Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1874-02-28
WOMEN VS.. WHISKY.

As the woman's raid against whisky |
sellers, seems to be tending in this d. !
recti6n, we take occasion, in advance !
of its coming, to express our hearty
sympathy withits object. Having long
been convinced that intemperance can
not be cured by prohibitory laws, or
any form of coercion, and beingas well
satisfied that the remedy is only to be
found in moral suasion and social in
fuences, we hope for little good from
the spasmodic effort now being made
to stay the tide Of drunkenness which
is desolating so many homes, which
would otherwise be prosperous and
happy.
Though man is the sufferer, in health
and characterand in conscience, by his
blind devotion to the poisoned cup,
yet, like suicide, he receives little
sympathy, because his insane passion
is assumed to be, to great extent, a
voluntary self-infiction. Not so with
woman. Though innocent of partici-
patton in the beastly habit, she suffers,
in their worst forms, the ills it inhicts.
From happy bride, the transition is
often sudden, to the condition of a
miserable wife. She is awakened from
her dream of welded bliss, to con-
sciousness that the husband is sinking
rapidly below the level of the brute,
and that her life is destined, by no
fault of hers, so all the wretchedness
that poverty and degradation bring in
their train. And not the wife alone.
but mother and sister are equally the
sufferers by the brute-like conduct of
son or brother who, without an effort
at reform, .descends to a drunkard's
grave-honoreI by none, pitied by a
few and wept for only by the victims
of his blasted life.
Is it any wonder, then that women
thus wronged by their natural protec-
tors, and cursed by the demon of strong
drink, should be goaded into efforts for
self-protection, and TO remove The
curse? But We do not hope much
permanent good from the present eff
fort because there is law of mind,
as we'll as of matter, which makes re-
action the necessary result of tension,
and because the ladies are dealing with
effects rather than causes. If the ell
cacy of prayer is relied upon to work
the reformation, they ought to test its
efficacy upon fathers, husbands, sons
and brothers, and if these can be con
verted, the saloons will be closed as a
matter of necessity; but as long as they
drink, men will be found to sellliquor.
Prohibitory laws will be of no avail
in fact, they do more harm than good,
because, in addition to falling to cor
rect the evil, they invite infractions of
the laws, and stimulate ingenuity in
contriving the means of evasion, thus
adding another immortality to the one
attempted to be cured. Moral inhu-
ences alone, can correct the evils of
intemperanee = not the influence
brought to bear upon one man by a
crowd of women praying and singing,
and carrying their point through the
agency of magnetic excitement, but
the influence of womanly purity over
the domestic and social circle. There
the reformation must begin, if it is to
be permanent. Tabernacles on wheels,
and prayer meetings in bar-rooms,
smack more of the effervescence of ia
naticism than of that staid purity OF
character based upon honest convic-
ton of the necessity for persistent eff
forts in behalf of temperance and
> every other virtue We may be mis-
taken in our estimate of the value OF
the experiment, and our sympathy
, with the cause, makes us solicitous
: about the fitness of the means employ
ed for its success. The ladies have
r in our opinion, started on the wrong
tack--they have started, in fact, where
! they should end. Let them turn theil
: attention to the frequenters of saloons
and when their prayers and entreaties
7 and their moral influence have rescued
. thorn frnun i,nnnnd ing min the wnr I