people to enforce the people's will. They were made to feel the lash of public opinion, and had they not heeded its lessons they would have been openly prosecuted. Temperance people take notice! No longer feel yourselves called upon to do amateur work in securing convictions. The city officials enforce other laws; require them to enforce the laws against license. But for the sheriff, the constable, the city attorney, and the mayor, your smallest rights and daily safety would be ceaselessly imperiled. Make the constituted authorities do their duty in the temperance law for the protection of your homes, as in all others."
But how did they do this? They had the city charter read and expounded in public meetings and showed the people — what they actually did not know — the positive and solemn obligation of the authorities to enforce the law. They sent deputations of leading citizens to the mayor, and only refrained from petitioning because they found it unnecessary; but, had not their will been heeded, they would have considered petitioning the next step, and prosecution the next, not of law-breaking saloonkeepers only, but also of officers shamefully guilty of malfeasance.
To the Hon. Mayor and Board of Aldermen:
We, the undersigned, men and women of — , respectfully and earnestly remind you of your oath of office (here quote the oath), and call upon you to invoke the following (here quote the ordinance).
Have this presented and circulated in a large public meeting, then carried from house to house, and presented by a deputation of leading men and women. Always have women sign. Never ignore your own sex. It shows a feeble sense of your personal dignity and a most inadequate comprehension of woman's power and place in civilized communities.
The following petition will serve to educate public sentiment in the most conservative localities:
We, the undersigned, men and women of — , do hereby petition for the protection of the homes of our city, by the enactment of a municipal ordinance that no place for the sale of intoxicating drinks shall be licensed in any ward in our city, without the consent of a majority of the voters and of the women over eighteen years of age in that ward; such consent to be expressed by their signatures to a petition for such license. [Or this form may be used: "Without the consent expressed by ballot of a majority of men and women over twenty-one years of age in each ward, or in each town, as the ease may be."]
The following petition has been used with excellent results at Stafford Springs, Ct.:
To the Voters of — :
We, your sisters, wives, and mothers, defenseless, except as you shall protect us, respectfully appeal to you, our husbands, brothers, and legal defenders, to deliver our homes from the ravages of rum, by voting no license.
"One vote in the caucus is worth ten at the polls," says Henry H. Faxon, of Massachusetts, and to his statement all observant men agree. When temperance questions are involved — and this is especially the case when municipal officers are to be nominated, or delegates sent to conventions where legislative officers are to be chosen — women who care for temperance ought to be out in force, because their presence will secure a much larger attendance of reputable voters, and because in this way and by their influence they can do much to determine the selection of candidates. When it seems best, a petition should be circulated pledging those who sign (both men and women) to attend the primary meeting, and involving a request to others to go and do likewise.
Books should be opened at the headquarters of the W. C. T. U. for a registration of voters as to how they will, and of women as to how they would, if they could, vote on the question of license, and also for what candidates. These intentions to be learned by house-to-house canvass, conducted by the W. C. T. U.
PLAN TO SECURE VOTES OF WOMEN ON SCHOOL QUESTIONS.
Five states have granted the ballot to women on the school question. This can be utilized for temperance purposes, and our unions in those states should do their utmost to call out the full strength of this vote, for many reasons, of which these are chief:
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1. If, from lack of information, women fail to use the privilege already conferred, men who are friends of temperance will say, with conviction and regret, what its foes will joyfully re-echo, "Evidently, women do not want the ballot"; and thus our work for the temperance vote will be greatly impeded.
2. If women will use their new power, they can help good men to elect such school ollicers as will put Miss Julia Colman's "Temperance Manual," Dr. Richardson's "Temperance Lesson Book," and Dr. Story on "Alcohol," into the different grades of our schools; and thus the scientific basis of total abstinence will be as thoroughly taught to the little men and women as reading and arithmetic. This steady and widespread influence would be as superior to our present spasmodic and incomplete methods of educating public sentiment as the falling of dew is more effectual for the growth of our gardens than the spray of a hose-fountain. We must first set these facts forth in the local press; visit the ministers' meetings, and get them to bring the subject before their congregations; hold public meetings, carefully prepared for and adequately addressed; and, last and always most important, institute a house-to-house canvass of the town, having it districted and streets duly assigned to women who will circulate a
We, women of — , believing that those who are dear to us should be forewarned and forearmed by regular scientific teaching against the habit of using intoxicating liquors, do hereby pledge ourselves to register our names as voters and to cast our ballots only for such school officers as are favorable to making instruction in the principles of total abstinence a branch of study in our schools: and we call upon all good and true men to aid us in this endeavor.
Let this petition be presented by a committee appointed for the purpose to the town meeting or primary at which the officers are chosen, and let women be there to speak on its behalf and to influence the selection of officers in the interest of temperance. A similar petition might with great propriety be circulated for the signatures of men. In either case it can be readily adapted to the different circumstances of the various states.
In several states these officers have jurisdiction over the liquor traffic outside of corporate limits, and much might be gained by a petition like the following:
To the County Supervisors or Commissioners of County:
Gentlemen: — We, the undersigned, men and women of — County, respectfully and earnestly request you to grant no licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors except on petition
The legislature of Michigan passed the following at its last session, and but for a dilatoriness in signing which should ruin the future prospects of the governor it would now be a law:
"Sec. 1, ETC. If any state, county, township, school-district, or village officer shall become drunk or intoxicated, upon conviction thereof, before any court of competent jurisdiction, the said officer so convicted shall no longer be competent to discharge the duties of said office; and said office shall thereby become vacant, the same as if such officer had resigned or died.
"Sec. 2. Any office becoming vacant under Section 1 of this act shall be filled in the same manner as is provided by law in case such vacancy had occurred by the death or resignation of the person holding such office.
"Sec. 3. That all acts and parts of acts which in any sense contravene the provisions of this act be and the same are hereby repealed."
Let us petition for the passage of this law, which can be enacted by town or county authorities, to govern themselves, as well as by state or national.
The following is the form furnished by the National Publishing Society, and can be modified for use in a state or in a city:
To the United States Senate and House of Representatives:
Tour petitioners, citizens of the United States, respectfully ask that you will provide, by appropriate legislation, for the appointment, by the President of the United States, of a Commission of Inquiry concerning the Alcoholic Liquor Traffic — its Relations to Public Revenue and Taxation, to Crime. Pauperism, the Public Health, Morals, Education, and the General Welfare of the People: and also the Results of License, Restrictive and Prohibitory Legislation in the several states, and in the District of Columbia and the territories.
Explicit directions should be prefixed to each copy of all petitions. They should be printed in smaller type than the petition itself, in brackets, at the top of the sheet. Never send out blank paper; but print the most telling facts and arguments on the back of each copy. If the support of leading journals has been secured, mention them: if speakers or writers whose adhesion carries special weight with the people have declared their sentiments, quote them: if Catholic priests or influential Germans have promised their assistance, state the fact. The Home Protection Petition of Illinois illustrates these points. (See p. 27.)
These include petitions to those well-meaning but thoughtless people who patronize hotels, restaurants, groceries, drug stores,
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and physicians that freely and without compunction deal in alcoholic liquors, and whose easy-going course is the despair of temperance doctors, landlords, and store-keepers. But because these careless people are total abstainers and friends of the cause a petition to them ought to be, but is not, one of the most hopeful, as it is one of the most important branches of work.Our pledge of total abstinence is, after all, the greatest of petitions, one which we must not fail to present to our audiences and to circulate in Sunday-schools and churches, everywhere, indeed, that it can be appropriately introduced. To include the specifications "wine, beer, and cider" is of the first importance. We build slowly, it is true; but we mean to rear the edifice of total abstinence and prohibition on sure foundations. We ought to be loyal to our own pledge, prepared, after careful comparison of different forms, by the Women's National Christian Temperance Union. It is as follows:
"I hereby solemnly promise, God helping me, to abstain from all distilled, fermented, and malt liquors, including wine and cider, and to use all proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the same."
In our meetings the most effective method of presenting this pledge is to place copies in the hands of a committee of young ladies, who, while a suitable selection is sung by the choir, will present it to the audience, which remains seated. Ours are meetings of sober second thought, rather than of enthusiasm; and vastly better results will be reached by a more quiet method of approaching the audience. A special plea for the pledge should always immediately precede its presentation.
Women have done inestimable good by circulating petitions to railroad and steamboat corporations not to permit bars nor sale of liquor on palace cars, and to make total abstinence a condition of employment. This last is now becoming general among railroad corporations at the West. Our unions should urge it in all manufacturing towns, all commercial establishments, and in corporations generally where large numbers of men or women are employed.
District or County Conventions.
In all brandies of our work the watch-fires of the temperance convention must brightly burn. Below are given plans, addressed to our vice-presidents, which if faithfully carried out will insure a profitable meeting:
Dear Sisters: — By your official position, you are chiefly responsible for the increase and efficiency of our local auxiliaries. No union should content itself with merely maintaining its organization. We must have definite aims and practicable methods. How shall these methods be brought to the knowledge of the many? There is no better way than by inducing them to send representatives to some large meeting, where experienced workers are in attendance, where all phases of the work can be discussed, and where the torch of faith and enthusiasm can be lighted at the fireside of sympathy and the altar of prayer. We call such a meeting a district convention, and are anxious to hold as many as possible during the year.
But the question will be asked: "How shall we cause such a convention to come to pass?" Permit the following suggestions:
1. Let the vice-president of each district, aided by a local committee of arrangements, send out a call and prepare a programme.
2. To facilitate this work, get from any city bookseller a district map of your state. Send to your local editor for names of all editors in your district; and to each minister in town for a list of all ministers of his denomination in the same territory; and to, each society, of whatever sort, in your town — temperance and every other — for names' of officers of similar societies in all towns of the district. When you have obtained this list, send your call and programme to each of these, asking their help in getting the proposed convention before the people and enlisting women to attend. Also write personally and induce your friends to write and urge attendance.
You will then and not till then know that you have thoroughly advertised your convention.
3. Secure entertainment for an average of two from each post-office to which you write, though it is feared you will not have so many. Have a special committee to go to trains and assign places.
4. Select a pleasant place of meeting, centrally located Have it decorated with a cross of evergreens, flags, plants, festoons, etc. Make abundant accommodations for the secretary, and have a table at the front for reporters, who should be especially invited to attend. Arrange with editors for full reports and with city papers tor special telegrams giving news of convention.
5. Have a table with copies of "Our Union," "Hints and Helps." "Home Protection Manual," "National Leaflets," Miss Kimball's "S. — S. Helps," juvenile temperance papers, Dr. Richardson's "Temperance Text-book," Miss Col-man's "Manual," catalogues of National Temperance Publishing House, etc., which can be had by sending to J. N. Steams, 58 Reade Street, New York. Place all these in care of a lady, who shall make sales and secure subscribers to "Our Union."
6. Secure good, rousing Gospel singing, without preludes or interludes, not many verses at. a time, except when signing pledge or home-protection petition. Have slips of paper ready for that and plenty of pencils, and ladies to distribute them.
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Young ladies should be enlisted to help in all this work.7. At all evening meetings invite the pastors and leading women of the convention to occupy the platform.
8. Let as many leading temperance workers among the women of the state be present as you feel able to invite.
This programme requires many brains and hands and hearts to carry it out; but, with the blessing of God, it will, if our prayers are as earnest as our work must be unceasing, result in great good to the cause.
Dear Friends: —
The — Woman's Christian Temperance Union is among the best fruits of the temperance crusade of 1874. It has auxiliaries all over the state, and is carrying forward active work by increasing and strengthening its societies, holding Gospel temperance meetings, circulating the pledge, enlisting young women, introducing temperance education into Sunday-schools, and, so far as possible, all other schools, securing a temperance column in local papers, circulating temperance literature, and developing a public sentiment which shall place the temperance ballot in the hands of women.
The central idea of all its work is the enthronement of Christ as Redeemer and Lord in the individual heart and of his spirit in the home and in the state. Its motto is: "For God and Home and Native Land." We believe these objects are dear to all of you whom we address. With solemn earnestness, we call upon you to help us by your prayers, your influence, your work.
That we may lay our plans and methods before the women of the district (including counties), we hereby call a district convention, to be held in — , on the — day of — , and we invite each woman's temperance society to send two delegates, and any woman who has the temperance cause at heart to come and learn what women are doing in this land, and to take home with her such information, documents, etc. as shall enable her to organize a W. C. T. U. in her own locality, if there is not one already; and, if there is, to give point and method to its operations.
We also respectfully request each pastor in the district to appoint a lady from his church who shall come as delegate.
Mesdames — and-will be present through the convention. A programme of exercises accompanies this call. Entertainment will be furnished to all women who come. Please send names at once to Mrs. — , of — , naming time of arrival.
Yours for God and Home and Native Land, MRS. — , Vice-Pres. of — District.
Mrs. — , Com. of Arrangements.
N. B. — Please wear the woman's temperance badge, a small white ribbon in the button-hole.
1. The Convention will be called to order at 10 a. m. on the — day of — , by Mrs. — , Vice President of the — District.
2. Devotional exercises conducted by Mrs. — , of — .
3. Appointment of enrollment committee. Report of said committee.
4. Appointment of committees on business, on organization, nominations, on plan of work, and resolutions.
5. Brief addresses by the president on objects of convention, advantages of auxiliary-ship, etc.
6. Report of committee on business.
7. Reports of all local temperance societies represented; also from fraternal delegates.
8. Prayer.
Convention opens at 2 o'clock.
1. Devotional exercises, conducted by Mrs. — , of — .
2. Brief address of welcome, by Mrs. — , of — , and response.
3. Address by — — , on "What we are trying to do in this state."
4. Reports of committees.
5. Brief addresses on petition work, juvenile work, circulation of temperance literature, "Our Union," etc., etc.
There will be a question-box. Friends, write out your queries and have them ready.
Doxology.
8 o'clock. Mass meeting, addressed by — — . Subject: "Home Protection." The Home Protection Petition (or the Pledge) will be circulated.
Music.
Benediction.
(If practicable, extend this meeting another day, and have special sessions for young women and for the children.)
A local habitation, a name, and an earnest, practical woman who could give her entire time to the work would quadruple the results attained by our W. C. T. Us. Compare the work done by those equipped in this way with that of the general run of our societies, and learn once more that God has chosen in this world to work by means. In many Western towns a great, rough, one-story hall is the rallying place of our forces, and demonstrates to the enemy that which he hates to think — namely, that we have come to stay. The Temperance Tabernacle of Atlanta, Illinois is a fine illustration. First an enthusiasm was aroused by a series of meetings conducted by a reformed man Before that had time to subside, several clear-headed men of business invited the people to take stock in shares of $10 each in a building which should be the temperance headquarters for meetings, concerts, etc., and which could be rented as a hall to any who would pay a fair price. This ten dollars was understood to be a gift, the "certificates of shares " — like many others supposed to be
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more valuable — being mere souvenirs of the transaction. A piece of ground was purchased for a nominal sum; lumber and hardware merchants furnished the material at cost rates; masons and carpenters, painters and glaziers gave their services at half price; women made handsome mottoes and decorations; and the place speedily became the favorite audience-room of all the country round. Add to this a reading-room and an office for the secretary of the W. C. T. U., and we should have a base of operations worthy the magnitude of our endeavor. Here our Sunday Gospel-meetings would be held, the poor feeling themselves especially welcome and at home; here would be the great mass meetings of the no-license campaign, the depository for temperance literature and subscription books of "Our Union"; here, by frequent sociables and entertainments, we could help replenish our treasury; and here, perhaps, some day, as the rallying point of beneficent influence for all. might be located the ballot-box, which is the coffin or the throne of the saloon. Mr. Frank Hoblit, Atlanta, Ill., has issued a circular, which he will send to those wishing further information concerning temperance tabernacles, on receipt of 3-cent stamp.How to Make Local W. C. T. U. Meetings Interesting.
The State W. C. T. Unions of Massachusetts and Iowa have sent out circulars with topics to be discussed at meetings of their auxiliaries. Ladies are appointed to open the subjects by essays or brief addresses, and the tracts mentioned are previously distributed and read, so that members bring some knowledge to the meeting and take still more home with them.
The following is the Massachusetts List:
Reference.
| 5. | New Cider a Dangerous Beverage | 1c. |
| Cider in the Pledge | 1c. | |
| 102. | The Evils of Beer Legislation | 1c. |
| 138. | Malt Liquors: their Nature and Effect | 2c. |
| 75. | That Glass of Ale | 1c. |
| 140. | Shall We Use Wine and Beer? | 1c. |
| 96. | Our Duty to the Temperance Cause. | 3c. |
| 10c. | ||
| 93. | The Effects of Alcohol upon the Human System | 3c. |
| 113. | The Voice of Science against Alcohol | 1c. |
| 81. | Alcoholic Liquors | 3c. |
| 35. | Is Alcohol Medicine? | 1c. |
| 154. | Alcoholics in Medicine | 1c. |
| 137. | Alcohol in the Kitchen | 1c. |
| Medical Use of Alcohol | 3c. | |
| 13c. | ||
| Is Alcohol Food? Good | 5c. | |
| Medical Use of Alcohol. Good | 25c. |
| 45. | The Working Temperance Church | 1c. |
| 73. | The Church and Temperance | 1c. |
| 146. | The Duty of the Christian Church | 1c. |
| 150. | The Duty of Christians | 1c. |
| Let the Church Awake | 1c. | |
| 32. | Drunkenness and Christian Love | 1c. |
| 6c. |
| 99. | Do not Sin Against the Child | 2c. |
| 123. | Parental Responsibility | 1c. |
| 48. | Temperance and the Children | 1c. |
| 160. | Sabbath-schools and Temperance | 1c. |
| 5c. |
| Juvenile Instruction | 2c. |
| To the Teacher.......... | |
| Letter to Mothers........ | |
| Responsibility of Parents |
All the tracts mentioned above may be had in large quantities, should you think it advisable to scatter at your public meetings any one tract treating upon the subject for discussion. The price in large quantities is about ten pages for one cent. For sale at 58 Reade Street, New York.
Best Temperance Papers.
"When the strongest array of facts, the most urgent reasoning possible, persuasion that melts into pathos, or ringing sentences that leap electric from point to point in the argument can all be compassed in a form, and struck off by the hundred thousand, and transmitted in a day to the people of a whole state, what voice, even though of syren or saint, can hope to compete with its influence?" — From Speech of Hon. B. GRATZ BROWN.
[The following list should be in every reading-room, and will furnish just the brief, practical selections best adapted to a temperance column in the local press]:
Our Union, Y. M. C. A. Building, Brooklyn, N. Y. 60 cents per year.
The National Temperance Advocate, 58 Reade Street, New York. $1 per year.
National Prohibitionist (Fortnightly), Frank M. Bemis, 1504 Pine St., St. Louis. $1.00.
The Morning (Monthly), 23 Park Row, New York. 60 cents per year.
The Temperance Record, 337 Strand, London, Eng. 6s. 6d.
The League Journal (Weekly), one penny per number, 108 Hope Street, Glasgow, Scotland.
The Temperance Banner (for Children), 58 Reade Street, New York. 35 cents.
| Kind Words | (Monthly), | 30 cents per year. |
| Your Paper | " | 30 " " |
| Good Things | " | 20 " " |
| Band of Hope | " | 20 " " |
The last four are published by H. W. Adams, 23 Park Row, New York.
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References.
For all kinds of books and tracts on Prohibition, for Miss Colman's Manual, Dr. Richardson's books, and all scientific works on temperance, also for Pledges, Placards, Song Books, etc., send to J. N. Stearns, 58 Reade St., New York.
For the series of Leaflets (prepared by Miss Colman for W. N. C. T. U., and suitable for distribution in homes or audiences) send to 58 Reade Street, New York. Price, 130 pages for 10 cts.
For small temperance handbills (labeled "Take One"), to fasten up in public places (very cheap), send to Mrs. Emma Bourne, 204 Market Street, Newark, N. J.
For Sunday-school Library Books (temperance), 58 Reade Street, New York.
For 25-cent packages of prohibition documents, to circulate in audiences or privately, also for documents in the German language, 58 Reade Street, New York.
For Miss Willard's "Temperance Bible Reading," "God's Idea of Sin and Way of Pardon" (10 cts.). James H. Earle, 20 Hawley Street, Boston.
For Miss Willard's book for girls entitled "Nineteen Beautiful Years" ($1.00), Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, New York.
For copies of the "Maine Law" (very important to temperance people, as a guide to better legislation), Smith & Mayo, Skowhegan, Maine.
For Rev. T. H. Johnson's Unfermented Wine for Sacramental Purposes (awarded the Centennial Medal of Honor) send to J. N. Stearns, 58 Reade Street, New York.
In the West, send all orders for literature to W. C. T. U., Room 4, No. 148 Madison Street, Chicago.
The following is Tract No. 166 of the National Publishing House, 58 Reade St., New York, and should be ordered in large quantities for the campaign:
Local Option.
[The Local Option Convention for the State of Pennsylvania, held in Pittsburgh, May 15th, 1877, appointed Dr. Vernon to write an Address to the People of the State on the subject. Address is here given.]
Local Option rests upon the principle of Prohibition. It invokes the aid of law in the suppression of intemperance; but the law must be the creature of the popular voice in the communities to be affected by it. It seeks to arouse moral convictions and to develop public sentiment, till they are strong enough to enact and enforce a prohibitory law. It throws the responsibility for the continuance or the suppression of the deadly traffic in strong drink upon the people, by submitting the question of "license" or "no license" to a vote in each county and district.
The friends of this measure see great, wisdom In it as a method for suppressing the evils of intemperance. It would be possible to sen/re the passage of such a law by the Legislature, when it would not be possible to secure the passage of a direct prohibitory law. We all know the difficulty with which legislative bodies are brought to take action favorable to the temperance cause. It is one of the most sensitive subjects that can be considered, connected as it is with large financial interests and prevailing social customs. Legislators, who depend upon the people for their positions, avoid an expression on the subject as far as possible. The Local Option Law does not require the Legislature to pronounce upon the main question, nor to assume the responsibilities of Prohibition. It is simply permissive in its character, allowing the people to determine the question for themselves. This measure is so democratic, so reasonable in itself, and involves so little responsibility, it would be hard to find a pretext for refusing it. The Legislature that would by no means prohibit the sale of strong drink might feel compelled, by the reasonableness of the demand, to allow the people to prohibit, it by vote.
Under the Local Option law, Prohibition will be more effectively enforced in the localities determining upon it than it would be under a general prohibitory law. A law that is not sustained by public sentiment cannot be enforced. The sentiment is, therefore, quite as important as the law. They are interdependent, so related that "united they stand, divided they fall." The Local Option law enacts Prohibition by the demand of prevailing public sentiment, which insures its enforcement. A popular vote stimulates discussion. The people must know the occasion for it and the grounds on which the disputants base their claims to support. Discussion develops and renders more positive the needed public sentiment. When this sentiment is strong enough to create a law by the vote of the people, and is sustained by the presence of the men on the ground who developed and fought for it, it will be found strong enough for the triumphant enforcement of a prohibitory law.
This measure would most effectually prevent what the friends of temperance hare most to fear, public apathy and indifference. Among good people there is a strange indifference to this cause, and great unwillingness to assume the labor and expense of agitation and reform. An alarming stupor has settled upon the conscience of the Christian public on this subject The Local Option law which for three years has been before the people of Pennsylvania affords an opportunity for arousing the conscience of the people and securing for the cause that attention which its merits demand, by calling for a vote in every county of the state, once in three years, on the subject of Prohibition, thus forcing a discussion of the whole subject at least once in every three years, and calling upon every man to inform and express himself in regard to it. If we can have a fair opportunity, such as this law would afford, for laying upon the conscience of the intelligent voters of the country our startling array of facts concerning the financial loss, the increase of crime, and the vast amount of suffering and sorrow entailed by the curse of strong drink, we will soon secure a popular verdict expelling it from the land. The temperance cause has a stupendous and overwhelming array of arguments, to which the enlightened judgment of the American people would yield assent if fully and fairly presented. There are two difficulties in getting it fully before the people. The first is that temperance advocates soon become weary and discouraged The burdens and embarrassments under which they labor are very great, and only the few endure "faithful to the end," unless aided from without. The Local Option law forces upon the friends of temperance once in three years the unwelcome discussion, and, if they would, does not permit them to be silent. Intemperance has nothing to
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fear so much as such a kindling of our watch-fires as this. It cannot stand before the awakened conscience and intelligence of the country. It dreads the light, and must fall before the array of facts which brand it as the sum of all iniquities. We may say that good people ought to be self-sustained in so good a work, with a tireless zeal; but experience teaches that the best men are greatly stimulated and helped by a special occasion, a pressing issue, and a definite aim, such as this law would place before the people every three years. The other difficulty is with the people. They often regard temperance workers as "busy-bodies in other men's matters," with no sufficient occasion to justify their methods, and, therefore, close their hearts against them. The Local Option law would place the whole population in the forum once in three years, and make it a duty to hear, as well as to speak and act upon the issue. The law of the land would thus make an occasion, and demand a hearing for the cause; and thus would deliver us from our greatest danger, apathy and indifference, by strengthening the position of the advocates of temperance and by placing the general public in a much better attitude for hearing and considering the subject.So far as tried, the Local Option law has been eminently successful. The Legislature gave such a law to the people of Pennsylvania in 1872. The vote of the people, taken in the same year, resulted in establishing Prohibition in forty-one of the sixty-six counties of the state The result was a reduction of nearly one-half in the sales of wholesale and retail liquor dealers for the first year. A vigorous effort was made at the next session of the Legislature to have the law repealed, on the ground that it had well-nigh ruined and, if not repealed, must utterly destroy the liquor business in the state. This plain matter of history is in itself the best demonstration of the practical efficiency of the law. Ledgers will not lie, and their testimony is that a Local Option law in Pennsylvania destroys the liquor business. Our best witnesses for this law are the men who clamored for its repeal at Harrisburg and the men who fought with true but unavailing heroism in its defense. It was clearly foreseen, by friend and foe, that, if the law remained, it must soon result in Prohibition for the entire state, for every Prohibition county was a standing illustration of its excellence and a great educator of public sentiment, thus augmenting the force that had already wrested two-thirds of the counties of the state from the accursed traffic and making certain its final complete triumph in the state. The influence would then have spread to other states, till at last the nation would have been delivered from this its greatest curse. It was the clear foreshadowing of these events, so terrible to the one side and so glorious to the other, that brought so much money and political influence on the one side and so much heroic effort by our most gifted sons on the other to the final and successful struggle for repeal at Harrisburg.
The right of Prohibition by such a method cannot be questioned. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided the Local Option law of that state constitutional, which forever settles the question, often raised, as to the constitutionality of such a measure. The right to prohibit any business that is injurious to the welfare of the community is everywhere conceded. It is an old maxim in common law, "Salus populi suprema est lex" — the welfare of the people is the supreme law. Blackstone says: "Common law requires that a man should not use his property to the injury of another. The consent of the party injured is no mitigation of the offense."In accordance with this is the long-established law maxim, "Sic utere tuo ut alienum non Iaedas" — enjoy your own property in such a manner as not to injure that of another.
Upon these principles, so obviously just, all our laws limiting and regulating the business of the country are founded. Our laws prohibit the publication and sale of obscene literature, the sale of lottery tickets, and gambling. They determine in many places the height and location of our buildings and the material of which they are to be constructed; they take for highways private lands made sacred to us by the homes and graves of our fathers; they, prevent the storing of explosive materials in cities, the damming up of water on one's own premises when the health of the community is injured by it; in short, "the welfare of the people is the supreme law," to which all statutes are expected to conform. If It is found that the liquor traffic endangers the peace of society; that it dethrones reason and fires the passions of large numbers, turning them loose like wild beasts, to burn, kill, and destroy at the caprice of their disordered minds; that it is the chief source of the crime, pauperism, and destruction by riot which burden society with oppressive taxes; that it wages constant war upon the purity and peace of the home, corrupting the sexes in their relation to each other, trampling upon the rights of women and children, defiling and sundering the most sacred relations of life; that it is the greatest cause of personal sorrow, domestic unhappiness, public vice, and waste of life and substance — then society has not only the right, but, if true to itself, is bound to anathematize and exterminate it. My neighbor has no right to engage in a business which puts the men of the town into such a frenzy of ungovernable passion as renders my life and property insecure. Society owes me protection from such a traffic, by suppressing it This traffic turns madmen into the street, with random pistol-shot or dagger-stroke, to imperil the life of every man in it; to apply the torch and kindle conflagration; to embroil the street, embolden discontent, and foment riot. If society fails, by law, to chain such a monster, it merits the evils which it endures for having betrayed its most solemn trust. The Local Option law proposes to secure the suppression of the traffic by the most democratic method — calling upon the people to determine for themselves by vote what security they will throw around person and property, what safeguards shall be established for public morals, and under what educating influences they will have their children brought up. When, in any county, a majority of the people believe the liquor business to be injurious to their Interests, they have a natural right and a right under the Constitution of the United States to abolish it. To deny this right by act of legislature or by the refusal of an act — that is, to compel the majority to submit to the minority — is oppression; that which from a foreign shore drove us into a separate national existence, but on our own shores imperils all that liberty has achieved.
The measure here proposed is in perfect harmony with moral suasion. Complete victory will never be achieved for the temperance cause by any one form of effort; and they but hinder the cause who oppose any that are fighting the great enemy. All forms of effort are needed and should work in harmony. Moral suasion, prohibition, local option, the women's crusade are all needed and should not be at war among themselves. When any one shows itself strong
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enough to sweep the field, the others will doubtless retire; but until then let them work as brothers. When the King of Persia could not overcome Greece, he employed all his arts to maintain war between its principal cities — Athens and Sparta — that, when mutually exhausted, the country might fall an easy prey to him. The friends of temperance may well apprehend a similar device on the part of their great enemy. God himself does not attempt to govern the world by one form of effort alone. He makes his appeal to the conscience; he also expresses it in the form of law, with penalties annexed. He has instituted the Church and civil government — both divine institutions — for the government of the world. In the Jewish Church and state crimes were visited, by God's appointment, with death and other severe penalties. God's method then and now for the suppression of vice is moral suasion first, and then, quickly following, civil law, with its penalties. St. Paul's doctrine in Rom. xiv is that the officer of the law, bearing the sword of execution, is the "minister of God"; a minister of God as truly as was Paul himself, since he was appointed by God, was doing God's work in the way he had appointed that it should be done. Those who insist upon moral suasion alone dare not apply their arguments to other questions. Abolish all laws against theft, murder, and other crimes; dismiss the city police: close the courts; discharge the officers of justice; pull down the jails and penitentiaries; and turn over the morals of the community to the preachers and editors — to moral suasion — and society would be swept from existence in an explosion of vice that would shake Heaven and earth. Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light in this plea for moral suasion only; and again, with the words of the Lord upon his lips, tempts the sons of God. It is overlooked by many that law itself is a large factor in all true moral suasion. For law, human as well as divine, has always been looked to for an interpretation of true morality. There must be some standard of right and wrong by which moral questions are to be decided. Law has in human history been that standard. Therefore, law is a great educator of public conscience and a most important element in moral suasion. Legislative halls, constitutional conventions, courts of justice, and battle-fields, where great principles have been announced in the cannon's roar, are among the greatest teachers of the world's conscience. The fact that the law of the land condemns or permits a certain act will have great influence in giving it its place in the individual conscience and in determining the force of moral suasion in regard to it. The fact that the law of the land is against an act powerfully re-enforces every moral conviction against it. There is special force in all this, as applied to the Local Option law, since by this the people are called upon to ascertain definitely what their conscientious convictions are, to express them in a law of their own creation, and to apply them to the enforcement of the law by all those measures to which conscience naturally impels us.We ask for this law as a wise measure in suppressing the evils of intemperance, by removing temptation. The temperance reform naturally divides itself into two branches, with two corresponding lines of effort. In the first place, it is concerned with the individual victim of intemperance, and seeks to deliver him from the power of inward temptation, and to make of him a new man; in the second place, it is concerned with society at large, and seeks, by the removal of temptation from without, to suppress the evil. The first is chiefly the work of moral suasion, the second of law. It is said: "If men are determined to drink, they will get it in spite of all laws." But the fact is, few drinking men are "determined" to drink. They have a thousand times "determined" not to drink; but appetite within and temptation without have been too strong for them. They loathe and curse the cup, while they clutch and drain it. Reeling and staggering down and down, they wildly shriek for some one to deliver them from the monster who has enslaved them by capturing their wills, which now no longer obey the dictates of conscience and reason. If these men reform, they cannot go upon the street without encountering the red lights, the old deadly fumes, and the long-familiar loitering places. With enfeebled moral nature, diseased body, and shattered nerves, is it strange that these men, with such temptations from without, fall again? We ask that these poor, unfortunate men shall have a fair chance in this, their last effort to regain manhood, by removing temptation out of their way.
Our hope for the entire suppression of the evils of intemperance is in the direction of prevention, rather than of cure. We may not hope to reform all the drinkers of the present; but, if we can prevent others from forming the habit, we shall soon free the country from its greatest curse and shame. If we remove these places of temptation from the streets, and take away the garb of respectability which a government license gives to the deadly traffic, the oncoming generation will be comparatively free from the evils which so oppress us. A great army of boys — innocent, bright, buoyant, and full of hope; just from their mothers' warm kiss and benediction — is now moving into the field, taking their first experience in contact with the world; and, unless these places of temptation are suppressed, great numbers of them will soon be swallowed up by this great vortex of ruin, which already has had too much of our best blood and brain. We ask that the people shall have the chance to say by vote whether the business of making drunkards, whose wives and children are to be covered with shame and crushed with poverty; whether the business which renders life and property insecure, piles up taxes, and corrupts public morals, shall be carried on in their midst; and we affirm that to deny the people this right is oppression.
To secure this, let us —
1. Scatter temperance literature. The overwhelming facts and statistics of the temperance cause, which cannot be detailed in this paper, ought to be forced upon the attention of the public. Temperance tracts, papers, and books must be freely distributed, that the people may be informed and aroused. Men of means must give money, men of intelligence must write, men of executive ability must organize and project, and Christian men must pray for the cause. We dare not overlook the established methods of success, if we mean not ignominiously to fail. Knowledge is the basis of action, and, if we wish to control the action of the people, we must furnish them the knowledge at our disposal.
2. Organize. Our movements are uncertain, unless conducted by organized bodies. Every county should have its Local Option organization, and be in regular correspondence with the general or state organization; that all our movements may be in harmony and that one may help the other. Unorganized sentiment is powerless, as an unorganized army, and will accomplish nothing. The evil we oppose has a vast, compact, wealthy organization, that can throw its whole force in the state upon any given point on a week's notice. We may not
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hope to equal our foe in wealth and organization; but let not our David go forth to meet this Goliath unless he has his carefully-selected stones and well-prepared sling. Then, if he trusts in the God of battles, he shall succeed.3. We must use political influence. It is useless to pray and speak, if we are not willing to vote for the cause of temperance. There is temperance sentiment enough in the country to control the nominations, if it will go to the primaries; and enough to control the elections, if it will vote at the polls. Let every voter watch the primaries, question the candidates of his party, and vote only for those who, in the legislature, will vote for the highest interests of the people. The temperance sentiment of the country can control this matter, if it will, and is, therefore, particeps criminis if it does not.
How to Interest a State or Local W.C.T.U. in Home Protection.
Write to women most interested in the subject, asking them where you can get documents setting forth plans and arguments, and also requesting them to reply by letter, which may be read to the society. Circulate these documents in your W. C. T. U. and appoint a day when the subject will be discussed. If the discussion develops a strong feeling against it, do not urge the matter; but keep it before the thoughts of the members and ask them to consider it with prayer. It will not be long before they will adopt the measure by an overwhelming majority. When this is done, do not content yourselves with a simple declaration of opinion; but incorporate the measure into your plans of work and instruct your delegates to stand by it in local, state, and national conventions.
Objections to Home Protection.
1. It is thought by some that the Home Protection movement can be adopted only by those states which work on the Local Option line. But this is a mistake. The campaign can be twofold, and of this Ohio is likely to furnish an example. Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge, of Ravenna, O., president of its W. C. T. U., will gladly give information on this point to any who desire it.
2. It is said that Local Option is an inconsistency, for no community would ever place a bill against stealing before the people for their option, and the liquor traffic is a crime as bad as stealing. But no law was ever enacted against stealing, except as the result of an option (a free choice) in the legislatures of state and nation. It was voted upon, and men voted as they chose. The immense public sentiment in favor of such a law caused the vote to be unanimous, and this will some day be the case with prohibitory law. Meanwhile, in states where the sentiment would not yet give us a prohibitory law (which we could only get by a local option in the locality known as the "Halls of Legislation"), let us not say to less conspicuous places — municipalities, for instance — that because the whole state will not they may not vote the legalized dram-shop out of their boundaries. Since in a representative government we can pass no law except by leaving it open to the chances of a "local option," and since this same option is the only possible method by which we can delegate to localities under a government "of the people, by the people," power to enact in the territory nearest them and in which they are most interested a prohibitory law, therefore, local option is a necessity per se and the surest forerunner of that more general form of Local Option popularly known as Prohibition. (See further on p. 23, "Local Option.")
4. It is said that men would sooner give us prohibition than the temperance ballot. The experience of Illinois refutes this argument. (See p. 8.) There is an element of justice in our request for power to overthrow the rum-shop to which men respond as to no other plea we have ever made along this line.
5. It is said that by taking up this work our W. C. T. Unions ally themselves with the woman suffrage movement, largely conducted in the past by those who did not believe in Orthodox Christianity. But, if the movement for the temperance ballot is right, then whoever cares for the right ought to help ally it with Christ's Church; and when an army of temperance women in nine states have done this it becomes a movement of the Church.
6. "But, if the National W. C. T. U. does not endorse a plan of work, neither should the state unions do so," is the last objection. Let it be remembered, however, that the "National" has twice endorsed the movement for woman's temperance ballot, and that, since its representation takes color from the locality in which its annual meeting is held, its utterances are necessarily sometimes inconsistent with each other, while no state which has once endorsed the movement has ever retreated from its advance position. It seems fair that in so extended an organization each state should be free to magnify certain methods and to add new plans, as its local circumstances render these helpful. But that no state should have any method of work urged upon it by the National Union until it has, as a State, endorsed that method, seems equally fair. Hence, while the states which believe in Home Protection have sought each year to have a resolution in its favor, and have each year gained some advance (by resolution at Cincinnati and Chicago, by petition at Newark, and by opening the columns of Our Union to the subject at Baltimore), they have never asked that it be made a part of the National Plan of Work, and will not until a majority of the states have adopted the measure.
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Home Protection Petition.
[Among the many prominent religious newspapers which have editorially endorsed this Petition are the following: Christian Union, Independent, and Witness, New York; Northwestern Christian Advocate, Advance, Interior, Standard, and Alliance, Chicago; The Golden Rule and Zion's Herald, Boston.]
[N. B. — This Petition will be presented at the State Capital at the earliest possible date in the session of the Legislature, which convenes on the — day of — , 187 — , by the following Committee: — — Any number of copies will be sent to any address, if desired; but it is also earnestly requested that persons interested in utilizing the influence of woman against the legalized traffic in strong drink will have printed or written copies of the Petition made and circulated from house to house. Let them also be sent to editors, ministers, Sunday-school and public school teachers, and to all Reform Clubs and other temperance societies. All ministers and temperance speakers are requested to present the Petition to their audiences, after a sermon, address, or exhortation on the subject of which it treats. The following method of securing signatures in audiences is recommended: Previous to opening the meeting, place in each pew a narrow strip of paper, with the words "Names of Men over 21" written across the top, and "Names of Women over 21" half way down the strip. After reading the Petition, at the close of the meeting, call attention to these papers and constitute the gentleman or lady sitting in the end of each pew or seat nearest the aisle a committee of one to see that all in that seat have the opportunity to sign the slip of paper. Let one person be in attendance in each aisle with pencils to lend, and let this person gather up the slips as soon as signed. These autographs are to be sent to headquarters, to be pasted upon the Petition. While the signing proceeds, such hymns as "America" or Miss Lathbury's "Home Protection Hymn " (see p. 32) may be sung by the choir. When the largest number of signatures possible has been obtained, send the list of autograph signatures, stating plainly where they were obtained and paying postage in full, to — — , at Headquarters State W. C. T. U., in — — . Write on one side only, giving name of town and county on each list of names. Paste more paper on the Petition as required. Names may be signed in pencil, and autographs only are desired.]
TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS:
Whereas, In these years of temperance work the argument of defeat in our contest with the saloons has taught us that our efforts are merely palliative of a disease in the body politic, which can never be cured until law and moral suasion go hand in hand in our beloved state; and
Whereas, The instincts of self-protection and of apprehension for the safety of her children, her tempted loved ones, and her home render woman the natural enemy of the saloons; Therefore, your petitioners, men and women of the State of Illinois, having at heart the protection of our homes from their worst enemy, the legalized traffic in strong drink, do hereby most earnestly pray your honorable body that, by suitable legislation, it maybe provided that in the State of Illinois the question of licensing at any time, in any locality, the sale of any and all intoxicating drinks shall be submitted to and determined by ballot, in which women of lawful age shall be privileged to take part, in the same manner as men, when voting on the question of license.
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Back of the Petition.
In a recent "Monday Lecture," REV. JOSEPH COOK, of Boston, spoke thus:
"There stands a noble statehouse in the cornfields near Springfield, Illinois, and Lincoln's grave lies under its shadow. Above his grave a legislature will be petitioned this winter by ladies of Illinois to give women of legal age the right to vote in eases of local option under temperance laws. . . . In New Hampshire the line has already been broken as to the exclusion of women from participation in the settlement of questions closely touching the home. Let it be noticed that New Hampshire, a conservative New England state, has just given to women the right to vote on all questions concerning the school laws. I am not a woman suffragist. Do not applaud this platform under the mistaken idea that I am a defender of extreme positions as to woman's rights. I am meditating on that theme. But this I dare say, that one of the fragments of self protection for women — namely, a right to vote, concerning temperance laws, when the question of local option is up — I am willing to defend, and intend to defend, to the end of the chapter. Great natural justice is on the side of such a demand. Woman's interests are among the chief ones concerned; and as to family divisions, why, they come largely from temperance laxness. Woman surely has political intelligence enough to understand the difference between license and no license, especially when she has suffered under a lax execution of the temperance laws. The difference is so plain between local freedom and no local freedom to sell liquor that woman without any great participation in the turmoil of politics might be expected to have an intelligent vote on this subject. I know that many cultivated and refined women say they do not want women to vote, because they do not want to increase the amount of ignorant suffrage. Well, I respect the intelligence and the refinement of the ladies who make such remarks; but I believe that on most moral questions woman is likely to be more intelligent and certainly more disinterested than man. I am told by many of the best authorities that women who are opposed to female suffrage at large are usually in favor of this modified measure. I am assured that a majority of the thoughtful, cultivated women of the United States, or certainly of the Northern states, can be expected to favor this demand for a vote to be given to women in questions of local option, concerning temperance laws. If a majority of women want such a vote, Heaven grant their desire! Women would be united on this topic. Woman's vote would be to city vices depending on intemperance what the lightning is to the oak. God send us that lightning!" [Applause.]
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Form of Home Protection Bills.
In Illinois the Legislature was asked to adopt a resolution providing for an amendment to the constitution authorizing women to vote on temperance questions, as this was deemed by many the only method practicable under the laws of that state. Meanwhile, for more immediate use the Hinds Bill was offered, providing for the signatures of women, instead of their votes. It reads as follows:
1. Introduced by Mr. Hinds, February 12th, 1879, title read and referred to Committee on License.
2. Reported back with amendments, passage recommended as amended, and ordered to first reading, March 21st.
3. First reading March 26th, and ordered to second reading.
4. Second reading May 9th, amended and ordered engrossed for a third reading.
5. Printed as amended.
A Bill.
For an act to amend sections three and four of an act entitled "An act to provide for the licensing of and against the evils arising from the sale of intoxicating liquors," Approved March 30th, 1874.
Section 1. Be it enacted by the people of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly,
2 That sections three and four of an act entitled "An act to provide for the licensing of and
3 against the evils arising from the sale of intoxicating liquors, "approved March 30th, 1874, be
4 be amended so as to read as follows:
Sec. 3. The county boards of each county may grant licenses to keep dram-shops in their
2 county, except within two miles of any incorporated city, town, or village, in which the corporate
3 authorities have power to license, regulate, restrain, or prohibit the sale of liquors;
4 and except in any place where the sale of intoxicating liquors is prohibited by law. Provided,
5 however, that no such license shall be granted by the county board, except upon the application
6 by petition of a majority of the registered residents, males and females, of the town,
7 who are 21 years of age, where the county is under township organization; and, if not under
8 township organization, then of a majority of the registered residents, males and females, of the
9 election precinct or district where the same is proposed to be located; and except upon the payment
10 into the county treasury of such sum as the board may require, not less than $50 nor more
11 than $500 for each license. Provided, also, that the corporate authorities of incorporated
12 cities, towns, or villages shall grant no such license except upon the petition of a
13 majority of the registered residents, males and females, over the age of 21 years, of the
14 ward or election district therein where the dram-shop is proposed to be located; or, if there
15 be no division of wards or election districts, then upon the petition of the residents, as
16 aforesaid, of the entire town or village. And provided, that any license granted in contravention
17 of the provisions of this section shall be utterly null and void, and the persons
18 constituting the boards of registry for registering the qualified electors, as by the registry
19 laws of this state constituted, shall, when they make the list or register of electors in their respective
20 districts, at the same time and in the same manner make a separate list or register of
21 all female residents of such district over the age of twenty-one years, and who have resided in the
22 United States five years, in this state one year, in the county ninety days, and in such district
23 thirty days; and said list at the time of the revision of the register of electors shall be revised
24 and corrected, and certified to by said board, and within three days thereafter be filed in the
25 same office and with the same officer that the register of electors is filed; and said list or register of females and the register of electors shall
26 be prima facie evidence in determining the
27 sufficiency of any petition presented under the provisions of this act; and all the provisions
28 and restrictions of said registry laws, so far as the same are necessary to carry into effect this
29 act, shall apply, be observed, and complied with in making and revising said lists; and for
30 a violation thereof on the part of any person or officer in making or revising the same the
31 same fines and penalties shall be imposed as by said laws prescribed.
Sect. 4. The license shall state the time for which it is granted, which shall not exceed one
2 year, the place where the dram-shop is to be kept, and shall not be transferable, nor shall the
3 person licensed keep a dram-shop at more than one place at the same time; and any license
4 granted may be revoked by the county board or corporate authorities, as the case may be,
5 whenever they shall be satisfied that the person licensed has violated any of the provisions of
6 this act, or keeps a disorderly or ill-governed house, or place of resort for idle or dissolute
7 persons, or allows any illegal gaming in his dram-shop, or in any house or place adjacent
8 thereto.
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PREPARED BY MRS. M. L. WELLS.
(Vice-President of 12th Cong'l Dist., Springfield, III.)
October 10th, 1878. — The Annual Meeting of the Illinois Woman's Christian Temperance Union, at Monmouth, ordered the petition to be prepared; which was accordingly done by Miss Willard, assisted by W. P. Black, an attorney at law, of Chicago.
December 5th. — The draft prepared was accepted by the Executive Committee of the State Union.
December 12th. — The first presentation was made by Miss Willard, at Geneseo; but no general effort was made until January.
January 1st, 1879. — Less than 1,000 names had been obtained.
March 1st. — The petitions were called in for presentation, the entire canvass having occupied but about two months or nine weeks. The signatures were pasted on strong white muslin, eighteen inches wide, bound with red ribbon on one edge and blue on the other. The entire supervision of this (the first) petition and putting it together were the weighty task of Miss Anna Gordon, Miss Willard's private secretary, and the, work was admirably done. Prominent business men of Chicago, chief of whom was R. J. Fowler, Esq., furnished the funds for postage, printing, and necessaries.
March 4th (Evening). — There was a reception in the Governor's Rooms at the Capital and addresses by a number of ladies.
March 5th (Evening). — There was a mass meeting in the Representatives' Chamber, previously granted for that purpose. The petition was gracefully festooned around the chamber, and stirring addresses were delivered by ladies of the Presentation Committee, and by Mrs. Foster, the lady lawyer of Clinton, Iowa, who was present by invitation of the ladies and presented the legal aspects of the case. The Presentation Committee were: Miss Frances E. Willard, president of W. C. T. U. of Illinois; Mrs. T. B. Carse, president of Chicago W. C. T. U.; Mrs. L. A. Hasans, Mrs. Willis A. Barnes, Mrs. C. H. Case, Mrs. D. J. True, all of Chicago; Mrs. Prof. Fry and Mrs. A. R. Riggs, of Bloomington; Mrs. C. H. St. John. of Eureka; Mrs. M. H. Villars, of Pana; Miss Mary A. West, of Galcsburg; Mrs. E. W. Kirkpatriek, of Monmouth; Mrs. H. A. Calkins and Mrs. E. G. Hibben. of Peoria; Mrs. M. L. Wells and Mrs. R. Beach, of Springfield; and Miss Anna Gordon, of Massachusetts (Mrs. M. Wait, of Galcsburg, former Pres't State W. C. T. U., and Miss Kate Ross, of Abingdon, also members, were unable to be present).
March 6th. — Presentation of the petition to the House of Representatives, with an address by Judge Hinds, of Stephenson County. Three of the ladies — Miss Willard, Mrs. Foster, and Mrs. St. John — by invitation of the House, on the motion of Hon. Sol. Hopkins, then addressed the House — this being the first time a lady had ever spoken in an open session of the Illinois Legislature. The number of signatures to the petition was 110,000, of men over twenty-one and women over eighteen years of age, about half of these being voters.
April 9th (Evening). — Mass meeting in the Senate Chamber, with supplemental petition exhibited in like manner as above, which petition contained at least 70,000 additional names, all secured in less than four weeks. The putting together of this last petition was the work of the women of Springfield, under supervision of Miss Barnett.
April 10th. — Presentation in the Senate by Senator Taliafero. An effectual objection being made to the ladies speaking in open session, a motion for a recess of thirty minutes prevailed, and Miss Willard occupied the time in speaking on the objects of the petition. Twenty-four senators voted for the recess and nineteen against it. Three senators left the chamber, returning at the close of the recess.
The presentation committee was the same as before, with the addition of the following persons: Mrs. H. A. Allyn, of Springfield; Mrs. R. Greenlee, Mrs. M. A. Cummings, Mrs. J. B. Hobbs, and Miss Lucia Kimball, of Chicago; Mrs. G. H. Read, of Bloomington; Mrs. H. W. Harwood and Mrs. H. C. Cullom, of Joliet; Mrs. S. B. Mooney, of Pana; Mrs. S. M. I. Henry, of Rockford; and Mrs. M. A. Taliafero, of Keithsburg.
In Massachusetts the W. C. T. U. presented the following excellent form of a bill to the Legislature of 1879, which was passed in the Senate, but tabled in the House:
"The vote shall be by ballot; and ballots shall be ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ in answer to the question: ‘Shall the mayor and alderman (or selectmen) be authorized to grant licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors in this city (or town)?’
"Any woman possessing the other qualifications for voting now established by law may apply to one of the assessors of the city or town in which she has residence, to be assessed for a poll-tax, and shall be so assessed; and upon payment thereof she may apply to the proper board of registration of voters in such city or town, not later than the Saturday preceding such day of voting; and it shall be the duty of such board, upon being satisfied that she possesses the other qualifications required of voters, to place her name on the voting list for use at such meetings; and she shall continue to be so assessed each year, until she shall otherwise request in writing; and so long as such qualifications continue to exist she shall have at all meetings held under this act all the rights of a legally-qualified voter.
"All licenses granted under the provisions of this act, and of the act of which this is an amendment, shall contain, in addition to the name of the licensee, the name of the owner of the premises upon which the business is to be carried on. The clerk of each city and town shall keep a complete record of all licenses, with their bondsmen, and of the owners of the premises upon which the business is to be carried on, in each case, which record shall at all times be open to public inspection."
A temperance ballot for women requiring a constitutional amendment, a bill was drawn (at the request of the ladies) by J. C. Wells, an attorney, of Springfield, providing that women over 21 may be registered, the same as voters, and that before a saloonkeeper can open a saloon he must be able to prove to the municipal authorities that he has secured the signatures of a majority
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of both men and women over 21 years of age. The bill was introduced by Judge Hinds and called by his name, and referred to License Committee Feb. 12th, reached a third reading May 30th, with some amendments, chiefly verbal, and was put on its passage. The ladies feel under obligations to many of the members of both houses for their courteous, kindly words and acts; but especially to Judge Kinds, who battled for us so grandly from first to last, and Mr. Peters, who insisted on the final vote. The bill was lost by a vote of fifty-three to fifty-five.Those voting for the bill are as follows: Messrs. Abraham, Allen, of Warren; Bolt, Bowen, Bisbee, Black, Brigham, Byers, Churchill, Core, Crooker, Crosthwait, Davis, Dysart, Elliott, Ewing, Foy, Gray, Gross, Hall, of Gallatin; Halladay, Harts, Hinds, Ingham, Jackson, Johnson, Keniston, Latimer, Lyon, McFie, Moss, Neal, Otman, Peters, Price, Ranney, Reavill, Robinson, of Jackson; Robison, of Fulton; Ryan, Savage, Scott, Secrest, Shaw, Simonson, Sloan, Smith, Stevens, Thomason, Tice, Trammell, Tyler, Mr. Speaker. Yeas, 53.
Those voting against the bill are as follows: Messrs. Barry, Bower, Brumback, Buck, Cockle, Collins, Day, Durfee, Ehrhardt, Eldredge, English, Granger, Hall, of Tazewell; Hamilton, Hammond, Herrington, Hinkley, Holden, Hopkins, Jennings, Jones, of Christian; Jones, of Washington; Kouka, Lovell, Marston, Mason, MeCreery, Mielbeek, Mock, Murray, Nichols, Orendorf, Pearson, Pleasants, Powell, Prickett, Provart, Reaburn, Rogers, Scarlett, Setter, Sexton, Snigg, Struckman, Taylor, of Cook; Thomas, Thomson, of Will; Truesdell, Vasey, Veile, Walsh. Weber, Wentworth, Wilson, Zimmerman. Nays, 55.
Those absent or not voting, many of whom were supposed to be friends, were: Messrs. Allen, of Whiteside; Bridges, Burt, Butterworth, Carter, of Adams; Carter, of Johnson; Chase, Clark, Cremer, Dewey, Ficklin, Fosbender, Frew, Graham, Green, Gregg, Layman, Lewis, Matthews, McBride, McKinlay, Meyer, Miles, Mileham, Mitchell, Morrison, Neff, O'Malley, Pratt, Riehey, Samuel, Sherman, Snyder, Spencer, Taylor, of Winnebago; Thomson, of Cook; Tracey, Wall, Warren, Wheeler, Wightman, Wright, of Boone; Wright, of Dupage; Zink. — 44.
[Illinois temperance people please copy these names for reference, and secure their publication in local papers throughout the state.]
Note. — The Ohio Woman's Christian Temperance Union is actively circulating the following:
1. It is more difficult for a woman to obtain a livelihood alone than for a man to do so, and so she has a deeper interest than a man in the home.
2. Woman's love of home is the natural antagonist of the enemies of the home, and among these perhaps the most mischievous is intemperance.
3. Woman is less intemperate than man, and so could be trusted to give a purer vote on temperance laws.
4. Woman is less complicated with party intrigue and political ambition, with desire for office and with business at large, and so would be more free than men to give a vote on the merits of the case.
5. A temperance vote by women would be a test by which the theory of woman's suffrage could be tried on a restricted scale, without danger.
6. It would not be an entering wedge, but only an appeal to experience; and the latter, as it, should reveal good or bad tendencies in the theory, would decide the result.
7. Rumsellers oppose the temperance vote of women. I suppose that nothing has ever stirred the rumsellers of Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati quite so much as this movement to give the temperance vote to the women. If you will show me what rumsellers do not want, I will show you what I want.
8. The temperance vote is asked for by women in overwhelming numbers, most of whom are not female suffragists.
9. Such a change as woman's temperance ballot asks for is not connected with high theories as to natural rights to suffrage, nor as to property qualifications.
10. Under English law, women paying taxes can vote in municipal and town elections, and this wider privilege, which has worked well, includes the narrower one of woman's temperance vote.
11. In questions where the decision is so easy as that between license and no license woman's vote would not often be unintelligent, and so would not add to the mass of the ignorant suffrage.
12. In questions so important to the home as those relating to temperance laws woman's vote would not often be unused, and so would not add essentially to the dangers of absenteeism at the polls and of unexercised suffrage.
In proof of Mr. Cook's seventh reason, read the following from the liquor organ of Cincinnati:
LOCAL OPTION. — SPECIAL Per 1,000.............$8 00
Local Option and Woman Suffrage. — "The New Crusade" is what the vigorous temperance movement breaking out all over the land is called. That there is unusual motion, energy, and determination in the matter of opposition to the "liquor traffic" is too apparent to escape the observation of the most obtuse. It is in the air everywhere. Not a breeze from any quarter but is sonorous with the notes of preparation and the voices of the workers. The women furnish most of the agitating force, and it is very effective. "The strongholds of sin" must prepare for a no ordinary struggle, or fall with a crash that will make every distillery, brewery, and wine-press in the country tremble. The two main points sought to be accomplished by legislation are local option, and woman suffrage at such option elections. Give the women the ballot on such occasions, allow them to have a voice in the question whether saloons and beer or wine-rooms where intoxicating drinks are sold may or may not exist, and not a drop could a thirsty soul get anywhere in the state. There is an earnestness in "The New Crusade" we have never before witnessed: and if there arc any who think there is not going to be much of a shower, after all, they will fool themselves as completely as did the scoffers of Noah and his Ark. The signs of the coming storm are too apparent for any observing mind to mistake their meaning. "Local option and woman suffrage" will be the inspiring motto of the New Crusaders, and the political arena will will be made lively with the shouts of battle-cry and activity of those who use it. And it
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will worry the political parties and the small politicians more than any question they have for some time had to deal with. Shall we say there is fun or death ahead? — Cincinnati Enquirer.Home Protection Hymn.
BY MARY A. LATHBURY.
Tune, "Arise and Shine," No. 74 in Gospel Hymns No. 2.Oh! trust ye in the Lord forever!
Strong is His arm and wide His love;
He keepeth truth, He faileth never,
Though earth and sea and Heaven remove.
Chorus:
Sing to the Lord! He goes before us.
His strength is ours, His truth shall stand
Till East and West shall join the chorus:
"For God and Home and Native Land!"
Be strong, O men, who bear in battle
For us the banner and the shield;
For strong to conquer as to suffer
Is He who leads you in the field.
Chorus:
Lift up your eyes, O women, weeping
Beside your dead! The dawning day
Has rent the seal of death forever,
And angels roll the stone away!
Chorus:
Room for the Right! Make room before us
For Truth and Righteousness to stand;
And plant the holy banner o'er us,
"For God and Home and Native Land!"
Chorus:
Newark, N. J., Easter, 1879.
Prohibition Literature.
| Prohibition Does Prohibit. | J. N. Stearns. | 48. | 10 cts. |
| Suppression of the Liquor Traffic. | Rev. H. D. Kitchell, D.D. | 48. | 10 cts. |
| The Throne of Iniquity. | Rev. Albert Barnes, D.D. | 22. | 5 cts. |
| Fruits of the Liquor Traffic. | Sumner Stebbins, M.D. | 24. | 5 cts. |
| Maine Law Vindicated. | Hon. Woodbsry Davis | 8. | $6 per 1,000 |
| Review of Ex-Governor Andrew on License. | Rev. Wm. M. Thayer | 8. | $6 per 1,000. |
| Indictment of the Rum Traffic. | By Rev. W. W. Hicks | 4. | $3 per 1,000. |
| The Fruits of License. | Rev. William M. Thayer | 4. | $3 per 1,000. |
| The Ballot for Temperance. | Rev. James B. Dunn | 4. | $3 per 1,000. |
| Natural and Reserved Rights. | Rev. Joseph Cummings, D.D. | 4. | $3 per 1,000. |
| Evils of License. | Rev. Wm M. Thayer. | 4. | $3 per 1,000. |
| Rum and Taxation under License. | Rev. Wm. M. Thayer | 4. | $3 per 1,000. |
| Why We Oppose the Traffic. | Rev. A. Sutherland | 4. | $3 per 1,000. |
| The Rumseller a Robber. | Rev. Luther Keene. | 8. | $6 per 100. |
| Accountableness for Evils of Intemperance. | Rev. J. C. Foster | 8. | $6 per 100. |
| The Evils of Beer Legislation. | Rev. James B. Dunn | 8. | $6 per 100. |
| What it all Costs. | Ovid Miner, Esq. | 4. | $3 per 100. |
| Practical Workings of Prohibition. | Hon. Robert C. Pitman | 8. | $6 per 100. |
| National Legislation. | A. M. Powell, Esq. | 4. | $3 per 100. |
| The Sabbath and Beer Question. | Rev. Geo. L. Taylor | 4. | $3 per 100. |
| Moral and Legal Suasion. | Hon. Robert C. Pitman | 4. | $3 per 100. |
| The Results of Prohibition. | A. M. Powell Esq. | 4. | $3 per 100 |
| Law as an Educator. | Rev. Wm. M. Thayer | 4. | $3 per 100 |
| The Relations of Drunkenness to Crime. | Eli Harris, M.D. | 8. | $6 per 100 |
| Constitutionality and Duty of Prohibition. | Rev. H. M. Scudder | 4. | $3 per 100. |
| Governor of Massachusetts against License. | Hon. T. Talbot | 4. | $3 per 100. |
| The Street of Hell. | Rev. R. T. Cross. | 4. | $3 per 100. |
| Second Declaration of Independence. | Rev. A. W. Corey | 4. | $3 per 100. |
| Constitutional Amendment on the Manufacture and Sale of Intoxicating Liquors. | Hon. H. W. Blair | 43. | 10 cts. each. |
It is a storehouse of fact, argument, and statistics, and should be in the hands of every lecturer, clergyman, student, and every one who is interested in temperance. Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price.
Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Aqent,
58 Reade Street, New York.
ALCOHOL AND THE STATE. A Discussion of the Problem of Law as Applied to the Liquor Traffic. By Robert C. Pitman, LL. D., Associate Judge of Superior Court of Massachusetts. 12mo, 406 pages...................................................$1.50
PROHIBITIONIST'S TEXT-BOOK, THE. 12mo, 312 pages. Paper, 50 cents. Cloth....................................................$1 00
PACKET OF PROHIBITION DOCUMENTS......$0.25
Comprising tracts on prohibition and the suppression of the liquor traffic, making 220 pages.
Local Option. — SPECIAL. Per 1,000. . . . .$8 00. Also Tracts in the German language.
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Plan of Work for a W. C. T. U.
1. Wherever possible, a Gospel Temperance Meeting is to be held on Sabbath afternoon at an hour that docs not conflict with church services, and in a place to which the drinking class will come. Here the iron-clad temperance pledge ("including wine, beer, and cider") must be presented and the power of Christ to save illustrated and enforced in Bible Readings, Addresses, and Songs. A Union Temperance Prayer Meeting of all the churches should be held monthly.
2. The vice-president of each church is responsible to secure members (active and honorary) in her own church; also subscribers to "Our Union"; to introduce the plans of the S. S. Committee; and to see that the subject of temperance and the women's work are brought before the church or the church prayer-meeting at least once a month. She is also to use her influence for the substitution of grape juice for wine at the sacramental service.
3. A column should be secured in each local paper, and material, selected and original, prepared by ladies appointed for this purpose. The column should be headed "Department of the W. C. T. U.," and its list of officers, with time and place of meeting and earnest invitation to women to co-operate in the temperance work, should be published in every issue.
4. Efforts should be made to enlist the young ladies. They may constitute a committee to furnish and conduct a temperance reading-room, to establish fountains and other water-drinking places "for man and beast," to circulate temperance literature, to provide a course of lectures, and to organize a Juvenile Temperance Union, to introduce Miss Colman's and Dr. Richardson's books into the public schools; also to keep autograph pledge-books on their tables and secure signatures.
5. A special committee on finance should be appointed to add to the resources of the treasury by assessments in the churches, finance cards circulated from house to house pledging a specified sum quarterly, "little brown jug" collection boxes, festivals, concerts, temperance colloquies, loan exhibitions, and other methods.
Miscellaneous Suggestions.
"Miss Willard's "Hints and Helps in our Work" (2d ed.) can be had by sending 25 cents to "W. C. T. U., Room 4, No. 148 Madison Street, Chicago."
For all desired information about "Our Union," address Mrs. C. C. Alford, Y. M. C. A. Building, Brooklyn. For Dr. Richardson's Temperance Lesson Book, Miss Colman's Juvenile Temperance Manual, Sunday-school papers, temperance books, etc. send to J. N. Stearns, No. 58 Reade Street, New York, or to W. C. T. U., Room 4, No. 148 Madison Street, Chicago, Illinois. For leaflets and information on circulation of literature, address Miss Julia Colman, No. 443 Clermont Avenue, Brooklyn. On Sunday-school Temperance Work, separate Juvenile Societies, and Temperance in Public Schools address Miss Lucia Kimball, No. 644 Monroe Street, Chicago. On unfermented wine — how to obtain it, etc. — Mrs. T. B. Carse, President Chicago W. C. T. U., 148 Madison Street For Forms of Constitutions, Suggestions for the Illinois Work, etc. address Miss Frances E. Willard, No. 148 Madison Street, Chicago, 111. In all cases please enclose stamp for return postage.
"Roberts' Rules of Order" is our authority on parliamentary usage.
The Badge now adopted by the National as well as State and Local Unions is the knot of white ribbon, which we ought all to wear. Let us not neglect any of these outward means of bringing our widely scattered workers into unity of thought and plan; but, above all, let us seek to be guided by the spirit which is "first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated," full of charity and faith.
Sisters, do not let it be forgotten that earnest, hard work alone gives proof of live faith. Our Unions will no more win trophies for Christ on prayer without work and the bird will soar to heaven upon one wing. Our Master is him who "went about doing good." "Lo, I am with you always" is his promise. Trusting in this, let us walk going forward, "without haste, without rest."
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For God and Home and Native Land.
"The government shall be upon His shoulder."
— Isaiah ix, 7.
"Woe unto him. that justifieth the wicked for a reward."
— Isaiah v, 23.
"There is neither male nor female; bat ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
— Paul.
"For if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God."
` Monday, October 12, 2009 — Gamaliel.
"Philanthropy and politics, now flowing apart, will unite in one stream when philanthropists become conscious of power to reach the sources of crime and misery, and when statesmen understand that their functions are assigned to them for none but a philanthropic end."