The Newtown bee., 1889-03-15

| protected childhood and womanhood can not exist with protected dram shops and their necessarily attendant evils. Which shall it be? Shall it be protection for the home, for wifehood, for childhood, for motherhood, for womanhood? Or shall we sit down supinely, listen to the Sy- ren's song of death and wait in vain ex- pectation for dawn, which, without vigorous measures, energetic, constant. prayerful labor, will never come?
 We live in wise age, when it has been found that almost everything needs pro- tection and, the best of ali is, by wise legislation ann careful discrimination, it is believed by many that we have found the best modes of protection. We have protection for the beast of the field; for the birds of the air; for the fishes in the water. We have protection against con- tagion, by strong quarantine laws; pro- tection against theft; against robbery and arson. There are laws against tres pass and laws to protect trade. There is law to protect inventors, industry and commerce. There is law to prevent cru city to animals and people are very zeal ous to see it enforced. There are laws to protect game and, in this State, to protect whortleberries and do not know but some great legislation, with little brains, will, some time in the near future, introduce bill to protect rattlesnakes and fleas. But, with all this protection for almost everything, how comparative ly small the protection for homes and families; for women and children; for fathers, husbands and brothers against an evil that is sweeping 10 times ten thousand into drunkards graves every year. A business enterprise is started /; capital is invested; shops are erected and skilled labor is called in to carry or the business. Prosperity, comfort and hap piness mark the path of brain, skill and muscle. Capital is receiving it's equiva- lent and Labor it's value. There is a happy and joyful union of the two. The veXed question of Labor and Capital is not raised. The school house and church, ministering angels of peace and prosper ity, are held sacred and revered, the an- | gel of the covenant spreads white wings of purity and security over the scene and the home is Heaven below. But let me put one other figure into the picture and To! what a change takes place. In the midst of this prosperity, there comes one under the guise of commerce and plants noxious germ just as near the home and the business as it is possible for him to get. Here he begins the cultivation of drug, whose well known properties are disease and death; poverty and mis- cry; ruin and rebellion, against God and man. He knows that he will palsy the arm of the skilful and destroy the peace of the Home. He knows that the plant will grow rapidly and send forth it's pois- onous exhalations, that will fire the brains of men and fill the air with walls of woe, that will rise even to Heaven and, in the bitterness of the agonized heart, there will be born, out of the aw- full experience through which they pass, burning petitions unto God to avenge them of the robbery of their jewels and the murder of their hopes, the fruit of their bodies. Yet he goes on planting and sowing and reaping the harvest of Death, or leaves the reaping of the death harvest to others, while he revels in hor- rible harvest of blood and souls for self 1 ish gain.
 | Is it a wonder that, under such terrible circumstances, when all legal acts for protection seem to fail; entreaty and pc tition and even threat contemptu- ously cast aside, or trampled under foot, is it a wonder, repeat, when all the energies of agonized hearts and intensely interested souls had been poured out as an oblation, 60 stay the awful work of ruin which was spreading through the land like the plaques of old, till it left one or more dead in every house, that there should have been an uprising oi the women of the land, who, wearied with fruitless labor of trying to persuade men to root out the poisonous plant which was blighting the whole moral physical and spiritual horizon, turned unto the God of Heaven and, with strong cries and scalding tears, poured out theii complaints unto Him who sitteth on the throne of eternal power. And, having waited on the Lord in prayer, they tar ried at the Jerusalem of their hopes till they were endued with power from on high, then, going forth in the strength of that power, the devils were subject unto them. Out of the awful grief and whitening woe, amid the bitter pangs o1 soul sorrow, was born on the 23d of De. eember, 1873, that wonderful moral and spiritual phenomenon known as .sThe Woman's Temperance Crusade It was the despairing cry of the defenceless whose plaintiye notes rose to Heaven whose echoes even now reverberate through the land. And when, on the 24tI of December, the ladies of Hillsboro mel in the Presbyterian church of that place and banded themselves into an organiza tion whose ehivalrous deeds and prayers of faith will light the pages of History till the angel of the resurrection shall de clare that Time shall be no more, they set in motion the great wheels of Gods mills of justice, which, though they may "Grind slowly, they grind exceeding small" In furtherance of this work which has been going on in our land ant in others, we come at this time with nc new theme, perchance, but with the old old story. If it were possible, we would intensity it thousand fold, till youl ears would ring with the wall of the los and your hearts should feel the bitter ness of the sorrow of those who art worse than dead. Were it possible, w