The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1885-04-02
What They Say.

This is the vigorous and wholesome way
in which DR.. Holland, in the May Scrlb-
ner's, talks about the great temperance
movement:
For years, and years, and weary, suffer
| ing wears, multiplied into decades, have
| the women in America waited to see that
traffic destroyed, which annually sends
sixty thousand of their sons, brothers,
fathers and husbands into the drunkard's S
grave. They have been impoverished,
| disgraced. tortured in mind and body,
beaten, murdered. Under the impulse of
maddening liquors the hands that were
pledged before Heaven to provide for,
and protect them, have withdrawn from
| them the means of life, or smltten them
| in the dust. Sons whom they have nurS-
| ed upon their bosoms with tendereSt love
and countless prayers, have grown into
| beasts of whom they were afraid, or have
sunk into helpless and pitiful slavery.
| They have been compelled to bear children
| to men whose habits had untitled them
| for parentage-children not only tainted
| by disease, but endowed with debased ap-
petiteS. They have seen themselves and
! their precious families thrust into social
| degradation and cut off forever from all
| desirable life by the vice of men they love.
| What the women of this country have
suffered from drunkenness, no mind, how
ever sympathetic, can measure, and no
pen, however graphic, can describe. 1t
| has been the unfathomable black gulf in
| to which infatuated multitudes of men
have thrown their fortunes, their health,
and their industry, and out of which nave
come only,-in fire and stench,-disnonor,
disease, crime, misery, despair and death.
| It is the abomination of denominations,
the curse of curses, the hell of hells.
For weary, despairing years, they have
waited to see the reform that should pro-
| 70 tbQDo from furt her 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 good
end. The politicians have played them
false; the officers of the law are unfaith-
full, the govgrnment revenue thrives on
the thriftineSS of the curse ;multltudeS of
the clergy are not only apathetic in their
pulpits but self indulgent in their social
| habits; newspapers do not help, but rath-
er hinder them the liquor interest, armed
with the money that should have brought
them prosperity, organizes against themr
million fierce appetites are arrayed
against them, and, losing all faith in men,
what can they do? 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
movement, begun and carried on by pray
er, is as natural in its birth and growth
as the oak that springs from the acorn.
If God and the God-like element in wom-
an cannot help, there is no help. If the
pulpit, the press, the politicians, the re-
formers, the law, cannot bring reform,
who is left to do it, but God and the wom-
EN- We bow to this movement with rev.
erence. We do not stop to question meth
ods; we do not stop to query about perma-
nent results.
It becomes men to be either humbly
helpful or dumb. We who have dallied
sionately drawn the line between temper
ance and total abstinence; we who have
consented to involve a great moral reform
with politics; we who have been polite
ally afraid of the power of the brutal ele-
ment 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 drunkardS Of even the women
themselves, and led their sons and ours
into dissolute life; we who have shown
either unwillingnesS or our impotence to
save the country from the gulf that yawns
before it, can only step aside with shame
faced humility while the great crusade
goes on, or heartily give it our approval
and our aid. 1t is no pleasant holiday
business in which 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 it's own superb
touch of heroism, and redeemS it from its
political debasement and the degradation
of its materialism. 1t is shame to man.
hood that it is necessary; it is a glory to
WomanhOod that it is possible.