Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1876-02-18
The Magnitude of our Work.

lege, is sound and clear presentation
of the work done, and TO be done for
Temperance. Read it, friend or foe, all
who desire to know. how earnest workers
regard it. We shall occasionally fur,
nish other strong passages from the same
source
We have undertaken to renovate the
entire social body, TO eradicate the
strange prejudices and customs which
have come down to us from the old Days
of Drink to enlighten and purify and
elevate all classes of men--ln word,
! to re-educate society and carry it over
bodily to rational views and right prac-
tice.
Look now at two pictures of society.
In the one, we see the whole community
utterly blind and stupid under the do
minion of intemperance. There is a
little sense of the evil and no conscience
touching it. All drink, shame.and mis-
cry abound, vice reigns, horrid DESC
lation is spreading strange blindness
is over all. The cause and the remedy
of all this are unthought Of To drink
and provide drink-to sell and to use
these are among the chief ends of life's
things necessary, with no character of
morality about them.
Society is stepped in strong drink.
Born, living, dying, no man can do with
out it. Such state of things is posi-
ble-it has been-and forty-six years ago
it existed among us. 1t was in this con-
dition of things the work of reformation
began.
And now contemplate the other pic
ture, and it is substantially true of some
towns in Vermont to-day. 1t presents
a community in which, instead ofstrange
prejudices in favor of Intoxicating
drinks, there is natural and intelligent
dread of them, and the use of them by
any man as beverage is looked upon
as an act of wanton trifing with his own
well-being and that of all around him.
For man to put himself in state of
intoxication, or make any voluntary APP
proach toward that state, is regarded as
mad and criminal act. All see it as
it is-a voluntary abandonment of his
own rational and moral being an ex-
pulsion of judgment, conscience and self
control, and surrender of himself for
the time into the possession of demon,
to be used by him as he will. All see
and feel that no human being has the
right thus to turn himself loose and in
turiated among his fellows, ready agent
for every shameful and infamous deed.
And with equal clearness all see that
for another to aid and abet such an act,
and even tempt men to its commission
by furnishing for gain the means Of such
arrangement, is an intolerable wrong to
the whole community. That a man
| should make it his business to sell what
| tends directly to madden and DESTROY
his fellows, and expose every right afec-
| ton and interest of others, that he
should live by making ruthless havoc all
around him, all look upon such an act
as one of superlative guilt. In this con-
dition of society, voluntary inebriation
is treated as crime and he who fur
nishes the means of intoxication is
deemed guilty Of higher crime. They
have laws to that end, as clearly seen to
be necessary and just, and enforced with
as ready and unanimous approval as our
statutes are against the thief or the
burglar.
Alcohol takes its place among the use
full but dangerous drugs, to be treated as
other poisons are. Drink it! The man
who does drink it is the man to be taken
care of-and he who should so trife with
the public security and peace as to give
or sell it for drink, and should talk OF
getting his living in that way, he would
have living provided for him, more
honest and more honorable, in the State
Prison.
Now, from these two conditions of so
ciety, drawn only in outlines, we may
learn the nature Of our enterprise. Oul
work is to carry over the entire body Of
the people from the one of these to the
other. We have found it no brief anc
easy work Patience must have a large
part in it, No such work can be done
swiftly. Let 10 man grow faint in hear
or hand. The work will surely be ac
complished.
Here and there the sin of naming ney
babies Centennial is committed.
, One million dollars in silver is e,