The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1874-07-01
From scHbnsr's Mag azine for May.I
The Great Temperance Movement.

] OF America waited 10 see JnaJ uaHlC uesIFO9eui
which annually sends sixty thousand Of their
sons brothers, fathers and husbands into the
drunkard's grave. They have been disgraced,
tortured in mind and body, beaten murdered.
Under the impulse of maddening liquors the
hands that were pledged before Heaven to pro-
vide for, and to protect them, have withdrawn
from them the means of life, or smitten them in
the dust. Sons whom they have nursed on their
bosoms with tenderest loves and countless pray
ers, have grown into beasts, of whom they were
afraid, or have sunk into helpless and pitiful sla-
very. They have been compelled to cover their
eyes with shame in the presence of fathers whom
it would have been bliss for them 10 hold in hon
or. They have been compelled to bear children
] to men whose habits had untitled them for pa
rentage-children not only tainted by disease,
but endowed with debased appetites They have
seen themselves and their precious families thrust
into social degradation, and cut of forever from
all desirable life by the vice 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 unfathom-
able 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 abom-
ination of denominations, the curse of curses, the
hell of bells
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 encouraged
temperance societies, they have asked for, and
secured legislation, and all to no practical end
The politicians have played them false; the Off
GERS of the law are unfaithfu the government
revenue thrives on the thritiness of their curse;
multitudes of the clergy are not only apathetic
in their pulpits, but sefindulgent in their social
habits; newspapers do not help but rather hinder
them the liquor interest, armed with the money
that should have brought them prosperity, organ
ICES against them fashion opposes them mil
lion fierce appetites are arrayed against them
and, losing all faith in men, what can they do F?
There is but one thing for them to do There
is but one direction in which they can look, and
that is upward The women's temperance move
ment, begun and carried on by prayer is as natu-
raj in its birth and growth and as the oak that
springs from the acorn. If God and the God
like element in woman cannot help, there is no
help. If the pulpit the press the politicians, the
reformers, the law, cannot bring reform, who is
left to do it but 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 permanent results. We simply say
to the glorious women engaged in this marvellous
crusade: "NAY GOD HELP AND PROSPER YOU, AND
GIVE YOU THE DESIRE OF YoURHEARTs IN THE FRUITS
OF YOUR LABoRs!"
1t becomes men to be either humbly helpful or
dumb. We who have dallied with this question
we who have dspassionately drawn the line be-
tween temperance and total abstinence; we who
have deplored drunkenness with wineglasses in
our hands; we who have consented to involve a
great moral reform with politics we who have
been politically afraid of the power of the brutal
element associated with the liquor traffic; we
who have split hairs in our discussions of public |
policy; We who have given social sanction to
habits that in the great cities have made drunk |
ards Of even the women themselves, and led their
sons and ours into dissolute life we who have /
shown our unwillingness or our impotence to |
save the country from the gulf that yawns before |
it, can only step aside with shamefaced humility |
while the great crusade goes on, or heartily give
to it our approval and our aid
This is not q crusade of personal agitators,
clamoring for an abstract right, but an enterprise
of suffering pure and devoted women, laboring
for the overthrow of concrete wrong. 1t is no
pleasant, holiday business in which these women
are engaged, but one of self-denying hardship,
pregnant in every part with a sense of duty. 1t
is the offspring of grand religious impulse which
gives to our time its one superb touch of herosm,
and redeems it from its political debasement and
the degradation Of its materiasm. It is shame
to manhood that it is necessary; it is glory to
womanhood that it is possible
If the experience of the last century has de-
monstrated anything, it is that total abstinence
is the only ground on which any wewisher of
society can stand. The liquor traffic has been
bolstered up for years, and is strong to-day, sim
ply through influence which is deemed respecta-
bic. 1t must be made infamous by the combina-
ton Of all the respectable elements of society
against it. 1t must cease to be respectable to
drink at all. 1t must cease to be respectable to
rent building in which liquors are Sold There
is no practicable middle ground. So long as men
drink temporarily, men will drink Unexpectedly,
whether it ought to be otherwise or not; and it
is with reference to the development of healthy
public opinion on this subject, that we particular
ly rejoice in the womenis crusade. Our own vi
sion is so blinded and perverted that we can only
see the deformity Of the monster which Expresses
us through womans eyes, upfted in prayer, tear
ful in shame and suffering or bright in triumph
as the stronghOlds of her lifelong enemy fall be-
fore her.
What Shall we DO with our Bows ?