The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-11-29

years later the women undertook the work
Their methods ere unique. They proposed to
accomplish ~ singing and praying
by legislation and it must be con
fessed that for n season tine scheme caused
little CONSERVATION in the ranks of the liquor
sellers, almost iustifying the pardonable parody
on the old hymrs running:
The devil trembles when he sees
These weaker saints upon their knees,
mo turn in the tide had ever before produced
such eddy. The good temperance men
who kept fashionable saloons and
called them drug stofes, or who rented
rooms to the traffic or drank genteelly, at once
proclaimed the utter overthrow of the good cause
or at least its backset of twenty years. But the
temperance tide kept grandIy on, deepening and
widening, increasing in both volume and
uentum, until we stand to-day upon the banks
of mighty river which, like Ezekiels river that
issued from the sanctuary and went down into
the desert, brings verdure and fruit wherever it
touches. But just before us is a seething tur-
buleut eddy A few days ago 200, coo voters of
the realm, wearied with long waiting upon poll
heians, and finding political party in sympa-
thy with them on a question which they regard
as of paramount Importance, and instigated
thereto it must be confessed by the counsel and
wishes of the brave women who, though they
can not vote, yet have convictions at least
temperance in politics, cast their votes for St
Jonn as representative OF prohibition. NO
turn of the current ever before produced sueh
a whirl Temperance men by the thousand
who nave taken no part in the temperance work
for a quarter of Il century, except to float with
the tide have caught up the old refrain, and
they declare, as if it was something new that
the temperance cause has, by this act, been set
back twenty years. Dear good souls They mean
well, and they seem entirely unconscious that
that song was sung on every scale of the ganut
more the forty years ago to brighten anti-saveryt
men, and that temperance men have become
quite familiar with it Among this driftwood
are not a few Peters, who less than a year ago
were ready to tighr, bleed and be crippled in the
cause of prohibition, when they thought it might
be made to minister to their political sspirs-
TONS
And now it is that, standing upon this raging
eddy, these women have met to celebrate their
anniversary, and to ask earnestly what shall be
done Let me suggest that, first Of ALL we should
carefully locate the present status
OF the temperance cause 70 my Ger
tain knowledge it has been set back twenty
years, not less than ten times, if the temperance
driftwood IS to be credited, which seems to think
that every time it has taken a bacltset the whole
cause has been set back. This would locate it
somewhere near the middle of the seventeenth
century, and still receding with accelerated mo
mentum. This would find it in that period in
which dram drinking, cock fighting, horse racing
and fox hunting were the daily sports of the
clergy, and far back of the period in our local
history in which the little. brown jug and the
big bellied bottle were found in the cupboards of
boards of the rich; and the use of whisky was
so universal as to be not only the grand panaeea
for every ILL., but indispensable in allfamilies that
could not not afford milk. If, on the other hand,
it shall appear that all kinds of intoxieants have
been substantially banished from domestic
use, and that but little Of drunkenness
now remains except what grows directly
out Of the saloons of the State which are Ii
censed and protected by law, the line of duty is
plain. From the day that the wonderful work
of the crusade terminated in the organization of
the Womans Christian Temperance Union
either wonlanly instinct or the directing hand of
the All Father has so clearly mapped out the
road that, in all their history. not single step
has been taken that needs to be retraced or
apologized for. Bold and sagacious IN planning.
yet always conservative. the union seems to
have grasped the situation at a glance. First,
there is the grand recognition of God as the
source of power and wisdom, and an implicit
faith in the efficacy of prayer. Then comes the
spirit of conservation to the work, not for any
personal aggrandizement, but for the good of
man and the glory of God. Then comes an en-
hghtened and comprehensive understand
ing of the scope of the work Too
many have gone into this work as though
it were to be one dash upon an unsuspectlEg foe,
one Short sharp engagement and then the song
of triumph, and never anything more. Not sue
ceeding in this, they have ingleriously surren-
deTed or fled. This union. almost with the spirit
of inspiration, has, from the first recognized the
enduring nature of the eontest-that it is for the
ages, nOt IOr the QdNf bhaB Wn1le virtue ana wee
shall continue to measure swords IN the unend-
ing conflict for the mastery, this temperance
work must continue, and these brave women
have planned their work accordingly. Begin
ming with the child, they teach him not to drink
iutoxieants or to use tobacco With characteristics
holiness they tell the physician not to prescribe
alcohol as q medicine, and the preacher not to
use doetored whisky in lieu of the pure fruit of
the vine in the holy communion. And now, be
cause they are not voters shall they sit quietly
and fha sal -1,
lection of lava The world never saw woman in
an emergency that she was not equal to. If
there is paid fire department in the city she
lets the men manage the machine, but let fire
break out in q village and she puts to shame
more than half of the maseuines, by her tact,
pluck, and endurance. On the frontier she kills
the bear if her worthless husband is too cowardlY
to do it, and then she lets him tell everybody
how BETSY and me killed the critter.7 And
now shall the saloons of this land hold high car
nival because the men have ingloriously fiedl
Let the truth be told, offend whom it may; nine
tenths of the 200 600 votes just cast for prohibit
ton were cast by the Noman's Christian Tenn
perance Union. Deny it as we men may in pub
lie, yet we all eoncede in our honest moments
that though she generously let's US hold the
lines, she has a womanly way OF telling which
way to drive. and we drive No hanging of the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union in
efigy OF denying the members the common
rites of hospitality by the enraged saloon ele-
ment in politics; no threat that this party or that
will never help the cause of prohibition, or ac-
cept help from Prohibitionists will change the
line of their policy one hairs breadth or cause
the union to trail in the dust its heavenly motto
For God and Home and Native Land" These
women will not even take to the caves OF tine
mountains to hide until the storm be overpassed.
1t is as true to-day as it was thousand years
ago, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of
every good cause that suffers inhuman indigni-
ties from vicious prosecutions, Let them hang
the Womans Christian Temperance Union in
efhgy, or refuse to entertain its members as cul
tured ladies, engaged in a good cause if they
chose to- and let them threaten to withhold all
material aid in future, yet none of these things
will move them. They were not deferred by the
more direct indignities of the rum power in the
early days of the crusade when many went even
to prison on account of their principles.
81 am interdicted by the terms of the invitation
under which | address you, speaking of politics.
This is we'll. Otherwise, / might be tempted to
say that the liquor question has been in politics