The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-02-09

The Women's Crusade Against Rum
carried on against the liquor traffic by the
women of Ohio, and intended to be opened
in Massachusetts, by the wives and mothers OF
that State. We have watched it with some
degree OF pleasure not however, unmixed
with pain and surprise. We were glad that
women had enlisted in this warfare for they
have the deepest interest, present and prospec-
tive, in the curtailment of the liquor traffic.
The dead weight of this business falls almost
entirely on the wives and mothers and daugh-
tiers and sisters Of the land. To hun
dreds of them the money that goes
into the liquor dealers till is the price
of bread or of blood. Every dollar spent
in the rumshop means deprivation and desti-
tuition for the wives and children of those who
drink. We were not surprised therefore, that
the women of Ohio took hold of this matter
with earnestness and zeal. Nor should we be
surprised if the women of New York organized
crusade against intemperance here, where.
according to recent report of one of the
Excise Commissioners, nine thousand of their
Sex have been arrested for the crime of intoxi-
cation in public during the past year, while
only five hundred and sixty males were ar
rested. The disproportion of the sexes ad-
dictedto intemperance is certainly remarkable,
and should arouse the women of this city.
But while the arrests Of females, doubt
less, cover all or nearly all of those
given to the intoxicating cup in New York,
it is too manifest that the number of males
arrested does not bear the same proportion to
the number who make themselves drunk with
liquor. We should not be surprised. we
repeat, if the women of New York or Boston
or of other cities made an effort to stay the
tide of intemperance in this land. But we
think there is better way to accomplish this
reform than that which the women of Ohio
have adopted. Their zeal is not directed by
discretion, and we venture the prediction that
a reaction will come by and by that will sweep
whatever of good these earnest and cody,
but, as we think, mistaken, wives and mothers
of Ohio have or shall have accomplished.
Praying and psalm-singing are right and
proper means, and the Good Book tells us that
there are time and place for these things.
The women of the West think the time is all
day long and seven days of the week, and the
place the shops and stores of their neighbors.
Now, aside from the ridicule which must fall
upon religion from this unseemly method of
warfare, it does not carry the gentleness Of
the Gospel with it as it should. These cody
1Ya So IF r1co
for the backs of the liquor sinners; and some
of their male followers, as we noticed in
paper the other day, carry slungshots and
other missiles with them and use them as well
as they do the hymn books but they
do not as readily bid those sinners, in
the tender tones of the Master, $50 and
sin no more The liquor seller is no
more of q sinner than the manufacturer of the
poison. But the latter is taken into the bosom
of the Church and Rugged and fondled there
as if he were a saint or an angel whose wings
had not yet grown to carry him on high The
root of tho evil is not here it is with the gov
eminent, which not only sanctions the traffic
in its various stages, but derives its chief reve-
nue. therefrom. Let the women of Ohio and
of New York and Massachusetts lay their axe
to the root of the tree bring their moral and
social influence to bear upon the legislation of
the nation which sanctions it, upon the
Church which endorses it by her silence and
upon the individuals who are engaged in it,
and who luxuriate upon its profits, snatched
from the homes and the bodies of thousands
in this land, and the doom of the liquor bust
ness cannot be far off nor be doubtful in its
success. But it is useless to break up the
business in little town in Ohio while Con-
gress and State legislatures and churches and
larger communities favor its continuance and
derive profit from it.