Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1893-03-04
Ella wheeler Too ressimistic.

Ella Wheeler Too Pessimistic.
The Journal is panied to find that
the brilliant and progressive, talent
ed and keen OF perception novelist
and poetess-Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
looks into the future through such
pessimistic glasses. The idea. that
with our Morrell Cures and Bichlor-
ide of Gold institutes that she would
postpone such an event, and proph-
ecy such stage coach gait in the
evolution of social reforms as this.
{ In temperance the world ere then
GS93) will have realized the folly of
trying to legislate upon appetites. 1t
will realize the necessity of educat-
ing them, and that to educate them
we must begin with the parents.
People who refuse to be taught on
this and kindred subjects must be
prevented from becoming parents. In
this way only can drunkenness be
lessened.
With the present strides in the di-
rection of temperance, Mrs. Wilcox's
prophsecy ought to be thing of re-
| ality in a score if not in decade of
years.
With the Morrell cure institutes
spreading their white wings of reform
over the land from ocean to ocean
and curing the diseases the idea
to be for moment tolerated that it
viii take another century to cure all
men afflicted with the contagion?
! Not much, Mrs. Wilcox,
The rising generation are being
| nipped in the bud, their children may
inherit sparinkling of the curse, but
their children's children will have
| been washed clean--the temperance
millennium a hundred years off?-pre-
| posterous thought.
| America, the land of the free, will
try and close the nineteenth century
with such inroads made upon the
| whisky disease that there will be no
money in the business of selling the
| green eyed, no need of prohibitory
laws, no use for temperance lectures.
The root of all has been unearthed
and Mrs. Wilcox presumes to put too
slow an estimate on the progress of
America when she says that it will
| take one hundred years to eradicate
a disease for which cure has been
| discovered.
Eternal progress is the price of
| American maintenance in the front
rank of civilization and freedom.
And to think that nation that has
discovered and applied in one century,
| electricity, steam on railroads, steam
| navigation, electric power and cleo
tricity as applied to rapid transit, the
| apparatus to measure the distance to
| the man in the moon, the photograph,
the telephone, the telegraph, alumni
mum, air ships, gatling guns, giant
| powder, nytro glycerine, dynamite
and guncotton, balloon ships and the
sunken sea monsters, the bacillus
and methods to kill it, together with
the thousand and one other discover
les that, even when Ella Wheeler was
a prattling babe, would have been
| pronounced as witcheries if limited
at, but that are now every day sights
and common conveniences of us
American people-just to think that
'We-us-and-Co.," who have accom-
| plished all these things things while
Mrs. Wilcox has been learning her
A b abs and developing her bright
literary genius and poetical talents,
will take n hundred years to cure the
whiskey habit. Danish the thought,
my dear girl, Danish it quick and put
your powerful brain to work to evolve
a"thunderer''on temperance and send
it to Col. Sheppard of the Mail and
Express and tell him You have
changed your mind, tell him YOU
think the whole thing can be done in
20 years. 1t can too, if you, Mrs. Will
cox, will only help.-Ottawa Jour
nal.