•- o p . "L-
F. F_,
ANNUAL ADDRESS,
1890.
"fltxxay Domn South in Dixie."
Beloved Friends and Comrades:
We are assembled here in Georgia, the Empire State of this great
Southland, by reason of an invitation sent to us at Chicago from
General John B. Gordon, its gallant Governor, from its Legislature
and the Mayor of its renowned " Gate City." This was indeed high
honor and significant courtesy. It meant that the National Woman's
Christian Temperance Union is for " Native Land," not for a section,
and is guided by the Southern Cross as well as the North Star.
Grateful for the'good will that called us, we have come to the
smiling land of Oglethorpe, who preceded by a prayer-meeting the
founding of Savannah ; to the land blessed generations ago, by John
Wesley's and George Whitfield's ministry, the land of Alexander H.
Stephens, of whom his colored attendant said, Mas'r Alick's kinder
to dogs than most folks is to men the land of Ben Hill, the peerless
orator and of Joseph E. Brown the trusted statesman. We have
come to the Georgia of Judge Longstreet's famous "Scenes," of
"Uncle Remus" and " Bill Arp," of "Old Si" and Richard Malcolm
Johnson; the Georgia of that Southern " Brother Jonathan, " Rev.
Sam Jones, the greatest humorist among them; the land of those
famous champions of our cause. Senator Colquitt, Dr. Felton and
Walter B. Hill; of those noble sons of the church, Drs. Hawthorne
and Lee, and Bishops Pierce and Hay good ; the land in whose bright
firmament burn those stars of the first magnitude, Paul Hayne and
Sidney Lanier, poets beloved, and Henry W. Grady, Georgia's favor-
ite and lamented son.
But " King Alcohol is enthroned in the realm of King Cotton,"
National W. C. T. U.
to quote the words of that scholarly Georgian Professor Scomp, and
Atlanta's proud neck has once more come under tlie yoke lifted for
a brief space five years ago. Nevertheless Georgia ha& the signal honor
of having been the first American colony with a prohibitory law. " In
1733," says Prof. Scomp's book, " the whole colony, not then two
years old, was put under prohibition of rum and distilled liquors—a
law which remained in force nine years; antedating that of Maine
by more than a century. Georgia was the first Southern State to
start a temperance newspaper, in 1834 ; and in 1839 Josiah Flournoy,
a pious farmer of Putnam county, canvassed the State with heroic per-
severance, securing names to a petition to the legislature for the
abolition of the sale of spirituous liquors or the closing of bar-rooms."
No other commonwealth in all the Union can match this record,
and when we consider the present position of Georgia as the banner
Prohibition State of the South, (having local prohibition in 100
of its 137 counties) and led on to this proud precedence by Col. C.
R. Pringle and Gov. Wm. J. Northen, we sum up a situation
that explains why as White Ribbon women we are welcome here and^
more than glad we came. Best of all, the Georgia farmer is now at
the fore in politics; he is not in favor of saloons and never was ; so
there is hope that the new Legislature just convened will say saloons
must go. And that is just what they are praying for, the faithful
White Ribbon women of Atlanta who have wrought so faithfully for
this Convention; that is what has nerved the brave kind heart
of Georgia's leader, Mrs. W. C. Sibley and the South's intrepid pio-
neer, Mrs. Sallie P. Chapin, of Charleston—God bless them every one.
No society ever organized by women has set the key-note of protec-
tion for the home so clearly as the W. C. T. U., or has more carefully
avoided antagonism toward good men. For this reason, there is not
a good man in America, who is not at heart the friend of our move-
ment, however the exigencies of party, professional preferment, or
success in trade may hold him from the utterance of all he thinks. It
has been contended from the first in our society, that there is no other
proof so great of the good-will that subsists between men and women, >
as the voluntary relinquishment by men of power hitherto unshared.
President's Annual Address. 5
With the sense of dominance that centuries have developed in them,
they would never have proceeded to share their power with those whom
they did not believe to be loyal to them, and sure to use the new priv-
ileges accorded, not in their own interest only, but in the interest of
men. It is the highest compliment that has ever been paid to woman,
and yet one of the most unobserved, that not a school has ever been
opened to woman except by the vote of men; until recently not a
woman has b«en elected teacher except by the vote of men, or ad-
mitted to any learned profession, or to any enlarged sphere in the
line of honorable occupation. Not a woman has been made a voter
in greater or less degree, either in church or state, except by the free
permission of men. They have put upon us all their own power in its
organized use except the ballot, and, save in the highest ecclesiastical
rank, they have opened to us all the professions. Nothing analagous
to this can be cited in history to illustrate the minifying of power
already gained and held in the hands of the stronger. But there are
two reasons why men have done this. First, they are conscious of
being abundantly able to take care of themselves and their interests.
Secondly, the induction of centuries of observation and experience has
taught them, that as a class, women are, if possible, more concerned
to do them justice and to treat them with consideration, than they ^.re
to do justice to themselves.
Miss Elizabeth Bisland, the young Southern lady whose flying trip
around the world attracted such universal notice, has this suggestive
passage, which must make thoughtful every woman who reads:
Perhaps this is the proper moment to speak of a feature that was to me one of
the most interesting of this unusual voyage. I was a young woman, quite alone, and
doing a somewhat conspicuous and eccentric thing. Yet, throughout the entire jour-
ney I never met with other than the most exquisite and unfailing courtesy and consid-
eration; and if I had heen a princess with a suite of half a hundred people I could
have felt no safer or happier. It seems to me this speaks very highly for the civiliza-
tion existing in all traveled parts of the glohe, where a woman's strongest protection
is the fact she is unprotected.
THE DEPARTMENTS.
These were contracted and " grouped" last year to the serious disad-
vantage of the work. To minify the parish of a specialist in tem-
6
National W. C. T. U.
perance work is a poor way of rousing her enthusiasm and to
subordinate her to another whose own work is far larger than she can
look after as it deserves, is the climax of how not to do it. Whatever
is not done this year, let us enlarge our borders, rehabilitate the excel-
lent superintendents whom last year, in a moment of obliviousness,
we placed under so many exhausted receivers and fling out full sails
to catch each favoring breeze. We can only enlist an army of capa-
ble women in our local. State and national societies by ^ettting them
independently at work in lines suited to their taste, their tempera-
ments and consonant with each one's special inspiration.
the kindergarten and industrial school.
As the slow, patient years pass on, we look less to swift results and
are content to build rather than to fly. Foundation work now takes
first rank in our purposes as it has so long done in the classification of
our departments which were agreed upon in 1879, as First, Preven-
tive; Second, Educationai..
The Kindergarten reaches out its motherly hands and grasps pre-
vention and education both. No more valuable influence has come to
us than the little pamphlet by Elizabeth Harrison, principal of the
Chicago Kindergarten Training School, who presented the Chicago
Corjvention with her address on " The Root of the Temperance Ques-
tion from a Kindergarten standpoint."
Pitiful has been the argument of defeat that has sent temperance
women back to the schoolroom, then to the nursery, as the only sure
supply of temperance principles. Blessed will this defeat become if it
but leads us to the little child as the central figure of our work. Had
I my wish for 1891, it would be that every local W. C. T. U. would
become guardian of a free Kindergarten, supported by stated contri-
butions from the well-to-do classes, or better still, grafted upon the
public school system, through the influence of our Society with parents
and school boards. '^Begin farther back" is the lesson of the hour. Beat
not your knuckles against the granite of mature character when you can
mould the clay of a three year old's habit and intention. The only
royal profession in life is motherhood, and yet in no other are there
so many inexpert members. I expect to see the day when schools
Premdenfs Annual Address.
7
' for the training of mothers will be the chief corner-stone of a better
civilization than the world has ever seen, and when young women will
attend these schools more generally than they now flock to the cook-
ing schools that are such a sign of promise in the land, and far more
reverently will study their possibilities as co-workers with God in the
endowment and training of His human image. But when one thinks
of it, every young woman who studies Kindergarten is gaining this
preparation, and if we could be instrumental in introducing a Kinder-
garten course into every girl's school and woman's college in the land,
we should practically attain the education of our sex for its highest
and holiest vocation.
As is the food so is the man ; drink beer, think beer; eat pork and
be porcine. The multiplication table is not more accurate than the
law of food; all distempers filter down the throat. Tell me what thou
catest and I'll tell thee what thou art. Children can be' trained to
physical holiness, and the knife and fork may become the flaming
swords that guard the gates to their health-paradise. God hasten the'
day of a scientific motherhood that will bnild into her child before
and after birth the beatitudes of wholesome appetite! Then will
alcoholic drinks gurgle into their normal home, the gutter, instead of
bespattering the temple of God, and tobacco will send the smoke of
its torment from the bottomless pit where it belongs, rather than from
that holy place the organs of human speech and the cradle of that
heavenly rainbow—a human smile. But we must begin with the babe .
in arms, for the grown man is "up in arms" at the mere mention of
such a revolution.
I greatly desire to have our women study about Sloyd, that Scandi-
navian invention defined as handcraft or educational work in wood. -
It trains the hands to skill, giving symmetry to a child's education by
helping it to include the soul's trinity of forces, head, hand and heart.
It creates love for work in general, and respect for physical labor.
We are finding out at last that all aroundedness of character comes
alone of the equal development of this great trio. More than all
other influences will this discovery solve the labor question in right-
eousness and help on the day of brotherhood. The religion of the
8
National W, C, T. U.
Carpenter's Son has reached its widest evolution in these later years of
manual industrial training for boys and girls; of this the Kinder-
garten was the prophet and blessed old Froebel the fore-runner.
One of the earliest safeguards of children against the alcohol and
nicotine habits would be the Postal Savings Bank, that the itching
palm with a penny in it might pass over that increment of power to
governmental care and increase, rather than into the till of the human
parasite ever lurking near the ignorant and unwary to get their money
in exchange for the fleeting pleasures that deteriorate body and souL
THE SCIENTiriC AND SUNDAY-SCHOOL WOEK.
will be reported by their respective superintendents, Mrs. Hunt
and Miss Kimball. By invitation of the National Teachers' Asso-
elation (at its Thirty-fourth annual meeting) I addressed that great
society at St. Paul in July, and was profoundly encouraged by the
hearty response of those ten thousand teachers to requests for co-op-
eration in the departments of scientific temperance instruction and
work for social purity. The International Sunday-school Association
had before it the petitions procured by Miss Kimball from various
societies asking four temperance lessons yearly, and there was a strong
sentiment in that direction, but the diflPerence of opinion was compro-
mised by a vote (finally made unanimous) for two Sundays regularly
set apart and two others optional, besides an urgent request that
Sunday-school publishers provide specific lesson helps. This puts us
on a vantage ground never before enjoyed, and from which we may
hope to attain the four lessons before many years are past. Those
Sunday-school workers are a noble army and we shall yet learn to
keep step perfectly in all the ways and walks of God.
There seems to be a surprisingly strong opposition in the influential
quarters to the appointment of women on the Sunday-School Lesson
Committee. This is curiously inconsistent when we remember that two-
thirds of the Sunday-School teachers are women. We must keep
steadily at work educating our people to larger ideas of the equality
and freedom there must ere long prevail in the household of faith"'
no less than in the "human family'^ at large.
Over eighty-two per cent, of our public school teachers are women.
Presidents Annual Address.
9
and they have about twelve million children under their care. The
sense of justice in the few and able men at the head of the systei^ is
each year bringing women forward in the highest educational counsels
of the land. This was clearly manifest in the St. Paul convention,
and we owe our thanks to these men as well as to the leaders of the
International Sunday-School Association for granting women such
recognition in 1890 as they have never before received.
Fifty per cent, of the primary scholars never get into the second
grade in school, and only five per cent, e ver reach the High School.
The only states in the north that have not adopted scientific tem-
perance laws are New Jersey and Indiana, that always hang beside
each other as the two political drags upon the public chariot.
I wish we could persuade Mrs. Hunt to write out the .marvelous
history of her eleven years campaign for scientific instruction in the
public schools. That is a record too precious to be lost.
JUVENILE TEMPERANCE WORK.
"And while I came and went the child was gone 1" This is the
requiem of reform work all over Christendom. Happily, the White
Ribboners, standing so near the cradle-side^, have builded more wisely,
and our indefatigable superintendent, Mrs. Helen G. Rice, of»Boston,
receives statistics of actual work accomplished in every one of the forty-
four,states and five territories this year. Probably so much is true of
no other society in church or state. The Loyal Temperance Legion is
a steadily increasing power. Planned by Mrs. Caroline B. Buell, our
level-headed corresponding secretary, and first applied to the juvenile
work of Connecticut, this method of enlisting as temperance*lsoldiers
all the boys and girls was soon adopted by the National, which ever-
more intends to be "made up of every creature's best."
The child in the midst, is also in the market place, and they are
bidding for him—the saloon keepers, tobacconists and venders of vile
literature. He will always be what he becomes before ten years have
etched their eternal impress on the delicate tissues of his brain and
the red tablets of his heart. This year the World's W.^C. T. U. takes
a long step forward in the appointment of Miss Anna A. Gordon as
Superintendent of its Loyal Temperance Legions. Marching Songs
10
National W. C. T. U.
(Nos. 1 and 2) and her "Questions Answered" cover all the needs of
organized work; she is devoted, inventive, experienced, and I am sure
that this promotion so richly merited after her nearly fourteen years
of service will give world-wide pleasure to White-Ribboners.
I think that in her new field she will introduce a new department
of work, for the effort to secure homes for children, homeless and de-
pendent, in the houses of independent, and often childless families, is
the latest, wisest word of practical philanthropy.
Judge Altgeld, of Chicago, shows in his recent book on " Our Penal
Machinery and its Victims," that five-sevenths of our criminals were
children of bad nurture. Whoever rescues one of these from its
accursed environment has mayhap saved a soul from death, a prisoner
from the cell and a body from the gallows. This work is preventive
and curative at once and is based on the bringing together of a friend-
less child and empty hearts pining for children, in some fortunate but
bereft or incompleted home. It is far better than shutting up these lip
tie unfortunates together, where the sense of father and mother-love is so
diluted as to be incapable of the nutrition that every young heart needs
if it is to grow and flourish. A home applies tons of moral power to the
square ^nch, while an institution applies only ounces and pounds. The
little segregated individuality has everything to hope from this powerful
battery of beneficence compared with the atmosphere of ignorance
and sin in others like itself. Then the reflex influence on those who
receive and cherish these little ones is no small factor in the sum total
of good achieved. "We wouldn't take a brick block for our baby,"
said a blunt man whose helpful love was transforming a waif into a
wonder. There is no red tape about this work and it requires next to
no capital; here are the friendless children, there are the friendly
homes, and they are brought together. As nine-tenths of these piti-
ful little strays of humanity are so because of drink, I have hoped that
our National, State and local unions might take up this work as a
department. We could handle it readily, having auxiliaries everywhere
and mother-hearted women as our helpers. It has always seemed to
me that the wife and child of the drunkard were our providential por-
tion, and that specific work for them should be systematized through-
President's Annual Address. 11
\
out our borders. Women not now with us could be enlisted to carry
out our plans, and this family system is certainly the best.
After the Johnstown calamity there was hundreds of families that
offered to adopt homeless little ones, but hardly one was given up
to be adopted. There are enough well-to-do men and women who
would receive the waifs, whose guardians our societies properly are,
and the only problem before us is how to bring the two classes
together face to face.
For this work we should appoint a woman in every State and
county of the nation. Our superintendent of Sunday-school temper-
ance work. Miss Lucia E. F. Kimball, has given example to all of
us women who are not "set in families," by the adoption of a friend-
less little boy, whose brightness and devotion are as great a joy to her
as her motherly protection and love have proved to be to him.
TO THE CHILDREN.
Nothing has more deeply touched my heart than the young parents
who, at the close of almost every meeting I address, bring forward
their little ones, saying, "We named our boy for you," or "Here is
our little girl; she is your namesake." This public recognition seems
no more than due, * with the expression of my tender thanks and heart-
felt prayers for all the sacred little lives that are hostages to the future
for good behavior on my part, and what is a thousandfold more sig-
nificant, hostages to God for the full triumph of our holy home cause
born in Heaven. Already the sweet lips of the white ribbon babies
seem to say, " Tremble, King Alcohol—-we shall grow up;" and the
badge worn by many of them testifies their early dedication to "God
and home and native land." To the boys of our white ribbon homes
I send this year a special greeting of affectionate good will, with these
lines out of my brain and heart, which I beg them to commit to
memory and recite in public schools, in Sunday-school, and wherever
appropriate occasion offers:
SPEECH OF A HOME PROTECTION BOY.
To home's blest cause I pledge my life,
Nor will I falter in the strite,
Till the White Cross shall gleam on high,
12 National \V. C. T. U.
Across the blue and starry sky,
Where floats our Nation's flag, and I
Here pledge my brain God's thoughts to think,
My lips no fire or foam to drink
From alcoholic cup, nor link
With my pure breath tobacco's taint;
For have I not a right to be
As wholesome and as pure as she.
Who, through the years so glad and free.
Moves gently onward to meet me?
A knight of the new chivalry
Of Christ and Temperance, I would be;
In nineteen hundred come and see!
I dedicate this good right hand
To God and Home and Native Land;
Its honest ballot shall be cast
For Home Protection, first and last.
O voters, who can vote to-day.
Answer the woman's prayers, I say.
Let North and South, let East aud West
Link vote with vote, and stand confess'd
As the avengers of the fair
And gentle ones who faithful wear
The ribbon white. This is my prayer:
A "mother's boy" whose chief delight
It is to share his mother's fight.
BANDS OF MEECY.
The work of organizing Bands of Mercy within our L. T. L/s is
going steadily forward. Mrs. Lovell, of Bryn Mawr, Pa., is devoted
to the sacred specialty, and in my judgment, should be made its super-
intendent, not as an adjunct of the juvenile work, but on an independ-
cut basis.
Miss Anna SewelPs prose epic of the Horse is entitled " Black
Beauty," costs 20 cents and should be circulated in all our public
schools. Send to George T. Angell, 19 Milk street, Boston, Mass.
When an individual has become merciful and gentle and self-con-
trolled he is likely to .remain so. When a nation has acquired the
same character it is not likely to change, for a nation is but the
individual enlarged. So having reached a point of civilization above
the blood point—having cooled the fever in their veins—the nations
shall learn war no more.
President's Annual Address.
IS
HEALTH.
DonH multiply departments," is the cry, but " wide as the curse is
found/' should be the method for its overthrow, and surely "there is no
speech nor language where their voice is not heard ; their line has
gone out into all the earth and their words to the end of the world."
Do everything, and do it all the time, is the only method that can
•cope with an adversary like ours.
Nature's way is winning women more and more. Even the prima
■donnas are now mollifying their complexions by massage rather than by
powder and rouge ; the daughters of millionaires are devoting them-
selves to out-door sports and a tine, free, natural physique is becoming
positively fashionable, just as it was once the fashion to be a walking
hour-glass, an interesting invalid and not to live by eating.
Many fashionable women who would not on any account work for
woman's ballot or for ecclesiastical emancipation are themselves among
the foremost on the women question, though their etlorts seem to be
for their own pleasure rather than for the good of humanity.
Woman's physical emancipation must keep pace with her spiritual,
mental and moral, or the harmonies are lost; and women of the high-
est fashion, who have taken to fencing, boxing, rowing, cycling, hunt-
ing and riding a la Turk, both in England and America, amuse and
interest me greatly by the assiduousness with which they are helping
cn in ways that some of us would not dare imitate, a cause concerning
which they are wont to speak with sneers.
The thought has come to several of us as we see the newly devised
deaconness upon the street in her neat, heathful and womanly uniform,
■^'Why not ask Annie Jenness Miller to design a costume for us ?"
I mean for such members of the W. C. T. U. as may choose
to wear it? If this is done there must be no corset, no bustle,
no constriction of any sort; there must be such a following of the fash-
ions afar olf as proves that we are still in the procession, but our skirts
must be cleanly, hen.ce not below the insteps, and we will have high
■collars and plenty of pockets. The Willard dress devised by Mrs.
Jenness Miller meets all these conditions, and I would it might be
called the W. C. T. U. But most of all I desire to see a head piece
u
National W. C. T. U.
invented that will protect women from shade and shine, shield the
delicate nerves from neuralgia, and which instead of being "a love of a
bonnet," shall be a "love of a hat"—as much more beautiful than the
"stove pipe" or sombrero, as women are more beautiful than men. It
must also be small enough not to cause the sterner sex to anathematize
the obscuration of view that the carriage-top coverings of the gentler
sex are apt to cause in these days. Briefly,- I would have this none-
such of a head-piece, somewhat like the classic helmet of Minerva, and
it should be taken off in doors. Now, "if this be treason make the-
the most of it!"
Let it be forevermore remembered that the croakers who said
public life would detract from the womanliness of women, cannot but
admit that the style of dress which reputable men and women deplore
is not illustrated by progressive women, but by women of society;:
and there is hardly an exception to this rule in the civilized world.
Women have in this century no patent on the invalid's estate. Nine-
ty-five per cent, of clergymen, nearly 75 per cent, of journalists, 67
per cent, of physicians and 54 per cent, of lawyers were found to be
unfit for military service in the civil war. Gymnastics, as a part of
the regular school drill, taking up the time heretofore given to recess^
is the latest word in hygiene. In Des Moines, Iowa, I met Miss R.
Anna Morris, author of a book upon this subject and teacher of phys.
ical culture in the public schools of that city. She says that Ger-
many takes the lead in these studies and that "Dr. Jaeger, of Studtgart,.
has compared the attendance of the school children, who went through
the regular course of gymnastics, with those who did not, and found
that the absence from illness among the former was forty per cent,
less than among the latter."
Emerson nobly said : "The first wealth is health ; sickness is poor-
spirited; it must husband its resources to live. But health answers^
its own ends and has to spare; runs over and inundates the creeks-
and meadow lands of other men's necessity."
O, that a second Mary H. Hunt would come to judgment, and
secure in every State a law making physical culture compulsory in
every normal and every public school throughout the nation ! There
President's Annual Address.
15
would be almost no opposition to such a movement, and it would
bring incalculable blessings to the parents and children of the future.
Within the last twenty-five years the fruit-producing resources of
the United States have increased just ten times as fast as the meat-
producing resources. Apples, oranges and grapes are getting cheaper
every year, but meat is getting dearer. This means clearer heads,
cooler blood and better equipoise of brain and brawn. It is a more
distinct blow at alcoholism than anything else this year reported.
Would that the drink habit, developed by meat eating and peppery
food, might be antagonized by scientific cooking in every woman's
kitchen.
Strong drink, tobacco and impurity are the three great sifters -of
the human race, and alas ! how few are the survivals that are in no
wise marred by these relentless mills that grind out death and destiny.
" 'Twere well to die if there be Gods, and sad to live if there be
none." This great and beautiful saying of Marcus Aurelius condenses
the sadness and yearning of universal humanity. Not until we get
back to God have we found peace. As Joseph Cook forcefully puts
it: " We cannot flee from God except by fleeing to his breast." To
find Him where one found Him not before is greater than to find
fame or fortune—nay, it is all that and a new section ot heaven be-
sides. To my own life has come in these last years a quickened per-
ception of our Heavenly Father in His relations to our bodily health.
Behind everything there is a thought, behind every thought there
is a thinker, behind every thinker is God. The human body was a
perfect thought in His mind before it was a fact of nature. Take that
great warm, mystic river of the body, the circulatory system, with
thirty barrels qf blood passing trough the heart, which is the reser-
voir, every twenty-four hours. That was a thought before it was a
thing. Now, if one invokes God's thought by the consent of one's
free will, nay by the living insistence of one's desire, and lets God work
in him His own thought, breathing upon that mighty net-work which
is the real vitality of the system, (likening the body to a continent
of which the veins and arteries are rivers, with their confluent streams)
who shall say that if it were a case of fever, there might not descend
16
National W
U.
upon that system vitality, equilibrium, perfection just from that in-
yoked inwrought thought which had power to create this mighty liquid
'highway at the first? Is it not as truly philosophical as to say : ^'We
will put in some drugs right here; get them into the blood as soon as
possible, and they will work this or that change ?" The same is true
of the nervous system; possibly more so, because the brain and nerves
seem to be the connecting link between body and spirit. Perhaps the
reason why nervous diseases as a class are more readily helped by an
active faith is that the nexus is closely between the thought of man
and the thought of God, along the net-work of the nerves. At any
rate, we hav3 the result in manifold and most emphatic cures. Why
should we not accept this philosophic explanation, which is not at all
out of line with facts as we know them? Besides, the thought of God
acting on the machinery of the body is the most elevating that we can
cherish, except the thought of his acting upon the make-up of the
mind and spirit; hence, by this method we can get a double benefit
out of the direct sense of God as dwelling in the body, the temple of
the Holy Ghost, imparting to it holiness, wholesomeness, salubrity,
harmony, happiness. And then that other higher sense of him as
loving us even as our father and mother do, only with a force as much
greater as he is more powerful, would ennoble life in a most practical
way when applied to every breath and heart-beat. Is this not a
higher concept than to trust implicitly to medicines, which are by no
means to be discountenanced, but which are not, perhaps, the last
analysis of good in physical recuperation. But I would not at all
limit myself to the consideration of divine healing when one is sick,
for to my mind the largest view of the subject is the one that claims
the imminent presence of Christ thr(ftgh the Spirit for physical health,
making that health divine, and having "the power of an endless life,"
even of his life who has passed into the heavens. The Bible says,
"Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." The Bible
says, "The body for the Lord and the Lord for the body." "Present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service;" and in what way could we so thoroughly
present them as by the recognition that the spring of life and joyous-
Presidents Annual Address.
17
iiess we feel in that perfect equipoise of faculties which we call health,
is the result of this iu-dwelliug ? If there is a better rationale of
health I have not found it. All others seem to me to be upon a lower
plane. The Bible teaches over and over again the concept of Christ
as the great physician. The celestial healer we have a right to call
him now, who, dwelling in the heavens, still is clothed in the human
body spiritualized, and why he cannot, from that vantage ground,
send out the force of a never-ending and divine life to those who trust
him so to do, I cannot see. Surely if he is for anything in those high
heavens where he dwells it would seem to be for this, since pain is the
greatest minus quantity either inside perdition or on the planet earth.
To my mind this does not interfere with the idea of death, because one
of the most distinct prayers of Christ was this: "Father, I will that
those whom thou hast given me be where I am," and he prayed this
on the eve of his departure. In proportion as a man is good he is
desired in heaven, we have reason to believe, in proportion as he is one
of those "whom thou hast given me" through the spirit; therefore,
to such a one death is no evil; it is simply transition and fulfillment,
even as "Enoch was not, for God took him." Death was simply the
■open way along which he was conducted to a better realm, which is an
heavenly. If we all had faith enough so to give our bodies to, and
use them for the Lord that we would not be sick, we also could have
faith enough developed in us to secure a painless translation as surely
and naturally as the leaf falls off at its articulation in the golden days
of autumn.
The sea is in the shell and the shell is in the sea. What health so
good, so constant and exalting as that with which we are infused after
the manner of a shell? It is better to stir a question without
deciding it than to decide a question without stirring it. Hence, I
present these thoughts that have been signally helpful and inspiriting
to me in the year past, passing them reverently, " like bread at Sacra-
ment." "Slow up the engine after fifty years of use," is the wise
counsel of my trusty comrade, Hannah Whitall Smith. May I pass
along this counsel also to this grand army of United Hearts? for I
realize its truth. "We shall fail you some day," whisper tired bones
18
National W. C. T. U.
and muscles as we sit together in the twilight. "You can not count onj
me as once you did," speaks that hardest worked muscle of all, the
heart, with its emphatic emphasis. And then one sighs a little, until
clear, unwearied voices, sweet as silver bells, say, " But we will never
fail you, the beautiful reason, the radiant hope, the ever-deepening
love, the unperturbed, unwearied will, we will only brighten with the
years and broaden into the infinite brightness and blessedness of
heaven." Beloved ones, the truest that were once here, but are now
translated yonder, unite their tuneful voices, stretch out their beckon-
ing hands and call to us—
"Grow old alone with me,
The best is yet to be."
EVANGELISTIC.
A gentleman driving along a country road overtook a stranger
and invited him to ride. Said the gentleman to himself, " I wonder
what this man is thinking about, and what subject he will introduce.
Surely it will be one of three—the weather, the crops, or the coming
electipn." But, no, his mind was on a greater theme, and his first
words after the usual salutations were those so seldom heard, so
worthy to be often uttered, " How is salvation down in your
country ? "
In the interview that Dr. Talmage had with Mr. Gladstone in Lon-
don, recently, the great statesman said:
" Talk about questions of the day; there is but one question, and that is the Gospef
It can and will correct everything needing correction. All men at the head of great
movements are Christian men. During the many years I Ayas in the Cabinet, I was
brought into contact with sixty master minds, and all but five of them were Chris-
tians. My only hope for the world is in bringing the human mind into contact with
divine revelation."
These are goldeu words, the choicest religious utterance of 1890,,
for they came from the greatest nation's greatest man and are the sum
of what eighty wonderful years have taught him. So often have they
recurred to me, with hope and inspiration that I put them here for
their heavenly helpfulness. "No Atheist's gibe falls from the lips ot
nature, but the whole universe is a set of pictured and lettered blocks,,
by which we babies learn at last to spell out "God is Love." Faith
President's Annual Address.
19
is God's dynamite. "I believe more than I know," is its formula,
''The steps of faith fall on the seeming void and find the rock beneath.""
Faith sent Stanley to the tropics and Schwatka to the pole; Edison to*
his laboratory and Grady to the forum; without faith it is impossible
to please the God of Science, of Investigation, of Reform — for all
these are but profile views of the God whom Deborah worshipped and
Mary gave to the world in incarnation, even of Him who said, "Before
Abraham was, I am!"
Study the figure of a runner—as he leans forward he has voluntarily
projected ahead of him the center of gravity. He must follow it up
carefully or he will fall. So it is with the Christian. Spurgeon has
the same figure, only not so fine. He says the Christian is like a
bicycle. He must keep going or ignominiously tumble over. How
true this is in all pursuits—either of Art or Science, or that greatest
. of Sciences and finest of all Arts, Character I Evermore the motto is :
"IN I AM AND ON I MUST!"
Yet how many of us chatter like a sparrow or mourn like a dove
when we ought to be soaring and singing like a nightingale ?
The wind is here—the mystical, on-bearing wind of the Spirit—
but we must lift the sail!
If nearest to the neediest were our motto the sail would evermore be
up and sure to catch the favoring breeze. Let us be careful to main-
tain the small, sweet courtesies of life and, most of all, may we be
divinely led to keep in touch with the hearts of the humblest. For
we do more good by magnifying in our common life the sense of
brotherhood than by the gift of dimes or dollars. A beautiful lady
jostled a despised waif on the sidewalk. "I beg your pardon, my
boy," she sweetly said. He looked up as if a heavenly voice had
deadened to his ears the city's din, and said: "Crowd me off
again, lady, so I may hear you speak again like that!" Hehry Ward
Beecher was waiting for the ferry on a rainy morning. He called a
newsboy, bought some papers of him and said: "It's a hard day for
you, my child." The boy who had thus been shone upon by that
great, smiling spirit answered: "It was hard, but it ain't so any
more." For ever is it true that we give best when we have given
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National W. C. T. U.
lourselves. Well does James Russell Lowell put tliese words upon the
llips of Christ:
" Who bestows himself with his alms, feeds three,
Himself, his hungering neighbor, apd Me."
The ever feminine draweth on in church no less than state. Miss
'Greenwood, our superintendent of Evangelistic work, reports 701
names and addresses of women ministers and evangelists. Even the
Congregational church, descended from the Puritans and notably con-
vservative upon the woman question, lately voted to ordain a woman,
Miss Juanita Breckenridge, who had been permitted to graduate from
one of its own theological seminaries. The vote on admitting her to
ordination stood 33 in favor to 15 against.
Women are freely permitted the hardest tasks. Competition does
not crowd them out there ! Bishop Thoburn, of India, says that in
ten years there will be more missionaries from their ranks than from
the ranks of men, and he says, too, they are equal to all emergencies,
even to those of leadership. Bishop Taylor, of Africa, says that his
hardest stations are manned by women, and in the very hardest of all
a Canadian woman, saintly and true, works all alone among the
natives, and is almost worshipped by them.
Thirteen years ago a general missionary conference for China was
held in one of the chief cities. This year it assembled in Canton
for the second time, with about five hundred delegates of all denomi-
nations. When it met before, a woman-missionary was called upon to
bring her methods of work before the conference, whereupon the presid-
ing officer left the chair, while several members hastened from the church
in tears, and still others protested in holy horror, "it is unscriptural
for a woman to participate in such a meeting." But this year, one of
the first things done was to make all the ladies who had come, (in-
eluding missionaries' wives), "voting members of the conference with all
the privileges of the floor
Besides all this, a resolution was adopted, by an overwhelming
majority, to set apart an evening for a speech by Miss Jessie Acker-
man, of California, "the representative of the NationalC. T. U.,
President's Annual Addi'ess.
who is working in China on behalf of a society that is the greatest-
moral force outside the church."
Surrounded by pagan hordes, these Christians stand together, and
men perceive the need of woman's utmost aid. Hedged in by hordes
of skeptics and saloon defenders, the Christians of America have well
nigh attained a similar clearness of vision. May the M. E. General
Conference, North and South, profit by the Chinese example.
In these days when learned prelates are fiercely criticising my luck-
less little book entitled "AVoman in the Pulpit," I ought to explain
that I long ago ordered the revision of one sentence, thus, "Christ,
not Paul, is the source of all churchly authority," to read "not the
pseudo-Paul of theology"; but fearing that was not clear enough, I
have now put it, "not the made-made Paul of certain theologians."
Dear sisters, please stand by me in explaining this clearer putting of
the point. Paul, interpreted by himself and by the Bible as a whole,
is woman's friend and liberator. For this let us always stoutly
'contend.
We believe in the perfect equality of men and women before the
law and the Lord—that is, in the household of government and in
the " household of faith."
I have recently visited a wonderful co-ordination of machinery, by
which beets are made into sugar; six hundred thousand dollars being
invested and mechanical and chemical power utilized to the utmost
in the intricate processes. I could but think as the ungainly beets>
are washed, bruised, pulverized, chemicalized, sifted and shaken up
until they emerge in as fine white sugar as was ever seen, "So God
deals with our souls. He is after their best; he would have us yield
up all our sweetness, and his intricate machinery of life is all to this;
purpose and end." We are only pig-iron; God wants to change us
into Besesmer steel—hence these many processes.
With some dim perception of all this, certain recent attacks upon
the W. C. T. U. and its President have been received in a philosophic
spirit,—as a part of the process—and eertainly a most ingenious one!
By way of explanation, it may here fittingly be s#id that theaccusa-
tions referred to my annual address in New York City (1888) wherein
9.2
National W. C. T. U.
as a possible method of introducing women to a wider field of
Christian work, a "church union" was suggested and ^the statement
made that this was intended to be carried on without at all disturbing
the church relations of anyone already connected with any Christian
denomination. It has been attempted to be shown that a new church
was contemplated; but it was a church union, wherein the total absti-
nence and white cross pledges should be a requisite, and women
should have the same status in all regards as men. That I have
been criticized signifies little. To the attacks made upon you through
me, it ought to be replied and is hereby, that the W. C. T. U. has no
secret designs of capturing any church whatever, and least of all, that
leviathan, the Methodist; we would as soon expect to bind the sweet
influence of the Pleiades! So far as I know, we have no plan or pur-
pose to organize any ecclesiastical movement whatever. Great kind-
ness is felt toward us by the church generally, but the highest water
mark of ministerial recognition ever extended to us was reached in
May last, when the General Conference of the M. E. Church South,
unanimously adopted a splendid promiuciamento on the temperance
reform, including the following:
The testimony is unvarying as to the valuable work of the National Woman's
Christian Temperance Union in the cause of temperance. ''Why,' said one brothert
'we have pretty much given over the temperance work to the women since we go,
beaten in our State. They were beaten, too, but they never could find it out as we men
could.' God bless these noble women in their noble work! They bend beneath the
storm of adversity only to rise again in the might of God's eternal truth—the stronger
for the time thus spent upon their knees. They are our wives, our mothers, our
daughters and sisters, and every thought of our hearts for them is love.
Be it remembered that this report was written by Wilmot H.
Goodale, of Baton Rouge, La., a "brother-in-law" of our society.
How much it means to have a friend at court.
We are apt to undervalue the sum total ot sympathy that is felt for
our work. A white ribbon woman visited a diorama and noticed that
through a small rent in the roof .shone the common light of day, but
the interior was so much less brilliant that this little opening looked
like a star of the ^r^t magnitude sending forth its bright and cheery
rays. It is .so with the every-day good-will of men and women. We
Presiderifs Annual Address.
hardly appreciate its intensity until we enter some dark hour, when,
lo! the sky is brilliant with the flaming torches of sympathy and
helpfulness. The crowning glory of Wilberforce, the great anti-
slavery reformer, was this, as given by one of his biographers: " He
was the prince of reformers, because he mingled an industry that
never grew weary with a sweetness that never grew sour." May this
verdict be ours when the controversies of to-day become th« annals,
•of to-morrow.
Let us each declare, " That if life be a burden, I will join to make
it but the burden of a song." Nay, better still, as says the grand old
' hymn :
" I'll drop my burden at his feet, and bear a song away."
Personal controversv is like viney-ar to the teeth and smoke to
the eyes." Let ns have none of it. " Being reviled, let us revile
not again." Beyond an occasional dignified reply to misleading
accusations, the National W. C. T. U. is wont to hold its peace, and I
believe it will do so, more and more, as the arrrows thicker fly. So
many of these arrows are now known to be " for revenue only " that
readers have grown weary, and most of them are " spent" before
they reach their purposed targets.
" Implacable is love ;
Foes may be bought or teased
From their malign intent;
But he goes unappeased
Who is on kindness bent."
Three hundred and twelve of our women have been studying the
Bible with Dean Wright this year. I wish there were ten times as
many and believe there will be when the advantages of his work
become better known. That a woman in the remotest hamlet or on
the most lonesome farm may, at small cost, avail herself of the help of
one of America's most accomplished scholars in New Testament
•Greek, is something new under the sun.
Dean Wright says; " The quality of the student's work in courses
I, (Evangelistic) and II, (English Bible), is unexcelled by that of any
equivalent number of students in my school."
H
National W. C. T. U.
Any one can take our courses of study in the Evangelistic Depart-
nient, or School of Methods; but only White Ribboners can be accred-
ited by us. All evangelists are expected to take the course or give sat-
isfactory proof of attainments in Biblical study and experience as work-
ers that are its equivalents. During their period of study they can go-
forward with their duties, if accredited as evangelists by their respec-
tive states. Miss Greenwood's systematic work has greatly built up-
the department and her report will be one of unique value.
We must have outdoor meetings to reach the voters who fail us-
and yet are more easily won than gospel-hardened church members.
Muscle-workers have too little attention paid them by brain-workers.
They are our (W. C. T. U.) allies. We must go where they are and
we need not fear to do so. Many a time have I and other women
spoken out of doors, in parks and from railway station platforms, and
always we have been received with the utmost courtesy by "the great
humanity that beats its life along the stony streets."
The ingenuity of our Superintendent of Evangelistic Work among
ranchmen and cowboys is shown in her successful efiort to get each
one to mark a calf with the initials of our society and give the pro-
ceeds thereof to help this department of the work. "The cattle on a
thousand hills are the Lord's," and much good may come of this new
device, in many ways. Will any ranchman willing thus to help,
address Mrs. Elizabeth M. Houghton, Midland, Texas, and will not
the press spread abroad the knowledge of her whereabouts and plans?
In addition to the week of prayer, I wish that Christendom might
have a day of prayer once a month, to be called the whole World's
Prayer Alliance. Might not the World's and the National W. C. T.
U. petition the Evangelical Alliance to this end? Why should we
wait a whole year to pray together? The world's people would not,
if they had ends they counted upon prayer to compass. Faith is per-
haps a spiritual chemical. Prayer may be another; and objects for
good that under the laws of the supernatural realm could not be ac-
complished, because the combination was lacking, may be wrought out
through the combined action of faith and the prayer of sincere hearts.
To my mind this is the strongest force in the universe, next to love;
President's Annual Address.
25
and it is really a part of it. We have handled coarse materials so
long that we have not adequate confidence in the real, vital materials
that lack the test of the five senses. If we could only bring these
elements of prayer and faith to a scientific nomenclature thousands
of minds would take hold of them that do not under the formulas
of the Church, which have become so familiar as largely 'to have lost
their meaning to the average person in the work-a-day-world.
DEPARTMENT FOR THE PROMOTION OF SOCIAE PURITY.
Only about seventy women in every thousand enter upon the holy
vocation of motherhood. '
In thirty-six states the married mother is not the legal owner of her
child. In several states it can be willed away from her by the father
before it ever sees the light of day. '
Bishop Thoburn, in a recent address on India, said: "When you
want to raise a building you put screws and levers under its lowest
parts. When you lift the lowest brick you lift every brick above it."
A better figure cannot be found by which to impress the importance of
work for the home-makers, since "the chief corner-stone of the state
is the hearthstone."
The supreme object of the W. C. T. U. is to elevate the home and
to protect its members, one and all—the stronger from legalized tempta-
tion, the gentler from oppression.
It has been well said by that well-known expert. Rev. Dr. Dike,
that in relation to all questions we must get first the facts, then their
relations and last of all the "causes." To inquire the causes of vice
is equivalent to asking the cause of original sin. The subject is too
large for us ! It is only by the ardent study of facts and their rela-
tions that the first glimmer of light is thrown at the root of any
matter.
Uniformity of marriage and divorce laws is the watchword of these
times. A special commission has been appointed by the state of New
York and is attempting to secure the co-operation of other States for
uniform legislation, and the American Bar Association has reported
on the subject this year.
A bill for a commission "to investigate the social vice in all its
National W. C. T. TJ.
phases; its relations to labor and wages, marriage and divorce," etc.,
was introduced into the last Congress by Senator Frye, at the request
of Mrs. Bittenbender. This effort will be renewed in the next Con-
gress. Steady advance is noted in legislation, which, after all, is but
the mercury in public opinion's great thermometer, showing what are
the strongest features of the weather in Christianity's new climate of
the world.
These are common-sense methods of securing better legislation and
mark a distinct advance for the causes of social virtue. Ministers and
doctors are the natural sponsors of this movement; they stand beside
the sacred cradle and the holy altar—we have a right to urge them to
lead in a movement like this. Rev. Dr. DeCosta has done so; he
introduced the White Cross movement into the United States, and by
my invitation came to Philadelphia and helped us when we were
novices in the organized work for promoting social virtue.
That last is a good phrase, my sisters, and I have thought of sug-
gesting it to you for the department of which I am Superintendent.
What an improvement it is upon our earliest venture, "Department
for the Prevention of Impurity." Evermore we journey from the
negative to the positive in thought and action. Social virtue—that is
the object of White Cross and White Shield work. We often see the
encomium upon some famous character that he .was "one who glori-
fied virtue in women and honor in men." Is it not about time to
reverse the panegyric, and to glorify honor in women and virtue in
men ? Each sex most needs building up along its lines of least
resistance. One of the best methods of protecting our children in
public schools from evil habits is to induce the wives-or mothers of
the men who form the board of education, or the women who may be
on such boards in commonwealths of great liberality of sentiment, to
use such an influence as shall result in a course of lectures from clergy-
men and physicians (who would undoubtedly give their work gratui-
tously) once a month, in the interest of boys from ten years old and
upwards. These lectures would of course be extempore and in sim-
pie language, accompanied perhaps by literature of the best class.
This method seems to us altogether practicable and reputable, and we
Presidents Annual Address.
27
earnestly desire that good women should note the suggestion and do
;all in their power to carry out its provisions.
I suggest a pledge that the boys aud girls " will not do, say or listen
to anything they could not tell to mamma." One of our women
writes : "This promise has been a wall of defense to my children all
through their school life; and the habit of confidence thus formed is
not easily broken." I believe we can place this pledge in the hands
•of primary teachers to excellent advantage.
The White Cross and White Shield pledges are now well known among
ns and are kept in stock at headquarters with all the leaflets necessary
to a full understanding of the work^ and suggestions for mothers who
would gladly talk with their children about personal purity, but hesi-
tate for lack of language.
Next to undress on the stage, the most vicious feature of the the-
•atrical life is that acts, transgressing the white line of purity, when
hinted at or involved in a drama, become the basis of a tragedy if a
woman's name is connected with them, but only of a comedy if it is the
name of a man. This underlying feature, well nigh universal, and
continued through the generations, is more responsible for the present
false ideas of the populace concerning the rectitude of a man's life
than any other one influence. Not until woman, by means of educa-
tion and Christianity, becomes so self-respecting that she will not wit-
ness a play based on such outrageous injustice, will the drama be ele-
vated and redeemed. Possibly it will never be, but certainly there is
no hope for it outside the influence of self-respecting women.
Dr. Julia Plummer, of Boston, is my new coadjutor, and Massa-
<3husetts women will bear testimony to the strength and delicacy with
which she carries on her personal work among young women and
spreads the propaganda of social virtue in essay and address.
The W. C. T. U., of California, has this year secured the following
law which I urge upon the attention of White Ribbon women in all
lands: i
"Every person who writes, composes, stereotypes, prints, publishes, sells, distributes^
teeps for sale or exhibits any obscene or indecent writing, paper, book or designs,
•copies, draws, engraves, paints or otherwise prepares obscene or indecent figures; or
National W. C. T. U.
writes, composes, or publishes any notice or advertisement of any such writing, paper,,
book, picture, print or figure, has committed crime and is liable to fine or imprison-
ment."
The women of Cheney W. C. T. U., under the lead of Mrs. Lucy
Switzer, president of Washington (state) W. C. T. U., sent out the
following token when of their own self-respect:
" That we request the business men of our city to prohibit the use of profane Ian-
guage and the telling of obscene stories in their several places of business. The sale
and circulation or the Police Gazette should be suppressed and a law against the cir-
culation of obscene literature and display of impure pictures should be vigorously
enforced. We urge the women of Cheney to co-operate with us in sustaining the
monthly mother's meetings."
. _ '
The use of woman's face or figure as an advertisement of low thea-
ters, high-license saloons and cigarettes, and the display of both upon
the stage in impure surroundings and denuded of drapery, is an
insult flaunted in the face of decent women with an impunity that
speaks volumes for the average of feminine placidity. Men do not
dream of using impure language in the presence of a true woman, and
no more would they dare to associate the faces of women or to
undrape their forms upon the stage, had the typical woman of public
thought, enough character and courage to resent the insult that such
exhibitions are to every one of us. I wish to pledge every White
Ribboner by the pure badge she wears, to be always clothed in public
places "as becometh godliness," and joining with our White Ribbon
comrades to crusade by united protest against women's faces in saloons,^
and tobacconists' windows, against immodest playbills and immodest
women at the play.
Last year it was Illinois that stood in the forefront of this fight,
but now Ohio leads. The W. C. T. U. of Steubenville protested
through the courts against a disreputable company of traveling min-
strels; caused their play to be stopped and their company disbanded.
Thus, like "some village Hampden who the petty tyrant of his fields
withstood," our local workers are withstanding the usurpers of their
right to have a decent village in which to bring up their boys and
girls. "Who would be free himself must strike the blow."
Not long ago an item appeared in the daily papers about a new
President's Annual Address. 29
'
\
method of raising money for the church, which was adopted at a
nhurch fair in a state that shall be nameless. The young ladies of
the church opened a "kissing tent," where, for a stated sum, they
allowed themselves to be kissed by the young men, the money going
to the church. I can hardly believe this, but it is well to sound a
note of warning. As women go more and more into public life, I do
not dread it for them, but I think that the standards of personal dig-
nity must be raised. The lines of demarcation must be carefully
observed. This will apply not only to manners and the permission of
familiarities,- but to dress. Some old-time, conservative people say we
must introduce the method of chaperoning young women ; and I feel a
Bense of indignation every time I see that such a party of young people
has gone to such a place, chaperoned by so and so. To me it is a confes-
sion on the part of those chaperoned that they had not sufficient per-
sonal dignity to take care of themselves, which is always a confession of
weakness on the part of any young woman or her relatives. The
nobler and the modern way is to give more liberty than ever to our
young women, but iu Sunday-school and public school and home to
BO forewarn, forearm, and develop in them a sense of their own per-
Bonal dignity and personal responsibility that they will need no chape-
roning.
William T. Stead has uttered a true word in opposition to this
European tendency imported to our shores by travelers un-Ameri-
nanized by long residence abroad. I hope the W. C. T. U. may
always stand for the higher law he would inculcate. Hear him:
Another mistake has heen this: When people aspire to have a purer society they
say, "We must have a stricter society; we must he more ascetic; we must diminish
the opportunities enjoyed hy the sexes for meeting each other; we must keep a tighter
diand upon our hoys, and keep our girls closer indoors." I believe that is all wrong,
and rotten from bottom to top. I think that God Almighty knew a long sight better
how to make this world than you or I; and it alway^ seemed to me that if He in His
■creation had taken a hint from some of our wise men and wise women He would have
had all the hoys horn in one family and all the girls horn in another. Ho ; as brothers
and sisters we are horn into the world in the same family, so as men and women we
must mingle in all departments of human life. Wherever you exclude either the one
or the other element, therein I believe you have a source of weakness and of danger.
The true unit of humanity is not the man or the woman, hut the man and the woman;
and the more you can bring together in your Church and in your industries, in your
30
National W. C. T. U.
social life-and in everything, man and woman so that we can reproduce the family
life in which you have brothers and sisters meeting on equal terms, therein you will
have less danger, more purity, much more happiness. Never forget that one great
point we have got to keep in mind is that we must labor to increase and multiply
human happiness. It is not enough to say, "We will he pure, we will have more-
justice." You must also have more happiness ; and more happiness you will not have,,
and cannot have, when you separate the sexes, and shut your men up in social monas-
teries and your women up in irreligious nunneries. I want to see much less separa-
tion. I want to see more association on friendly, innocent, and safe terms of young
men and young women. It is one of the most deplorable symptoms of the state of
things which prevails in mainy societies, when if men and women who are not married
are noticed to be united by close ties of friendship and sympathy, p'eople assume at
once that something is wrong between them. That assumption may be, and perhaps-
is, a natural growth in a corrupt and immoral society, hut if we have got to mend
matters we have got to change all that. Men and women, no longer shut up apart
and separate, must work together, discuss together, think together, and talk together,
and it ought not to he thought if a man and woman are often seen togeher that therr
is something wrong and improper in what they are about, any more than if they wera-
brother and sister.
SOLDIEES AND SAIDORS.
While probably not so intended, the establishment of the "Canteen
System" in the United States army is a backward movement greatly
to be deplored. By this method the United States furnishes intoxicat-
ing liquor to its own soldiers—a degradation that will seem almost
unbelievable to a future generation. Our duty is plain—the agitation
must go on, by petition, literature and public address, until those who-
"drink from the same canteen" will there find no alcoholic poison.
We are opposed to the army canteen on principle. What more
flagrant violation of its trust than for the Nation to furnish intoxicat-
ing liquors to its defenders ? The same logic, carried further, is what
provided the British army in India with degraded women, on the plea
that they would be patronized anyway, and governmental supervision
was more safe. The vices of men should never be catered to by the
government whose office it is to protect and benefit its subjects. Here
we stand and will do no other, and our watch-cry for the soldiers is
down with the canteen.
Hon. Eugene Hale presented a bill by request of our National
Superintendent, Mrs. McClees, to prohibit the sale or supplying of
intoxicating beverages in military and naval institutions and branches.
f
Presidents Annual Address.
31
of the national home for disabled volunteer soldiers, and the sale or
supplying of intoxicating liquors as a beverage (including wine and
beer) to any soldier in the uniform of the United States within ten
miles of any military or naval institution under the control of the
United States.
If the love of Congress for " the old soldiers " were intelligent, the
army canteen that furnishes him alcoholic drinks under govern-
ment sanction would never have been legalized. It is something
gained, however, that these canteens are forbidden to sell liquors in
the prohibition States.
The debate in the House and Senate showed that many leaders are
with us, both in the army and the national legislature.
"No flag waving above a government canteen or soldier's home
with a beer saloon attached," is one of the mottos of this depart-
ment, but it is not enough to determine where that sacred emblem
shall not be without our protest; we must reso^lve where it shall be,
and so Mrs. Endocia Moflett, our associate Superintendent, sends forth
the call: " A fiag for every school-house in the land.'' If there is
a humiliation to womanhood deeper than any other that confounds
her as a patriot, it is to see the saloon from which flows forth a con-
stant curse upon her home, floating the flag's caressing folds. Then
down with the star spangled banner of saloons, and up with that ban-
ner on the school-house of prairie and hill!
When the G. A. K. met in Boston in the flerce heat of August, the
W. C. T. U. of that city and vicinity determined to play the part of
good Samaritan on the day when the great procession marched. With
their own hands those faithful women served the veterans for nine
long hours with lemonade enough to exhaust three barrels of sugar and
thirty barrels of spring water. Many thought they were to pay for
their refreshments, and when they found that good will comprised
the whole transaction their hearty "God bless you, ladies!" rang
along the endless line. It rejoiced my heart to read of this and I
earnestly hope our members. North and South, may thus help to defend
the soldier, be his uniform of blue or grey, from the temptations of
the march, which, God be thanked, is now a march of peace.
3^
National W. C. T. U.
TOBACCO.
The best thing for the race, that comes to us from New York City
this year is the following action, taken there on August 12, relative
to our W. C. T. U. against smoking:
New York, August 12.—At the meeting of the hoard of Aldermen this afternoon
the following resolution was adopted.
V\ hebeas, The smoking of cigarettes upon the cars, upon the streets and avenues
and in various places of public resort hy hoys, many of them of tender years, has
become an intolerable nuisance ; and
Whereas, Many of our most eminent medical men have inveighed against the
evil effect of cigarette smoking, declaring that the habitual use of tobacco in this form
is undermining the constitutions of thousands of boys in this city and elsewhere, and
Whereas, The legislature of the state in its wisdom has passed the following law :
" No child virtually or apparently under sixteen years of age should smoke or in any
way use a cigar or tobacco in any form, whether in any public street, place or resort, "
and
Whereas, Violation of this statute is made a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of
not more than $10 nor less than $2, and
Whereas, The said law goes into effect September 1, 1890; therefore.
Resolved, That a copy of this preamble and resolution he transmitted by the clerk
of the board to the commissioners of police with a request that instructions be given
the police force to enforce the law by arresting any minors using cigarettes or tobacco
in any form upon the public streets or avenues, or in any public place.
The tobacco crusade waxes warmer. Mrs. Ingalls, of St. Louis, is
becoming a power in the earth. The Pullman and Wagner Com-
panics are steadily importuned to separate their smoking department
from the drawing-room cars, the nicotine taint of those cars having
become a public nuisance. As yet they do not move, but they will one
of these days. Laws are being passed to put tobacco under ban, so
far as minors are concerned, and majors are leaving off for their own
sakes. The " arrest of thought" is, however, but begun. The opium
habit is becoming dangerously prevalent. Women are using a small
lozenge of opium carried in bon-bon boxes, and taken when one is
tired or depressed. We must try to reach these deluded women by
press and pulpit, persuasion and prayer.
It is about time that we talked of our " tobacco politics," for if a
politician does not smell of tobacco and beer he is at a discount in the
caucus.
The party of the future will be minus these two factors, to the
/
President's Annual Address.
33
advantage not only of the faculties but the olfactories of its members.
Bestir yourselves, brothers, in your governmental bachelors' hall—
clean house, and do so speedily, for the ladies are coming, and that
right speedily.
THE NATIOXAI. W. C. T. U. TRAINING SCHOOL.
On page 18 of that excellent "W. C. T. U. School of Methods
Manual," by Mary Allen West, are these words:
"Our highest ideal will he reached when we have a National W. C. T. XJ. Training
School. Here could be trained and from here sent out, conductors and teachers for
the thousands of these Schools of Methods that our country needs, thoroughly furnished
unto the good work which would thus he unified and systematized. Our National
President recommended it in her last annual address, and our earnest prayer is that
this ideal may soon he realized."
Our ever helpful friend, Ferdinand Schumacher, of Akron, Ohio,
agrees to give $500 to start the W. C. ,T. U. Training School in
Chicago, and to duplicate every dollar that we receive from other
sources. This is a brave beginning, and I think we ought to name
the institution the " Schumacher W. C. T. U. School of Methods,"
a permanent institution at Chicago, that shall build up women
purposing to be evangelists, in the knowledge of God's word and the
purpose and method of the W. C. T. U. Miss West has admirably
outlined plans for this work; Miss Greenwood and Dean Wright will
heartily co-operate, and I believe that within five years we may see
our way clear to establish such an institution on a permanent basis,
with branches in every summer Chautauqua on the continent, and regu-
lar courses of study conducting to certificates that will open a path
before the feet of thousands of on-coming women workers.
OUR SUMMER COTTAGES
at Chautauqua, N. Y., Bayview, Mich., Lake Bluff, 111., Winfield,
Kan., Lake Side, O., Crete, Neb., and elsewhere, are important fac-
tors in developing new workers and moulding public opinion. Mrs.
S. M. I. Henry, at Chautauqua, and Mrs. A. S. Benjamin, at Bay-
view, have done such service as renders this acknowledgment just
rather than invidious. The Kellogg cottage at Chautauqua and
Evelyn cottage, built by B,. G. Peters, of Manistee, are among the
/
National 11^ C. T. U.
most attractive on the grounds of these two chief summer camps, and
are a foretaste of what royal-hearted men will do for us, I believe,
throughout the country, not only in furnishing summer homes for our
work, but in building us temples for all the year round.
LEGAL AVOIIK.
Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender, our Superintendent of legislation and
petitions, has worked faithfully at Washington, and in the field our
strong corps of franchise experts has done splendid service. Nn
department is better equipped than this. In South Dakota they
wrought valiently. Rev. Anna Shaw's resignation of the superinten-
deney has not deprived us of her ringing voice in popular discussion;
and Mrs. Susan Fessenden, our new Superintendent, is a rare rein-
forcement to the cause, as is Mrs. Mary Haggart, whose statesmanlike
utterances call out the approbation of conservatives. And as for
"our Deborah," Mrs. Zerelda Wallace, who at seventy-two goes alone
from State to State, everywhere winning adherents for equal suffrage
on a Bible basis, how can we love and honor her enough ?
THE BULLETIN.
Ours is, above all else, an educational propaganda. The first ele-
inent in that education is to permeate through the press, the public
mind with the spirituality of the modern temperance movement; its
inherent religiousness. Then we have to show that science is the
sword of the great reform and law its shield, parties its enlisted sol-
diery and women its reserve crops. We shall do this most effectively
by the citation of authorities; the exegesis of texts; the experiments
of the laboratory ; the conclusions of statesmen; the expert testimony
of reformers, and we must enforce all this body of evidence by illustrat-
ing the temperance cause in action under the head of news and per-
sonal items. But we have, through inexperience, inverted this order
and made our bulletins too personal. In 1891 there will be a change
for the better ; and the press department will deal more largely with
-principles and less with plans, thus making it more acceptable to the
great public.
Wci must also arrange for systematic work in writing articles for
Presidents Annual Address.
35
leading papers, secular and religious, and an occasional temperance
contribution should be sought in our magazines, whose immense cir-
culation offers the widest possible field for the educiition of public
sentiment.
Miss Mary Henry built up the Bulletin so well that she has been
invited to help edit that most inspiriting of monthlies. The Chau-
tauquan; and Miss Alice Briggs merits our thanks for the faithful
work she has done in filling out the year.
The appointment of Press Superintendents in all our large cities is
of emphatic importance. If the local W. G. T. U. in each city would
furnish items of scientific, governmental and social interest, also gen-
eral news of the work to each editor, weekly, it would give strong im-
pulse to the movement in quarters where it is least popular. May I
not urge the consideration of this method upon all presidents in cities
and large towns? If you do nothing else do this and subscribe for
the Union bignal for pastors, Sunday-schools, public-school superin-
tendents and other leaders of public sentiment.
Sadly do they need these utterances to offset those of current muni-
cipal journalism, for as our own'editor has forcefully said : " Suppose
the press spoke as lightly of horse stealing as it does of the violation of
prohibitory statutes, whose horse would be safe?" We are told to
educate public sentiment by the same writers who are themselves
degrading it.
But the worst efect that the present demoralization of the press leaves
on the minds of those who read, is in that it lowers our standard of
human nature, and increases our distrust of one another—the greatest
harm that can fall upon a human spirit; for the press gives us a record
of all the evil conduct, and every person who does an evil act dimin-
ishes the sum total of human confidence. Besides the bitterness of
the commentary so often seen in the press intensifies this sense of dis-
trust, and is opposed to that genial atmosphere of brotherhood, which
it should be the study of all those who influence the public by pen or
Toice to disseminate and to increase.
the women's lecture bureau.
Mrs. R. A. Emmons, secretary, (161 LaSalle street, Chicago), has
so
National W. C. T. U.
done well this year, largely increasing its influence and income. It is
now practically self-supporting, and is of great service to the cause of
temperance and woman.
NATIONAL ORGANIZERH.
Our national organizers deserve well of us. I hope their number
may be increased. They should be associated as the National Super-
intendents arc, with Chairman, Secretary and By-laws. Miss Henri-
-etta Moore has worked for twenty-two months steadily on the Pacific
-coast. Mrs. M. L. Wells has explored Texas, Arizona, Nevada,
been to California, and held an admirable training school in North
Carolina. Miss Frances E. Griffin has devoted herself to her native
State of Alabama with a heroism worthy all praise, giving up an
assured income and not receiving enough to meet traveling expenses
this year. She will be amazed that I name this; but I am perfectly
aware that hers has been the most heroic field of 1890, and I propose
to take her home with me and give her a holiday in the disguise of a
Northern lecture trip ! Mrs. Bullock has helped us nobly in Iowa
and New York. Mrs. Washington has been detained at her home in
Port Jervis, N. Y., by the long illness of her husband. Mrs. Mary
Beade Goodale has gone steadily forward in Louisiana and Texas.
Mrs. Chapin has wrought chiefly with her pen this year, owing to
impaired health, and we know that pen and tongue are both with her
the cimeters of light. To Mrs. Fanny Bastall, President of Kan-
sas W- C. T. U., who went there by request of the general officers,
we owe the organization of this new domain, beautiful for situation,
.delightful in climate and certain to become a noble State.
"W^hen Miss Gordon and I were in the Indian Territory last we
learned that at one point on the river that separates Oklahoma from
•an adjoining State, and from crossing which all emigrants were with-
held by the presence of United States troops until noon on the
appointed day, two enterprising "school mams" waited with the rest,
eager to stake out their "elaim" and start their new farm. To the
credit of all men let it be said that these, by common consent, held
back their horses until these two "lone women" crossed the ford and
had first choice of all that goodly heritage. It was a happy omen.
President's Annual Address.
37
May the W. C. T. U. now organized in the large towns and led on
by Mrs. \V. L. Rhodes, of Guthrie, President, help to hold the fort
for home protection and saloon destruction yonder on the newest of
our prairies.
Miss I. C. DeVelling, of Ohio, was specially detailed to work in
the new Northwest, and has done so to good acceptance. She is now
in Colorado resting, but will soon resume her peaceful war-path.
The growth of our Young Women's unions this year has been phe-
nomenal, especially in Pennsylvania, and Ave all know that a word tu
the Y's is sufficient, but Ave fear that, taking the world at large into-
account, they haA^e by no means reached the proportion named in
Holy Writ, "and five of them AA'^ere Avise and fiA^e Avere foolish." With
this fulfillment as their objecth^e point, Ave may safely trust our bright
young sisters to march onward under the lead of Mrs. Barnes, Mrs.
Rhodes, Miss Morgan and Miss Ida Clothier, "of ours."
At the Asheville W. C. T. U. School of Methods in July, the fol-
loAving resolution Avas offered by Mrs. J. E. Ray and unanimously
adopted:
Whereas, We believe that the negro in our midst is being trained of God for the
evangelization of Africa, we would respectfully ask the National Woman's Christian
Temperance Union to institute a department of co-operative missionary work for the
development of christian workers among this people, both in the home and foreign
field.
That this Avas a true key-note I steadfastly belicA'c. There are more
Christian and more educated negroes in the South than anywhere else
on earth. They hav^e the sympathetic' nature that adapts them tO'
evangelistic Avork. Africa is to be ciAulized and that glorious work i&
to be largely done by them as well as the Avork of converting to Chris-
tianity those of their OAvn people Avho are unsaved.
Five hundred dollars Avere sent me by the executors of Mrs. Sarah
Speer, of Woburn, Mass., to use as I t-hought best, aud it Avas set apart
for work among the colored people. For I believe that kindly race
deserA^es more of us and will more readily repay by its co-operation ia
our movement, all effort we put forth on its behalf, than any other on
this continent. I am glad t > see it represented .so ably here to-day
3S
Natiomxl W. C. T. U.
and hope its delegation may continually grow in the great national
W. C. T. U.
In 1877, a mob ten thousand strong held Chicago by the throat
until from the western provinces 400 regular United States troops
arrived. But their presence was the signal for good order. The
soldierly bearing, measured tread, and gleaming guns of this hand-
ful of men struck terror to the hoodlum heart. The Regulars did
not fire a gun, but, all the same, they quelled the mob. It was the
triumph of system over chaos; of concerted power over hap-hazard
movement; of government over lawlessness.
Organization, as has been often said, and as can hardly be said too
often, is to the work of civilization what a company of trained
soldiers is to a mob. Disorganized temperance sentiment is our
weakness; organized sentiment our weapon of power.
We have not yet found that "reluctant, elusive, inevitable" best
woman to organize and direct the department of presenting our cause
before influential bodies. She should abide at headquarters and have
special supervision of the work and of the department of organiza-
tion itself. Concerning this desideratum, I shall continue mildly to
intimate until the powers that be, ordain action in as well as on the
premises, for I firmly believe that every social science association,
every philanthropic and reformatory gathering in the United States
and world should hear from the temperance women concerning that
great cause so often overlooked, but which, if carried to success,
would make most of their convenings a work of supererogation.
total abstinp:nce.
Total abstinence makes steady gains. The Pan American Con-
ference sat down to several elegant official banquets where no wine
was served. The President of the United States was similarly hon-
ored at Boston's Civic Dinner; the Press Association of North Caro-
lina expressed by resolution its thanks for the compliment to its steady
habits involved in the wineless banquet given by the Durham Board
of Trade. In Washington society, a total abstainer is no longer
unique; seventy of the chief railway superintendents of the United
Presidenfs Annual Address.
S9
States report in letters to the New York Indepeudent, that their em-
ployes are forbidden to enter a saloon.
HERE IS OUR WHITE RIBBON PLEDGE :
I hereby solemnly promise, God helping me, to abstain from all distilled,
fermented and malt liquors, including wine and cider, and to employ all
proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the same.
I wish the convention would order this struck olf in the form of a
pocket folder with our reasons attached, and I offer the following for
that purpose, iis they embody my own and as I believe your position
briefly stated:
reasons for total abstinence.
First. Modern science proves that alcohol is not helpful to any vital process. It
is the enemy of vitality. It overworks the organs with which it comes in contact, in-
■ducing needless friction.
Second. The appetite for alcoholic drinks is cumulative. It has no power of self-
restriction. It grows~by what it feeds on. One glass calls for two, two for three, and
so on in dangerous ratio. ^
Third. The life of a drinking man is apt to ho divided into two chapters of a very
tragic serial, in the first of which he could have left off if he would, and in the second
he would have left off if he could.
Fourth. The power of habit is practically omnipotent. The power of will to cope
with it has been proven insuflicient. The grooves of action are quickly worn. No
harm results from doing without alcohol, hut absolute good has been proven to result
from such abstinence. Therefore as a friend to myself, and the special guardian of
my own well-being, I am hound to let intoxicating liquors alone; and by the terms of
Christ's Golden Rule I am equally hound to let them alone because of my interest in
the well-being of those about me and because of my purpose, by God's grace, to invest
my life in hastening the day when all men's weal shall he each man's'care.
In the centennial celebration of Father Mathew's birth we have all
rejoiced; in the benediction sent by the Pope of Pome to the Catholic
Total Abstinence Society of the United States we have been glad. It
reads as follows:
" We esteem worthy of all commendation the noble resolve of your pious associa-
tion, by which they pledge themselves to abstain totally from every kind of intox-
icating drink. Nor can it at all be doubted that this determination is the proper and
the truly efficacious remedy for this very great evil. Leo Xiii."
The beautiful brain that can think out an epic, compose a symphony,
transfigure a canvas, invent an engine, a telephone, an airship, we are
40
National W. C. T. U.
in the fight for its freedom and integrity—the holiest fight this side
Jehovah's throne.
THE BIBLE IN OUR SCHOOLS.
This year has had no utterance on this great theme so forceful and
conclusive as the following from Rev. Dr. John Bascom, of Massachu-
setts, who, beyond any other, is the philosopher of reform movements
in this age. I quote from his criticism of the Supreme Court of Wis-
cousin, because of its decision against the Bible in the public schools:
" The court excluded religious instruction in order to get rid of sectarian instruction.
Under a construetive interpretation the Bible is not a sectarian book. All Christian
sects assign it distinctively a central position. Sectarianism arises in the doctrinal ren-
dering of portions of it and not in its primary moral force. We read the Bible in our
schools for its primary historic force, as roe offer minerals and plants to the senses of our
children. The Bible is to sectarian opinions what water is to specific drinks— it is the
body of them all, but has the peculiar qualities of none of them. It is the chief classic in
the English language, themnost wide-reaching and forceful of historic records; itisineom-
parably superior to all other books in its intellectual productiveness, moral power and
spiritual inspiration, while as « fact it has been the most potential element of our race
and national development.'^
What more curious idea could have wormed its way like a cork-
screw into the public mind than the opinion that to prohibit the
saloons in our streets and to permit the Bible in our schools are equally
an oftense against personal liberty ? In view of such conclusions it
becomes doubtful whether reason itself is reasonable!
Consider, for a moment, what kind of a book this is which has been so peremptorily
shut out from the schools of Wisconsin. Shall the Chinese cling to the works of Confu-
cius, the Hindoo revere the Rig-veda, and the American cast aside the Scriptures? It is
not a question of our own individual estimate of the value of this book; it is not an in-
quiry into other sources of truth from which Europeans might have derived their purest
beliefs and best impulses, it is rather, whence have they received them, and how are they
now most frequently enforced? It is folly to cut ourselves off from the most copious
fountain, at our very door, from which we have drunk, and our fathers and our chil-
dren, and then sink ineffectual shafts in every moist place in search of the mere
drainage of the world. A truth is no more than a truth because it is in the Bible, an
error no less an error because it is in the Bible, yet for actual force in the formation
of society every other influence is insignificant compared with that of this book which
we are ready, either in adversion or intolerance or misapprehension, to forbid our public
schools. We have no list of excluded _ works. We proscribe nothing else. We
single the Bible out alone for this special indignity. We treat no other friend so ill,
A friend of Rufus Choate, examining the library of that great lawyer, expressed surprise
President's Annual Address.
4-i
that while he found on the shelves not a single copy of the United States Constitu-
tion there were no less than seven editions of the Greek Testament. " Ah!" responded
Mr. Choate, "you forget that the Constitution of my country is in every one of them."
A volume of Scripture Readings for use in the public and high
schools of Ontario, was published in 1888 by William Briggs, King
street, Toronto. This excellent collection was compiled by leaders in
the various denominations and has been endorsed by the State Depart-
ment of Education. I hope our leaders may send for this book and
seek its adoption in our schools.
sunday rest.
This is a living issue. Ballots are being taken by Chicago papers on
the question, "Shall the Columbian Exposition be closed on Sundays ?"
The saloons are solid on one side, the Churches practically solid on
the other. As a class the workingmen perceive that their interests
will be best conserved by holding on to the one day they have. In-
deed the wage worker is very shortsighted if he allows himself to be
roped in as a laborer on the one day when he is "his own man." This
is his vantage ground; this is his fulcrum from which he can lift for a
better chance on the other six days. Capitalists as a class have proved
that more work is done by hands having one-seventh of their time for
rest and renewing of body and soul, so that only the light-weights of
society are here, as always, the champions of Sabbath desecration. Our
petition as a society has already gone to the Commissioners and I
hope this convention may also urge that the exhibition and sale of
intoxicants be alike prohibited from this great fraternizing place of
nations.
Chicago has 5,250 saloons running wide open every Sunday,
although the law of the city declares that they shall close every
Saturday at 12 o'clock p. m., and not open again until Monday '
morning. This is printed in every license issued, and still no regard
is paid to the law. What sort of a pandemonium will they have in
Chicago at this rate when the World's Fair arrives? In view of the
situation the question is a pointed one: Do voters prefer measures or
men in carrying out their will? We have had the measures on the
statute book for well nigh a generation. What about the men?
National W. C. I. U.
When will they appear on the scene, and what will bring them there
save votes ? When will men's principles be their politics ? When
will they put this question in the ballot box and cease to make it the
foot-ball of non-partisanism ? This is the burning question of the
hour.
Your general officers joined the Chicago Central Union in the fol-
lowing petition, which this convention will no doubt authorize:
To the Honorable Board of Commissioners of the Columbian Exposition :
Gentlemen—
The demonstrations of science have in these years of more exact learning confirmed
the teachings of religion, that to rest one day in seven is for the highest good of
humanity and tends to the worthiest worship of God. Our beloved Columbia is the
country above all others that seeks to build up the best interests of man ; ours is the
Christian religion and ours are the ethic's of Christ's golden rule. We fervently hope
these great and gracious principles, upon which this Government is based, may he pub-
lished to the world in the vocabulary of action at the coming exposition and to this
end we ask that all departments of the same he closed on Sunday that the hand-
worker and the brain-worker may alike receive rest, refreshment and recreation from
God.
We do not find as the result of sixteen years study of the subject that wage-work-
ers as a class care for the opening of exhibitions upon that day, hut rather that the
demand comes from those who could as readily attend on one day as another. But
we do earnestly hope that the Commissioners may be pleased to suggest to employers
that Saturday afternoon he made a half-holiday to he enjoyed by their employees in
attending the Exposition, hut in such rotation as shall not interfere with the conduct
of their business.
This petition is respectfully oflfered and prayerfully jsuhmitted by the National
Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Rev. Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts is devoting himself to the cause of Sab-
bath observance, and should be invited by our local unions to speak
under their auspices.
OUR AFFILIATED INTERESTS.
(For none of these is the W. C. T. Union legally responsible.)
1. The Women's Temperance Publishing House.
By the change in its fiscal year (ordered at the last convention) the
books were closed so early that no fair report of our publishing inter-
ests can be made at this convention. It is believed, however, that the
returns of the winter months will warrant the usual dividend. Full
President's Annual Address.
statements will be forthcoming at the annual meeting in January.
As Cato closed his speeches with " Carthago delenda est, " and as
Petroleum V. Nasby, of the " Toledo Blade" was wont to wind up his
editorials with the words " pulverize the mm power, " so it seems to
me the Union Signal would do well, in exhorting the women to the
best work and the most thorough for our cause, to close with this:
" Exploit the product. " We have tons of the most helpful literature at
headquarters. How are we to get the middle men or middle women
to furnish hands to convey them to the attention of the great
indifferent public? How are we to exploit the product? Some one
woman should give her genius, soul, body and spirit to that problem,
and I favor giving her in return, enough of a premium on the exploita-
tions to make it to her interest to spend her days and nights in pon-
dering plans.
Be it remembered, that for one cent a package of our leaflets can
be carried around the world. At this rate each Christian Temperance
woman may hope to reach some drinker who thinks that nobody cares
$
for his soul; some voter who opposes because he does not understand
our purposes; some woman who is at ease in Zion; some little child
whose home teaching does not defend him from temptation.
We have had our Membership Crusade, and a grand one it was. It
seems to me now that we need a Postoffice Crusade. All the world
meets at Uncle Sam's delivery window. Blows dealt there are sure and
swift. No other method of striking home to consciousness compares with
striking here. No other distribution of temperance literature is so direct.
If now we had such leaflets as Hannah Whitall Smith's Bible Bead-
ings; Mrs. Nichols' "Beer—What It Is and What It Does;" "A Ger-
man Professor on the Alcohol Question;" "The Delusions of High
License;" "The Story of a Great Conviction;" "Doctor and Drug-
gist;" "Society and Society Women;" "The Black Anchor;" "Some-
body is Praying for Yon," sent to those that need them, and sent
directly and impersonally from the publishing house, what a mnl-
titude we could touch through the long arms that reach out to every
state and nation! Let me urge upon yon earnest work, seasoned with
prayer, along this new highway of power.
u
National W. C. 1. U.
THE UNION SIGNAL.
This is the chief corner-stone of the National W. C. T. U., and
journalism has not a more unique or helpful member in its great
family. The paper is cosmopolitan in purpose, contents and circula-
tion. A more honest, fearless, kindly pen was never dipped in ink
than that of Mary Allen West. * Miss Ames is a journalist born as well
as made, and two such editors are trusty guardians of " the literary
child of the crusade." Mrs. Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew filled her
niche with grace of diction of the spirit; the past is assured and reas-
suring, but to the future it should be as a tallow-dip to Edison's electric
light. This can only be by a rally of the clans, and our Board of
Directors has recently announced a plan for issuing' bonds of five dol-
lars each, the interest to be paid in literature or money as the buyer
may elect. This ought to enlist almost every woman in our ranks,
so small is the investment and so helpful the gains.
No other woman's paper in all history ever had a constituency so
large, Qr so progressive. The Union Signal is read in every corner of
the earth. When it attains the hundred thousand subscribers already
in sight, we can afPord such a list of contributors and improvement in
material make-up as will fulfill the high hopes of ever faithful friends.
We must be able to command the best pens on both sides of the water
and to enlarge the paper without increasing the price, which will only
be possible by a large increase in the number of subscribers. The
multiplication of State W. C. T. U. papers, while it is a token of
immense vitality, diminishes the clientele of our national organ, and is
at best a venturesome experiment. If the States would issue monthly
bulletins at twenty-five cents yearly and rely on the Union Signal as
the great educator of the people, it would in the long run, better con-
serve the.interests equally dear to us all. The W. C. T. U. has twenty-
six State papers already, besides local papers not a few. The Union
Signal is the mother of a white-winged flock, even as the Chicago
Temperance Temple is the mother of a forest of spires.
The Young Crusader is admirably edited by Miss Alice Guernsey,
and is steadily gaining, especially in S. S. patronage. The Oak and
President's Annual Address.
Ivy Leaf, conducted by Miss Margaret Sudduth, is deservedly well
liked by our young women.
THE NATIONAL TEMPEEANCE HOSPITAL.
This has been a year of unequalled prosperity. For the first time
in its history the hospital is free from debt. Mrs. Judge Baker, of
Evanston, 111., president of the new board, Mrs. M. M. Hobbs, vice
president. Miss Kate A. Jackson, corresponding secretary and Mrs. C.
E. Biglow, treasurer, have personally devoted themselves to the work,
and their report to be presented by Mrs. Hobbs, will give a new im-
petus to this noble enterprise ; Dr. C. G. Davis, than whom Chicago
has not a physician more successful, is the chief of staff, and Dr. L. M-
Owsley the devoted and successful resident physician.
Several morphine patients have been treated with marked success.
It is demonstrated daily in this institution that curable diseases can
be cured without the use of alcohol. This principle of non-alcoholic
medication must be generally accepted before prohibition can be estab-
lished on firm foundations. The growth of this enterprise is such
that we must have a building, and measures to that end will doubtless
be taken at an early day.
THE WOMEN'S TEMPEEANCE TEMPLE.
The Corner Stone of the Women's Temperance Temple was laid
with impressive ceremonies in Chicago, November 1, 1890. It was
the greatest day our organization has yet seen. Tens of thousands
filled the streets, and as the procession marched, after the exercises at
the Armory were over, flags gleamed along the line from Idaho and
Texas, Maine and Missouri and almost all the states that lie between.
As the children, guided by two young Scandinavian maidens dressed in
white, bore the bright banner of the Temple and led by a young Ger-
man woman (Miss Hofer), sang "Rise Temple Rise" every heart con-
fessed the exaltation of the hour.' It was a day of most auspicious
omen for Mrs. Matilda B. Carse, founder of the Temple, and her
great heart must have rejoiced to see the interest manifested by Christ-
ian minister and city journalist alike; by solid men of business, and
loving hearted women from all parts of the nation. The corner-stone.
46
National W. C. T. U.
which came from Maine, the rock-rooted state of Prohibition, weighs
twenty thousand pounds and is the largest ever laid in Chicago. The
Temple will enclose two million five hundred thousand feet of
space, and cost eleven hundred thousand dollars. While we have not
as a society the slightest legal responsibility, we are nevertheless mor-
ally bound to help on the enterprise of one intrepid White Ribbon
sister to the utmost extent that is consistent with our other obliga-
tions, and I am glad to know the local unions are very generally doing
this.
"Rise Temple Rise" is an exquisite song; full of the Crusade's faith
and works; to its moving melody let us march forward.
' As has been said before, this mighty undertaking of Mrs. Carse is
most significant of all in its reflex influence. I seldom visit a village
so small these days, that it has not headquarters of its own, and often
these are the local Union's property; the approved method being to
incorporate and build for renting purposes so as to have an income as
well as a home. If all the Women's Societies of a locality would
combine to do this, receiving in proportion to the amounts severally
invested, a vast impetus would be given to the totality of woman's
work, and an unmatched stability acquired.
OUR LOCAL WORKERS.
I cannot too often or too earnestly appeal to women working in
over-crowded groups, to branch out into the W. C. T. U., thereby
helping to open new lines of beneficent activity and to leave a stand-
ing place in old guilds for the less adventurous and capable. Our
riches consist in women, not bank deposits. Each new worker we
estimate at from ten to twenty-five thousand dollars, actual money
value!
From the first, these soldiers of rank and file have been our truest
^ t
heroines. On the prairies of Nebraska and among the hills of New
England, they are everywhere the same; patient, invincible and
uncomplaining. Their faces are a type distinctly marked; their lips
still smile, even when the eyes are full of tears. They are like that
old soldier of Waterloo who had charge of a gun on an important
height. Some one asked him what he could see while the battle went
Presidents Annual Address.
on? "See; nothing but dust," he answered. "What did you do?"
^'Do; I stood by my gun."
The pathos of these women, working so hard but held back from
the authoritive expression of opinion; so eager to help, but weapon-
less; praying for the protection of the homes for which they have
given " the last full measure of devotion," yet powerless to work out
their salvation, is something that can but give to any who perceives
the situation, "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Yet in
the churches good men who pray for everything besides, forget to pray
for temperance, and kindly, homelike husbands and fathers smile at
^'the enthusiasm of the women," and freely own that they dare not
vote for prohibition lest it harm their trade or hinder their ambitions.
The Presidents of our local Unions are fairly typified by one whom
I met upon the prairies, recently. In introducing me to an audience,
she said:
"Some declare that the W. 0. T. U. is'not doing much in this headquarters of
beer, hut I would remind them that no fort is thought to have surrendered so long as
its colors are flying, and ours were never brighter. Don't stand off and criticise, but
come and help us."
Anxious parents and forsaken wives are learning to appreciate the
help of the W. C. T. JJ. in caring for their wayward absent ones, and
the saying of a woman thus consoled becomes of wider signification
every year: " The W. C. T. U. gives to each boy a score of moth-
ers." May this faith deepen the motherliness of all our hearts.
Crusade Membership Day was quite generally observed. "Call
out the reserves" was its watchword and their response aggregated
thousands of names. It seems to me this one more "special day" on
our White Ribbon calendar has justified itself, and I urge that it be
set apart as a fixed institution.
The loneliness of leadership is not unlike that of the scout, the sen-
try and the explorer. The leader is first to draw the enemy's fire;
he is first to tread where serpents hiss and noxious vapors rise. He
is held responsible for the failures of his following, for their mutinies
and marplots; their random blows strike him ofttimes rather than the
enemy, and of him upon the human plane it may be justly said, as of
our blessed Master on the divine, " He saved others—himself he
^8
National W. C. T. U.
could not save." But, on the other hand, the laurels of leadership
are often vicariously worn. The truest heroes are of the rank and
file; theirs the small round of duties done as unto God alone; theirs
the weary toil of march and trenches; theirs the contest without con-
quest, the valor without renown; theirs the unselfish devotion that
glories to see their leader's name writ large, and upbears him in faith-
ful arms when he is wounded. Yes, and Heaven be thanked, theirs
is the choicest chrism of character for this world and for that which
is to come; theirs is the crown of life which the Lord, the righteous
Judge, shall give them in that day.
THE MONUMENTAL EECOGNITION OF WOMEN.
America has hardly a shaft, a statue or a picture commemorative of
women, except as rich husbands have bought such for their wives living
or dead. But a new spirit is in the air. Mrs. President Hayes was
great-hearted enough to secure for Martha Washington the tardy rec-
ognition of a portrait placed beside that of George Washington in the
East room of the White House. Later on, the temperance people had
the wisdom to present the pictured face and form of Mrs. Hayes to the
nation, in remembrance of her total abstinence record, and still later,
friends of fraternity between once severed sections, placed the portrait
of Mrs. President Polk upon the White House walls and that of Mrs.
President Tyler followed. Mrs. Mary Virginia Terhune (Marion
Harland) is now engaged in the patriotic effort to complete the monu-
ment of Mary, the mother of Washington, long ago begun ; Queen
Isabella, of Spain, mother of the new world, is to have a statue in
Chicago, and that of Susan B. Anthony, will be completed in time for
the Woman's Triennial Council at Washington, February, 1891—but
its ultimate destination be it prophetically stated is the capitol at
Washington. History begins in that most plastic mass, the brain, but
works out into marble that its results may be symbolized for posterity
in perpetual object lessons. Woman's epoch is surely signalized
by the tokens herein mentioned, and it is hoped that this convention
will warmly co-operate in this work of women for woman, and
through her for humanity.
Especially let me urge upon Southern women the monument to
Presidents Annual Address.
49
Mary Washington, to the completion of which that chief among Vir-
ginia's gifted women, Mary Virginia Terhiine is deyoting her time and
talent at this honr. The mother of the Republic's father in which
women are coming to their Kingdom, merits more of us than any
woman since Mary of the Bethlehem manger. I hope that we shall
take a collection for this purpose in the convention.
MEMORIALS.
We have had great losses and Heaven great gains this year. The first
promotion came to Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, of London, first
president of the World's W. C. T. U., and, at the time when she left
us, president of the British Women's Temperance Association, as she
had been from its organization in 1876. The name and fame of this
great hearted woman have been celebrated for many a year by this
convention. Of the best Quaker birth and breeding, with endow-
ments that in a man would have achieved'a parliamentary reputation
as gracious, if not so world-wide, as that of her great brother, John
Bright, investing life and fortune for humanity's upbuilding, this
blessed woman "has left along the mountain tops of death a light that
makes them lovely."
John Grubb Richardson, of Belfast, Ireland, was the next to hear
the golden trumpet of an immortal victory. He, too, was a member
of the Society of Friends, and established the famous linen factory at
Bessbrook, where thousands of hands were employed, but where there
was neither policeman or pawnbroker, because there never was a
dram-shop.
We lost a genius when Julia Thomas died. She was our health
apostle; her method linked the spiritual to the physical side of man's
development, and so had in it more of God than any other that I
have known. She was with us in Chicago, potent to win smiles from
the gravest and agile movements from the most sedate. But she has
onward passed to the ever sunny, ever healthful climate of the better
world.
The next to hear the heavenly summons was Mrs. Georgia Hulse
McLeod, of Baltimore, Md., for many years Corresponding Secretary
of the W. C. T. U., in that State, Secretary to Mrs. Chapin in the
50
National W. C. T. U.
Southern work, and later, associate National Superintendent of the
press department. Mrs. McLeod was a native of Pensacola, Fla.^
daughter of a naval officer, and wife of Rev. Dr. McLeod, of Balti-
more. We had no woman of greater delicacy of nature ; refinement
was her leading characteristic; she was of a tender and poetic temper-
ament. Heaven will be to her like its native climate to an exotic. In
1880 when I first adventured South, this gentle daughter of a Gulf
State was with me and to her wise foresight and personal devotion, I
attribute not a little of the warm welcome that was from the first
accorded.
And then, in the midst of summer's heat—the heat of this most
sultry of all summers—we lost
GEN. CLINTON B. FISK,
our brother beloved; cur champion who won from fiercest foes and
" bore without abuse, the grand old name of gentleman." In politics
men speak of different States as having " favorite sons." He was a
favorite son of nature and humanity. He was born to be loved and
built to win. Loyal to God and the Home, he gave " the last full
measure of devotion" to our sacred cause. How he has been
lamented; how he is missed; " I cannot make him dead " who was
so much alive! Mary T. Lathrap, our temperance Miriam, has uttered
the grief that most of us could only feel:
" I wonder sometimes that the world goes on
Since his royal heart stopped beating
I wonder that men can toil and plan
And women can smile their greeting;
I wonder that even the children at play
Do not pause as if touched by sorrow,
I wonder that any who loved him can care
For the losses or gains of to-morrow;
Since never again, this day or another
We shall find what we lost at his going—our Brother."
Lucian A. Hagans, the husband of our beloved Mrs. Hagans, left
us but a f^w months since. His wife has been from the first, treasurer
of our Womens' Temperance Publishing House, of which he was one
of the earliest friends and stockholders, as he was of the Woman's
Temperance Temple. He was always ready in person, purse and
President's Annual Address. 51
prayer to help our cause. A staimeh Virginian, a graduate of Wash-
ington College, Pa., a member of the constitutional convention when
West Virginia was formed, and then its Secretary of State; Mr,
Hagans edited its chief paper for eight years, and then removed to
Chicago. He never knew the taste of liquor, and was one of the most
chivalric men that ever lived. He has gone home to Heaven.
And this year we lost Henry Grady, the young man eloquent.
Unrivalled work for temperance and fraternity between the North
and South forms his imperishable monument.
In this presence I desire to quote concerning that great and gracious
man, who is the idol of Atlanta, these words from a biographer whose
diction is like Grady's own—Rev. Dr. J. W. Lee:
" He had the simplest habits. He tasted neither tea nor coffee nor wine nor tobacco.
He did not even drink milk. Nothing but pure water ever passed his lips. He had a
conception of Atlanta redeemed and moving on to wealth without the blood money of
the weak. This conception he desired to see abide in the city of his love as a perpet-
ual benediction. The conflict was raging, the parties were massed and strictly defined.
He spoke for prohibition before six thousand people, and such a speech, measured by
the enthusiasm it called forth, has never been delivered on this earth before or since.
He said, just before he died, that his work in that campaign he desired to he known
as what he regarded the best of his life."
And humanity has lately lost another of its royal friends. The mighty
soul of her who was soul of the Salvation Army went back to God
on a recent October day, and Catharine Booth's funeral in London was
a greater event than that of any ecclesiastic of which there is a record.
It was a scene of tenderest sorrow, yet of heavenly exaltation as her
great consort. Gen. Booth, joint-chief with her of the Salvation Army,
lead an andience of twenty-five thousand in singing " I have loved thee
in life I will love thee in death," and then fifty thousand passed in pro-
cession beside the coffin with its glorious words " Catharine Booth—
more than conqueror." She was sent of God as truly as Deborah was,
and her memory will be cherished centuries from now.
Mr. A. E. Bartlett, of North Guilford, Conn., dying this year, left
us $5,000—our largest single gift. This our treasurer prefers to keep
. as a foundation for the future funded estate of the National W. C.
T. U. We did not know this gentleman—a wealthy bachelor—and
5^
National W. C. T. U.
his gift came to us as a happy surprise. I wish we might in some way
connect his name .with our enterprises, and a tablet to his memory
should certainly be placed in the Temple at Chicago.
world's w. c. t. u.
Women are becoming the true cosm'opolitans; and best of all, not
commerce and selfishness, but Christianity and self-renunciation set the
key to their wide outlook. The Foreign Mission Society has domes-
ticated their thoughts at the ends of the earth. Madagascar and
Bombay are present to their minds as Kansas and Ohio. White
ribbons, following in this path, have the wide world as their heritage,
and the Great Petition, with its universal protest against legalizing the
sale of alcoholics and of opium, gives the most practical possible
direction to the new world-sense that thrills the heart of woman.
In reflex influence what an illimitable power this new sense is lo be in
moulding the natures of their children to the ideal of universal broth-
erhood!
Twenty-one countries have translated our motto "For God and
Home and Native Land." It was seen in Chinese, Japanese, Siamese,
Norwegian, Dutch, French and Maori at the World's Exposition.
Seven sacrificing years have strewn the earth with local unions,
blooming like beds of fragrant flowers. Thirty-four different nations
are now federated against opium, alcohol and tobacco. Nearly all the
work has been wrought within five years. Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt
will soon complete her reconnoissance by going to South America, and
we expect her presence at the next National Convention; also that of
the new luminary in our beautiful temperance skies. Lady Henry
Somerset, of Eastnor Castle, England. I hope our warmest greeting
may be cabled to this gracious lady, who, I am told, adds to youth,
beauty, culture, fortune and a great historic name, the higher gifts of
remarkable native talent and devoted Christian zeal.
Miss Jessie Ackerman, of California, has wrought valiantly for our
cause in Japan, China and India, and would have penetrated to Sibe-
ria but for the relentless fever that threatened to end her work and life.
She then fell back upon Australia as her skirmish line, and is sedu-*
lously at work developing the white ribbon methods among those
President's Annual Address.
53
earnest women at the antipodes. Mrs. Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew is
now in England, and Dr. Kate Bnshnell will join her in a few months
for the world trip. We also expect to send two from the San Fran-
cisco side of this home-like little planet, for which the dull word earth
is a name by no means good enough. When it shall be won to world-
wide prohibition, shall we not petition the astronomers to change its
name from Planet Earth to Planet Concordia ? At least we- will help
to make that nobler name deserved. The first born of the World's
W. C. T. U. was the Hawaiian kingdom, with its eighty thousand
people. Mrs. M. R. Whitney has been President from the beginning,
and the society is still hard at work. Mrs. Jane C. Bateham recently
visited the Islands, and gives a good report in the Union Signal.
Newfoundland is our latest member, thanks to the earnest efforts of
Rev. Mr. A. D. Morton of the M. E. Church.
Miss Charlotte Gray has wisely helped on the general movement by
convening an International Temperance Congress in Christiana, Nor-
way, at which Mrs. Leavitt was a delegate. This was the most nota-
ble temperance convocation of the year, and brave voices spoke out
' for total abstinence and total prohibition.
The Dominion W. C. T. U. held its most successful convention in
Montreal last May, and meets in St. Johns, New Brunswick, next
June. The British Women's Temperance Association also held its
best convention in May, at which time Lady titenry Somerset came
into her kingdom. The A'oung Women's Christian Temperance Union
was decreed, a national press department ordered, and " the ties that
bind " were memorably increased by the presence and work of Mrs.
Barnes and Miss Ames, our fraternal delegates. These noble women
more than fulfilled our high expectations of their embassy. Their visit
has strengthened the already strong ties that bind us to the white rib-
boners of our dear Motherland. Nothing could exceed the loving
kindness manifested towards them ; nor is it invidious to name as chief
factors in their happiness, our cherished Hannah Whitall Smith and
family. Lady Henry Somerset, Wm. T. Stead, and Mr. and Mrs. Jas.
H. Raper:
The World's W. C. T. U. should hold Sunday services at the
National W. C. T. U.
World's Fair. Mrs. Nichols knows how to set up white ribbon house
keeping in that tremendous caravansary, and we can preach the gos-
pel as Paul did "in our own hired house" among the Gentiles.
We must keep a worker moving in Japan. Mrs. Mary Sparks
Wheeler's plan tells how this may be done by means of a missionary
fund. Our good friend Sho Nemoto is willing to undertake the work,
and I hope that he may be appointed.
It has been objected that the World's petition would fail of its pur-
pose because the first government to which it was presented would
claim its custody under parliamentary usage. But those who say this
have not learned the object and method of our movement. The great
petition against legalizing the sale of alcoholics and of opium is to be
presented to some friendly representative of each government, at a
popular gathering, and he is to be requested to report it to his gov-
ei-nment, speak on its behalf and present a bill embodying its provi-
sions. The commission of ladies having the petition in charge will
then convey it to another government, and so on, the purpose being
to belt the world with the protest of the home against home's dead-
liest foes. I expect that a steamer will be chartered in which to sail
to England, because of the number of earnest-hearted women who
will wish to accompany the petition in its journey around the globe.
But we have not names enough yet. Dear State Presidents, will you
not stir the local unions of America this year to lend a hand; and
will you not, my faithful coadjutors, the Presidents of all civilized
nations, put a shoulder to the wheel more strongly than ever in 1891 ?
We shall call in all copies of the great petition in 1893, when the
Columbian Exposition signalizes a convention of the World's W. C.
T. U. Then and there the petition will be exhibited and special
efforts made to gain a harvest of new signatures. I most earnestly
wish the petition might be printed in every copy of the Union Signal,
we paying for the space and urging that it be circulated by every reader.
Lady Henry Somerset is interesting herself in her wise, systematic way
to secure signatures. As she is to be with us next year, let us call
the World's W. C. T. U. Convention for that date, and I hope we may
then make her President. Miss Gwendolyn Morgan, of Wales, is
President's Annual Address.
55
superintendent of petition work, and we shall now see the names
rolled up in a fashion worthy of Great Britain. What is everybody's
business is nobody's, and what is somebody's business is not unlikely
to become everybody's.
The World's W. C. T. U. has had earnest work done this year both
at home and abroad. Mrs. Woodbridge as American Secretary, and
Miss Esther Pugh as Treasurer, have been indefatigable, and Miss
Briggs as office Secretary has been faithfulness personified.
The Arab Anti-Rum Congress in Khartoum was the most striking
temperance feature of the year. While Christian nations were
holding their Anti-Slavery Congress at the Capitol of Belgium and
resolving to "search all vessels suspected of having slaves on board,
confiscating the vessels and returning the slaves," the Arabs passed
the following:
"Resolved, To surround the entire coast of Africa with a cordon of
armed ships, to confiscate every European vessel containing liquors
and sell the crews into slavery."
Would that some of the Boston ships that carry rum might fall into
the hands of these righteously indignant Arab heathen ! Poetic would
then be providential justice.
Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith is to edit a revision of " Glimpses of
Fifty Years," the proceeds of which go to the World's W. C. T. U. I
proposed that the British Women's Temperance Association have the
benefit thereof, but Lady Henry Somerset thinks that the international
method will be better and more in the line of reciprocity.
Canada, following the lead of its recent President, Mrs. Judge
Foster, of Quebec Province, has set the largest example of this frater-
nal spirit of which we have record, having relegated to an American
-white ribbon cousin the Presidency of the World's W. C. T. U., which,
in the order of precedence, would this year have fallen to its share.
We can never outdo this unheard of magnanimity, unless Mrs. Leavitt
should, by etherial ships, some day include the solar system in her
■explorations!
Let me earnestly plead for the word Christian in the name of every
society auxiliary to this largest organization of woman that the world
56
National W. C. T. U.
has seen. It is by the grace of God that we are what we are. But
for Christ's gospel we should to-day be slaves, and the question among
leaders in mosque and temple would not be -whether we should be
admitted to the highest ecclesiastical councils and ordained to minister
at God's altars, but whether or not we had any souls to save or
immortality to gain! When all is said, those who deny Christ must
admit, that somehow, only Christian countries treat women kindly.
Where the Son of Righteousness spreads his beams there we are
warmed into life intellectual, social and legal; there we become the
companions and co-workers of men. In Africa, living women, laid
side by side upon their faces, become the carpets and couches of luxu-
rious chiefs; in Canton, China, blind women, guided by a beldame
appointed for the purpose, traverse the streets seeking food and lodg-
ing, as the offset of nameless degradation;»in Egypt I saw mothers
mending the Khedive's royal highway and cowering under the lash of
brutal overseers; in Italy yoked with oxen, in Germany with dogs
among the Indians of the plains carrying their husbands on their
backs. Only where the Bible is an everyday home book and the
artificiality of a state religion is forbidden, has Christianity showu
its full possibilities of uplift for the gentler and more spiritual
half of humanity. But everywhere that it has at all touched
the earth, with its teachings of peace and good will, women
has been lifted into better hope. Seldom has Christian woman wit-
nessed a more memorable object lesson in proof of this, than greeted
my eyes one bright May day in 1870, when our party of travelers
was coming up the Danube. Our steamer had stopped to take coal
at the Turkish town of Widden, and then crossed over to Kalafat, a
Christian village in Bulgaria. There were the unspeakable Turks in
their nondescript costume, undignified attitudes and ungain motions.
—a group of men, who, if they named their wives in one's hearing at all
would beg pardon for committing such an indelicacy, and at a dis-
tance up the bank were fluttering budgets of particolored calico with
faces and figures invisible, but the supposition being that these cower-
ing groups were women. We crossed to Kalafat, and on the pleasant
shore, circling hand in hand with songs (in which base and soprano-
Presidents Annual Add7'ess.
67
mingled) around a flower-wreathed May pole, was a group of men and
women, celebrating some national festival.
The difference was so great and the distance so small, that I sought
an explanation from one who knew those distant lands. He pointed
out two salient objects in the landscapes of those separate shores be-
tween which rolled the Danube's blue, and there 1 saw a mosque, a
church, a minaret, a spire ! Even in the degenerate form in which the
Greek church dispenses Christianity, it has -thus made women the
comrades of men and made men the brothers of girls.
By this sign conquer is the motto still! Up with Christ's Cross and
smite the dragon of woman's degradation to the slimy pit where he is
already well nigh slain. Whoever speaks lightly of Jesus Christ, that
radiant figure uniting in itself all that is holiest in both man's and
woman's character, let not a woman's lips thus curse themselves in
cursing Him whom they should bless, and may the name of Christian,,
token of our loyalty and pledge of our allegiance, gleam like a gem
in the midst of every name by which white ribboners are known,
throughout the world.
a world's women's congress.
When bad men conspire, good men combine; that is the spirit of
the age; but among women it is, thus far, for good alone that they
have reached the plane of combination. It is indeed a noteworthy
f^ct that while we have a .Brewers' Congress, Distillers' League and
Tammany Association of men, there is, so far as I have learned, no
organization whatsoever among women, that is disreputable. On the-
contrary, all are in the interest of humanity, and the very few divi-
sions that have occurred among them are based on differences of
method rather than antagonism of principle. The largest actual
society of women is the World's W. C. T. U., projected in 1883. In
the opinion of all progressive women with whom I have communi-
cated, a World's Congress of Women should be called at once, in con-
nection with the next World's Fair. Closely associated with Mrs. Mil-
licent Fawcett, of England, President of the International Woinen'&
Council, in such a call, should be Madame de Morsier, of Paris, the-
accomplished French woman to whom is chiefly due the success of the
58
National W. C. T. U.
International Congress of Women, that was a feature so prominent in
the World's Exposition of 1889. The women of every land should
be urged to organize a national council to which existing societies of
women would be tributary, and a penny per member paid annually
into the national treasury, of which one-tenth should be forwarded to
the International Council. Delegates from all these national councils
should be chosen to participate in the World's Congress at Chicago in
1893. Here the works of all women banded together for purposes of
beneficence should be passed in review; each church, from Catholic to
Q.uaaker, being encouraged to represent its missionary work, both home
and foreign. Literary and educational guilds of women, professional
and business, philanthropic, reformatory and political, all are deserv-
ing of a fair and equal hearing. Besides the great general meetings,
arrangements for national groups of women to meet by themselves,
and for the, various classes of workers to counsel together, would be
important. That there will be a women's pavilion, as at the Centen-
nial in Philadelphia, seems certain, and from the Bureau ot'Informa-
tion here announcements can go forth and a rendezvous be furnished
for these many women of many minds. The World's W. C. T. U.
will have its own exhibit, booth and cafe, under the care of Mrs.
Josephine Nichols, of Indiana, through whose efforts the white ribbon
movement was so admirably represented at Paris last year, taking
Le Grand Prix " besides several diplomas, and alone emphasizing in
that bewildering array the organized work of women. The outcome
of this World's Congress, with its earnest planning for future achieve-
ments, could not fail to give a strong impetus to the crusade against
brain poisons, to the liberation and enlightenment of the mother half
the race, and to the sacred cause of universal peace and brotherhood.
May these things be; and may the National W. C. T. U., in Conven-
tion assembled in Atlanta, Ga., sound the key-note for this magnifi-
cent uprising.
" THE WOMAN QUESTION."
Theologians have overlooked the fact that God's curses are two-
fold, and rest on man and woman equally. If she was cursed in that
her husband ruled over her, he was cursed in so ruling and had been
President's Arinual Address.
59
throughout the centuries. Man's greatest pride is in his sons, but the
stream can not rise higher than its fountain; the mother of our race
oan not with impunity be trodden under foot. The man who rules
her is cursed in his character and his offspring. He is unspeakably
degraded by the desire to rule her; for such desire is the quintessence
of selfishness and pride. A free, large, generous spirit in man instinc-
tively revolts from the degradation of the word " obey " applied to
the one nearest, dearest and best of all the world to him. Christ
says in explanation of Moses' act ia permitting the man by a bill of
divorcement to dismiss his wife : " But from the beginning it was not
■so," and Christ came to restore the years that the caterpillar and
palmer-worm had eaten. In Christ the curses that have alike debased
husband and wife are cancelled; the new Heaven and the new Earth
revealed wherein dwelleth righteousness, justice, and the inwrought,
outwrought Golden Rule.
"You wish_to teach our women to read, do you?" scornfully said
an official of the Hindoos to a missionary .from America, and added,
"Next you will seek permission to teach our cows!" But what good
has come to the Hindoo by his supreme selfishness toward mother and
sister, daughter and wife? He has not progressed one inch in thou-
sands of years except as men who look upon women as their equals
have placed in his unskilled hands the inventions of Occidental civil-
ization and taught him our ideas of literature and law, of art and
oommerce. He has not risen one hair in the scale of being, except as
our missionaries have brought to him that gospel which says, "There
shall be no more curse, for the former things are passed away," and
which restores the joint headship set forth in the divine words: " Let us
make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion."
A theologian of classical attainments, sends me the following admi-
rable exegesis:
"The term 'wifely subjection,' as used in the New Testament, has been a stumbling
block to many. Let it be noticed that St. Paul does not direct wives to obey their bus-
bands, as he expressly commands children to obey their parents, in the "Word. The objec-
tionable word "obey" is very properly expunged from the American marriage service,
as authorized by the Methodist Episcopal church. Paul's words are; 'Be in subjection
to your own husbands in all things.' That is, when God and conscience do not forbid.
60 National W. C. T. U.
Paul's words rendered 'subjection,' John "Wesley says, mean 'having a yielding
spirit.' But let it be also observed that the chief apostle writes what many annota-
tors virtually overlook: 'Subjecting yourselves one to another.' Here Paul teaches
husbandly subjection, as in the first passage named he teaches wifely. Annotators
often follow one another like sheep, vainly attempting to make Paul's words harmon-
ize with their own earnest teachings and the echoes of antiquity. Notice : the apos-
tie expressly teaches mutual subjection as a set-off to wifely subjection. His words
are 'one to another.' Thus husbands are here expressly taught subjection, that is, to
have a yielding spirit; husband is 'one,' wife is 'another'; and Paul's words are 'one
to another.' There is not only no sex in religion, but St. Paul expressly teaches (see
revised version) 'there can be no male or female ' Just as the ocean's incoming tide
makes little pools and rivulets one full, smooth sea, so Christianity will swallow up
caste and sex. 'Ye are all one man in Christ Jesus.' (See revised version). These
words divinely teach perfect equality iii all Christian privileges."
Sidney Lanier has put the subject well:
"If men loved larger, larger were our lives.
And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives."
These are new days and woman does not move on with the rest of
the procession.
Three locomotives made in Philadelphia, and the first ever known
to Palestine, have reached that sacred land, and will be used on the
"Jerusalem and Joppa Railway." An Aerial Ship Company is chart-
ered in practical Chicago; a woman has put a girdle round the earth
in seventy-two days, and the Legislature of New Zealand has voted in
favor of giving women the ballot by 37 to 11.
Miss Margaret Alford, niece of the distinguished Dean Alford, won
the first place in the Classical Examination at Cambridge University,
where, in the Mathematical Examination, Miss Fawcett had already
taken precedence by four hundred marks of the Senior Wrangler.
Besides these, sixteen others won special distinction. No woman
failed to pass with credit, while six men were "plucked."
Miss Helen Reed of the Harvard annex captured from sixteen male
competitors the Sargent prize for the best metrical translation of an
ode of Horace, and Miss Belasco, of Belgrade, Roumania, carried off
the highest honors of the Law School in Paris. All these are marvels
of the year 1890. The greatest triumph of these women is not one
that they will ever reap; but it raises the world's average estimate of
the abilities of all women, improves the standard, inspires all with
PresidenVs Annual Address.
61
greater faith in their own powers, and is of immeasurable value as a
stimulus to women and a rectifier of men's judgments concerning our
abilities.
In view of these and other facts equally significant, the following
postulate is respectfully recommended to the New England remon-
strants, and all other excellent, conservative women opposed to the
great pending question of equal suffrage, namely, " Nothing subjects
like subjection." We grow by what we feed on, and largeness of
nature comes' not to those who hug their chains. To be taxed and
punished under laws in the making of which we have no voice is not
a thing to be rejoiced at by a normally constituted mind. "The
proper sphere of all human beings is the largest and highest that
they are able to attain to, and what this is cannot be ascertained
without complete liberty of choice." Progress and precedent are two
mettlesome steeds, and all the world watches their mighty race,
but no reasoner doubts which will come out ahead.
No utterance from any eeelesiastieal quarter has been so generous
and fearless since we last met as the oration at Notre Dame, Indiana,
on commencement day, when Bishop Spaulding, of Peoria, 111., the
well-known Oatholic leader, addressed the graduating class of girls.
More significant still is the fact that a hundred priests and six hun-
dred students applauded his words to the echo. He said;
" That the position of women in all ages since the beginning of the world had been
the position that the Southern planters gave their slaves. It was no better to-day
than it was years ago. They were treated kindly, as the slaves of the men he knew
had been treated, but kept in ignorance. But in this country women had emancipated
themselves. American women are more intelligent than men." He then turned
solemnly to the graduates and told them that they must not make marriage their
main idea in life. They must get rid of the idea that marriage was anything but a
constant sacrifice to duty on the part of the woman. " Why," he said, " a young man
would laugh at you if you told him that marriage was to be his aim in life; he will
not be dependent; he intends to start alone, and so can a woman; she can learn to
battle for the prizes of life; she is in most cases superior to man. The old theory
that a woman is like a flower, to be cherished only in her bloom, is exploded; she is
no longer a creature to be loved and caressed when the bloom is on her cheeks, and
then to be thrust aside, to be a nurse or drudge; she will henceforth work side by
side for the prizes for which men work and win," He demanded the highest educa-
tion for women. They must make themselves strong, mentally and physically, for
strength is power. " A woman," he said, " could live in a grand world of her own,
6S National W. C. T. U.
were she a sister in a hospital, a worker in the marts of trade, a toiler in the desert j
were she rich or poor, she could live in the fairest realms of poetry; the world of
Plato, of Dante, of Milton. The young girls of St. Mary's had received the key of
culture; they could open their way to dazzling realms of light. They must use it to-
raise themselves higher and grasp their birthright. They were the equals of men.
The highest virtues which men cultivate were theirs naturally. They were gentle,,
merciful, pure. Their mission was to help the world to attain the desire of God. The
world was better to-day than it ever had been, and good women had made it so."
He appealed for a higher civilization, and startled his hearers by giving a view of
the future of every hundred young Americans who leave^college. Twenty-five, he
said, would ruin themselves by the sins of the flesh, and at 40 be total wrecks, thrown
helpless by the storms of lust or intemperance. Twenty-five might fall by dishonesty
or live degraded by unhappy marriages, the other fifty might be fairly respectable,
doing the work of slaves, the humdrum work of making money merely to exist.
How many Americans, out of the one hundred would live for love, for culture for the
higher life? How many would strive to he great saints, great poets, great philoso-
phers ? . His oration was a protest against materialism, and he struck hard blows.
His appeal for the higher education of woman and for her having equal rights with
men at first startled the large audience in the theater of the university and then called
forth a storm of applause. He insisted that the present position of woman was a relic
of barbarism. "The right of woman was to be the equal of man in all respects. He
who denied her this right was a savage. She was ill paid; she should he paid as much
as a man. The saddest sight on earth was that of a delicately matured girl, capable,
cultured, cut out of her place in life by barbarous prejudices." The Bishops' most
advanced sentiments were loudly cheered bj^ the students. He said that a time would
come when the saloon must go; it, too, was a relic of savagery. A time was near
when Americans would cease to boast of great cities, of long railroads, of more
material progress; when riches or the holding of office would not be the criterion of
a man's worth, " What can riches buy?" he asked. "Only the outward things. One
may buy great pictures, but one' cannot purchase the insight into their beauty; one
may go to Switzerland, but who can buy the gift of really seeing Mt. Blanc?" He an-
nounced that it was a misfortune for a young American to be born rich. The son of
a rich American generally went to the devil. He implored the graduates of Notre
Dame, to disregard the example of the West, and not to work for money alone. All
work merely for money was the work of slaves. "We Americans must strive to put
behind us materialism, and to remember that we have a hundred orators but no
eloquence, a hundred poets but no poetry, a hundred philosophers but no philosophy."
Bishop Simpson stood on a level with Bishop Spaulding as to his
progressive thought in relation to the woman question; and surely no
better man has lived in our time than that chieftain of the M. E.
Church in the 19th century.
Alas, for the Missis.sippi men ! They knew not that the day of their
deliverance was just at hand by means of woman's vote with an edu-
President's Annual Address.
63
national test and a veto on the rum power. Belated reformers; dwellers
in the graveyard of old issues; owls that cannot take in sunshine, they
have lost an opportunity that ranks them with the blinking bats of
Idaho and Montana, and the retrogressive State of Washington.
There is poetic justice in the fact that the State of Wyoming ranks
44 on the flag, while ill-natured Idaho, that wouldn't let the women
in, ranks 43. That is, in Idaho the men are to the women as four to
three ; in Wyoming they are as four to four, i. e., equal !
This beautiful new State—the only free State in the world—has an
area larger than all New England. For twenty-three years women
have had the full ballot in this fair land of mountains and mines, of
farms and waterfalls, and home is no where purer or more pleasant;
the illiteracy in no other State so small.
The People's Ballot is coming ; it is slow but sure. For more than
a century and a quarter the Almanaeh de Gotha has been issued annu-
ally. When it first came out, upon its list of sovereignties there were
but three republics, while to-day, out of its total of 58 states enume-
rated, 26 are republics. By the laws of rational thought a government
by the people must include women, and that necessary idea is being
slowly embodied in law. This is the mighty philosophy of the movement
for woman's right and I wish we might call it a movement for the peo-
pie's ballot, for thus we should incarnate in an epithet our most effec-
tive argument.
Into the witch's booth of city misrule there is one ingredient that
can counteract the virus of boodleism. It is set forth in Munici-
pal Study" published in The Century of last March, and describes the
city of Glasgow:
" The picture presented of a well governed, orderly city of a population of 775,000
is an instructive one for American statesmen. The points to he specially noted in the
system of municipal government of Glasgow are these: The Municipal Council,
consisting of fifty persons, elected by districts, and having entire charge of the munic-
ipal government, receive no salary. The President of the Council, which office most
nearly corresponds to that of Mayor in our cities, receives no salary. Throughout the
United Kingdom, indeed, the Mayor receives no salary, the honor conferred upon
him being a sufficient attraction to the right sort of men. In Glasgow the right of
suffrage is limited to householders who have paid the poor rates, and lodgers who
occupy rooms which, unfurnished, are worth ten pounds a year. Woman suffrage is
National W. C. T. U.
granted to the extent that women who are householders and who pay the poor rates are
entitled to vote, but unmarried men who are lodgers, not householders, are debarred
Jrom the ballot. The result is a city whose prosperity has been phenomenal, whose
growth has been equal to that of most American cities, and which is in point of munic-
ipal rule the first city of the Anglo-Saxon world, which means the first of the entire
world."
All ages have witnessed to some degree the chivalry of man^ but
this age is giving us a new development—the chivalry of woman.
For the magnificent material civilization of force has a worm in the
bud. It is not more certain that jungles are dangerous because of
lions, and rocky vallies because of snakes, than that cities have their
wild beasts and stealthy 'serpents. Man has killed olf the roaring
beasts and creeping things that hiss and spit out venom, because he
has a strong arm and stout heart. St. George slew the Dragon and
rescued the beautiful maid, but women saints are stout of heart against
the serpent of the still; against the wild beast of impurity and the
stealthy tiger of the gambling den. Women wield the sword of the
spirit with untrembling hands, and their chivalry toward man shall
yet clear the jungles of civilization from the trio of scourges that lie
in wait to devour him body and soul.
The watchword of those who believe in prohibition by woman's
ballot is ''^iwo votes for the home where it now has but one.'' We can in
no other way so re-enforce the Nation's conscience or purify the pollu-
ted blood of the body politic. Hands that have just put down the '
whisky bottle o'' shuffled the greasy pack of cards in some saloon, are
putting ballots in the box that are like the match to a powder mine.
God grant that soon those other hands may be released that have been
busy with home's most sacred ministries; that have sheltered helpless
infancy; cooled the fevered brow of anxious manhood and been clasped
in prayer, while woman's voices have cried out, "How long, 0 God,
how long!"
THE SALVATION ARMY.
And now, concerning the Salvation Army. It is in working order
in thirty-six nations, countries and colonies. Its motto is, "Bring
the people to Christ," and its twofold work against intemperance and
impurity is the greatest known to modern times.
President's Annual Address.
65
Popular Christianity says : " Here is my check; send some one
else." The Salvation Army says : " Here am I; send me."
I pass over its faults. They are inseparable from an organization,
so miscellaneous, so vast, and one that antagonizes public sentiment
at every step. But if there are heroes or heroines on earth to-day,
they march in that same army. Sometimes it seems as if I can per-
ceive the halo on their brows. The sons and daughters of that won-
derful pair. General and Mrs. Booth ; the sweet-faced girls who are
captains of the fifties or of hundreds in every land—what soldiers
of the Lord are doing more to enthrone the Prince of Peace ?
In this army woman has come to her kingdom; no metes or bounds
here hold her from the fullest reaction of her powers upon the world
for the world's betterment.
When great petitions are wanted for Sunday closing, anti-compensa-
tion of liquor dealers, the protection of women or any movement
whereby Christ becomes enthroned in the customs of society or the
laws of the land, there the Salvation Army is at the fore, doing the
hardest work in the briefest time, and in the most effective way.
When Wales wallowed in drunkenness the Salvation Army went to the
rescue, and by God's grace transformed that human desert into a gar- -
den. Frances Ridley Havergal worked with these soldiers; the best
and noblest in England admit their unequalled helpfulness, and every-
where the verdict is: "Women are the strength of the movement,
and have been from the first." A woman of this host is in New York
to-day for the spread of every-day Christianity among the most
wretched and depraved—Mrs. Maud Charlesworth Booth.
She is the daughter of a rector in the Chnrch of England and her
marriage to Commander Ballington Booth was an event of wide inter-
est in England. That beautiful book "Ministering Children," was
written by an aunt who had the same spirit of divine helpfulness of
which Mrs. Booth is an example so gracious. I have asked Mrs. Booth
to be with us and to speak of the spirit and methods of the Salvation
Army. She will come as a fraternal delegate, as will several others
from societies, philanthropic and religious, and as our custom is, we
shall receive them joyfully.
66
National W. C. T. U.
The Salvation Army has a standing order that from the 5th to the
15th of April its officers and members shall relinquish some luxury,
either pertaining to food or clothing, and place the money thus saved
in the treasury of the army. This is not on the basis of monastic
penance, but a large-hearted, free-will offering of that which costs us
very little. Why might it not be well to institute some such method
of helping out our growing expenses in the W. C. T. U.? I would
suggest adding this happy device to the "Systematic Giving" of Mrs.
Esther Pritchard Tuttle and the Missionary Fund of Mrs. Mary
Sparks Wheeler.
PROHIBITION.
It is said that the Bible has been upset twenty-seven times in the
last five years, by those who do not receive it as a revelation from God.
But the good Book is considerably like a cube ot New England
granite; when you upset it, you have only set it up; it is just as big
one way as another, and just as big after it is tumbled down as it was
before. Indeed, '.Gt stands foursquare to every wind that blows." The
Bible and prohibition are alike in that matter. Both resemble the
Irishman's wall that he built on the side of a bog, and his brother
said, "Dennis, me boy, isn't it going to be undermined, this wall
that you're building?" "Faith, and it isn't," he retorted, "because
it's three feet high and four feet wide, and if it tumbles over it will
be higher than it was before."
Some temperance workers were well-nigh disheartened when the
original package agitation rose, but the adverse decision of the Supreme
Court precipitated such discussion and called out such Congressional
action as has helped the prohibition cause more than all the work that
all temperance societies have accomplished in 1890.
Iowa is fortunate in having Judges Caldwell and Shiras, who declare
the Wilson bill and the prohibitory law in full force. So that for
the present, at least, the interests there seem safe.
In view of the recent decision in Kansas to the effect that prohibi-
tory States must re-enact their laws before the relief provided by Con-
gress will apply to them, there is another general stirring up, but the
elections of Nov. 4th in Kansas have buried the talked of re-submis-
President's Annual Address.
67
sion of their amendment out of sight and given a legislative majority
that will if need be, re-enact th«ir law.
Great advantage will come to reform voters through the law in
New York State and elsewhere by which all the tickets are printed by
the government of the State, so that ballots are sure to be at every
polling place. We as Prohibitionists have lost a great many votes
because we could not man the polls; having neither the money nor the
men. Thus outside forces in our civilization are constantly working
for the temperance reform by that method of indirectian which so
often proves to be the parabola of power.
As is well known the landing place of immigrants is no longer
Castle Garden but the United States barge office near by. In the forty-
three years that they have been required to land here more than
9,600,000 foreigners have come to us, over 2,500,000 of these being
Irish, nearly 3,500,000 Germans, and nearly 1,200,000 English. It
is to the everlasting credit of Secretary Windom that he has banished
strong drink from these premises where it has held sway for forty
years.
The national convention in New York last spring was a grand
rally of temperance troops, but will be longest remembered for its
exhibition of the lack of cohesive force among the advocates of the
great reform. Disciples of moderate drinking and high license
appeared on the same platform with total abstainers and prohibi-
tionists. To my mind there is small advantage in these exhibitions.
An amalgam can be formed only from materials that will amalga-
mate. "We wait beneath the furnace blast the pangs of transformation."
Heat that fuses and pressure that blends alone can compact for
practical use the elements of a reform. "As gold is tried in the fire,
so hearts must be tried by paiu." Nothing will heat and press and
purify into one mass of God's, incarnate power the temperance people
of this country except the national battle of the ballot-box; the
thunder of its coming cannonade already rumbles and its fateful light-
nings send their flash iuto the depths of character and motive. God
hold us steady in that terrific fight!
68
National W. C. T. U,
"The day of the Lord is at hand, at hand,
Its storms roll up the sky.
A nation sleeps. Starving in sight of gold,
The dreamers toss and sigh.
The night is darkest before the dawn
When the pain is sorest the child is horn,
' And the day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, angels ot God,
Freedom and mercy and truth ;
Come, for the earth has grown coward and old,
" Come down and renew us her youth;
Wisdom, self-sacrifice daring and love.
Haste to the battlefield, stoop from above
To the day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell.
Famine and plague and war.
Alcohol, bigotry, want, and misrule.
Gather and fall in the snare.
Hirelings, mammonites, pedants and knaves
Crawl to the battlefield, sneak to your graves.
In the day of the Lord at hand.
Who would sit and sigh for a lost age of gold
While the Lord of all ages is here ?
True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,
And those who suffer can dare.
Each old age of gold was an iron age, too.
And the meekest may find stern work to do,
In the day of the Lord at hand."
THE LIQUOR AND THE LOTTERY CRIMES.
This telegram was sent by Chief Justice Corliss, of North Dakota,
to Washington when the lottery crisis was pending last winter:
" To President Harrison: Gamblers are seeking to fasten the Louisiana Lottery on
North Dakota. The hill has passed one house. The people are demoralized, and
public sentiment is prostituted. The pressure af national sentiment is our only hope
You, the Cabinet, the Senators, and the Nation, speaking through the Associated
Press dispatches, can save us from this infamy. I implore your aid."
Promptly and nobly was that aid rendered. Let us gratefully recog-
nize every good thing that is done by those of whom we are often
obliged to speak in terms ot always to be regretted censure. But if
President's Annual Address.
69
Nebraska in its recent struggle had sent the self-same telegram, only
substituting saloon for lottery license, and "friends of the liquor
traffic" for gamblers, ought not the President to have stood by them
just the same? I think he ought, and that he would have done so
but for the risk to his political party. All the^same that party will
go down if it does not take up this holy cause.
It should be remembered that a hundred years ago lotteries were
altogether respectable, and to interfere with them would have been
considered an outrage on personal liberty. The city hall in New
York and the library of Harvard College both profited by lottery
tickets issued in their names, and it is noteworthy that the national
legislation lately granted strikes a blessed blow at the raffles, grab-
bags and other abominations current in church fairs, and also at
that twin abomination, " progressive euchre." But this form of bar-
barism (for Indians and other barbarous people are the most inveterate
gamesters on record) now feels the paralyzing power of legislation's
thou shalt not," and though the prohibition will not by any means
wholly prevent, the fact that it prohibits means the strongest check
that society can put upon the evils under which it groans.
Our earnest thanks are due to the President of the United States for
his invaluable message against that disgraceful institution, the Louisiana
State Lottery; to the Postmaster-General for his zeal in separating the
government from complicity with the lottery crime; and to Congress
for giving to the country at large, and especially to Louisiana, the
protection of the anti-lottery bill. While we are neither so sanguine
or so impracticable as to expect that these prohibitions will prohibit,
we recognize the solemn duty of the government to remove the safe-
guards of the law from this odious octopus; to set a true key note
for public opinion, thus warning and educating our people in the
broadest and most rapid manner against the lottery crime, and holding
it in check by the most vigorous means within the power of the
nation's chiefs. But while profoundly appreciating all these wise acts,
we humbly ask them to do so and more also to that other and more
odious octopus, the liquor crime.
70
National W. C. T. U.
LAW.
As Garfield clearly said : "Coerciod is the basis of every law in the
universe—human or divine. A law is no law without coercion back
of it."
As " personal liberty" is inversely as the distance, the farther
you are away from other folks, the more you have of it. That is the
long and short of the matter, but the short is very much better than
the long. Indians had the long; they had the freedom of all out
doors, but they had to take with that the disadvantages of all out
doors; and see where they have fetched up. " Lo, the poor Indian,"
is their epitaph. For my part I would rather have the civil liberty
of a civilized human being and trot steadily along in harness with the
rest.
Said the great philosopher Emanuel Kaut, "Two things fill my
soul with awe; the starry heavens and the sense of aught in a human
soul." "You temperance people talk God and humanity, but the liquot
advocates they give ns figures," said a politician in my hearing. These
two utterances are the zenith and nadir of opinion. For I ought,
means "I-owe-it" and is the only basis of reform. God and humanity
always come out ahead, while the devil and his running mate, the
dollar, are certain on the home stretch, to bring up the rear.
Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage ; Ephraim, joined to
his idols, was let alone; Judas bartered his Lord away; these tragedies
are renewed in every new age and the Christian voter for High
License, who would not for a moment permit a saloon keeper as a
member of his church, but votes to legalize the saloon keeper's busi-
ness must be there-in-carnation of these characters described in every
Holy Writ. In village and city there are three forces at work—the
celestial, terrestrial and diabolical. To assort these is our present
task. Were they separated and each marching under its own ban-
ner, instead of masquerading under another, success would come
to-morrow.
I love prohibition for the enemies it has made, and I ask good men
to think of the company they keep when they vote against our Con-
stitutional Amendments. Nobody doubts but that every law-breaker
President's Annual Address.
71
who is out of jail, and can get to the polls, will be taken there, and
bribed to vote against ns. Every Sabbath-breaker will be on hand
for that purpose; every gambler, every saloon keeper; the enemies of
society will be solid. The Chnrch, perhaps, will divide, and this
one fact is what defeated prohibition in six States in 1889 and this
year in Nebraska. Jugglers with words employed their utmost power
in the recent Nebraska campaign to get the voter's eye off God
and on a grocery store, a municipal office, or a diminished tax bill.
They brought out the pyramid of temperance and set it spinning on its
apex like a top. They wrangled over the comparative sizes of towns
and the volume of trade. They sent out "trusty agents" to bring in
figures proving that prohibition does not prohibit. Their pains-
taking was worthy of a better cause. They cited Leavenworth, Kas.,
as a town that has lost what they are pleased to call its "boom," and
claimed that this was because of prohibition; but they were sedulous
not to mention Sioux City, Iowa, which found its boom when its
saloons were banished.
" As the eagle stirreth up her nest," so the Lord leads his temperance hosts.
" Whom the Gods destroy they first make mad," and the " original
package " regime of the last year has illustrated, by way of contrast,
in the prohibition States, the beneficence of their laws, while the
growing sense of insecurity realized in these States tends to edncate
toward National prohibition.
John W. Atherton, of Kentucky, President of the Liquor Dealers'
League, was asked by one of our journalists the following question :
" Is not High License harmful to your trade ? "
His reply was:
" Theoretically, yes; but practically, no."
The worst of it is high license divides temperance people into two
camps, but unites the forces of the grog shop. Until politicians took
up this method almost every amendment campaign was successful, but
since then every one has failed. By their fruits ye shall know
them, yet some men still say that "high license educates toward pro-
hibition." It does so, as sickness educates toward health, sin toward
saintship and death toward longevity. Nebraska, the original high
72
National W. C. T. U.
license State, answered that question ten days ago with fearful
emphasis.
We do not have to get enough voters on our side to elect our
candidates. As soon as we elect our issue we shall be in sight of sue-
cess. The abolitionists polled but five percent, of the vote in 1856 ;
but their ideas went into power in 1860. Already we have polled
three per cent, of the vote—150,000 for St. John, 250,000 for Fisk,
300,000 in 1886, and in 1890 we doubled in Tennessee, Michigan,
California and Iowa the vote cast for General Fisk. God wants us to
hold together, and keep pounding away, just as we have done in the
past. He wants us to hew out the wood, shape the planks, mortise the
beams; and in due time He will bring along the hands to raise the
building with "shouts of grace unto it."
THE LABOH QUESTION.
Americans have learned to perfection the art of making money, but
how equitably to distribute it is their unsolved problem. For one, I
believe the wage-system is as sure to pass away as the system of
license and of unequal suffrage, and while deploring strikes as a calamity
to capital and labor, to the individual and public alike, I rejoice in
the labor organizations, (most of all in the Farmers' Alliance), and
believe that we should call upon them to combine at the ballot-box
for the righteous reforms declared for in their conventions. I believe
that we should send them words of cheer, and to that man of destiny,
Rev. Dr. D. C. Kelley, of Tennessee, who has been true to prohibi-
tion (which is the core of the labor question) when it was not a lever
to lift but a chain to bind him, we owe the assurance of our earnest
sympathy.
But what will wage-workers do with their eight hours?
Let the rich answer that by opening reading rooms, gymnasiums,
drawing schools, baths, natatoriums and people's palaces. It is a con-
solation to know that the Vanderbilts expect to do for the poor of
New York what London philanthropists have so royally done at
Toynbee Hall, and it requires no stretch of the imagination to per-
ceive the deeper joy the givers must derive from such a use of their
Presidents Annual Address.
73-
abundance than if it flashed in diamonds or glittered in the wheels of"
splendid equipage.
No contribution of the year, to what we may call the literature of
salvation, compares with Gen. Booth's recent book "In Darkest
London." The General is a muscular Christian; he believes in the
Bible and bread. He holds that every human being is entitled to
board and clothes, shelter and fuel in return for honest work and that
the work should be forthcoming. He holds also that those unable to
earn this quadrilateral of man's necessity should be provided for by
the more fortunate. And one in every ten of London's population
requires help. Sixty thousand families in that headquarters of royalty
live in cellars. Three million persons must have help from their
fellowmen or else they must starve or steal. Gen. Booth proposes to
found a colony in London for the relief of what he suggestively calls
"The Submerged Tenth," which will be set at work and supplied with
food by the "Household Salvage Brigade," which will collect food,,
clothing, etc., from homes of the well-to-do. Second, he would trans-
fer the ablest of his wards to a country colony where each should have
a humble home, be kept at work and no grog-shop permitted. Third,
he would colonize in South Africa the fittest survivals from both oL
his home colonies. To carry out these plans he asks for five million
dollars.
* Already he has received the strong support of William T. Stead,
whose Review of Reviews has reached a circulation of one hundred
thousand copies per month. Other chief journals of England are
falling in with the plan; members of the Royal Family approve;
Canon Farrar has preached in favor and it looks as if Christianity in
action would so change the outlook that man would cease to be the-
cheapest and most worthless piece of goods that great cities sell to the
devil. For it is the most monstrous fact in the annals of so-called
Christian nations that a dog or horse counts for more, alive or dead,
than some human beings do. Clearly the four-footed creature can never
fall so far as to totally lose his commercial value, since there are its hide,
bones and flesh that can be utilized. Buffthe pauper of London, New
York, or any other city, has absolutely no value under our present
^7If. National W. C. T. U. «
madness of administration, unless for the disseeting table. The won-
-der is that the almighty dollar has not devoted his remains to the same
process that cause his canine and equine neighbors, no matter how for-
lorn, to so far outrank him in price.
"Rattle his hones over the stones,
Nobody hut a beggar that nobody owns."
" Well, but supply and demand settles all that," complacently
-answers Mr. Moneybags, the old-school political economist. "Jfay,
but there is a higher law," respond new-school disciples—"the law of
brotherhood." The political economy of the W. C. T. U. is embodied
in the Golden Rule, which is the only rule for gold.
" The best things any mortal hath
Are those that every mortal shares."
This is a poet's way of saying what the Divine One told us with
-authority: "All ye are brethren.'''' Mighty changes are before us.
Old things are passing away. The world will not much longer
belong to a few. Humanity will claim its own—the right to live and
grow in exchange for the willingness to work and love.
What our lamented John Boyle O'Reilly said of one great leader
may be as justly said of the society whose representatives are gathered
here to-day:
" His life was a ceaseless protest and his voice was a prophet's cry—
To be true to the Truth and faithful, though the world were arrayed for the lie.
' Disturber' and ' Dreamer' the Philistines cried, when he preached an ideal creed,
Till they learned that the men who have changed the world, with the world have
disagreed."
Dr. Horace Bushnell said that "The soul of all improvement is
the improvement of the soul," and Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, that
electric preacher now reacting on wealth at the West End, London, has
these significant words:
" Lord Nelson has proposed that all Christians, however widely
they may differ on theological and ecclesiastical topics, should co-operate
in the promotion of social Christianity. It is impossible to exaggerate
the importance and blessedness of this proposal. We Christians,
when we unite our forces, are simply irresistible. Let us then in the
name of God and humanity" combine heartily against slavery, drunken-
ne&s, lust, gambling, ignorance, pauperism, mormonism and war.
President's Annual Address.
7B
After that is over we shall not have much difficulty in settling all our
theological and ecclesiastical differences, and the glory of God, who
is the happiness of men, will fill the whole earth."
Bismarck ridicules the idea that workingmen will ever be con-
tented, because, he says, " the rich are never contented." That proves
nothing, for reformers are not asking that everybody be rich. In so
far as rich people have any nobility of character, they must be
unhappy as they look around on a world where there is so much mis-
cry, caused by the inequalities that their own position in life illus-
trates. Probably a true content can never be in this world until the
heart can rest in the assurance that each man's weal is all men's care.
It would be like our Heavenly Father so to construct human nature
that no other outlook could give it peace.
The following is a principle admirably stated by Hon. Carroll D.
IVright, of the National Bureau of Labor:
" I believe that in the adoption of the philosophy of the religion of Jesus Christ, as
^ practical creed for the conduct of business, lies the surest and speediest solution of
those industrial difficulties which are exciting the minds of men to-day and leading
many to think that the crisis of government is at hand."
The industrial progress of the United States reads like a fairy tale.
Numbering less than one-fifteenth of the inhabitants of the globe, we
■do one-third of all its mining, one-fourth of its manufacturing, one-
fifth of its agriculture and own one-sixth of its wealth. Twenty mil-
lions (a vast majority of our people of intelligent age) belong to the
uhurch; twelve million children are in the public schools; there are
350 colleges for the higher education of men and 200 for women,
while 450 institutions of learning for science, law, medicine and the-
■ology are the despair of the scoffer and the demagogue."
The luxury of these days is blasphemy of God. There are marriage
feasts brilliant with orchids, each spray of which cost more than could
'be earned in a twelve month by the white-faced woman who at starva-
■tion wages made the garments of the bride, and the service of silver
-tind gold that gleams on the festal board cost more than two hundred
families in hovels of that same city spend in a year. So declares one
who notes the pageant of these Sybaritic days.
76
National W. C. T. U.
It has been wisely said : " Only let justice prevail among men, and
there will be small need of charity."
Each age develops a new conscience—becomes just concerning a
class to which before it had considered itself generous. For instance,
a charitable master thought well of himself because he took good care
of his slave, but a just master liberated him that he might care for
himself; "an indulgent husband" as the phrase is, thinks well of him-
self because he permits his wife to do as she chooses, but a just bus-
band perceives that to do so is her right which he can neither give
nor take away.
A charitable capitalist thinks well of himself because he looks after
his wage-workers when they are sick, but a just capitalist admits labor
to his own domain of profit-sharing and then the worker needs no
" looking after." But before these improved outlooks can come the
new conscience must work its marvels, penetrating with nerve tissue
what before was only cellular, and lighting up with God's love the
unexplored remainders of the human heart's self-love.
In these days, when not to work is to be at a discount, that was a
graceful introduction given to one of New York's noblest philanthro-
pists in these words: "I have the honor of presenting Miss Grace-
Dodge, a working woman, who has received her wages in advance.""
Would that all women, who, like this one, have inherited wealth
might feel the force of the motto that is as religious as it is classical:
Noblesse oblige.
Among many other things, some of us have been called socialists iu
this year when, most of all, the newspapers have reminded us of Josh
Billings' philosophic saying: "It's better not to know so much, than
to know so much that aint true.^'
The fact that three-fifths of this country's wealth is in the hands oT
one-eighteen-hundredth of our population; that the Labor Bureaus
of two of our best states declare the average wages of working-
men are not enough to bring up families upon, even in the cheapest
way, unless wife and children are also wage-earners; the fact that the
combinations of capital are bringing about the serfdom of labor—these
and a score of others like them point to an industrial revolution. As
President's Annual Address.
77
•Christians we ought steadily to proclaim that the golden rod of capital
must blossom into a national flower that shall glorify the common
roadside of the common people's life. It to teach this is to be a social-
ist, then so let it be.
Capital has learned the value of combination. Labor must learn it
too, and the greatest number's greatest good must be the Christian's
motto in this fight. For myself, I believe that the lighting and
heating of cities and towns, should be done by the municipality rather
.than by private corporations, and that railroad telegraph and tele-
phone lines should hold the same relation to the national government
that the postal system does already, and if this worked well, I would
gradually add to the public ownership of that great plant that we call
industrial and economic civilization. By the magic wand of evolution,
not the red clutch of revolution, I would lead the nation into an actu-
alized brotherhood, where the " splendid. everybody that knows so
much more than anybody," should be the capitalist with co-operation
as the code. "Let no man seek his own, but each his neighbor's good."
This golden counsel of St. Paul, is the glass through which I would
.spy out that coming America, in which Christ shall reign without a
rival in the customs of society and the laws of the land.
I believe in "eight hours for sleep, eight hours for rest, eight
hours for what you will," and hope to see this division of the sun dial
universally prevail, but in all this agitation it astounds me to hear so
very much about the eight hour husband and so very little about the
sixteen hour wife! According to the reports of the United States
Labor Bureau there are in New York City alone 27,000 men who are
supported by their wives.
Recent statistics in Massachusetts'prove that "in the employments
in which the very lowest wages are paid women constitute over 70
per cent, of the workers, while in the employments that pay $20 per
week women hardly constitute over 3 per cent. Women standing
side by side with men are also paid less wages for the same work, the
proportion being that a woman 20 years of age and upwards is made
to work for the same wages as a boy of ten."
It has been well said that the question of human rights is bounded
78
National W. C. T. U.
ou one side by the principle that what is necessary to the peace and
well-being of society each individual is bound to yield, and on the
other by the correlated principle that what is necessai^y to the health,,
security and happiness of the individual, society is bound to accords
On these two hang all the ethics of human progress, and they underlie
every discussion of that sacred trinity, the temperance, the labor and
the women questions. Both these beneficent principles combine
to call upon the state to place drunkards and other moral incapables
within the walls of industrial homes where they can be self-support- '
ing and do no harm to themselves or others. And so solemnly do I
believe this that I shall not cease to urge the appointment of a super-
intendent of this department of work until a woman is raised up for
us who will organize success in this most holy war upon the public
treasury of the State.
There is one heart-breaking wanted that out-reaches the capacity oT
all our newspapers to print, and it reads after this fashion :
Wanted—The chance to earn my bread.
For lack of this I have known young men to break the glass plate
windows of a store, that they might be arrested and sent to jail, w^here
at least they would be clad and warmed and filled. Now I solemnly
believe there is something immensely wrong in a civilization where
willing hands lack work.
It has been well said that "The welfare of the workman is the last-
analysis of human liberty," and I fully believe that in this last
analysis every one will work. The holiness of hand labor is becom-
ing better understood. We are perceiving that it conduces to syihme-
try of character; that until you have yoked head, hand and heart,
individual culture must lack unity, society can not have solid strength
and government can never be truly democratic.
The present unrest is nobly translated in these words:
WHAT WE WANT.
We are the hewers and delvers who toil for another's gain.
The common clod, and the rabble, stunted of brow and brain.
What do we want, the gleaners, of the harvest we have reaped ?
What do we want, the neuters, of the honey we have heaped?
President's Annual Address.
We want the drones to be driven away from our golden hoard ;
We want to share in the harvest, we want to sit at the board;
We want what sword or suffrage has never yet won for man.
The fruits of his toil God promised when the curse of toil began.
Ye have tried the sword and scepter, the cross and the sacred word,
In all the years, and the kingdom is not here yet of the Lord.
We are tired of useless waiting; we are tired of fruitless prayers.
Soldier and churchman and lawyer—the failure, is it not theirs ?
What gain is it to the people that a God laid down His life.
If, twenty centuries after. His world be a world of strife ?
If the serried ranks be facing each other with ruthless eyes.
And steel in their hands, what profits a Savior's sacrifice?
Ye have tried and failed to rule us; in vain to direct have tried,
Not wholly the fault of the ruler, not utterly blind the guide.
Mayhap there needs not a ruler; mayhap we can find the way.
At least, ye have ruled to ruin; at least ye have led astray.
What matter if king or council or president holds the rein.
If crime and poverty ever be links in the bondman's chain ?
What careth the burden-bearer that Liberty packed his load,
If hupger presses behind him, with a sharp and ready goad ?
There's a serf whose chains are of paper, there's a king with a parchment crown --
There are robber knights and brigands in factory, field and town.
But the vassal pays his tribute to a lord of wage and rent;
And the baron's toil is Shylock's with a flesh and blood per cent.
The seamstress bends to her labor all night in a narrow room;
The child, defrauded of childhood, tiptoes all day at the loom;
The soul must starve; for the body can barely on husks be fed;
And the loaded dice of the gambler settles the price of bread.
Ye have shorn and bound the Samson, and robbed him of learning's light;
But his sluggish brain is moving; his sinews have all their might.
Look well to your gates of Gaza, your privilege, pride and caste.
The giant is blind but thinking, and his locks are growing fast.
THE CHRISTIAN IN POLITICS.
No words spoken this year have greater force of condensed statement-
than these from Rev. Dr. Stevenson^ of Philadelphia, editor of the
Christian Statesman:
The population of this country has doubled, on the average, every twenty-five
years; but the Christian church has gained on the population until instead of 1 in 11,
as at the date of the revolution, one in every five of our people professes the religion oT
Christ. Thirteen millions of the American people are communicants in evangelical
churches. Add times their number for children and adherents, and we have
45,000,000 of our population under the infiuence of the Church of Christ. Imperfect
National W. C. T. U.
as is the organization of the church, on account of her sectarian divisions, the re-
inaining twenty millions have no organization to compare with it, nor have they in-
telligence, or social influence, or the capacity for united effort, or any other element
■of social preponderance at all in equal measure with the followers of Christ. There
is no evil which could stand for a day against the united opposition of the churches of
■our Lord. This great Christian majority God calls to take possession of the land in the
name of His Son; to sweep it clean from the curse of intemperance, from the deflle-
ments of impurity, from the stains of blood. If we obey the call, all Christian work
will receive such an impulse as has not before been known in our history. Christ
"lifted up" by our obedience will draw us more completely to Himself. If we
refuse, the converse will also be found true. Christ dishonored, disobeyed, will recall
His gracious gifts and withdraw His hand of power.
The successes of the past were won with an open Bible in all our public schools;
with Sabbath laws generally respected and obeyed; .with the family uncorrupted by
the evils which we have since learned to tolerate and sanction. But to-day we are
•diligently engaged in thrusting the Bible out of the schools where it was placed by
■our fathers, and in trampling down the safeguards which they erected around the.
Day of Eest. We have forty-six sets of laws in our States and Territories relating to
divorce, and no two are alike, while among them all they recognize thirty difierent
grounds for breaking up the marriage relation. The whole number of divorces
granted in the last twenty years is 328,716. We have the power and the opportunity
to destroy the liquor tratflc, and we refuse to do so. We are untrue to the responsi-
bility which has come to us since we became the majority, and the Lord will not help
us to increase that majority, to add to that power, which we refuse to wield for Him.
There is not a principle, or a law, in the kingdom of God, nor a promise in His word,
•on which we can build our hopes of continued spiritual victories while we are charge-
able with such unfaithfulness. - H^ay, more, we shall not even hold what we have
.already gained. If the monolith cannot be set upright, but hangs in mid-air because
the strength of the builders has failed, it will surely topple and fall, and the temple
and the builders will be overwhelmed it its ruin.
The Republican and Democratic platforms have both been strangely
silent on the prohibition question this fall. It is the ominous lull
before a storm. As said Judge East, of Teunes.see, "We have two
parties, every plank in whose platform is either slippery elm or dog-
wood."
The President of the United States Senate, John J. Ingalls, of Kan-
sas, makes this declaration:
" Politics has no place for the decalogue or the golden rule. All is fair in politics
The puriflcation of politics is an iridescent dream."
Beer and boodle are partners to-day in both the big parties, (for
none is great except the little prohibition party.) The recent elections
-emphasize the people's di.sapproval of high tariff and the force bill,
President's Annual Address. . . 81
neither of which measures was endorsed by the prohibition party.
The farmers are the Samsons in politics to-day, and are the mightiest
single force in the land for prohibition. This year the Democrats
have obeyed Charles A. Dana's exhortation, "Get together." May
prohibitionists and farmers be as wise in 1892. The party of reform
is marshalling its legions. Wait for the wagon, the solid old farm
wagon, and we'll all take a ride. The farmers are our natural allies.
They have never yet led the country to anything but good. They
and the women are home's chief defense to-day against the dram shop.
A farmer's daughter and proud of the name, I stretch out a sisterly
hand, on your behalf, to the Farmer's Alliance everywhere. Who
knoweth if they and we be come unto the kingdom for such a time
as this ?
The Farmers' Alliance is to hold its national convention in Florida
sometime in December of this year. Woman suffrage and prohibition
were endorsed by them last December at St. Louis. It seems to me
we should be informally represented by our leaders at their next meet-
ing, and help them re-affirm their action had at St. Louis, and then
provide, if we can, to have representatives at each of their state con-
ventions, and there hope that the action of the National Con-
vention may be endorsed, and if so, there will be a natural coalition
of forces, andwoman suffrage and prohibition will have what is indeed
a powerful confederate, and will be much more generally accepted
everywhere than they have heretofore been.
The Farmers' Alliance and the Prohibitionists both face the same
way; they ought to cast the same ballot. In North Dakota th'ey do
this. Here is the platform on which they have fraternized and won:
We demand the continuance of prohibition in the State, and favor the abolition of
the liquor traffic. We demand the free coinage of gold and silver. We demand
equal suffrage. We demand the repeal of the war tariff tax,'which has been and is a
grievous burden upon producers of the wealth of the nation; and we favor a tariff
upon all articles of luxury, only to he. imposed to pay the current expenses of the
government, honestly administered; and that a graduated tax be levied upon all
incomes in excess of $2,000 per annum. We demand government ownership ■ and
control of all railroads, telegraph lines, and coal mines in the interests of the people.
We demand that our State adopt the Australian system of conducting elections.
82
National W. C. T. U.
Why "our folks" do not everywhere show as much good sense as
the Dakotans, is to my mind the chief enigma of the hour. The
commonwealth; that is a noble word, prophetic of more than has
ever yet been realized. The party of the future might well bear that
name : Common-wealth; peoples, reform, home protection party—
anyone of these names would, I believe, hasten forward the triumph
of our cause. But it will come when the time is ripe for it; mean-
while we give our influence to whatever party gives its influence to
prohibition, and nationally, there is but one—God bless the prohibi-
tion party of these United States !
Whereunto we have attained we will walk by the same rule, mind-
ing the same thing. We are not to be drawn aside by questions of
expediency, but evermore, as a good minister has said, we will sound
in men's ears, "the sin—the sin—the sin" of legalizing the sale of that
which is accursed. Men see this plainly enough (except down in
New Orleans!) when the lottery curse is spoken of. They applaud
with us that noble governor who stood for the people and homes
against the bribing lottery men and the bribed law makers. They
rejoice with us in the timely action of Congress and President, by
which a National anti-lottery law was passed, although they know
right well that it can be but partially enforced. They do not send
such a law up and down in the scale of values according to the like-
lihood of its enforcement, but approve it on the " God and humanity"
basis of eternal right and brotherhood.
These same men would for like reasons stand by the prohibition
law if they were not divided in two political camps, in each of which
the saloon vote holds the balance of power.
There is no backward step in the prohibition party. Two new
States this year recognized woman's ballot as a method of prohibition.
We owe our hearty thanks to Wisconsin and Maryland for this brave
advance. Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of the earth, and
they have overcome not a little gravitation in this new departure.
" Hitch your wagon to a star," is wise advice, and the rising star of
woman's opportunity and hope will help the party of the future on.
The attitude of his administration toward the liquor traffic is indi-
President's Annual Address.
88
cated in these words from the recent annual address of Mrs. S. D.
LaFetra, President W. C. T. U., of the District of Columbia
THE WASHINGTON SALOONS.
"We recall with painful regret," she said, "the hearty welcome accorded the
National Brewers' Congress by two of our city Commissioners and their public com-
mendation of the beer which they said they had tasted for themselves. This same
Brewers' Congress was assured by our Commissioner of Internal Revenue, John W.
Mason, that their interests would he ' carefully guarded.' What more could saloon
men ask of the administration?
"Twelve hundred and twenty-one saloons have been licensed in Washington the
past year—wholesale and retail—though our Commissioners have confessed in their
printed regulations that the law of the District does give them discretionary power as
to the number of licenses to he granted.
Of the famous "Shoreham" hotel, belonging to Vice-President
Morton, Mrs. LaFetra says :
"It is a source of sincere congratulation to us that Vice-President Morton has
prohibited the sale of liquors by the drinks at his magnificent hotel, the Shoreham.
True it has been, perhaps maliciously, stated by some New York papers that this was
done simply for political purposes. Whether the latter he true or not we would
rejoice if the sale of liquors at retail could he prohibited throughout the Nation, even
for political purposes. We sincerely hope that the sale of liquors by the bottle will
also soon he prohibited by the Vice-President, for the authority to prohibit the sale at
retail carries also the power to prevent selling by the bottle."
Miss Ida M. Hinman, the well known Washington correspondent,
gives this additional testimony :
" The restaurants under the dome of the Capitol are still selling liquors. The con-
tract of the House restaurant states that the "sale ot spirituous liquor is strictly pro-
hibited." This is signed by R. P. Emerson, the restaurant proprietor and Congressman
Darlington and Congressman Dibble, the Rules Committee of the House Committee
on Public Buildings and Grounds. Then there is a rule prohibiting the sale of liquors
in the Senate and the House restaurant."
With an undoubted majority in the present Congress, and con-
trolled by a Republican administration, this is the condition of things
at the National Capitol.
With civil service reform throttled ; thirty-four thousand postmast-
ers having been appointed in a little over one year of the present
administration ; the Blair bill to which the National Republican party
was pledged, defeated in^ the Senate which had already adopted it
twice over; with liquor sold in the capitol; with the New York
S4-
National W. C. T. U.
Tribune declaring that "the Republican party, as a party, is squarely
committed to high license;" with Nebraska lost to prohibition by at
least fifteen thousand majority, the outlook is not brilliant.
No leaders have more bitterly opposed prohibition than Republican
leaders in Nebraska. We can hope nothing from them, and we can
hope nothing from democratic leaders as a class.
If in presence of facts like these, white ribbon women did not
speak out for the only National party that has declared against the
liquor traffic, we should be unworthy of this crisis hour in our
country's history ; if the home people did not speak, w-ell might the
very stones cry out. Brain poisons at the Republic's capitol; brain
poisons sold under the starry dome and in permitted violation of the
laws that Congress has promulgated ! Could degradation further go ?
But alas, the explanation is that the brains of men who make our
laws are muddled with' the very liquors, against which public senti-
ment has obliged them to declare. The priest and the prophet of our
Nation's temple are out of the way.
Solemnly let the Woman's Christian Temperance Union say on its
knees : " Then arose I, Deborah, a mother in Israel," and if we are
true to God we shall live to hear Thfs land ring with the song of
victory from Deborah and Barak over the slain Sisera of the saloon,
"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed,
he fell; wRere he bowed there he fell down dead."
"We vote as we shot," so the soldiers say up North, and the words
sound harsh to a w.oman's^ears. And yet the truth remains that
North and South voted that way in the awful days we have survived.
But because votes had created the Confederate government, and with-
out them it would have been but the shadow of a dream, no South-
ern minister hesitated to preach and pray for the Confederate cause.
Indeed I have heard of nothing more memorable than the pulpit
services in war time of that great Southern Chureh to whose large-
hearted liberality I, as a White Ribboner, owed my welcome when in
1881 I came here as a stranger. The solid influence of this Church
went with the Confederate government, even as that of my own
Church, the Northern Methodist, went with the Republican party of
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85
those historic days. I have heard Bishop Simpson, in our old church
at Evanston, pray for that party, its leaders and its policy, with a
power unapproached by any other prayers that have enthralled my
heart. But that was well-nigh thirty years ago. We are in the throes
of another great struggle where, God be thanked, the hands that then
would have closed for a blow are now open for a clasp; the eyes that
would have flashed with fires of hate are now moist with tears- of sym-
pathy; the voices that would have rung out in defiance, are blended in
soft notes of love and prayer. The thraldom of the liquor power,
cursing us all alike, has made us brothers and sisters of a common
sorrow and a common hope. Why may we not here help to plan the
great campaign whose guns are ballots and whose bullets are ideas?
Why may not the sacred cause of peohibition, for which your Grady
fought, become one with that great cause of fraternity for which he,
fighting, fell? Nay, brothers, to this complexion it must come at last.
Temperance men North and South must not cancel each others
ballots; Christian men must not upon election day keep company they
would disown on any other. Every bruiser, every burglar, every
betrayer of woman votes against prohibition; Christian men must
cease to vote with them; to do this they must come out from among
them and be separate; and when the better men thus choose the better
part their partnership will mean a party! If that party is not fit to
be prayed about in church, then let us gather as did the early Metho-
odists, under God's great sheltering sky, and do our praying there!
It has been said that between a temperance society and a political
party there could be no common denominator. But I claim that in
the mathematics of this great reform these two fractions can be reduced
to a denomination common to both, and that is: God in government.
The W. C. T. U. in Maine passed a resolution that crystallizes our
position. It is as follows :
Resolved, That we reiterate our intention to be as we have always been, neither a
partisan nor a sectarian organization, but this shall not prevent us from the frank
declaration that we will lend our influence, express our gratitude and goodwill, and
offer our prayers for any society, association or movement, in church or State, that has
for its watchword, "The saloon must go."
The Central Illinois Conference of the M. E. Church has just put
National W. C. T. TJ.
forth an ideal resolution for Christian voters. Hear it in the love ot
God and humanity, all ye, my brothers, who have named the name
of Christ:
Resolved, That we are uneompromisingly opposed to license, either
high or low, and that since the allies of the rum power have publicly de-
claiwd that in the exercise of their elective franchise- they will not support
any candidate for office who is in any way allied to the prohibition move-
ment, we therefore feel driven to the necessity of affirming that in the exer-
cise of our elective franchise we cannot support any candidate who is not
openly and avowedly opposed to the liquor traffic.
What less, what other could these Christians do ? The gauntlet
was flung down at their feet. Saloon politicians dared them to their
worst, but that worst was humanity's best, and meant the outworking
at the ballot box of what had been inworked at family prayers, in
Sunday sermons, class meeting exhortations and song, that said:
" Stand up, stand up for Jesus,
Ye soldiers of the cross;
Lift high His holy banner—
It must not sutfer loss."
Thank God, there is not one among all the thousands of beautiful
banners that belt this world to-day, bearing the mottoes of the W. C.
T. U., that does not mean
" Lift high His holy banner—
It must not suffer loss."
But every triumph of the liquor traffic at the polls trails that banner
in the dust; helps to empty church altars and crowd the bar and grog
shop. Christian men know this as well as any saloon keeper could
tell them. Therefore, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
cries aloud and spares not, nor will it spare, nor will it cease to cry to
the voting manhood of the nation that has named the name of Christ:
"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.
With the cross ef Jesus going on before!"
My sisters of the South, we are on soil that was reddened with the
blood of women's hearts when the ruddy life stream spilled itself as
the libation of heroes uniformed in blue and gray on the altar of a cause
Presiclent's Annual Address.
87
that each believed to be worth dying for; we are in a city* that was
swept as by the besom of destruction when Sherman marched to the
sea; some of ns are from keen-brained New England, some from the
mighty West, and we are in your homes because the chieftains of the
Sonth's greatest commonwealth invited ns to come; We meet upon
new battle-fields; A.tlanta's struggle for anti-slavery has been glorious
—the anti-slavery of prohibition. Georgia is so true to this cause
that could her voters stand up and be counted the undoubted majority
would be for temperance; we are here to declare before'liigh heaven
in the city where Henry Grady fought for prohibition; near the church
in which he worshipped God, and at whose altar his coffin so lately
lay, that Atlanta shall not be enslaved by the saloon; that Georgia
shall be free; that the Republic shall have National prohibition; that
the world shall trample its brain poisons into the dust. Hand in
hand, eye to eye, heart to heart, and on our knees, we women of the
North and South, East and West, solemnly swear eternal enmity to
alcohol; we are for prohibition by law, prohibition by politics, prohi-
bition by woman's ballot, so help us. Almighty God.
But this result will work out slowly. There is always the Pharisee
mind, the Saddncee mind, the Nathaniel who comes by night, lacking
the courage .of his convictions, although in him there is no guile, only
he is still an Israelite and wedded to the old-time views. And there
is always an apostle of the Gentiles striking out new paths, blazing
the trees, and taking as his portion the cause, the curses, and the con-
sequences. This is just as true in religious things as it is in things
political. Politics and religion divide the world and are the two
great realms. The Democrats answer to the Catholics, conservative
and stereotyped, but whose foundations rest on the tombs of heroes
and the altars of saints. The Republican party answers to the well-
to-do Protestant denominations, who hold to views and polity not now
requiring sacrifice, although in the beginning based on martyrdoms.
The Mugwumps, with their culture and high-toned views, answer to
the Unitarians of all stripes and shades. The Prohibitionists find
their analogy in the Quakers, with their fearless protest against wrong;
the holiness people, with their eager search for the highest and best,
88
National W. C. 1.' U.
t'he Faith people who "stagger not at the promises of God"—^and the
revivalists of every name and sort. Thus these two great realms of
material and spiritual power forever at war with one another and
within themselves, have farmed out the world to the clash of their
arm's and the din of their doings, and as there is nothing changeless
except change, the minority ever tends towards being the majority,
and is as sure to become the majority as the coral reef is sure to
become the Coral island. If we as temperance people can only once
see this, we can look with absolute amusement, and with no sense of
loss or contradiction upon the splendid battle field, and take our
chances as the minority, already feeling in our hearts the grand enthu-
siasm, and seeing in our gait the " swing of conquest" that comes
from the overwhelming numbers sure to follow where we lead.
THANKS.
Our thanks should be sent to Senator Henry W. Blair for his
heroic championship of a National Prohibitory Amendment, a National
Amendment for Equal Suffrage and the Blair Educational Bill. That
Bill was defeated by the party pledged to it by the platform of 1888.
Probably none bemoaned its fate as we did. We love it for itself, for
the dangers it has dared and the enemies it has made. We stand by
its noble author and will help on the cause of national aid to educa-
tion until it is a fact assured. It is late in the day to discuss this
measure; we understand, believe in and expect to see it through.
We must all remember to the credit of this administration, the anti-
Mormon and anti-lottery agitation; the power given to the States
over alcoholics in original packages; and the admission of Wyoming
with its enfranchised womanhood.
Among the year's gains we may count the fact that the Vice-Presi-
dent of the United States has ceased to sell intoxicating liquors at
retail in his now famous Shoreham Hotel, in Washington, D. C.
The Vice-President might with propriety be thanked for this improved
action with gentle intimation that the White Ribboners hope he will
soon cease to sell at all.
President's Annual Address.
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89'
HOME AFFAIRS.
It is now generally known by the white ribbon constituency that
Rest Cottage, after a life-use thereof by the present occupants, (includ-
my brother's family and Anna Gordon), is intended to be the property in
fee simple of the National W. C.T.U.,the income to be used in training
children not to use alcoholics or tobacco. Hence, when it was told to
us at home that the leaders of the W. C. T. U. had (in reply to the
question sent them by Miss Pugh last spring : "What shall I do with
the proceeds of our president's autobiography falling by contract to-
her, but by her presented to the W. C. T. U. at its last annual meet-
ing ?") indignautly repudiated the gift, as the convention itself did at
the time it was humbly proffered, we decided to put the money into
Rest Cottage itself. This was more suitable because, although we
have lived there Avell nigh twenty-five years, its general appearance
has "continued in one stay." Workmen have been busy since Sep-
tember 1st, and you will rejoice, as Ave do, in the improvements
Avrought. In this connection, I wish to ask leave (of the eight hun-
dred friends—mostly national delegates—who went out from Chicago
to visit Rest Cottage last autumn), to establish a cairn on the little
lawn back of the house, made up of a Lake Michigan pebble for each.
Hereafter each Ausitor will be asked to add one, and thus we will build
a perpetual emblem of the many in one, Avhose Avork, small in each
instance, will become an aggregate large enough to sink the liquor traffic-
one of these years. We are qot Avilling to have no enduring token
of so great an event as was that rallying of the clans in 1889.
My mother, noAV so near her eighty-seventh birthday, sends you
loving messages. The W. C. T. U. is her whole life. The thousand
'tokens of good Avill that come to her in all my letters and her own
help keep her young. No faculty of mind or sense abates in poweiv
She is serene and steadfast. "Tell the Avhite ribboners for me," she
says, "that I send them my message in the Avords of two great poets t.
" As the bird trims her — to the ,s;ale, >■
I trim myself to the storm of time. i
[ man the rudder, spread the sail,
Obey at eve the voice obeyed at yrimer
:W
National W. C. T. U.
And this:
" I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way;
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first
I ask not. I shall arrive
In His good time.
THE SIBERIAN EXILE PETITION
movement has had our heartiest sympathy. Indeed, we had issued through
The Union Signal a request to white ribboners to write letters of pro-
test to the Czar, before any knowledge of this petition reached us, but
when we learned about it we forwarded our letters and names to the
Secretary of the Petition Society, Rev. Alfred J. P. McClure, 1407
Locust Street, Philadelphia, and I here give the name and address,
hoping that men and women in all lands may send him all the names
and letters they can gather, always, I hope, writing the Czar in
friendly terms, for it is rather his misfortune than his fault to be where
and what he is; and remembering that his ice-throne is now so under-
mined by the sunshine of Christian progress that he is himself virtually
a prisoner in his palaces, and the most pitiable spectacle in all his
empire.
RATIONALE OP OUR WORK.
It is said that when Gilbert Stewart painted his most famous picture
-of Washington he put more blue in the eyes than the facts called for.
Some one asked him why, and he replied, " They will tone down to
the right color in fifty years." The exaggeration that men saw in the
methods of the Crusade, gives us an analogy to this utterance of the
great painter; but, at fifty years distance, that which was considered
an extreme method, will, in the mellow light of history, with its beau-
tiful, softening perspective, seem the most natural thing that could be
done in times so desperate. Archbishop Whately said the greatest fea-
ture of Christianity is that it has sent men to learn- of women and
women to learn of God. Possibly there may be some analogy between
this utterance and the present situation of the temperance reform.
iSurely we have no need to fear the success of a movement that began
Avdth women on their knees in prayer.
President's Annual Address. 91
\
*
Everything depends upon the point of view, and everybody sets
his mind as to the point of view as readily as he sets an alarm clock
to wake him at a certain hour in the morning. Many people seem to
have fixed their minds, or, as Dickens has playfully said, "made up
what they are pleased to call their minds," to see the ill in every
person, institution, and object; to look for that, and to discourse upon
it. We have all known persons in talking with whom for an hour they
would not speak favorably concerning anything that came up. It was
not that they were ill naturedbut they had set their minds that
way. Perhaps it was a cross-grained heredity or environment that
-started them at it. Anyhow, it was a very poor start, to say the
least. The best law of criticism is the one laid down by Coleridge for
viewing works of art: "Always look for the excellencies; the blemishes
will work their own discovery." I believe every white ribboner is
bound to seek for the point of harmony, not of variance, between our
purposes in life, our plans as a society, and the animus of our ihove-
ment, and every other purpose, plan, and movement. Study this in
household relationships, neighborly adjustments, social environments^
•denominational associations. If you are a Methodist, think wherein
5the Baptists are like the Methodists, not wherein they are unlike
forever and ever. If you are a W. C. T. U. woman, think wherein we
have points of harmony with the Salvation Army, the Knights of
Labor, the Good Templars ; not wherein we differ. That will do itself.
The law of observing differences seems to be born in us, as descend-
^nts of a fallen pair. It is a part of our general and genuine
depravity.
In thus setting one's mind like a music box rather than a fire
alarm, there is this hazard: It will be said on the one hand that we
ifavor new departures and fellowship fanatics, and on the other that
we are not severe against conservatives and Catholics, but we must
hold steadily on our way, and, like the bee in the posy-bed, get all
the honey possible and bear it home to the hive of our early and
beloved faith, while we "repeat our father's creed, our mother's
prayer.^'
Among the helpful reactions of the work upon the workers is
92
National W. C. T. U.
breadth of view. We learn to think of elasses and masses In terms;
of humanity. A white ribboner who was polite to a colored waiter^
thanking him for what he brought her at table was smilingly remon-
strated with by a fashionable friend. Whereupon she replied, "I
cannot do otherwise; my own gentleness of thought obliges me tO'
treat all human beings in a manner consonant with their best possi-
bilities. I would even have the stevedore who handles my baggage-
more self-respecfful after I have spoken to him than before. I wouldf
leave a glow of good-will in his breast." And I know another ok
our number who having the privilege one Sunday to speak to 1600''
men in a State's Prison carefully guard her preparation that she might
not by word or sign remind them that they were in prison; because
she recognized as the largest and most helpful generalization concern-
ing them that they were men, her brothers of the human race, witb
its pain and passion and its splendid outlook toward immortal being
and unceasing growth. And still another said, "I owe it to my
principles aud the culture that Christianity has given me so to treat
ipy kitchen girl that she shall be thereby knit more closely in the great
kinship of humanity, for Christ is judged in me through her, and she has
her verdict thoroughly made up concerning what religion is as I exhibit
it. Abraham Lincoln, who was perhaps the most truly royal man this-
country has produced, was the one of whom Frederick Douglass has
said that no other ever made him forget while in his presence that he
was a colored man.
"The best thing any mortal hath is that which every mortal shares."^
The provincial spirit is selfish because narrow, the cosmopolitan spirit'
is generous because broad. ' The only true cosmopolitan this world
has seen is Jesus Christ. He taught us that only by sharing our hap-
piness can it be multiplied. This is the only true philosophy of life and.
would make the rich so restive in their abundance that poverty would
be impossible within the circle of their influence. He said in a thou-
sand ways what a great poet puts upon his lips in "The Vision of Sir
Launfal: "
" Who bestows himself with his alms/eerfs three.
Himself, and his hungering neighbor and Me."
President's Annual Address.
93
There is no such thing as mystery. It is only a romantic name for
Ignorance. In all the centuries that the sources of the Nile lay cov-
ered from sight on the mental map of every person, they were
; really lying open to the great bright skies, full of their own happy
life of insect, bird, four-footed creature and happy man. And there
they had been since the morning stars sang together—only waiting
for the strong and capable chieftain who was to come. That is what
•humanity is for—to search with tireless eyes; to take as its guiding
light in science, arts and holiness this promise : " Then shall ye know,
if ye folloro on to know, the Lord." It is so this mighty planet over,
-■and no doubt in all other worlds it is the same. God shuts His hand,
as many a father does, that the little one may try to pry it open. He
has something there worth trying for. He only closes up the hand
that the child may be developed by its'search, in muscles and in
mental power; and also that they may have a certain pleasant,
humorsorae, and at the same time thoughtful action and reaction on
one another—the great intelligence of the father and the little dawn-
ing intelligence of the child.
These thoughts came to me as we entered Chicago one morning on
Ihe train from Nebraska. I heard some men opposite me speaking
.a little cautiously about the city, its wickedness, how great it was,
how sharp one had to be to get along, etc., and I said to myself,
-''Here I have lived nearly thirty-three years; I am wonted to the
place ; I don't dread it; it seems to me like coming home to glide into
■the great beautiful electric city on these smooth rolling wheels. But
when I went to London I was afraid just because I did not know London.
How Lady Somerset, who loves it, and has known it always, would
laugh that I should be afraid of that great central heart of the world !
I read about a bravm young woman who recently fired off a huge
oannon on one of our war ships. She was considerel remarkable for
her intrepidity, but the young naval officers who stood around her,
lighted the match and put it in her hand were not afraid, nor did it
.seem to them a great action to fire a cannon, they were so used to it.
They had the courage of having done the thing, but perhaps if she
had asked them to tie up some dainty box of bon-bons with bright
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National W. C. T. U.
ribbons, their clumsy fingers would have trembled, and they would
have been afraid. The difference between a provincial and a cosmo-
politan is that the latter is afraid of fewer things, because he has had
«
a wider observation of that great beautiful fact of God that there is
really nothing to be afraid of in all the universe. I mean there is
nothing if one goes at it right. Sin is the going wrong at our
relationships in life; it is not getting hold of the law that governs,
the situation. It is throwing one's self on the track instead of taking
one's seat in the safe swift car. But one might say, "O, but people are
sometimes killed on the cars." Yes, but if they have fallen into line with
the laws of God, a new set of laws will that minute descend upon them
lifting them aloft into other ranges of the universal, benignant power.
How beautiful that saying of Goethe, in which his genius showed itself
before he was ten years old, when his mother was crying over the great
earthquake in Lisbon where so many thousands were lost, and he too^
had cried in his contagious sympathy with her whom he loved best;;
but afterwards he said, while tears were still upon his face, "Mother,,
perhaps God sees that no mortal accident can injure an immortal soul."
It looks as if the way in which we get to be not afraid any more, is that
the microcosm becomes more and more a record and duplicate of the mac-
rocosm. The reason I am not afraid of Chicago is that I have lived in
Chicago. Much of it is in my very being, and to be a Christian is to have
liyed God to some degree, to have fallen in with His wdys; so that then
one is serene, because God is everywhere, and if we are at one with
Him, then we have reached our equilibrium. We find it in Him at
every breath and heart beat. The good son lives at home in peace
and prosperity alongside of his father. He knows his father's ways^
has fallen in with them, has the same plans, looks toward the same
results with a serene and loyal heart; but the other son who is restive
and contradictory, neither knows his father's will nor cares to find it
out. He is afraid, for he has not made himself the microcosm that
reflects the macrocosm. To do this is all there is of life worth living..
IN CONCLUSION
I wish we were all more thorough students of the mighty Past, for
we would thus be rendered braver prophets of the future, and more-
President's Annual Address.
95
cheerful workers in the present. History shows us with what tenacity
the human race survives. Earthquake, famine and pestilence have-
done their worst, but over them rolls the healing tide of years and they
are lost to view ; on sweeps the great procession, and hardly shows a
scar. Rulers, around whom clustered new forms of civilization, pass
away, but greater men succeed them ; nations are rooted up; great hopes
seem blighted; revolutions rise, and rivers run with the blood of
patriots; the globe itself seems headed toward the abyss, but behold !
it rights up again ; new patriots are born, higher hopes bloom out like
stars; humanity emerges from the dark ages vastly ahead of what it
was on entering that cave of gloom, and ever the right comes upper-
most, and now is Christ's kingdom nearer than when we first believed.
Only^ those who have not studied history lose heart in great reforms ;:
only those unread in the biography of genius imagine themselves to
be original. Except in the realm of material invention there is
nothing new under the sun. There is not a reform which some great
soul had not dreamed of centuries ago; there is not a doctrine that
some father of the church did not set forth; the Greek philosophers
and early Christian fathers boxed the compass once for ail; we may
take our choice of what they have left on record, for we are not orig-
inal to others or ourselves save in so far as both are ignorant, and
the correct statement appears to be that the one original thinker is
God, and Adam was his prophet. Let us then learn a wise humility,
but at the same tilhe a humble wisdom, as we remember that there are
but two classes of minds—one of which declares that our times are
the worst the world has seen and the other claims our times as best—
and he who claims this, all revelation, all science, all history witnesses,
is right, and will be right forever more.
About four weeks ago a horrible catastrophe was averted on the
Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway by the steadiness and
daring of Engineer John Burns, of Buffalo. His express train was on
the down-grade and going at the rate of fifty miles an hour. He
saw a truck and freight car on the track ahead; behind him in his
train were a hundred and fifty passengers. To stop before reaching-
the obstruction was impossible; to jump would save himself alone
.96
National W. C. 1. U.
in an instant he resolved to share their danger and their destiny. So
he put on all the steam and opened the sand pipes that the engine
might get a firmer grip on the rails. Forward raced the engine,
-throwing the truck aside and cutting clean through the freight car
and debris. Steady was the brave man's hand upon the lever, and
the moment he had cleared the obstacles the engine was reversed and
the air-brakes set in motion. As they entered the wreck the sides were
torn out of three coaches, and the screams of frightened passengers
rose high above the screeching of the steam. The engine was dis-
mantled, the engineer covered with cuts and bruises, but every life
was saved. Excitedly the people gathered around the engineer and
•nmbraced him, for they knew that he h^id risked his life to guard their
own.
There are obstructions on the track of Humanity, where the good
old engine temperance is whizzing ahead with daily accelerating
speed. Partisan non-partisanship is the truck, and high license the
oumbrous freight; the National W. C. T. U. is the fearless engineer;
-some cars have lost splinters, and one or twd had their sides torn out,
but this train is going through, and without a life the less!
The introspective is not the healthful life. Suppose the eye should
-set out to see itself, or the ear to hear itself! No, these organs are only
normal in their use when applied to the outward world; and the soul
is normal only when joined on to God and Humanity—its natural
correlates, the atmosphere of its lungs, the air to iTs wings, the love
for its heart. Introspective is the last infirmity of noble minds; it
is repression's penalty and life's distemper; it reverses the soul's engine-
ry and sets it grinding on itself. Let us rather fling ourselves out
into the thickening battle; let us live the life of action which is
the only true and happy life. Men tell us God is force—iiay. He is
that purposed force behind all forces, that combines head, hand and
heart; God is action—let us be like God.
"The Kingdom of Heaven sufFereth violence, and the man of violence taketh it by
force."—(New version.)
God's word constantly sets before us images of vigor, of action, of
power. Women need to study this; they need translating out of the
Presidents Annual Address.
97
passire into th6 active voice ; out of aimless reverie and into resolute
aim. The W. C. T. U. has no higher, holier mission than to help
bring this about.
The most perfect eye is the one of which its possessor is most
unconscious, except he knows how well it sees. The most perfect ear
is that of which its possessor is most unconscious, except he knows
how well it hears. This, which is true in detail, is just as true in the
wholeness of one's life. A morbid self-consciousness is the greatest
hindrance to any heart. Man is like an engine—the greater and the
more perfect, the less conscious is it of its parts, but the more con-
scious of its power. The Corliss engine swings its great levers and
turns its mighty wheels a thousand times more quietly than the rat-
tling little freight. The most normal and most perfect human being
is the one who most thoroughly addresses himself to the activity of
his best powers, gives himself most perfectly to the world around
him, flings himself out into the midst of humanity, and is so pre-
occupied by his own beneficent reaction on the world that he is
practically unconscious of a separate existence. Introspection and
retrospection were good for the cloister; but the uplook, the outlook
and the onlook are alone worthy of modern Christianity. To change
the figure, a normal Christian stands in the midst of a great, beauti-
ful and varied landscape. It is the landscape of beneficent work.
Above him arches the boundless sky, brilliant with stars of God and
Heaven. Love and friendship form a beautiful rainbow over his
landscape and arch up toward his sky. But the only two great
environments of the human soul are work for humanity and faith in
God. Those wounded in love will find that affection, dear and vital
as it is, comes to us not as the whole of life, not as its wide, wondrous
landscape of the earth, not as its heavenly vision of the sky, but as its
beautiful embellishment, its rainbow, fair and sweet. But were it
gone, there would still remain the two greatest and most satisfying
pictures on which the soul can gaze—humanity and God.
In that old war when you and I were not, as now, enlisted soldiers,
a captain at evening roll call said to his company : (whether they
wore the blue or gray I do not know.)
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National W. C. T. U.
" Soldiers, I am ordered to detail ten men for a very dangerous service, but of the
greatest importance to the army in the coming battle. I have not the heart to pick
the men, for the chances are against their ever coming back. But it there are ten
men in the company who will volunteer for this service they may step two paces to
the front." As the Captain ceased speaking that whole line stepped two paces for-
ward, and stood there with every man in place, and ranks as even as before. The-
captain's eyes were dim, and his voice faltered as he said: "Soldier's I thank you; I
am proud to be captain of such a company."
Sisters, we wear a badge whose white light includes all that was
pure and good iu blue and gray alike. We have been mustered for a
costly service, and one that grows more dangerous every day. Let us
move forward with steady step—close up the lines when any comrade
fails or falls and so present a solid front to the frowning enemy where
wave the banners with their sacred sign, "For God and Home and
Native Land!"
Those are the troops with which a leader can sweep the world,—
who of their own free will dare heavy odds, who do it for the love of
it, and who all move as one.
In the midst of the fight out of which Paul Jones came an immor-
tal hero, when his sails were riddled with cannon balls, and one of his
legs was shot away, the speaking trumpet of the English captain,
whose ships were so dangerously near to those of the plucky American,
sounded forth these words: "Aren't you about ready to surrender?"
Back again came this reply in Paul Jones' deepest bass: "No,
indeed, we have not begun to fight yet," and fifteen minutes later
victory turned on the side of the Americans, and our flag floated from
the British ships. This was the power of leadership in a great
emergency. Those dauntless words from one who was suffering, and
whose life it would seem had been blasted by the cruel accident that
had just befallen him, nerved every man to use that last ounce of
power which is the one that tells.
SELF SURRENDEB. ,
Of all the thoughts Niagara has evoked,—and I suppose they would
make many volumes if literature were searched for them,—perhaps the
one that comprehended best the panorama here spread out, was written
by James G. Brainard, a young poet who had never heard this roar, nor
President's Annual Address.
99
seen this whiteness of enternity. But for a single sentence, it seems to
me that of Emerson is most suggestive, where he says, " Difference of
level makes Niagara." Of this I thought one memorable day in the
past year, as I stood beside the cataract. The lower level of consecra-
tion and self-abandonment is the path to truest power. Standing here
singing " Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me," there came a concept of analo-
gies full of lessons to my spirit, and possibly not without helpfulness
to yours.
In all that roar and din the gentle whisper of Lake Michigan's soft
summer wavelets came to my ea»*, the lake at home, beloved by all of
us, and known so long and well in all its moods, rejoiced in when the
foaming white caps chased each other like eager coursers at a tourna-
ment, and feared, almost, when the great yellow waves lifted themselves
ocean high, and roared their wrath in the wuntry storm. But to
Niagara Lake Michigan had come to lay its greatness down; it
had traveled fast and far from its beautiful and varied shores to pour
itself over these rocks, so awful and so high. In the thunder of it all,
I heard the deep orchestral voice of that supreme lake of them all,
Superior, hastening onward with mighty tread from its northern fast-
nesses and dreary strips of wilderness; and then came Huron thunder-
ing down with heavy waves; and then the gleam of Erie, that had
mirrored many cities on its cultivated shores, splendid in themselves
and historic in the vast work back of them.
Yet all these wondrous waters had gathered in above the cataract,
and, though fretted here and there by obstacles of rocks and islands,
and, hesitating for a moment, they had poured themselves with awful
majesty, their very semblance gone; spun, woven, whipped, beaten,
over the billowy brink in the utter abandonment of self-surren-
der, as they took the leap of death, calling only upon God. But the
rainbow of faith spanned their grave, and heralded their resurrection.
To me it was an emblem of the Holy Spirit, let down from heaven
with light and warmth and actinic ray of divine vitality,—the real
power behind all powers.
After the plunge, the great lakes lie there seemingly sluggish and
inactive, as if stunned by the descent. This, however,- is of brief
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National W. C. T. U.
duration; for a mighty force is in them. I think Edison has said
there is enough power at Niagara, if correlated into electricity, and
coiled and stored and transported to New York, to turn every spindle
on the way, and furnish the total forces needed to carry on all depart-
ments of mechanical work in the metropolis of America. So
the great lakes have gained a mighty impulse, and because
they have, the powers of them are mightier. Those deep, strange
waves, they start off, now, on their inevitable journey; for it was
to reach the sea they took that leap, and all of gravitation drew
them to it. The whole current of their being set that way, and they
could do no other. They can really care for no less journey; they
have no other home; their insatiable desire for unity with the source
of their being, the great fathomless and restful heart of the ocean,
urges them on. Nothing can stop them now; they are headed toward
their source. But on the way men ask them to turn mills, to furnish
power for various industries; and they take time for that, helping to
the utmost in,every pursuit of man, happy and blithe as they make
the little wheels go spinning around, singing their song of sunny toil,
laughing in foam as they come down the sluice-ways, and, the moment
that they are released, seeking their natural current, going away upon
their unreturning journey.
So it is with the soul of man intent on God, who is its natural home ;
and happy is that soul, and blessed that Christian, however great, that
takes the holy leap of consecration, and speeds onward toward the sat-
isfying sea !
TABULATED KECOMMENDATIONS.
Five prize banners were last year promised by me, one to New England, one to
the Middle States, one to the Southern States, one to the Western States and one to
the Pacific States. These are to be awarded each year hereafter to the commonwealth
in each division that has gained the largest per cent, of members over its record in
the previous year. Be careful to trace on the hack of all banners the dates and places
where they were borne aloft on battle ground or vantage ground of the W. C. T. U.
This will make these banners doubly precious in time to come.
As President of the national organization of that name let me advise the organiza-
tion of a Woman's Council in every town in the nation, and in the world for that
matter, to be composed of the presidents of the various societies engaged in woman's
work; this to be a sort of a clearing-house of their work, a whispering-gallery of
President's Annual Address.
101
their purposes, and an object lesson of that growing solidarity ot woman's sympathies
and eiforts from which the world has everything to hope. By such a unification ot
women's enterprises it will be practicable to build a Woman's Temple in every town
to serve as the rendezvous for their varied philanthropic work and by its rentals to
help carry that work forward.
February 15-18, 1891, inclusive, has been set for the first regular meeting of the
Women's National Council, at Pike's Opera House, Washington, D. C. The National
W. C. T. U. is auxiliary to this Council, and is invited to send representative women,
who shall speak on its behalf.
Leave the number of National Organizers to be determined by Executive Commit-
tee and require a renewal of their filled-out blanks, only at discretion of said Com-
mittee.
That organizers be speedily detailed to work in Wyoming and Oklahoma, and
that provision be made by the World's W. C. T. U. Committee for an Organizer in
Japan, the most hopeful of oriential countries for our work.
I recommend that Organizers adopt By-Laws, choose a Chairman and Secretary,
and hold meetings of their o\/n ; that they be invited on equal terms with the Super-
intendents to be present at the joint session of the Executive Committee and Super-
intendents, and that they sit together as the Superintendents do.
A sub-division of the large State of Texas seems requisite. California and Wash-
ington are far more successful in their work because thus sub-divided. Will not the
Convention detail leaders who shall go from here to that great, undeveloped State to
advise with its white ribboners with this intent ?
The best method of organization is by counties, each locat president being elected
by ballot in her own union, the county president elected by ballot from the united
local unions, and ex officio vice-president of the State and a member of the state exec-
utive committee. The superintendents and other agents who are appointed are not
members of the executive committee of the State. This gives a very democratic basis
to the movement.
The Presentation of our Cause before Influential Bodies and the Deparment of
Organization should each have a Secretary. This has been asked for a term of years
and until granted, these two Departments will be practically nil at headquarters.
Let us name a day for a general movement all over the land in accordance with the
plan for a membership crusade. Let the local unions divide up into twos and threes,
starting out early in the morning and continuing till evening if need be, canvassing
for new members and leaving literature in each home. A day set apart for prepara-
tion and prayer before that would be inspiring. The very thought that hundreds and
thousands of W. C. T. U. women the world over are doing missionary work the same
day will give faith, courage and success. Will not the Convention vote on such a day
for 1891 ?
A special membership card, to be prepared for Membership Crusade Day.
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National W. C. T. U.
That the report of the Executive Committee be acted upon item by item, and that
all its recommendations relative to business he brought in at the close of each reading
of the regular minutes; also that added at the end of the Executive Committee reports
he the items thereof, numbered one, two, three, etc., and that these be read out and
acted upon one by one, so that no woman can say she " did not notice." The trouble is
that we have a careless method in the National of mixing Convention and Executive
Committee reports; the states all copy it, and are rather apt to let items slip by with-
out observing as carefully as they should.
Eecommend that we always ballot for Superintendents. Have a ticket with the
Superintendencies printed upon it; then the Superintendents having been nominated
in the Executive Committee, let them be balloted for in the Convention. It is a curi-
ous fact that owing to our method of electing Superintendents the minutes do not
show that we have elected any at all, which is a most imbecile non sequitur.
A permanent W. C. T. U. School of Methods in Chicago.
Let me advise the "Y" Societies to study the method of "College Settlements," by
which well-to-do women take up their abode in undesirable quarters of the city, living
among those for whom they work and illustrating " Christianity applied."
That our Loyal Temperance Legions be represented in the proportion of one to one
thousand in the National Convention. How their presence would brighten us and
confirm them in the faith.
*
A fund for work among the colored people with a view to their preparation for
evangelistic work here and in Africa. That continent looms up wonderfully near in
these days—the port of Sierra Leone is hardly more distant than the city of Liverpool,
and that is less than a week away.
The systematic appointment of a W. T. P. A. representative and a reader of our
publications in every local W. C. T. U., also a superintendent ot a postal delivery for
temperance literature. That is a method by which we can exploit any
amount of' our literature through the Post Office by order of our women. It
will help solve the problem of "exploiting the product." Any number of wo-
men will send us orders to forward temperance and religious literature to
friends of theirs to whom they would hardly feel free to send it from their own
town, but bearing the Chicago postmark it is impersonal. The same is true of
Social Purity literature. I believe this is a thought worthy of expansion. I
know a woman in Boston who would do this work well. If such a position could be
worked up as I believe, we might attach this Superintendency as an adjunct at head-
quarters.
Every local W. C. T. U. should furnish its President with Mrs. Buell's 'Helping
Hand," and Miss Mary Allen West's "School of Methods," two books that are a
liberal education for our work.
The White Kibbon Hymnal, that Anna Gordon was requested by the last conven-
tion to prepare, is not yet ready, but advance sheets therefrom will be used at the
present convention, and the Hymnal will be ready for us, D. V., in 1891.
President's Annual Address.
103
For Christmas presents Mrs. Scott's " Boys and Other Boys," and " Her Talisman,"
both invaluable for our young people.
Leaflets from " Boys and Other Boys" should be secured by every mother for
her sons.
One ot our Illinois White Ribboners, Mrs. George Clinton Smith, has published, as
many here know, a unique and valuable volume entitled " W oman in Sacred Song."
In doing this, Mrs. Smith has rendered a real service to the cause of woman and of
temperance. The book is both historical and poetic, and I wish each local union in
this country had a copy. Please address Mrs. George Clinton Smith, Springfield, 111.
Tbus year has brought me nothing more choice for spiritual upbuilding than the
"Refiections" of H. B. Chapman, Rector of St. Luke's, Peckham, England. If every
one of our members would send 50 cents to Mr. J. Nichols, 159 Southampton street,
Peckham, S. E. England, and would read these ripe thoughts in a docile and teachable
spirit, they would mightily help us to carry out the motto of their author: To love is
to go out of self.
Miss Frances M. Kingman, Falls City, Nebraska, has a plan for prison work
whereby each local W. C. T. U. looks out for such States prison convicts as go from
its own vicinity, sending literature, notifying each that he is the subject of especial
prayer and trying to help them when their term of imprisonment expires.
Separate Soldiers from Sailors work; separate regular army from G. A. R. work.
I recommend an appropriation to department of work among miners.
A Protective Agency for women and children as a part of the work of local unions
in large cities and towns.
A department of Industrial Homes for Inebriates and other Adult Incapables.
Each State President where there is not such an institution, is advised to write Mrs.
N. H. Knox, Manchester, N. H., President State W. C. T. U., learn all about "Mercy
Home," to which, by request of the W. C. T. H., the legislature made an appropriation
and "go and do likewise."
A department to oppose viticulture, in view of the fact that grapes for wine are
now being raised in large quantities wherever in this country the climate will per-
mit, and most of all in California.
We should have a department for the establishing of W. C. T. U. restaurants,
thereby teaching temperance principles and helping local treasuries, as these restau-
rants will if wisely managed.
The Windsor ( Canada ) W. C. T. U. has a beautiful fountain for man and beast,
erected in the fiftieth year of Queen Victoria's reign, as its contribution to the gen-
eral jubilee. There ought to be such a fountain in every town, and the W. C. T. U.
could not endear itself to the average population more than by being the power
behind, if not upon the throne, to procure such a comfort for the people. J. W.
Fiske, 21 and 23 Barclay street. New York city, ofiers fountains to the W. 0, T. U.
at greatly reduced rates. See his catalogues and write him.
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National W. C. T. U.
A mite box in every house to eollect funds for the Women's Temperance Temple.
That women in the fourteen states that already give the school vote to women, he
urged to utilize it to graft the Kindergarten and ethical and manual training, upon
our public school system everywhere, in the interest of their own children.
Let me advise the women of the local W. C. T. TJ. specially to invite the teachers
and managers of the public schools to receptions. Get personally acquainted with
them. It will help immensely in the enforcement of scientific temperance law.
Would it not he well for all white rihhoners to have a certain hour in the week
when they are known to he at home to any friends who may call ? Our work keeps
us so busy that we grow unsocial in the technical sense of that word, and this method
would help us not to do so.
An article in all local Constitutions stating that any article of the Constitution or
any hy-law, can he amended or stricken out by a two-thirds vote at any meeting
regularly and publicly called, except the pledge and the article on auxiliaryship.
I recommend that beer he explicitly included in our pledge, rather than implicity
under the head of malt liquors; because we wish, by the use of the word "beer" to
warn people against it. Put it in with a big B. It may he argued that "malt liquors"
covers the ground. So does "fermented," and jmt we explicitly say the pledge is
against wine and cider.
Once more let me recommend as the most interesting features of a county or dis-
trict convention or a neighborhood meeting of several local unions, the question box
because it gives each member, even the most silent and timid, an equal chance with>
all the rest to he a felt force and to free her mind.
The following pledge has been circulated this year by earnest workers, and is given
to set us all to thinking, with the recommendation that we act:
m ;—^ li
"We, the undersigned, pledge ourselves
each to the other, by the help of Almighty
God, we will buy no class of goods or mer-
chandise from any dealer in any town or city
that to our knowledge sells intoxicating
liquors as a beverage."
m m
A letter to the National Liquor League, showing them that we hear them no ill
will, putting before them the rationale of our movement and urging them to join the
forces of God and Home and Native Land.
I recommend a Missionary Fund, to be raised by Mrs. Mary Sparks Wheeler.
A Tithe Fund (general) in charge of Mrs. Esther Tuttle Pritchard.
President's Annual Address.
10b
Committee on best methods of co-operation between World's Missionary Committee
of Women and World's W. C. T. U.
Appoint fraternal delegates to the British Womens' Temperance Association,
also appoint to the Canadian W. C. T. U., with alternates in both cases; also ap-
point fraternal delegates to the Farmers' Alliance, Knights of Labor, the Catholic
Total Abstinence Society, Good Templars, etc; send fraternal delegates to the Inter-
national convention of the I. O. G. T. at Edinburgh' in May of 1891, and to the
International Association for the Promotion of Social Purity.
A World's W. C. T. U. convention for 1891, at which time Lady Henry Somerset
is to visit America.
We should join with other womens' societies to call a World's Congress of women
in 1893 at the World's Exposition.
Kecommended that we do not receive as afBiliated societies any whose members
are not total abstainers. For lack of care on this point we have been involved in
some unpleasant outcomes. The fee is a cent of American and a half-penny of
English money per member per year. Some suggest that instead of charging so much
for each person we request each society to pay a pound, that is $5, as an affiliation
fee. Very likely this is the better method, though I think the amount too small.
Men's names are received for the World's petition as well as women's, but they come
in as endorsing the petition, and all names may be taken not only individually, but by
vote of synods, assemblies, and individual audiences.
We should have a Superintendent of the World's W. C. T. U. in every nation, of
each of the following departments: Organization, the Great Petition, Juvenile
Work, Scientific Temperance Instruction in the public schools. Fairs and Expositions,
Press Work and Young Women's Work.
We should have a clerk for the World's W. C. T. U. and a worker for Japan. We
should follow up synods, associations, etc., with our petition, seeking the attestation
of the President and Secretary to the vote of the society, and state the number of mem-
bers back of these signatures. This clerk should follow up all such assemblies and
secure their attestation. She should also work for the department of organization of
the National W. C. T. IT. as well as the World's, and make a specialty of influencing
these associations as suggested above.
Prepare a blank for reports of the World's W. C. T. U. Until we have these,
very little systematic work will be done or chronicled.
We must have a Superintendent of the World's Press Department.
A petitioa from women of the civilized world to the Czar, against political prison-
ers being classed with those guilty of crimes, and against their being treated with so
much harshness. World's W. C. T. U. undertake this in 1891.
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National W. C. T. U.
WORLD'S W. C. T. U.
FOUNDED 1883.
Motto:—For God and Home and Every Land. Object: To unify the methods of wo-
man's temperance work the world over, to promote social reforms and to circulate a peti^
tion for the prohibition of the traffic in alcoholic drinks and opium.
All members wear a little knot of white ribbon, and remember the noon hour of prayer
for all temperance work and workers, and for the coming of Christ's kingdom.
President—Miss Frances E. Willard, Evanston, 111.
Date of VICE-PEESIDENTS.
Organizat'n.
1874. United States—Miss Frances E. Willard.
1876. England—Lady Henry Somerset, 13 Meiuorial Hall, Farringdon St.,
London, E. C.
1882. New South Wales—Mrs. Euphemia Bowes, Stanmore, Sydney.
1883. Canada—Mrs. Fawcett, 103 Hazleton Ave., Toronto, Ont.
1884. Hawaii—Mrs. Mary S. Whitney, Honolulu.
1885. New Zealand—Mrs. Catharine Fulton, Dunedin.
" Queensland—Mrs. Elizabeth Brentnall, Coorparoo, Brisbane.
" Tasmania—Mrs. Grace Saltan, Mildmay Cottage, Launceston.
" Victoria—Mrs. Mary M. Love, Armadale, Melbourne.
" South Australia—Mrs. E. W. Nichols, Prospect, Adelaide.
1886. Ceylon—Mrs. T. S. Smith, Tillipally, Jaffna.
" Sweden—Madame Andersson-Meijerhelm, 17 Sodra Humlegardsgatan,
Stockholm.
" Turkey—Mrs. Zee M. S. Locke, Philippopolis, Bulgaria.
" Japan—Mrs. Saku Asai, Tokio.
" China—Mrs. M. J. Farnham, 18 Peking Road, Shanghai.
1887. Siam—Miss Cole, Bangkok.
" Straits Settlement—Mrs. Marie Oldham; Anglo-Chinese School, Singapore.
" Burmah—Miss Ruth W. Ranney, Rangoon.
" India—Mrs. M. D. Mac Donald, F. C. M., Calcutta. Nat. Lecturer, Pun-
dita Ramabai, Chopati, Bombay.
" Cape Colony—Miss Virginia C. Pride, Huguenot Seminary, Wellington.
Dec. 1887 or
Jan. 1888. Mexico—Mrs. Margaret Taber, Zacatecas.
1888. Chili—Mrs, Ida A. T. Arms, Coleilo Americano, Concepcion.
" Denmark—Mrs. Elizabet Selmer, St. Kongensgade 77 III, Copenhagen.
" Mauritius—Mrs. Bishop Royston, Bishop Thorpe, Rose Hill.
" Madagascar—
1889 Jamaicai—Miss Mary Dillon, Manchioneal.
" Norway—
•' Natal—Mrs. Laura Bridgman, Umzumbi.
" Orange Free State—Mrs. Janet Gray, Transvaal.
" Sierra Leone—Mrs. Bishop Ingham, Bishop Court, Free Town.
" Asia Minor—Mrs. J. E. Pierce, Bardezag.
PrrHhienVH Awmaf AiMrem-.
IB-- Mrs. B. B, Oiiihiger, jStfOwl.
" littfmmft h.— M5ss Juliit l>i<?kit>son, Nttssau.
IB90 —Mrs. J. E. E. liters, St. JoiinV,
(hrr^Mpufiding Sffiuditg—Mrs, Marv Cl«ii:»ent LeavEt. ear«Msf Miss Amy Leafitt,
1228 Mass»<;hus0tis A ve.. H, W,, WiishirigttXi, D. C.
Smretarkm—A nieri«a:it----Alr«. Mary A. Woodbti [Uveruia, Oliio, Britkh—-
Mrs. .Vlary Whitstll O:»st0llm», 40 Or««\'t?ru>r Ei«tcl, \S tiniRster, Ltrndon, S, \¥. Ung-
land. Sermary—Aliee E. {iriggs, Evaaston. ill.
7Vms«re?*s —Amerifaii—..M.iss Esther Ftigb. I8| LaSailo St., (Eiieago, J It Britkh'—
M«?, .lames (Irt-g-ex), Heart's Hill, D-kkn Oreett. ,lA>ught<>it, Eaglmud,
i Ik rid' >t 0 rtjtt n i wrs— EtirojHi ■—AHss Ohar'lotte A.Omy, Steijsherggad#t5 ('hristiaina,
Kt>rway. Northern Karope—- American Oommittee—The ire Gerseral Otiicers of
.N. W. O, T. U.
Sufd. Deparfymnl <d BihU Mr. Ilaotifth M^'hitall Btasth, 44 Orosreiier
Road, Westminster. Lotidon, S. W. England.
Depnrfmml (if Bi'H'nti0r Trmp^^mrirt imh'Hcikm—Mrs. Mary l:L Hunt, Hyde
Park, Miissaeliusatts.
Bupi. Drpartmrmi (>f Primm, Ikkkit Btmihm and J. E!. Barney,
Fri>videnco, R. L
S-upL Fmr» and —Mrs. .fos«j>hine R, Nichols, 549 B. Fennsylvaiiia BE,
l!id!aria|»1is, Ind.
Siipt. IkrpL Ptmrf amf InPtimtmMtl Mrs. Hannah J, Bailey, Winthrop
4-enire. Ale.
Bupi. Work Anump -Miss Anna A, Hordoii, Mvanston, 111,
/vwwyeiwk—Mrs. Elkabeth Wheeler Andrew, |>r, Kate O. BtishnelL
AmsHmn Supl. fjepol />r/»/.—Mrs. BIsbnp .lohn F, Nf'wman, Omaha, Heh,