The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-06-12
The Great Temperance Movement.

fering wears, multiplied into decades,
have The women of America waited to
see that traffic destroyed, which annually
sends sixty thousand of their sons,
brothers, fathers and husbands into the
drunkard's grave. They have been
impoverished, disgraced, tortured in
mind and body, beaten, murdered. I'm
der the impulse of maddening liquors,
the hands that were pledged before
Heaven to provide for and protect them
have withdrawn from them the means
OF life, or smitten them in the dust.
Sons whom they have nursed upon their
bosoms with tenderest love and count
less prayers, have grown into beasts, of
whom they are afraid, or have sunk
into helpless and pitiful slavery. They
have been compelled to cover their eyes
with shame in the presence of fathers
whom 1t would have been bliss for them
TO hold in honor. They have been COM
PEELED to bear children to men whose
habits had untitled them for parentage-
children not only tainted by disease, tut
endowed with debased appetites. They
have seen themselves and their precious
families thrust into social degradation
and cut off forever from all desirable life
by the vices Of the men they loved.
What the women of this country have
suffered from drunkenness, no mind,
however sympathetic, can measure, and
no pen, however graphic, can describe.
1t has been the unfathomable black
gulf into which infatuated multitudes OF
men have thrown their fortunes, their
health, and their industry, and out OF
which have come only-in fire and
stench-dishOnor, disease, crime, misery,
despair and death. 1t is the abomina-
tion of denominations, the curse of curses,
the hell of hells
For weary, despairing years, they
have waited to see the reform that
should protect them from further harm.
They have listened to lectures, they
have signed pledges, they have encOur-
aged Temperance societies, they have
asked for and secured legislation, and
all to no practical good end. The poll
ticians have played them false; the Of
ficers of the law are unflithful; the Gov
ernment revenue thrives on the thrift
iness of their curse; multitudes of the
clergy are not only apathetic i'm their
pulpits, but self-indulgent in their hab-
its; newspapers do not help, but rather
hinder them; the liquor interest, armed
with the money that should have
bought them prosperity, organizes
against them; fashion opposes them; a
million fierce appetites are arrayed
against them, and, losing all faith in
men, what can they do? There is but
one thing for them to do. There is but
one direction in which they can look,
and that is upward The WOman's
Temperance Movement, begun and car
ried on by prayer, is as natural in its
birth and grewth as the oak that springs
I from the acorn. IfGod and the God-like
element in woman cannot help, there is
no help. If the pulpit, the press, the
politicians, the reformeTs, the law, can
not bring reform, who is left to do it but
Z God and the women? We bow to this
movement with reverence.
! We do not stop to question methods;
we do not pause to query about perma-
nent results. We simply say to the
glorious women engaged in this mar
/ velous crusade: "Alay God help and
prosper you, and give you the desire OF
your hearts in the fruit of your laborsr'
1t becomes men to be either humbly
I helpful or dumb. We who have dallied
with this question; we who have dis
passionately drawn the line between
! Temperance and total abstinence; we
who have deplored Drunkenness with
wine-glasses in our hands; we who
have consented to involve great moral
reform with politics; we who have been
politically afraid of the power Of the
brutal element associated with the Ii
quor traffic; we who have split hairs in
our discussions of public policy; we
who have given social sanction to habits
that i'm the great cities have made drunk
ards Of even the women themselves, and
led their sons and ours into a dissolute
life; we who have shown either our un-
willingness or our impotence to save the
country from the gulf that yawns before
it, can only step aside with shame-faced
humility while the great crusade goes
on, or heartily give to it our approval
and our aid.
This is not q crusade of professional
agitatOrs, clamOring for an abstract
right, but an enterprise of suffering
! pure and devoted women, laboring fol
the overthrow of concrete wrong. II
! is no pleasant holiday business il
which these women are engaged, but on'
of self-denying hardship, pregnant IL
every part with sense of duty. 1t i
the offspring of grand religious i'm
pulse which gives to our time its on
superb touch of heroism, and redeem
it from the political debasement an
degradation Of its materialism. 1t is
shame to manhood that it is necessary
it is a glory to womanhOod that it
possible.
II the experience OF the last centur,
, has demonstrated anything, it is tina
:, total abstinence is the only ground ol
! which any well-wisher of society ca
l stand. The liquor traffic has been Dol
e stored up for many years, and IS stron
D to-day, simply through influence whic
) is deemed respectable. 1t must be mad
E infamous by the combination of all tn
4 respectable elements OF society againstii
e 1t must cease to be respectable to drin
|. at all. 1t must cease to be respectabl
T to rent building i'm which liquors ar
! sold. There is no practical middl
{ ground. So long as men drink temper
: ately, men will drink intemperately
: whether il ought to be otherwise or mol
; and il is with reference to the develop
: ment of ahealthy public opinion on TN
!, subject, that we particularly rejoice IN tn
!. woman's crusade. Our own vision IS 5 5
$ blinded and prevented that we can onl;
v see the deformity of the monster Whlcl
J. oppresses us through wOman's eyes up
g lifted in prayer, fearful in shame an an
suffering. or bright in triumph as IN
stronghoids of her lifelong enemy lai
q before her.-Dr. j. q. Holland ~ oc'fo
: neT's for May.
, The Paris, KY, Gazette congratulate
: the rebel Gen. Hood upon the appear
ance Of his seventh child in live years
a. ~.Ew AL IL