The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-03-07

| she allied herself and the w. G. i. u. with
the earnest men who had been several years
intent on building up party on the single
issue of prohibition that should be strong
enough to suppress the saloon and keep it
| suppressed forever, and she at once threw
into the task her great natural and ac-
quired endowments. A first effect was dis
memberment of the organization and the
formation of a nonpartisan w. C. T. u,
which took with it many of the most dis
tinguished leaders of the organization and
caused the withdrawal or lukewarmness of
many in every local union, many of whom
never entered the nonpartisan organization
or any other efficient temperance society.
Nothing daunted by these reverses, this he
role woman continued to hope that the
the moral and political forces of the gov
eminent, from President to policeman,
would be so arrayed against the saloon
that it would be so under ban everywhere
as to exercise little or no damaging in
fuence on society. For a decade or more
the -ever-decreasing probability of such a
contamination seemed to increase her zeal.
Meanwhile, she noticed with much alarm
the daily increase of moderate drinking in
the home and in social life and at saloons.
Men who were once total abstainers We're
becoming tipplers, and these, in large num-
bers, were becoming drunkards. The pull
pit and the Sunday school, once ubiquitous
educators of total abstinence, had turned
their batteries wholly against the saloon
even where relief through a party was not
contemplated, and dram-drinking, even in
churches and colleges, was fearfully on the
increase, while hope of prohibition through
a party was annually decreasing by the de-
crease instead of the growth of the party
which tshe had, hoped would soon over
shadow all rivals. Though her faith in pro-
hibition as the only right attitude of the
State to the saloon never faltered, it was
observed that for several years her public
labors were less and less directed against
the saloon and less and less Importance
was attached to party IN the interest of
prohibition, while in private conversations
as well as in public she more and more
emphasized total abstinence as the only
safety from drunkenness, thus putting her
self more in touch with the Murphy move
ment than she and the w. C. T. U. had
ever been; but never until the late conven-
ton of the N. w. c. r. U. at Buffalo last
October did she formulate and publicly pro-
claim her change of front on the tenn
perance branch of the many enterprises the
union had in hand. When she came to speak
of the temperance work she announced her
new departure in the following eloquent and
forceful words:
The supreme duty of the hour is to con-
vince the moderate drinker that he is doing
himself HARM If only this belief were
general men would soon become law unto
themselves to such a degree that statutory
enactmentS would be but the outward ex-
preston of an inward grace. Upon the
sullen fortress of moderate drinking the
artillery of the temperance reform must be
concentrated in future years.
Drawer words were never uttered nor
more complete change of front in the face
of the enemy. It's first effect was that the
national convention, for the first time in
thirteen years. refused to pass the GUS
tomary resolution indorsing the Prohibition
party; seeming to prefer to begin then and
there to concentrate their artillery upon
the sullen fortress of moderate drinking"
Miss Willard died too soon afterwards to
give personal supervision to the change of
front in the subordinate unions, but this
will soon take place. The promptness with
which the national convention fell in with
her suggestion is a pledge that the SUBJ
ordinate unions will follow as soon as local
obligations to local party organizations can
be discharged. When this is done all friends
of temperance will hope for a return to
the organization of those who had left on
account of the partisan leaning of the
union, and that this once effective temper
ance force, thus reorganized, will join with
the Murphy leagues and all other temper
ance influences and make common cause
against the common foe, moderate drinking.
Though she did not live to give personal
attention to this work, her eloquent words
will be regarded as her dying message to
those she loved, and it is not impossible
that, under the persistent firing of tenn
perance artillery from all temperance forts
upon ''the sullen fortress of moderate
drinking" there may come to whole COM
munities, as to individuals, that degree of
sobriety that prohibitory enactments will
be as she expressed it, only can outward
sign of an inward grace" and they will
be as generally enforced as laws against
larceny are where public opinion is OPP