West Virginia freeman. (Parkersburg, W. Va.) 1881-1886, 1881-03-23
WOMAN,S INFLUENCE IN THE
SUPPRESSION OF THE
LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
By BERN1cE McCALLY Pollock.
written for the Freeman.l

If is q well-known fact that the
most inveterate foes both OF rum
drinking and rum-selling are Wo-
men. There are many men, IL Is
true. who are sincere and enthusiast
tic workers in the temperance cause,
but they are almost invariably men
who abstain entirely from the use
Of LIQUORS of all kinds themselves,
and there necessarily cannot exist
within them that subtle and IN
tense antagonism which anlmates
the woman who beholds an ldollzed
husband, brother or father enslaved
bv strong drink. In all ages wo-
mans influence over man has been
acknowledged; yea, [ venture the
assertion that there are thousands
of men to-day who consider the in
fuence exerted over their lives by
pure women their greatest glory.
While all TEN perance movements
number in their ranks women tried
and true, tried, perhaps, in the
most emphatic sense, my object at
present is to glance, for moment
at the tremendous influence which
must be exerted on the other side
by those women who are arrayed
against the temperance cause, the
wives and daughters Of the whisky
dealers. AS a woman's power for
good is almost boundless, who can
doubt that her power for evil is in
the same ratio? If a wife encour-
ages her husband to sell liquor, is
she any less guilty than he? If
any difference is perceptible, she is
the more guilty Of the two, for it is
possible that had no such influence
been brought to bear, he might not
have embarked in this pursuit. In
this, as in all other moral evils, If
we desire thing done, it is in
Gods sight ash we had performed
the act ourselves; in this as in all
other moral evils, it star more con-
temptible to incite others to crime
than commit it ourselves. | fear
no proper estimate has yet been
made of the silent yet potent sway
which is held by those women who
regard it as right to sell intoxica-
ting liquors. Not only the Scrip
lures, but Ethics as well, teach us
that in man centers a tWofold moral
responsibility. We owe certain
duties to God because He is God,
and because we are so essentially
His sole property that without Him
we should positively have had no
existence whatever, and no less GER
tain duties to man as Gods creature
IN common with ourselves. Now,
he who sells liquor, or she who in
cites her husband to sell it, violates
both those two commandments on
which hang all the law and the
prophets. He who loves God with
all his heart and soul will find him
self more and more inclined to love
his neighbor as himself; in other
words, he who keeps the first COM
mandment finds himself in a condi-
ton to fulfill the second somuch so,
indeed, that the keeping Of the Sc
cond is only the natural conse-
quence Of the keeping Of the first.
For any man to love God and at the
same time to hate his brother, is
clearly declared impossible.
Now, it is a noticeable fact that
those women who heartily favor
the liquor traffic are rarely found to
be wives Of drunkards They know
not what it is to watch weary hours
for a husband, feeling at the same
time the dread certainty that when
he does come it will not be with a
loving smile and tender caress, but
will come transformed into an OBJ
ject that must call forth contempt,
or, at best, pity, When the drunk
en- husband merely comes home to
fall into a stupor, utterly incapable
CT giving that counsel which the
wife needs, or Of directing either the
studies or amusements of his chill
dren, in short has rendered himself
an intolerable incubus where he
should have been tower of
strength, being loved and reveren-
ced next to God; I say, when he
merely comes home in this condition
and retires without further moles-
tatiOn to his familu thew 1nn,t nnn