Volume XXI.— No. 1.]
CHICAGO, JANUARY 3, 1895. [Price $1.00 Per Year in Advance.
THE POLYGLOT PETITION.
For the Polyglot Petition see page 14,
SINCE OUR LAST ISSUE.
The Indian National Congress met at Madras last week, with 1,150 delegates and 3,000 visitors present.
Ex-Secretary of State John W. Foster has gone to Japan to aid the Chinese representatives to bring about peace.
Indiana college presidents, at their meeting in Indian- apolis Thursday, decided against inter-collegiate football games.
The Turkish misrule in Armenia was eloquently de- nounced by Mr. Gladstone in a speech on his eighty-fifth birthday.
Christina Georgina^Rossetti, poetess and daughter of an exiled Italian patriot, died at London, December 30, aged sixty-four years.
A national initiative and referendum league has been organized within the Populist party^ with James H. Lath- rop, of Topeka, Kansas^ as president.
The National committee of the Populist party assembled at St. Louis, Friday, to decide upon a plan for an educa- tional campaign in ’96 and the place of their annual meet- ing.
Ex-police Captain Stephenson, the first conviction for bribery under the Lexow investigation, has been sentenced to three years and nine months’ imprisonment in Sing Sing and a fine of $1,000.
The annual meetings of the Associated Historians of America, the American Folk-lore Society, the American Society of Church History and the Jewish Historical So- ciety were held in Washington.
The municipal reform wave has rolled upon Chicago; the Civic Federation ha9 decided to investigate the Cook county board Tof commissioners and the grand jury has passed a resolution to investigate gambling.
A large number of representative women were invited to meet in the New Mexican capital, Monday, at the time of the opening of the state legislature, for the purpose of organizing the New Mexican Equal Suffrage League.
State Teachers’ Associations of Wisconsin, Iowa, Mich- igan, Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Kansas have held their annual meetings. The Michigan teachers in ses- sion at Lansing declared in favor of free text-books and against teachers using tobacco.
A meeting of the immigration commissioners for the various ports of the United States was called Friday at Ellis Island, N. Y., by Secretary Carlisle. The chief object was to agree upon rules governing the scrutiny of immi- grants with a view to keeping out the undesirable.
The Turkish government has refused to accept United States Consul Jewett as a member of the Armenian inves- tigating commission with instructions to make a special report. Foreign members of the commission, however, are to be permitted to personally summon and interro- gate witnesses.
The destitution prevailing in western Nebraska is terri- ble even in contemplation. For three successive years droughts have ruined the corn crops and the small ac- cumulation of food and clothing is now exhausted. In one county alone (Perkins) three thousand peoplo are actually starving. According to County Clerjt Wilcox, who lives at Grant, unless outside assistance is "speedily received, thf horrors of death by cold and starvation will result. The people are industrious and worthy in the best sense. They have carefully planted and tilled their crops but no rain descended to water and mature them, conse- quently all their faithful labor is lost to them and they are without the simplest necessities of existence.
Mbs. Mary Clement Leavitt desires us to say that she has not intended to go to South America for the winter, but that she is at Yera Cruz, Mexico, and will return home to commence work at the beginning of May, 1895. Mrs. Leavitt’s address remains unchanged, care of Kidder, Pea- body & Co., Boston. Should any one wish the speqdier communication, however, address Mrs. Leavitt, care United States Consul, Vera Cruz, Mexico.
That the Christmas tide does not bring peace and hap- piness to all is proven by a glance at the newspapers of December 26 each year. A few headlines in the Chicago dailies told the story. They ran in this wise; “Killed on Christmas,” “Day of Many Crimes,” “Patrol Wagons in Great Demand,” “Station Cells Full,” “Serious Fray from Christmas Drink,” “Tragic end of a Christmas Dinner,” etc. And yet this traffic is licensed and legalized by followers of the Christ whose birthday they celebrate, and such results are inevitable. It is the nature of the drink to dethrone reason and mercy and enthrone the demon of madness and cruelty. Cause and effect were never more indissolubly linked than a glass of liquor and a wanton act.
An epidemio of falsehood concerning the situation in Portland, and other cities of Maine, is now flooding the metropolitan press, especially in New England. One reads ponderous statements peppered with statistics showing what a deadly failure is the prohibitory law and clamoring for its repeal, but the worst of it is that a large majority of those who read are not aware of what there is every reason to believe is the fact, namely: that these articles are paid advertisements. It is perfectly well known that during the constitutional Prohibition amendment cam- paign in Pennsylvania many of the Philadelphia daily papers gave whole broadsides of “facts” against Prohibi- tion which had all the appearance of being well-considered statements on the subject, and yet were known to be paid for, line by line, by the liquor dealers’ association. In these days every person of common sense will suspect every statement that he sees in favor of the liquor system, which is in itself “a covenant with hell and a compound with damnation.” '
Miss Willard wishes to have it impressed upon the minds of our white-ribboners that the round trip to the World’s W. C. T. U. Convention in June (14-21) at which time tne B. W. T. A. will also hold its annual meeting, requires special thought and planning throughout our constituency. She hopes that in many states the requi- site two hundred dollars will be raised to send those whom the executive committee may select, and that a large number of good men and women may make this the occasion of a trip abroad. To go so far, to see so much, and to have the trip, including hotel bills, for two hun- dred dollars, is an opportunity without a parallel. All men and women friendly to our work are entitled, to these special rates, and will please send their applications for information, etc., to Dr. Albert Shaw, editor Review of Reviews , Astor Place, New York city, marking the letters on the left hand top corner, “Pilgrimage Bureau.” There is no time to be lost in planning for this great whit® ribbon journey from which wo all expect so much good to come. We hope our members will use their utmost influence to secure the insertion of the statement made in this paragraph in the local press of their own towns, also in the denominational press of their own churches, and generally so far as possible to mix printer’s ink with the enthusiasm and noble purposes of the expedition. Do not let it be forgotten that the Polyglot Petition and the principles which it embodies form the nucleus around which will be grouped the dramatis personae of this move- ment which is but a prelude to the journey around tho world*
The New York W.^j. T. U., led by the state president, Mrs. Mary T. Burt, is arrayed in active opposition against the reopening of bar rooms on Sunday. This campaign is occasioned by a bill now before the legislature for the legalizing of Sunday saloons. Among others prominent in this movement are Mrs. Frances J. Barnes, Mrs. Louise Demorest, Mrs. Clinton B. Fisk, Mrs. Jane Fowler Willing. Surely such women with their eloquent appeals for the protection of the home will touch the hearts of the Empire statesmen.
It is interesting to analyze the vote by which justice was refused to women m Kansas at the last election through the defeat of the Constitutional Amendment, granting them full enfranchisement; it is well known that they have for years enjoyed the municipal ballot by legis- lative enactment. In the first place nearly seventy-four thousand men who voted for governor failed to vote on this issuey either pro or con. That is, a large per cent of the voting population in Kansas lack the sense of justice: the power to put themselves in the place of another; the consciousness that the Golden Rule is the only law of noble living. As to the men who voted, It appears that thirty thousand more Republicans vo^ed agai/ist en than for them, while eighteen thousand more Populists voted for than against. Ninety per cent of the Prohibi- tion vote was for the women; fifty-seven per cent of the Populist vote, thirty-three per cent of the Republican vote and twenty per cent of the Democratic vote were in our favor. It is well for women to know these percent- ages in making up their minds as to what they have to expect from old parties versus new ones. “Ho that hath ears to hear let him hear.”
The heavenly powers that as we believe are guiding this world to a happier future have not left themselves without a witness to their purpose of helping us improve the government through the ingenious devices of the in- ventor. The Myers voting machine is declared by com- petent authorities to be a means of electoral reform. It has advantages over any ballot system as yet devised. Indeed, where it is used there is practically no chance of fraud and at the same time there will be a speedy return of the results of the voting. It has already been tried in many local elections with entire success and the voters of all parties in the towns and cities where it has been used are unanimous in its favor. It is stated that the Myers machine will permit five hundred voters to register their preferewces between six o’clock in the morning and four in the afternoon with perfect ease, and when the voting is over and the polls are closed the election inspectors will find the exact number of votes given to each candidate already tallied and registered so that they have only to describe the result and send it to headquarters. Watch- ers and canvassers may be continued for precautionary reasons but they will be useless under the Myers plan. In any city where it is put into operation the total vote for every candidate ought to be known within an hour after the polls have closed. It is declared by Mr. C. S. Smith, chairman of the New York executive committee of seventy which has just “cleared up” the Tammany ring, to be “as perfect a piece of human mechanism as can be constructed.” It would do away with ballots and “past- ers”; ballot clerks and cauvassers would be of no more use. This, of course, would be an immense saving in the election expenses. It now looks as if the Myers ballot box and tho Australian system of registration would so humanize the polls that the coming in of women as voters would be relieved of all the features with which conserva- tives have surrounded it in their thought and imagination and would be as simple a matter as the sending of a tele- phonic message. How true it is that “all things work to- gether for good” and “we cannot tell which shall prosper, this or that.”
THE NEW YEAR.
“The acceptable year jhe Lord.”
BY W. EVANS DABBY, LL. D.
O year of God, that prophet eyes foresaw,
Paling earth’s glories with its milder sheen, Whose pulsing tides obey His spirit’s law,
Whose nearing is by heavenly watchers seen; Come quickly, and this weary earth restore With love’s blest reign of peace for evermore!
Too long have greed and guile the nations cursed, Debasing nature from its primal aim;
Too long have men their brutal instincts nursed, Till cruelty has felt no touch of shame,
And selfishness grew strong beyond control,
“And froze the genial current of the soul.”
The years of man have been the years of Cain, Long years of hatred and unbrotherhood,
The race pursued by fratricidal pain,
Till God’s new time shall bring the promised good, And from the past a grander epoch rise,
Whofee joy shall spring from mutual sacrifice.
The years of men have been the years of sin, Moulded by human passions from their birth,
O year of God, with newer life begin,
And shed thy bounties o’er this hate cursed earth! May slavery, war and kindred evils flee,
And a new manhood all thy glories see!
New Year of hope and blessing for mankind,
Come with good tidings of a glorious spring! Freedom for slayes-whom social hatreds bind,
And joy for broken-hearted mourners bring,
So shall thy dawn be sung by souls forlorn,
And all earth’s joy-bells greet thy natal morn.
London , Eng. •
PIERRE AND JEAN, TWINS,
— 9
BY ELIZABETH OUMINGB.
(Concluded,) '
Never before in all his life had Dr. Bassett had such a wonderful pupil as Peter, and as the months slid away into years and the boy became a tall fellow, the old minis- ter doctor would come to the shoe-shop and talk about the child’s future. “With education he will be a man of con- sideration. He has it in him to become a scholar, a minis- ter if he wills, or a doctor of medicine. And he is such a worker He will find a way if only you are willing.”
Jean, for his part was all for the river. He wanted to be an engineer, and he began by learning to use the pad- dle and oar, and by working in old Sylvester Blondel’s mill. He did not want to go too far from home. Mon- treal was far enough, Quebec at the end of the world. The joy of his life in summer was the bit of garden be- hind the shoe-shop, where there were currants and a rhu- barb bed and a bed of pinks and balm. As for books, they made his head ache, especially his arithmetic. As for geography, he never would have learned any of it had not Father Gabriel tried teaching it to him in rhyme.
When Peter was sixteen he was quite ready for college, and Dr. Bassett, who had no children of his own, agreed to lend him money for the first year. “When one’s eyes are open and one is willing to do anything that offers that is honest, there is always work,” he said encouragingly.
“Maria,” said old Peter to his wife as they sat in the privacy of the back veranda looking at the pinks and the rhubarb bed, “our Peter is going to be a credit to us.”
“And so is Jean,” said the mother. “Jean has a heart of gold.”
“So has Peter,” said the father stoutly. “Peter’s head makes him slow to speak. But you will see he, too, has a heart when it is necessary.”
“Jean’s head is quite as good only it is of a different kind. I never saw an old man wiser than he about plant- ing potatoes, and as for cabbages, he knows how to keep off the club root, and he is as clever as a fish on the river and strong as an ox. We’re lucky it is he who is to stay at home and Peter who is to go off into the States.”
“It’s a great thing going to college,” said the father, thoughtfully.
“Yes,” assented the mother. “I worry about nothing save his religion. If only he will remain a good lad.”
“Eh, now, I am surprised at you,” said old Peter re- proachfully. “You from the states to say that, and about our boy — our own boy.”
Five years ran by, then six, seven, and Peter remained
THE UNION SIGNAL.
in the states, working at all sorts of things;. now in a shop, now on a farm, now in a counting-room, and then going on with his college work. Once a month he wrote to his father. That seemed often enough, and naturally as the time lengthened the home-folk seemed more and more shadowy. It had been a struggle and taken all there was in him to gain what he had, but now the hardest was over and he would take his degree in a few months. 80 much for the history which brings us to the beginning of the story.
It was into this feeling of relief and security that a letter from Father Gabriel brought the news that his father had had a stroke of paralysis, and that his brother, Jean, who, in all his life had never been ill, was in the agonies of inflammatory rheumatism.
All night, back and forth like a caged lion, Peter walked in his narrow bedroom, not to disturb Lummy Yates in the room just beyond. With a vision of his home and the love that had been lavished upon him in it, came a pic- ture of the river always going, going, and the great bridge hanging above it like a web. The narrow, dusty, sleepy street, the talk about trifles, the petty economies, the lack of space save out under the sky, how it all came up. Then he would tell himself that his father must have grown old in those seven years. Yes, seventy-five, and the mother, never strong, was far toward fifty.
“Dr. Bassett fears that your brother is going to be left helpless,” Father Gabriel had written. “It is an awful stroke for the lad.”
It was cold. The fire had long since gone out in the little parlor he shared with Lummy Yates, but sweat stood on Peter’s forehead. It was hard for him, too, for never once had he two opinions as to what he must do. He must make an explanation of some sort to the faculty, pay his bits of debts and go, which he did.
Five years later Lummy Yates stopped off at the little village opposite Lachine. There was some land there that had come td him by inheritance, and Lummy, always practical, wanted to know what it was like. It was June and the tall white lilies were open in Father Gabriel’s gar- den. As Lummy walked up the street he saw a familiar figure coming out of the priest’s gate. It was Peter La Mell, Yes; there was no mistake. Lummy forgot Peter's reserve. Now that he was out in the world, the men he had known at college were almost like relatives. - He hurried up, and Peter after one look also hurried. They shook hands long and hard. “You must come with me,” said Peter. “I am the village doctor. I went down to Montreal two winters, and I studied there. Oh, but it will do Jean good to see you.”
Jean, strangely twisted up and prematurely old from suffering, lay in a wheeled chair on the Sunny vetanda. The old shoemaker’s shop had been drawn away from the street back among the pinks and balm, and a porch had been built along its front-, and there were daisies and polyanthus and pausies for Jean to look at. Father La Mell was out too. He had suffered a second shock and could no longer speak, only babble. But Peter brought his old chum straight up to him. “He knows, father does,” he explained. “It is only the power of control that is lost.”
Mother La Mell wanted Peter within for simple house- hold task. Lummy Yates sat down between the old man and Jean and fanned himself with his hat. Jean’s eyes shone. “Oh,” said he, “I’m glad you’ve come. Perhaps you thought you knew my brother in college. You did in a way, but it is in his home a man shows. He hovers us all as a mother bird does her young. He gave up — things — ” Jean f$lt far more than he could phrase, “to come back to us. But he says it was nothing, only a New Year’s resolve he had. He might have been a great man if he had not thought so much of us. When he first came he supported us making shoes.”
Prosperous Lummy Yates felt a bunch in his throat. “My dear fellow,” said he putting his plump hand caress- ingly upon Jean’s thin one, “no man ever began to be great by neglecting his own. And,” he coughed, it was really embarrassing that lump, but it would come when he recollected just what prospects Peter relinquished, “after all it is not necessary to be great.. It is only neces- sary to be true.”
Belvidere , III. .
THE ENGLISH CRADLE OF THE TEMPERANCE RE- FORM.
BY FRANCES E. WILLARD.
I wonder how many intelligent American temperance workers could answer this question: What town in Eng- land is as well known as “the cradle of the British tem- perance movement” as Hillsboro, O., is as the oradle of the women’s temperance crusade?
Probably in England no temperance worker of fair in- telligence would fail to give this prompt reply: The good old town of Preston, where Joseph Livesey lived and died.
Mr. Livesey is looked upon as the father of the total
January 3, 1895.
abstinence movement, he having founded a temperance society in his adult Sunday-school, January 1, 1832, which merged into the present famous temperance society of Preston, March 22, of the same year. Having organized, they held their first meeting in the Cock-pit, where the “sporting aristocracy” had been wont to fight their mains with cocks and make their bets on the result. The build- ing is a hundred years old or more, and the abomination of these fights used to go on in the week when the Preston horse races were run. The Cock-pit was so near the par- ish church that on a hot day when the windows were open many a goocl temperance man has distinctly heard the yells, oaths and curses that issued therefrom while he was standing at the altar of God. But the evil spirit was driven out at last, and the old Cook-pit became a center of reform work.
The fact that the first teetotal society originated in a Sunday-school class is of special interest to Christian people. If each class in every Sunday-school in the wide world were to-day the center of total abstinence example and influence the temperance reform would take a forward stride longer than it has ever yet achieved.
It seems that Joseph Livesey, who was a tradesman, philanthropist, public speaker and writer, and a temper- ance man, was one of those who fought his way through difficult conditions to. success. He says that the cellar was his college and the breast-beam his reading desk. He studied by the dim flicker of the fire, being unable to procure the luxury of a candle, for he was a weaver lad, who at tfce age of seven was left fatherless, motherless, sisterless and brotherless to make his way.
It required no 6mall strength of character to take the position, in 1833, that the nutritious and strengthening properties of beer and porter were a delusion, but he studied for himself and found this to be true, and having found it he went forth to village, town and city, with his blackboard, chalk, barley scales and weights, and demon- strated to the people that there was more nutrition in a penny loaf than in a gallon of beer. More than a hun- dred thousand copies of this lecture, entitled “The Grand Delusion,” were circulated in the United Kingdom and in America. He not only organized the first teetotal society in this country but founded the Temperance Advocate, the first exclusively teetotal paper, and afterward founded The Struggle , a weekly paper which advocated the aboli- tion of corn laws, for Mr. Livesey was an all-round re- former, and finally established The Preston Guardian , in 1844, which still lives in the enjoyment of a well won eminence.
When he was seventy-six years old, in a severe illness, and all hope of recovery was said to be gone unless he would drink brandy, although unable to move hand or foot, he whispered to his son, “Raise me up and let me tell them that whether I die or not I will not drink the stuff.” He did not drink it but lived on fifteen years longer. •
It is not professed that Preston stands preeminent in the temperance reform, but that it is the first town in which the teetotal pledge was signed. It is also bold that the first moderation society was organized in Preston in 1829. The expression, “the seven men of Preston,” is a household word in England, for the pledge was first taken by that golden number. This is the pledge they signed:
We agree to abstain from all liquors of an intoxicating atunre, whether ale, beer, wine or ardent spirits, except as medicine.
Around these so-called “seven men of Preston,” gathered in the course of time a legendary halo. Six months after this teetotal pledge was signed the moderation society adopted it but it was not without great searchings of heart resulting in long continued discussion and strong disagreement that this vantage ground was gained. No effort was spared to crush out the temperance men; they were treated with obloquy, satirized as Utopian dreamers, and the bitterest opposition of all was visited upon them by the members of the church and the medical profession. The movement owed everything to the genial personality of its founder, Mr. Livesey; he was not content with speaking in public but had a regular system of visiting from house to house, especially on Sundays. When he entered a home he would say in his pleasant, smiling man- ner, “Good-morning, will you please have a temperance tract?” or “Have you any teetotalers living here?”
He never sought the society of the rich, but toiled on amongst the poor and working classes, and he was wont to invite teetotalers from their ranks to take tea with him. His constant injunction to temperance workers was, “We must do more visiting. Without frequent visit ation, my private opinion is, no temperance society can be in a prosperous condition.”
It should be carefully remembered that his hand wrote the first pledge, his head planned the first arrangements, his heart inspired the visiting department which was the life-blood of the society; he was its great organizer, its life, spirit, its presiding genius, its guiding, directing, controlling intelligence.
Not only is Preston the birthplace of teetotalism, but
January 3, 1895.
THE UNION SIGNAL.
(3) 3
there was formed what was in reality the first Band of Hope, though it did not then take that name.
On the 18th of April, 1831, the pledge of total absti- nence from all intoxicating liquors was agreed to and signed by one hundred and one youths, who, following in the wake of Joseph Livesey and his comrades, were anx- ious to be the first to establish an entire abstinence so- ciety.
Facts such as these should be familiar to all who are devoting themselves to temperance reform, and for this reason I have collated them from documents placed in my hands when I visited Preston, Feb. 1 and 2, 1891.
Those brave women of Preston have recognized the fact that there is no historic monument in their beautiful town in honor of the greatest reform of the age, and have decided to ask their sisters to help them erect such a monument in the form of a memorial building which shall do honor to the cause and from whose rentals they can derive a fund for the promotion of the work.
So much for Preston and our pleasant visit, with a parting injunction to every temperance worker who goes to the mother country to attend the World’s Convention next June to go and do likewise.
THE MOTHER-SPIRIT.
BY BEV. W. HOWATT GARDNER.
It was not by accident that the history of the human race began with the history of the family life. It was the family, with human authority invested in married man- hood and womanhood, that was to 6ubdue the earth and have dominion over it. The Bible does not represent the male portion of the family as acting solely alone in gov- ernment, but associates with him the female portion as an equal participant in all affairs that vitally concern them both. The male and the female, representing in the family life fatherhood and motherhood, were both made in the image of God. “So God created man (Humanity) in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” Both were equally endowed with those qualities of mind and heart, which, through intelligent cooperation, were to provide right and just government for the race.
The most highly developed family life as the unit and ideal of society is, to a considerable degree, emphasized by the fact that the Godhead is revealed to men through the family idea. As the family on earth, naturally begot- ten, invblves fatherhood, motherhood and childhood, so the “family of heaven,” spiritually existent, is presented to us as involving Fatherhood, Childhood, or Sonship, and, we would say, Motherhood. One of the earliest and distinctive revelations made by Christ at His coming was that of God as the Father, while Christ took His place with us as one of us, a Son, our “Elder brother,” as Paul speaks of Him, of “the household of God.”
While much is thus declared concerning Fatherhood and Sonship, little is clearly discerned in the Scriptures con- cerning the Motherhood of the Godhead. But may not this be discovered in the offices of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead?
The Holy Spirit is represented as active both in gener- ation and regeneration; as the giver and sustainer of life. In the creation of our world we read that “the spirit of God moved (or brooded) upon the face of the waters”; when the “earth was without form and void; and dark- ness was upon the face of the deep.” It is the Holy Spirit who gives the new, spiritual life. “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the king- dom of God.”
The characteristics of the Holy Spirit are more largely those that belong to motherhood, qualities of the heart. The very name by which the Spirit is best known, “the Comforter,” or Paraclete, expresses those qualities of per- son that persuade, entreat, win. In the spiritual realm the Holy Spirit is represented as teaching, leading, guid- ing into truth, purifying, sanctifying “the household of God.” The Father sends forth His commands, His word, but they are no more His than they are the Holy Spirit’6. Both God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, representing motherhood in the Godhead, are seen to be mutually en- gaged in the work of redeeming the world. The fulness of life is not given by the Father alone, but by the Father and the Spirit.
It is true that men are accustomed to speak of the Spirit as “He,” but as a fact the Greek word translated “spirit” is a neuter word and expresses nothing as to sex. The Spirit might more appropriately be designated by the feminine personal pronoun “she.”
Human nature in its best aspects exists complete in the family life. But no family life is complete when one only, and that one the father, holds supreme authority. Only as both mutually hold authority and intelligently codperate will the highest ends of the family life be served, and the well-being of society secured. In the most highly developed and best regulated family circles we find that which society ought to be.
In such families we find in full exercise the finest social instincts and spiritual qualities of human nature, courtesy, love for one another, deference to the wishes of each other, and yet the highest liberty for all. Action is governed with reference to others, and is not prompted by selfish impulse; the concern of one becomes the concern of all. But such family existence can never be where one is a master and the other a menial. It was never intended that the male half of the human race should monopolize all powers of government in the family and in the nation. The past has missed much in excluding the female half of the race from direct participation in the discussion and regulation of all those questions that pertain to the pro- tection of the home. The salvation of the home means the salvation of the nation. The life of the nation will be purer only as motherhood is accorded equally with father- hood her rightful place in national representation.
The social world is practically “without form and void,” or chaotic. Social regeneration will not become the fact until motherhood receives her God-given right to legislate on all questions that threaten the integrity of the home. The Holy Spirit, the motherhood of the Godhead co- operates with God, the Father, in the common work of spiritually redeeming humanity. But the divine powers work through human means. As rapidly as motherhood is more and more directly employed with fatherhood in the common work of rescuing the home will society become the purer. The questions of the “age of consent,” divorce, increasing social vice, intemperance, are quite as much, if not more, the concern of women as of men.
The ballot in the hands of women is the most potent means by which the power of womanhood may “make for righteousness.” As long as the right of petition only is given to woman she receives little consideration from legislators; the ballot is the power that commands respect.
The Biblical picture of the first family life is still largely an ideal. Both father and mother received equal responsibilities and duties with respect to government; one was the counterpart of the other, rather than the inferior of the other; of both God said, “Let us make man (humanity) in our image, after our likeness,” father- hood and motherhood, and to them both, without restric- tion, God gave “dominion . . over all the earth.”
The condition that actually prevails to-day differs much from this picture. The male feature of the humau family assumes to be of superior origin, knowing positively his rights, and as positively ignoring, or suppressing the ex- ercise of the rights of her who was made his counterpart. But this supposed superior origin of masculinity is an assumption based on his greater physical strength, where- as the likeness of God, or the Godhead, wherein men and women were made, consists of the powers of mind and heart, and in these alone is the guarantee of righteous government invested.
It is often said that woman is so much more spiritual than man, that her virtues are of such a higher order, she should therefore abstain from the ballot lest the higher qualities of her nature be contaminated. But it is an infusion of just these higher qualities of womanhood that are needed to purify the political life of the nation. The spiritual forces, the qualities of the heart as well as those of the mind should find their expression at the bal- lot box.
In the public expression of opinion in the casting of the ballot the husband is supposed to represent correctly the desires of his wife for a better protection for the home, when as a fact very few husbands think of the home.at all as an important institution for which to leg- islate. He is moved more by partisan considerations than by family conditions. He would prefer to vote for further naval defences than to vote for the defence of his fireside. With the exception of a few communities the wife is positively denied the right of citizenship and to the exercise of that personal responsibility that the Bible represents as hers in the beginning.
When the mothers of the nation are allowed to partici- pate equally with the fathers in government we will ap- proach very closely to the position marked out at the beginning, for the government of a nation is, after all, but the government of families.
Newton Centre , Mass.
“WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE.”
I.
BY KATE 0. BUSHNELL, M. D.
The various interpretations put upon that portion of Scripture which relates to women “praying or prophesy- ing uncovered,” afford interesting reading. The passage will be found in I. Cor. 11:1-16, and I urge that those women who are interested in the matter will open their Bibles and study the lesson with me.
There are few passages of Scripture concerning which greater diversity of opinion has been expressed. Let us, for instance, contrast the comments of Dean Stanley and Bishop Lightfoot. As to the very object of the apostle
in bringing up the topic for consideration, they contra- dict each other in the following language:*
SAYS DEAN STANLEY:
“The practice [of men veiling] is attacked, not because it existed at Corinth, but for the sake of illus- trating the practice of women.”
SAYS BISHOP LIGHTFOoT:
“It certainly may be inquired whether he so much urgeth the veiling of women as reproves the veiling of men. However, by this fit argument he will chastise that contrary custom [veiling] and foolishness of man.”
One commentator declares the object to be an attack on the practice of women unveiling , the other, an attack on the practice of men veiling.
As to verse 4, “Every man praying or prophesying hav- ing his head covered dishonoreth his head,” they differ again as to the reason why the act is dishonoring to Christ.
STANLEY.
“Dishonors his head by an un- seemly. effeminate practice, and thereby Christ.”
LIGHTFOOT.
“A man praying covered, an ashamed of his face before God. disgraceth his head, Christ, who himself carried the like face of r. man.”
One says the dishonor lies in doing an “effeminate” thing, the other in “being ashamed of his face.”
As to the phrase, “dishonoreth her head”:
STANLEY.
“Man is the reflex of the glory of God; woman is a reflex of the glory, not of God, but of man.”
LIGHTFOOT.
“A woman praying not veiled, as if she were not ashamed of her face, disgraceth man, her head, while she would seem so beautiful beyond him, when she is only the glory of the man; but man is the glory of God.”
Herein both these learned men agree that those of their
sex are “the glory of God,” while those of the other sex
only get their glory from men. It is a little puzzling to understand how the woman could seem, in Bishop Light- foot’s words, “so beautiful beyond” man when she is merely the reflex of his glory. The moon is the reflex of
the glory of the sun; does it need to cover itself lest it
shine beyond the glory of the sun, and thus reflect dis-
honor on the sun? Perhaps woman should be “ashamed of her face,” because, if unveiled, it shines forth to the
detriment of the theological theory of its having only a glory reflected from man’s face, and it is a shame that nature should thus be allowed to contradict dogma. Bishop Lightfoot should have explained, moreover, most carefully, which head it is the woman’s duty to be ashamed of. She has two, one on her body and her husband, and the Bishop would not like women veiling under a mis- taken notion that being “so beautifulbeyond him,” she must, when praying or prophesying, wear a token of her shame at the plain looks of her spouse.
The two differ, indeed, as to the very meaning oi a veil. Dean Stanley pronounces it “the mark of man’s dominion over her.” Bishop Lightfoot calls the veil “a sign, indeed, of 6hame, but not of subjection” — “of shame that woman first brought sin into the world.” Further,
SAYS STANLEY:
“The woman is to appear with her head, the symbol of her hus- band, not defrauded of that seemly covering which nature suggests by the long tresses which it has given her.”
SAYS lightfoot:
“The apostle, therefore, does not at all chide this making bare the face [by women] absolutely considered.”
There is a startling divergency in opinion here, Dean Stanley taking the ground that women are not to appear unveiled; Bishop Lightfoot, that the apostle “does not chide making bare the face.” It is remarkable how it is agreed upon by many commentators that “long tresses” are given by nature to women only, while the world is peopled mostly with long-haired men as well as women. How does a Chinaman become possessed of long hair excepting by the same method — nature — that an Ameri- can woman does? Those who are familiar with the sort of veiling common in Egypt and the Holy Land — when seen in the latter place— cannot but recall it as a gro- tesque parody on a full-bearded face. The veil does not cover the eyes and forehead, but hangs (a piece of black cloth) from the cheek-bones downward. “Nature sug- gests” this sort of veil not by hair hanging from a wom- an’s head backward one-half so much as by whiskers on a man’s face.
Again:
STANLEY.
“As all his outward manifesta- tions have reference to God, so all hers have reference to man.”
LIGHTFOOT.
“Regard is had [in veiling] to something that belongs to the woman in respect to God, rather than in respect to her husband.”
One refers the custom of veiling to a matter of wom- an’s relation to man, the other to woman’s relation to God. It is difficult to understand how woman could ever get the blessing promised to those of “single” eye (Matt, 0 :22), if even in times of prayer she is to see to it that “all her outward manifestations ‘have reference to man.’ ” Does duty bind women then (like the hypocrites, Matt. 6:5) to pray “that they may be seen of men” when they do pray in public places? Again: are women to be in subjection only at prayer-time and in preaching? If not, why ought they not to go perpetually veiled as a sign of continual subjection?
The most difficult verse to deal with, according to com-
mit will be necessary in some of these extracts to slightly condense from the original, but by reference to Dean Stanley’s “Notes on the Epistles to the Corinthians,” and Lightfoot’s “Hebrew and Talmudic Exercitations,” it will be seen that no injustice has been done them thereby.
‘‘i! >
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THE UNION SIGNAL.
Januaby 3, 1895.
mentators, is the tenth. Literally translated it reads: “For this cause ought the woman to have authority over her head,” etc. Of this
DEAN STANLEY SAYS:
BISHOP LIQHTPOOT ANSWERS.
[The veil is] “a sign indeed of shame, bui not of subjection.” “If it were so argued by him [Paul], then ‘Let not a man pray but with his head covered, be- cause he is subject to Christ.’ ”
“The general sense of this text, as gathered from the context, can be nothing more or less than an assertion of the subordination of the woman to the man.’’ “The woman ought to bear upon her head the mr.rk of man’s dominion over her.”
The claim, on the part of Dean Stanley and many oth- ers, is that somehow the tenth verse must be a command for women to veil as a sign of subordination, although the verse does not at all say so. He draws his proof from the “context,” that is, from the statements that “the head of the woman is the man,” “the woman is the glory of the man,” and “the woman,” was created “for the man.” It is curious to note that these varieties of expression, “head of,” “glory of,” “created for,” come but to one thought in the eyes of male commentators; that is, “subordinate to.”
It is possible to conceive that “head” means “leader,” not “driver”, that “glory of” means that man ought to glory in the public career of women; and even that the reason that the woman was “created for” the man is be- cause the only help meet for him is some one to usurp authority and drive him into the path of righteousness. I do not declare this to be the meaning of these expres- sions, but only as not contradictory to their meaning; which shows that they all cannot be summed up in the single thought of “subordination.”
Dean Stanley and Bishop Lightfoot do not at all agree as to the meaning of this tenth verse; they each give a version of their own in the following words:
STANLEY.
“The woman ought to bear upon her head the mark of mau’s do- minion over her.”
LIGHTFOOT.
“Let her bare her face if she will” . . . “let her veil it if she will.”
The last phrase of the tenth verse, “ because of the an - gels,” has also received at the hands of commentators the widest possible differences in interpretation. Bishop Lightfoot believes “angels” in this expression means “messengers of espousals” sent to the places of*Christian worship to find wives for young men, and declares the meaning of the verse to be, she “hath such a power of uucovering her face before these angels [or messengers] who come to espouse her, when otherwise by the custom of the nation it were not lawful.”
Dean Stanley, on the other hand, propounds the remark- able theory, which originated with Tertullian, that to women is to be attributed not only the fall of men, but the fall of angels, and that hence women cannot be trusted to come in contact with them. Bishop Lightfoot applies the passage more especially to the conduct of unmarried
maidens, Dean Stanley to married women:
STANLEY.
“The authority oi the husband is, as it were, enthroned visibly up- on her head in token that she be- longs to him alone, and that she knows no allegiance to any one be- sides, not even to the angels who stand before the throne of God.”
LIGHTFOOT.
“Let her bare her face, if she will, that she may appear beauti- ful; let her veil it, if she will, that she may appear modest. She hath full power in her own hands to promote her own espousals.”
To those conscientious women who put confidence in the comlnentary as they do in the very Word itself, it will be a matter of real regret to be forced to believe that women are at the bottom of all the mischief done, not
only among men, but among angels also.
In Bpite of Dean Stanley’s teaching that women are to obey men only, and to know “no allegiance to any one besides, not even to the angels,” I fear that woman, what-
ever her training and preconceptions, no matter how obe- dient by nature and inured to subjection, might, like tho ass that belonged to Balaam, even if under the master’s lash, balk at the apparition of an angel in the pathway, and the teaching turn out to be of no account after all in an emergency!
But does suoh teaching of insubordination to angels accord with the Word of God? Supposing Sarah and Hagar and the wife of Manoah and the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, had acted according to such instruction? In the latter case, at any rate, had Mary Magdalene been disobedient to the word of the angel at the sepulchre, what would have become of the very gospel itself?
London, Eng.
THIRD BIENNIAL CONVENTION OF THE WORLD’S W. C. T. U.
The Call To Prayer.
The third biennial Convention of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union will be held, in connection with the annual meeting of the British Women’s Temper- ance Association, in Queen’s Hall and Exeter Hall, Lon- don, June 14 to 21, 1895.
In view of the custom to hold a service of prayer pre- vious to such conventions, and as superintendent of the evangelistic department of the World’s Woman’s Chris- tian Temperance Union, I hereby call upon the white- ribboners of the world to set apart Saturday and Sunday, May 18 and 19, as days of praise and prayer.
Although but twenty-one years have passed since upon the women of the Crusade fell the divine fire, yet this
heaven born enthusiasm has spread from America to Canada and Great Britain, thence to Australia, South Af- • rica, Japan, India, China, the Hawaiian Republic and round tho world. It is fitting, therefore, that we offer united praise to God for the way in which He has led us in the past, and tho blessing of the present.
Realizing the great possibilities of the future: that our field is the world; that multitudes are still enthralled by alcohol, opium and impurity; realizing also, our profound helplessness and dependence upon the God of nations, let us draw near to Him for a fresh anointing of the Spirit, confess our failures and mistakes, and consecrate our- selves anew to His service.
PROGRAM FOR LOCAL UNIONS.
Saturday, May 18, 1895, From 2 to 5 p. m,
FIRST DIVISION FROM 2 TO 3:30.
SUBJECT: PRAISE.
Scripture Lesson — Ezekiel 47 : 1 to 10.
Hymns— “Coronation,” “How Firm a Foundation,” “Blest Be tho Tie that Binds.”
Praise for the blessings upon our work. For its won- drous growth , as pictured in this vision of Ezekiel — “A river of influence which has spread, until the world is refreshed by tho life-giving waters, and its trees are for the healing of the nations.” Praise for the increased recognition of woman’s place and power. For the prac- tical beauty in the religious teachings of the day; the creeds and traditions are giving way to the simplicity of the Christ-life of love and self-sacrifice. Praise for the growing sense of individual responsibility, and the strengthening of the tie which binds all men in a sacred brotherhood.
second division FROM 3: 30 to 5.
SUBJECT: THE PREPARATION OF HEART. Scripture Lesson — Psalm 24.
Hymns— “Gently, Lord, Oh, Gently Lead Us.” “Nearer to Thee.” “If we had but a day.”
Earnest prayer for the coming conventions in London. For the president and officers of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the president and offi- cers of the British Women’s Temperance Association. For superintendents of departments, evangelists, our round-the-world missionaries, all delegates and the city of London in which we gather. Prayer for wisdom and har- mony. For the removal of all friction, selfishness, pride and misunderstanding, and a baptism of love which shall unite our hearts and renew our zeal and courage. Prayer for the home, the church, the nations of the world. For the overthrow of intemperance, impurity, war, oppression, and the reign of purity and peace. Prayer for the homeless, the weary and broken-hearted. For thoso who struggle amid poverty and temptation, and for the rich and pros- perous, that they may see the golden opportunity for per- sonal ministry. Prayer for the youth and children and for ourselves , that we may have a fresh vision of His face and a baptism of power from on high.
Mass Meeting, Saturday, May 18, 7:30 p. m. program.
Hymn — “Give to the Winds Thy Fears.”
Scripture Lesson — Psalm 146, Crusade Psalm.
Prayer.
Hymn — “Christ for the World we Sing.”
Address — Sketch of tho World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
Address — Twenty-one Years of Temperance Work. Hymn — “While the Days are Going by.”
Address — The Outlook.
Doxology and Benediction.
Sunday, May 19, 1895.
Arrangements for Sunday services are left with the local unions. Where possible let a union church service be held, or urge each pastor to preach on that day a sermon upon the evils of intemperance and tho work of tho Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
The hymns used are numbers 149, 117, 123, 92, 127, 79, 108, 7, 133, from the White Ribbon Hymnal.
Will all presidents of unions, evangelistic superintend- ents, and members of the press give this call to prayer the widest publicity, that with one heart and voice we may turn to God? Elizabeth W. Greenwood,
Superintendent Evangelistic Dept .
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN.
Dear Union Signal: — To women working in lines of missionary effort the first two days of the triennial of the National Council of Women at Washington, D. C., will be of great interest.
On the evening of the 18th of February <he time will be divided between the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Union of Friends and the National Free Baptist Woman’s Missionary Society. This latter organization is one of the very oldest of women’s societies, having been organ- ized in 1843. It will be represented upon this occasion by two of its ablest workers and speakers. Mrs. Frances Stewart Mosher, upon “The Ethical Adjustment of Wo- man’s Home and Sociological Duties,” and Mrs. Emeline
Burlingame Cheney, upon “Practical Christian Living.”
Mrs. Eliza C. Armstrong, who will speak upon “The Relation of Religion to Public Duties,” is known among the Friends as one of their very best speakers.
Tuesday evening, February 19, will bo occupied by the Woman’s Centenary Association of the Universalist church and by the National Council of Jewish Women. The Cen- tenary is many years old, — the Counoil of Jewish Women is an outgrowth of the World’s Congress of Representa- tive Women of the Exposition year.
Rev. Lorenza Haynes (Universalist) will give an address on “The Relation of Religion to Public Duties,” and “The Exact Attitude of each of the Leading Religious Denomi- nations toward Woman’s Growing Service in the Church” will be treated by a speaker not yet decided upon.
Some fine subjects are upon that part of the program occupied by the Jewish Council, namely, “Social Obliga- tions of Religion,” by Miss Sadie, American correspond- ing secretary of the Council of Jewish Women; “Tho Function of Women in Religious Life,” and “Greek and Hebrew Genius-Influence on Christianity and Civiliza- tion” by speakers whose names are not yet announced.
The morning sessions of these two days will be equally interesting, the first being given to tho formal opening of the National Council triennial, presentation of delegates, and greetings of fraternal delegates from associations not in membership in the Council. Tuesday morning will be- gin the sessions in which the time will be largely given to free discussion by the members of the triennial, each subject for discussion being presented formally in half hour address by a specially invited speaker. The topics of Tuesday are" “The Influence of Women in Bringing Religious Conviction to Bear upon Daily Life,” presented by Mrs. Minnie D. Louis, who spoke so acceptably at the W7orld’s Congress of Representative Women, and “Wom- an’s Mission to the Church as Minister and Missionary,” by Mrs. Eliza C. Armstrong. Each of these topics will be discussed for one hour, exclusive of tho time occupied by the main addresses mentioned.
Rachel Foster Avery.
Philadelphia , Pa.
BLOWING UP HELLGATE.
Dear Union Signal: — Seeing an article in your paper speaking of names of liquor saloons, it reminded me of some I have seen in the past. I can only mention two. One was called “The Shades,” and it was appropriate, as the shadow always falls on all who enter thero. But to be brief, I would call your attention to a brewery in upper New York, called “Hellgate Brewery,” becauso it is built along the narrow stream that was so full of rocks before the government blew it up with dynamite some years ago. When the bed of the river was undermined for a great distance and loaded with dynamite all was connected by wires and then went to a battery on shore. It was adver- tised to be blown on a certain day and hour; the writer was on the New York side to see the explosion, with thou- sands more all over the hills and buildings. A little child touched the button, the little daughter of the principal engineer, and the bed of the river went up apparently one hundred feet for a long distance and fell with a fearful roar. This hurl gate is by the vulgar called Hellgate. The great browery thought it would be cute to adopt that name, therefore all their great wagons were labeled in gilt letters, “Hellgate Brewery.”
We thought it the best name we had ever heard for a dis- tillery of any kind, as nothing could be more appropriate. But the question is, how can temperance people under- mine the whole field of whisky and beer manufacture, and so place the dynamite as to destroy the root of the great upas tree at one blow? We are chopping off branches here and there, but it should be undermined, and every root blown so high in the air that it will die for want of soil to grow in. Hell gate needs to be blown up by the power of God and the united power of Christian women. You are working the mine, and are preparing it, and may God give you abundant success in the future blast.
Philadelphia , Pa. T. S. Soovillb.
A PRACTICAL TEMPERANCE WORK.
Dear Union Signal:— Last July the Y. W. C. T. U. of Providence, R. I., opened to the public their newly com- pleted ice-water fountain in one of the most central parts of the city, and maintained it until the middle of October. It was a modest looking affair, yet 80,250 pounds of ice were used during the season, and it was estimated that an average of over one thousand four hundred persons per hour partook of the refreshment it offered. One of the patrons exclaimed, “I’d be a rich man if I could have a soda fountain patronized like that!” and another, “Shure, that’s good, and the saloon niver got five cents for that drink!”
Mr. H. F. Jenks, of Pawtucket, R. I., constructed the fountain, and Mrs. J. H. Kendrick was the able chairman of this committee. The cost of erection and maintenance was nearly six hundred dollars. All summer the flag of our country and a white ribbon floated over this most practical temperance work. The Y’s are hoping to erect another ice-water fountain the coming summer. The committee found it vary difficult to obtain any definite information concerning such fountains, and will be most happy to impart the results of its research and experience to any other union, desiring to engage in a similar work.
As one saw the thirsty crowds constantly surrounding the fountain one realized as never before the desire of the people to obtain easily a refreshing drink. Shall we not have the pleasure of helping other societies to enter upon this line of work and thus secure for themselves the blesB- ing promised to those who offer a cup of cold water in the Master’s name? # E. C. Hodge.
Providence, R. /.
January 3, 1895.
THE UNION SIGNAL.
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6
Deab Comrades: — It is hard to tell when W. C. T. U. laborers are the more inspired to zealous endeavor — at the waning of the old year or the beginning of the new. Methinks it is an activity that never really diminishes, and therein lies our greatest assurance of victory.
A great many unions are planning to push
THE POLYGLOT PETITION
as never before. With the italicized form found on pago 14 of this issue or by means of the printed blanks fur- nished from the National Headquarters, The Temple, Chicago, there is no reason that tho great list of names be not rolled up countlessly. Ono worker has set herself to secure one new name a month, at least, during 1895, trying, in addition, to interest the twelve new petitioners to the extent of each circulating a petition themselves.
We doubt if another society can match the record made by ours in issuing its
ANNUAL MINUTES,
covering five hundred and thirty pages, just one month to a day from the date of tho adjournment of the Conven- tion, and giving a full account of the same. The volumo is the best kind of a hand-book for local unions, for it covers the entire ground of our methods and gives a com- parative view of their success in different sections of the country. If extracts in the form of paragraphs and longer articles were made from this collection, which em- bodies the wisdom and experience of twenty-one years of the woman’s crusade for the protection of the home, were transferred to the columns of the local denominational press through the influence of our local workers, this unique and varied volume would accomplish that where- unto it is sent. Nothing strikes us more in glancing over its fair pages than the growing correlation of our work with all the great current movements of the time. The list of telegrams and letters received and of fraternal delegates, with the branchings out of the reports of our general officers and superintendents, marks a movement wider than has ever yet been included under the forms of organization of any single association. We are glad that the resolutions show forth much of this progress, especially those that were added by the Convention, and we think that while our loyalty to the Prohibition party is unquestioned, it was a stroke of wisdom to adopt the resolution of thanks on page 51, which is as follows:
Resolved , That we render our thanks to the Federated unions of Cleveland for their complete arrangements for the success of the Convention, to the people of the city for their gracious hospitality, to the pastors of the churches who have welcomed us to their pulpits, to the pages for their effective services, to the railroad super- intendent for her painstaking and successful efforts to secure reduced rates, to the press and to all who have in any way contributed to the success of the Convention.
A copy of the Minutes costs but fifteen cents, and orders should be sent to Mrs. Katharine Lente Stevenson. It is perhaps just to add that the picture of our president, not a very good one, by the way, which accompanies the pic- ture of the original Crusade church on the title page, was placed there without her knowledge or consent.
SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES.
Query. — Has a woman a right to wear the white ribbon who has belonged to the union in time past but has dropped out, does not pay dues or come to the meetings except at long intervals? Can we appoint such an one as superin- tendent of Loyal Temperance Legion work?
Answer. — It seems strange that any woman who cares for the white ribbon would insist on wearing it if she does not pay her dues to the society, and any local union has a perfect right to adopt such a by-law regulating this or any other condition of membership that it chooses. Our local unions forget that they have power to do whatever they think best so far as allowing a woman to be superin- tendent of a Loyal Temperance Legion when she does not pay her dues. It is inconceivable to my mind that any woman would undertake any work with us who had not interest enough in the cause to pay fifty cents a year. I should certainly give her very little rest until she had paid it. When these local difficulties arise let the union make just such rules by which to control them as seems good in its own sight, always remembering the law of love as su- preme.
Q. — Will you please state what the Single Tax is?
A. — I gladly do this in the language of some of its chief advocates: “The Single Tax involves the abolition of all taxes upon industry and the products of industry and
upon exchange through tariff taxation and the taking by taxation upon land values, irrespective of improvements, of the annual rental value of all those various forms of natural improvements embraced under the general term, land. With this reform many of its advocates desire to unite the abolition of all special privileged legislation, the adoption of local option in taxation and the adoption of proportional representation.”
Miss Margaret Macdonald, of Allston, Mass., has sent us this suggestive story of
THE BEGINNING OF AN L. T. L.
“Alice Dow and I were invited to spend the evening with a friend and make ourselves useful in helping enter- tain a number of young people, who had gathered there to celebrate little Edith Enwood’s birthday. Of course we went.
“I had just started a lively game for the little ones, when I happened to spy in the corner a boy and girl who looked as if they had come to an end of their conversa- tional powers, so I crossed the room to see why they were not playing with the other children. Annie said Harry did not like the game and she would not play unless he did. It was the rule of the house for no one to be over- looked or neglected, so I cast about in my mind for some- thing to talk to them about. Suddenly liko an inspira- tion came the thought, — temperance. Holding up my watch chain on which was tied a bit of white ribbon, I asked, ‘Who knows what this little ribbon means?’ No answer. ‘Did either of you ever hear mamma or papa speak of the brave men and women who are fighting the rum-shops and saloons?’ At this their faces brightened, and they seemed to have an idea of what I was talking about, but were afraid to talk so I told them how, in other places boys and girls, as well as men and women, were working to drive wickedness out of the land, what a lot of good they were doing, and how much we could do too, if we would only try. They grew so interested that when the time came for them to say good-bye and go home, they were really sorry to leave. I took courage and said, ‘Come and bring some little friends to my house after school Friday, and we will see* if we cannot all join together to work for right.’ When I went home I prayed for strength to carry on the undertaking begun in such an unexpected way. I waited anxiously for Friday. At last the wished-for day arrived, and with it twenty- eight children. When I had made them all feel at home with me and we had 6ung some pretty hymns, I explained to them just why they were there, read to them the pledge and tried to make everything perfectly clear. When I questioned them they seemed to have a correct idea as to what their duty was, and how they were to fulfill their pledges. Out of that twenty-eight we formed a Loyal Temperance Legion. That little L. T. L. has increased to eighty-five. With God’s help we hope to go on in this good work.”
Mrs. L. S. Weightman, of Washington, D. C., sends a program which, interspersed with music, basket-lunch, etc., might serve as a suggestive model for meetings during the new year. It was called a
CONFERENCE MEETING OF REFORM FORCES,
and though not strictly a W. C. T. U. meeting, leaned strongly that way. Following are the leading features of the program:
Song and Prayer Service.
Bible Reading. (Conducted by W. C. T. U. evangelis- tic superintendent.)
What Measure of Time and Labor Should a Busy Wom- an Give the W. C. T. U.? (Answered to the effect that since W. C. T. U. principles enter into every relation of life, all busy womeu can at all times be in some way fur- thering W. C. T. U. interests.)
The Next Step in Anti-Saloon Warfare, or How Shall we Conquer the Liquor Traffic? (Discussed by pastors, citi- zens and white-ribboners.)
Treasury Notes. (Financial aspect of W. C. T. U. work.)
Difficulties in Winning New Members and How to Meet Them.
Incentives to Workers.
Apathy in the Local Union; Its Cause and Remedy.
Teaching Prohibition in Church and Sabbath-school. (Handlod by pastor or Sunday-school superintendent.)
A Paying Investment. (Of time and money in W. C. T. U. work.)
What the W. C. T. U. has Done for me. (Discussion open to all.)
A Nation’s Suicide: the Sacrifice of Our Girls. What Shall we do About it?
Twenty-one Years’ Trial; the “Coming of Age” of the W. C. T. U. Is She Worthy of Citizenship? (Answered by a pastor.)
With hearty acknowledgment of the pleasant and prac- tical communications I have already received from the hive-workers and awaiting your further advances,
Yours in all fellowship,
Mother Experience.
Let this be our daily prayer during 1895. If we do we shall grow strong in the Lord and in the power of His might — going on from strength to strength, we shall con- quer every foe, and difficulties will vanish like mist before the morning sun. Our new year will then be a happy one. We shall step fearlessly into its untried days. Not death itself shall appall us, for faith conquers even that, too.
***
The following letter from a noble Prohibitionist, ono of our Temple Trust bondholders, Mr. John R. Madison, Irving Park, a suburb of Chicago, was received a few days ago. It brought cheer and copifort at a time when dark- ness seemed to reign. And the writer felt like joining with David as he expresses himself in the sixty-fourth Psalm: “Hear my voice, 0 God, in my prayer; preserve my life from fear of the enemy. Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the insurrection of the work- ers of iniquity: who whet their tongues like a sword and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words. They encourage themselves in an evil matter; they com- mune of laying snares privily; they say, who shall see them?” Mr. Madison writes: “I am just recovering from a serious railroad accident where my life was in great peril, and I desire to make a than koffering. No cause interests me more than temperance, and I therefore en- close herewith my check for fifty dollars, payable to your order to be used for the Temple. I will take this oppor- tunity to assuro you of my implicit confidence in yOur in- tegrity and honor, notwithstanding the malignant asper- sions that have been cast upon you.” Mr. Madison refers in the abovo to a most venomous- attack which has been made during the past week or two upon the founder of the Temple through a Chicago newspaper instigated by hers and the Temple’s most inveterate enemy.
***
How thoughtful and considerate some of our dear white-ribbonei*3 are. They think of the burden that rests upon the shoulders of some of us as the day approaches for paying tire interest on our bonds. Such consideration is conspicuously shown in the following letter received from Mrs. Lizzie E. Tilton, superintendent of Temple work for Vineyard Haven, Mass., W. C. T. U. She writes: “Enclosed you will find check for $25, our second pay- ment on a huudrod dollar pledge. We will send the rest the first week in January, when our mite-boxes are called in. I thought we had better send this amount now, rather than wait for the balance, so you could have it to use the first of January.” Mrs. H. P. Cummings writes: “En- closed find check for $25 for Temple fund, from the Ware, Mass., W. C. T. U. This, with the $25 sent before, makes $50 we have paid on our pledge. We will send the bal ance as soon as wo can raise it. We have great satisfac tion in knowing we have a part in the beautiful Temple.”
The Seekonk and East Providence, R. I., W. C. T. U., are a brave little band of women. The union only num- bers thirteen, but in spite of that unlucky (?) number, they have just sent through Mrs. C. C. Balch, $25 as a thanksgiving offering, making $59 this little union has paid on a hundred dollar pledge. Mrs. Balch writes that only a very little of the above amount was raised outside of the union. This proves that it only takes a willing mind and a determined purpose for almost any union, no matter how small it is, to raise $100.
***
The Temple superintendent of the Richmond and Hop- kinton, R. I., W. C. T. U. , Mrs. Mattie A. L. Greene, sends $66 which completes the hundred dollar pledge of the union. A check for $45 has been received from Mrs. E. A. Whitford for the Westerly, R. I., W. C. T. U.; this com- pletes the hundred dollar pledge by this union. Mrs. Whitford writes: “I am so glad we have been able to pay it within the first year. Our union made the pledge last January. All hail to our House Beautiful. May it be a monument of righteousness and temperance and soon be the property of the National W. C. T. U.” Mrs. L. Mel- bourne, Covington, Kentucky, seuds $25 for the Coving- ton W. C. T. U.; this makes $75 that union has paid on their hundred dollar pledge. Mrs. Mary E. Watson sends $15 for the Syracuse, N. Y., W. C. T. U. on their pledge. The Fredonia, N. Y., W. C. T. U., through its president, Mrs. E. McNeill, sends $11 on their hundred dollar pledge. This makes $51 the union has paid. Mrs. C. S. Sheldon, a member of the Kirksville, Mo., W. C. T. U., although no longer a resident there — she being now in California — sends $100 as a thanksgiving offering, “In memory,” she writes, “of my mother, a Crusader.” She wants the money credited on the Missouri tablet.
***
Little Nettie King brought her mite-box to the Temple to-day and exchanged its contents for a souvenir spoon. This is the third time this dear little girl has filled her mite-box and she is starting right out to fill it again for another year. There are still two or three thousand mite- boxes out in the hands of persons who desire to get a Temple spoon by January 1, 1895. We will allow a few days’ grace but must insist on our friends sending in the contents of their mite-boxes without delay to our financial secretary, Miss Sara G. Johnson, Room 1113, the Temple, Chicago, if they expect to get their spoons. Let our friends remember how much it will help us if they will send promptly at this time when we need money so badly
6 (6)
THE PAST.
BY MABY LOWE DICKINSON.
A tyrant that bindeth with cords of pain,
And guardefch a prison door?
Nay — bnt an angel who breaks a chain,
And leads the way to a summit plain,
Where grasses blossom in summer rain,
And singing birds can soar.
A poisoned chalice whose hotdrops bring A pang to each pulsing vein?
Nay — but a draught* from a healing spring, Cooling the fever and soothing the sting,
Till the dimming eye and the drooping wing Are lifted to light again.
A pitiless blackness of dreary sea Hiding our good ship’s grave?
Nay — but a beacon , flashing free Over the track where the breakers be,
When winds are striving in frenzied glee Shrouding the rocks in the waves.
A spectre, ever with iron hand Holding the spirit fast?
Nay — but a prophet , in silence grand,
Lifting the veil from a far-off land,
Where, in the scorching of desert sand,
Water shall gush at last.
The angel, who rolls from the closed door The sealing stone aside;
The healer, for hearts that are rent and sore; The light that flashes the black seas o’er;
The prophet that points to the othefc shore — They are here to-night by my side.
And it matters little if New Year bells Sadly or gladly ring,
An undertone in their clamor tells,
Of a soft south wind that dies and swells In fragrant arches of pine-wood dells,
Where some day the birds will sing.
— The Silver Cross.
THE SECRET OF HER DEVOTION.
BY EDITH GRAY.
My grandfather, Captain Lowell, was a sturdy branch of the old Puritan stock, a pillar in the church, captain in the war of 1812 and a leader in his home country. He ohose for his wife a dainty maiden from a family noted both in this country and in Europe for their intellectual power* She was herself a writer of widening reputation when she married my grandfather. Within the year she laid aside her pen to take into her arms that sweetest of all burdens, a baby.
The young mother did not gain strength as rabidly as did the sturdy baby boy and then came the serpent into their home that has left its poisonous trail through three generations.
The family physician ordered pure New England rum for the frail young mother to “build her up.” She used it as directed and as other children came to her she learned to depend more and more upon the stimulating contents of the rum jug until her own strength was gone, her con- stitution broken down, and the last three babies came only to open their sweet eyes for a brief moment in this world of sorrow.
The eldest child had not come under the ban and grew to manhood much like his father.
My father was the second child, and throughout his character and life the effects of that doctor’s prescription can be traced,— a highly nervous organization, great in- tellectual power coupled with extreme prostration after effort. He becamo a Christian in early manhood, and I verily believe that the heavenly Father ofttimes sent a legion of angels to deliver him in his hours of temptation.
He was a consistent Christian, dearly loved by all his friends, and “Uncle John” to every child in our neighbor- hood. He was singularly pure in all his habits, and wa3 ever just, yet tender. I love to dwell upon this side of his sunny character, but my heart aches when I remember how desperately he fought the adversary for every inch he gained in the upward journey. His story came to me in fragments; he could not speak of it himself, and my mother looked his life-secrets in her heart so that no one but herself and God, the two who ever stood close to him, aud who ever bore him up, knew all he suffered. Ho
THE UNION SIGNAL.
came into the world cursed with an appetite for strong drink, and a mania to take his own life.
He who directed Christian work; he who was ceaselessly engaged in a struggle against all evil; he who was called . a fanatic because of his uncompromising warfare against the rum-power, knew the horrors of a life broken and fettered by this prince of devils. Never, in passing a sa- loon upon the street but the demon appetite clamored to be appeased with fiery draughts, and then, in the fight that always followed, would come the consuming desire to end his life.
Through his influence un fermented wine was used at the communion table of his church, and many of the brethren wondered a little at his energy in pushing the question. Others thought it decidedly uncalled for and a piece of fanaticism, but yielded more out of love and respect to him than because they thought the use of fermented wine wrong.
My wise mother well knew the influence of children, and without seeming to be watchful she guarded him from many a pitfall. When he went from home, she nearly al- ways accompanied him, by his express wish, and well he appreciated the strong tower God had given him. ^Yea, “He will not allow us to be tempted more than we are able to bear, but will make for us a way of escape.”
As he must needs go to his daily labor, she sent one of his children with the admonition, “Be a cheery helper to papa.” And we were instructed in her wise, gentle way, not to take our childish troubles to him, but to reserve our pleasant experiences for his hearing; thus, without knowing why, but implicitly trusting mother, we learned to be ever cheerful and helpful. How tender was the love between father and children, and, in helping him bear his burden, it helped us to develop self-reliance and to be self-sacrificing.
But I, being the baby, was oftenest his companion, and felt a great responsibility resting upon me. In a vague way I could feel the pressure of the trouble of which I was ignorant.
Years passed in this way and my father, worn and weary with life’s battle, looked longingly into the bright beyond. Though racked with disease and pain, he ever came off victor and when God said to his soul, “It is enough, come up higher,” he could say with Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” As the light of earth grew dim a great peace fell upon his dear face, and He said softly, “Come, Jesus, oh, come quickly.” As we watched the light fading from his eyes once moro his lips moved and we caught the words faintly uttered with his dying breath, “Jesus, my Jesus,” and the suffering, struggling frame was free.
When I remember how my beautiful, talented grand- mother fell beneath the rum curse — tho demon alcohol so taking possession of her mind, body and soul that she sacrificed her own life, her husband’s happiness, her home and her children upon its unholy altar, I am roused to every effort to banish the cause of all the misery.
When I think of her living children deprived of their birthright, tho right of every child to be well-born, — when I remember the little lifeless frames laid in the old ceme- tery and know they were murdered, yes, murdered by the same rum fiend; when I think of my noble father, hating with intense hatred the demon that wrought such havoc in his childhood’s home, and himself cursed with its con- suming appetite; when I think of these things that have been burned into my memory, is it to be wondered at that I urge an aggressive warfare as well as a defensive one? Is it surprising that I glory in every department of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in its work of pre- vention, uplift and reform? I may well bej“instant in sea- son and out of season.” I long and work and pray for that day when the people shall be awakened and put away this greatest of all evils from their midst that future gen- erations may not be cursed.
It is a part of my religion to look well aftei? the cheer- fulness of life, and let the dismals shift for themselves, believing with good Sir Thomas More that it is wise to be “merrie’in God.” — Louisa M. Alcott .
Sweeter than any grace of tint or form; nobler than the keen look of intellect, or the massive breadth of power; noblest when it is added on to these — i^ the beauty with which holiness of soul lights up the face. It makes the plainest features pleasant to look upon; it lights up the sunken eyes of sickness, smooths the worn brow of care, wreathes the drawn lips of suffering into smiles, and gives to age a glory which is like a foreshad- owing of the very “crown of life.” Some one has said that a woman cannot choose whether she shall be beauti- ful at twenty, but that it is her own fault if she is not beautiful by the time she is sixty. True — and for men as well as for women. As life goes on our faces becomo what we make them — the silent outgrowth of the charac- terjwithin. — Brooke Herford , D . D., in “ Sermons of Courage and Cheer."
January 3, 1895.
ANOTHER PAGE WRITTEN IN BLOOD.
BY HON. A. B. RICHMOND.
He that is drunken
Is outlawed by himself ; all kind of ill
Did with his liquor slide into his veins.
—George Herbert.
I have recently finished my eighty-eighth homicide case in our court of Oyer and Terminer . Four young men were riding together along a lonely road in our county. They had with them a bottle of diluted alcohol, of whioh in a spirit of friendship they drank freely. The poison had been purchased at a licensed drug store under the guise of a medical prescription. A slight admixture of some other drug had been added to4t by the pharmacist, to cheat the law and avoid its penalties.
The young men had left the little village where they procured the murderous compound in apparently the most friendly feeling. One of them was a married man.
A few miles from the place of the murder his young wife with her babe waited for the return of the affectionate husband and father.
It was a very cold night in March; at a late hour a 6torm of sleet, snow and wind had set in, and as it beat upon the window panes of the cottage the young mother hoped and prayed that her husband would soon return or that he had stopped at the village for the night. But at that very moment her husband, wounded and bleeding, was freezing to death by the roadside. In a drunken fight he had been knocked from his wagon, and left in a help- less condition by his drunken companions to die.
In the early morning he was discovered by a neighbor who was passing by, and taken to his home. He lived several days after the shock from amputation of his frozen lower limbs. He made a statement in articulis mortis which was read in evidence in the trial of his companions for “involuntary manslaughter.” It was the old, old story: First, a drink taken in fellowship; another, and yet another. The licensed demon that lurks in every intox- icating cup gained the ascendency. A thoughtless word uttered in maudlin drunkenness aroused the anger of one of the young men; it was followed by a blow. When the trouble ended one of the number lay stunned and bleed- ing upon the frozen ground by the roadside. Partially sobered and alarmed at what had been done, the other three young men fled from the place, leaving their com- panion to freeze and die. Had they moved the unfort- unate man to the nearest house, his wounds were not of so aggravated a character as to have produced death; but a consciousness of guilt, with the unreasoning influence of strong drink made cowards of them all.
They were arraigned for trial before the court that had granted the license to the druggist to Bell alcohol under the guise and protection of a medical prescription. After a lengthy trial, whioh cost the county more than it re- ceived for a score of licenses, the young men were con- victed with a recommendation to the mercy of the court. And very proper it is that the eburt should heed the rec- ommendation, for it was accessory to the crime the de- fendants committed through its licensed influence. Yes, the sentence of the court should be tempered with mercy for it placed the primordial cause of the murder within easy reach of three young men, who without its influence would have been as guiltless of crime as the judge who pronounced the sentence of the law.
In the dying declarations of the deceased his last words were, “Whisky was at the bottom of it.” Oh, oft told tale of crime and woe! How repeatedly have I heard it in our so-called “courts of justice” (?) and how often for the same reason have I heard “recommendations 1 6 mercy” by the jury, but never that the court should refuse to license the sale of the infernal spirit that prompts the commission of all the crimes defined in criminal code.
WHAT IS THE REMEDY FOB THE EVIL?
Experience of nearly half a century in our courts and the arena of politics has satisfied me that there is but one remedy for the great evil of licensed rum and its certain effects, that is to put the ballot into the hands of woman. Turn into the turgid pool of politics the pure stream of woman’s influence and the cleansing of the nation from the curse of the liquor traffic would be as thorough as was that of the “Angean stables” by Hercules. The history of the world has shown that the courage of women in all contests for human rights and morality far exceeds that of men in their contests for human depravity and immu- nity for crime. It is too late in the light of the nine- teenth century to attempt to deny the intellectual power of woman and her moral influence on the destinies of the people. Put the ballot in her hands and it will do more to destroy the social evil than a century of mission efforts without it. Let women vote and maudlin senti- mentality will give way to a desire for the welfare of hus- bands, sons and fathers. The drinking saloon and license law will never survive one election, when their right to remain on our streets or in our statute books shall be submitted to the votes of the whole people.
Meadvillet Pa.
January 3, 1895.
THE UNION SIGNAL.
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7
BY FREDERICK SHERLOCK.
Sign the pledge! we now entreat you;
Come with us and take your stand,
Many ftiends with joy will greet you,
Give you welcome to our band!
Sign the pledge! our country calls you,
Bids you help us in the fight;
Ere the tempting cup enthralls you Sign the pledge! oh, sign to-night!
Sign the pledge! The promise given In the name of God Most High,
Will encourage some who’ve striven From the dangerous path to fly!
Your example thus to others Shall be as a guiding light;
For the sake of weaker brothers,
Sign the pledge! oh, sign to-night!
Sign the pledge! The children’s voices Rise to heaven — oh, heed their cry!
Many a fresh young heart rejoices,
Many a cheer supplants a sigh,
When fond parents help their dear ones In the battle of the right,
For the sake of precious near ones,
Sign the pledge then! Sign to-night!
— From the Church Monthly.
GYPSIE LINNETT.
BY ADA M. MELVILLE.
Gypsie came to our house in the middle of winter, when the snow was piled up away above our fence. It was so cold that it drove the tears to one’s eyes, and then froze them on one’s cheeks.
I guess I was the only one who was glad to see the lit- tle fellow. All mother said was that there were too many mouths to fill already without another, and father mut- tered a curse, and told us to “keep that thing out of his sight.” That made Tim cry, — he was only seven years old, and I was ten, — but I just made up my mind that poor little Gypsie should not be without one friend in the house. I wanted to take him up to the little loft where Tim and I slept, but it was too cold up there, and besides we did not know how to take care of him.
(Mother came and peeked over my shoulder right after the period there, and says people won’t know but what I am talking about a baby. But Gypsie is a bird.)
Now I’ll begin over again, only, first, I want you to know why I am writing this story. The editor of The Union Signal wrote to Miss Jennis, the captain of our Loyal Temperance Legion, and asked her for something real true and interesting for the paper. Now what did Miss Jennis do but set the Legion to work. We are to each write something that we think will help somoonej or interest them. I could think of nothing but about Gyp- sie Linnett, and I only hope Miss Jennis will think it good enough to send to The Union Signal.
Now I’ll start again.
There was a little girl who used to live next door to us. She was the only girl in the whole street. Her folks were poor, but they were nice people, and mother let me go over there real often to play. Reenie, — that was the little girl’s name, — had a bird given to her for a birthday pres- ent. One day she and I were out playing, when a run- away team came flying round the corner. I tried to get Reenie and me out of the way, but we were knocked down. She was hurt so badly she never got well. I felt someway as if it was all my fault, but her mother said Reenie would have been killed at once instead of living four months after she was hurt, if I hadn’t been there. She was the only playmate I ever had, and I could hardly bear it when she died.
Her mother wanted to give me something, and the only thing she had of Reenie’s that she thought I would like was her bird; so she brought him over that cold day I started to tell you about, all cuddled up in her hand and the cage in her other hand.
We weren’t real happy just about then, and we were ever and ever so poor. Mother had been sick all summer, then father lost his work, and learned to drink. By and by he Jorgot how to be kind, and sometimes we were afraid of him.
We hung Gypsie Linnett up in the kitchen window, — I mean we hung up his cage. His cage was the only really
nice thing in the room, and he was the nicest looking per- son. (Oh, dear! a bird isn’t a person. But you see we have all come to love him so, he seems like one of the family.)
I must tell you how Gyp looked. He wasn’t just like the canaries you see in the windows for sale. He was yellow and brown, and some parts of him almost black. His head was dark, then came a pretty, yellow collar, and his wings were like his head. His tail was yellow, and his breast a real pale yellow. He had funny little ruffles on his shoulders, a row of tiny feathers curling up like a girl’s bangs when they’re combed right.
(Now I’m coming to the interesting part.)
A few minutes aftor Gypsie came into the house, father took the last good chair and the only looking-glass we had and went out to sell them for whisky. Mother threw herself face down on the bed. It was awful cold. Tim and I took Gyp’s cage and set it down between us by the stove. There was a bit of cold potato and a scrap of stale bread, not enough for a meal, so we gave them to our bird. He seemed to think they were pretty nice. We wanted him to sing, but either it was too cold or he felt strange.
By and by we called mother to get dinner, but there wasn’t anything to cook. Mother said she didn’t want any and that we could go and beg if we wanted some. She wouldn’t ever let us beg before. We fouud a part of a cabbage and a couple of frozen turnips near the mar- ket. Then we went to the wood-market and the men let us pick up a basket of chips.
We lived on the cabbage and turnips that day and the next. Father kept away and mother didn’t want anything but water. Her cheeks were red but she didn’t look right and I was scared. Tim was too little to understand. All he wanted, poor little chap, was a “drink of milk and a piece of bread and butter.”
Gypsie was fed all right, because Reenie’s mother gave us a whole lot of seed, and we could get water easy enough when it wasn’t frozen. But Tim and I were so dreadful hungry we could hardly keep from crying.
Chicago, 111.
(Concluded next iveek.)
FOR TIRED LITTLE FOLK.
“Auntie, please tell me something nice to do. I’m tired of Sunday. It’s too late to go out, its too early for the lamp, and the wrong time for everything.”
“Well, let me see,” said auntie. “Can you tell me any one in the Bible whose name begins with A?”
“Yes; Ac(am.”
“I’ll tell you a B,” said auntie. “Benjamin. Now a C.” “Cain.”
“Right^” said Aunt Sarah.
“Let me tell D,” said Joe, hearing our talk. “Daniel.” And so we went through all the letters of the alphabet, and before we thought of it we were called to supper, the house was lighted, and we had a fine time. Try it. — May- flower.
SOFT-SHELLED NUTS.
371.
NUMERICAL ENIGMA.
I am composed of fourteen letters.
My 1, 6, 5, 7, 3 is an article of furnitare.
My 2, 10, 11 is a covering for the head.
My 9, 13, 14 is a cry made by a cat.
My 12, 4, 8 is a bricklayer’s tray for mortar.
My whole was once a prominent temperance leader, who led many to sign the pledge. Cecille Wade.
372.
OBOS8WORD ENIGMA.
In one, not in two.
In me, not in you.
In wild, not in tame.
In you, not in 6ame.
In pork, not in lean.
In dirt, not in clean.
In ask, not in tell.
My whole a city you know well.
Oliver K. Evans.
373.
BEHEADINGS AND CURTAILINGS.
1. Behead a girl’s name and leave a plague.
Behead it again and leave something that is very cold.
2. Curtail a fowl and leave a pronoun.
3. Behead and curtail a part of the body and leave a part of the body.
4. Behead and curtail a part of the body and add a tail and leave something that lives in the water.
5. Behead and curtail a farm utensil and leave an inter- jection. Alice Thayer.
Send all replies and original puzzles to Puzzle Editor, The Union Signal, The Temple, Chicago, 111.
ANSWERS TO PUZZLES PUBLISHED DECEMBER 13.
363. 1, D-rink. 2, E-vent. 3, C-heat. 4, E-very. 5, M-arch. 6, B-last. 7, E-late. 8, R-ally. December.
364. Genesis 23:9. 2, Esther. 3, Psalm 3:9.
365. Holmes.
Correct answers: Fanny H. Wingert; Isa Olla Boyle; Mary Sidwell.
Dear Boys and Girls: — Come up close as you can, for these are cold winter days, and our Corner, too, is a very crowded place just now.
How many of the school boys and girls (and I expect that includes nearly all of you) find geography a very hard study? Yes, boundaries are not easy to remember, the capitals of the various countries and other hard facts. For this reason, many scholars, and especially those whose memories are not strong, find geography “poky” and not easy to learn.
A certaiu boy of whom I have heard, however, thought differently. To him this study was play; he had the high- est marks of any in his class, and his teacher was very proud of him. He could answer every question perfectly, and give in addition many facts of interest about people and countries. The other boys and girls all wondered how he did it, for he was not any smarter than the others.
The secret was that he had a wise mother. She had been a teacher, and had read a great many books of travel. When her boys were little she bought a nice globe, and when their father was away from home this globe was put in the center of the table at meal time, and all their talk was on a certain locality or country, which had been pre- viously chosen.
When a book of travel was read the boys would repeat the story from memory, pointing out the places upon the globe, and thus geography was thoroughly and correctly learned. It was better far than any game, and you can see how this home practice helped to make both the boys the best scholars in their classes.
Of course, the mother did a good deal of study herself for this. As a teacher, she had been used to hearing her scholars’ answers without referring to the atlas. Now, for the sake of her boys, she looked up every question before- hand in the gazetteer and geography.
Why not suggest this plan to father or mother and try it in your own homes, dear Cozy Cornerers? I’d like to see a globe on every temperance table. When you have learned enough of general geography you can follow on your globe the progress of the ribbon white “around the world.” '
Yours for solid information,
NEPHEW8 AND NIECES.
Will you please accept me as one of your Cozy Corner- ers? I am a temperance boy of ten. This is the first time I have written. Here is a puzzle I just composed to-night. Oliver K. Evans.
Yorkville, III.
You are one of us, Oliver. Your puzzle is a good cross- word, and is among our Soft-Shelled Nuts this week. Many thanks.
I would like to join the Cozy Corner, and become one of the nieces. We used to have an L. T. L. here, but have not had one for a long time. I like the Cozy Corner very much. Madge Baker.
Summerside , P. E. I.
We are glad you like us, and we know we’ll like you, for of course, you’re a temperance girl, Madge.
I was interested in hearing my uncle tell about the W. C. T. U. Convention. My uncle and two of my aunts at- tended the Convention. I would have liked very much to have been there and seen Frances E. Willard and “Aunt Jane.” Mary Sidwell.
Flushing, O.
And Aunt Jane would have dearly loved to have seen you, little niece.
There are many saloons here, but I hope that they will soon be overcome. There are so few temperance people here that Satan got ahead of us this election.
Galveston, Tex. Clara Detering.
You will help to sound our war-cry, “Saloons Must Go,” won’t you, Clara?
We have a Sunday-school in the public schoolhouse, but no L. T. L. or W. C. T. U. out here, but may be will have some day. I hope so. Please may I join the Cozy Cor- ner if there is room? Georgia I. T. E. Ferris.
Highland Park, Wayne Co., Mich.
When you get a little bigger, Georgia, you can start ar. L. T. L. by yourself.
I like to read the Cozy Corner very much. I take a little temperance paper called the Midget. It is edited by a little girl twelve years old.
Newark, Del. • Florence P. Butler.
And are you a temperance girl, too?
#3
T.j
*1 4. 0**
t
Januaby 3, 1895.
8
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Organ of the World's and National Woman’* Christian Temperance Union EDITOR-IN-CHIEF— Frances E. Willard.
CORRESPONDING EDITOR— Lady Henry Somerset.
MANAGING EDITOR— Margaret A. Sudduth.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR— Jennie A. Stewart.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR— Mrs. Katharine Lente Stevenson.
Published by the Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association. Mrs. Caroline F. Grow, Business Manager.
The Temple, Cor. Monroe and La Salle Streets, Chicago, 111.
THE UNION SIGNAL.
Republic for permitting the illiterate foreign vote to weigh as much as the best balanced vote of a Christian patriot who is “to the manor born.”
The man who sawed off the bough between himself and the tree trunk was not more fatuous than the men of this country who persist in carrying out this plan. Women could by no means have made a madder muddle. If luna- tics had done it, they would have aoted according to their reputation. It is thought to be a great gain that in the new constitution of New York a man must have been in this country ninety days instead of ten before he votes. The “one man” power has much to justify it in the de- cency of European cities. “Slums” are an Anglo-Saxon product, and follow in the wake of so-called “representa- tive government.” But this is because the government is one of halfness rather than wholeness. The object les- son of the world’s cities indicates to-day that the “one
REPORT OF THE GOVERNMENT COMMISSION ON THE RAILWAY STRIKE.
Entered at the Post-office, Chicago, 111., as second-class matter.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
Mrs. Matilda B. Carse. President. Mrs. L. A. Hagans, Tieasurei'.
Miss FRANCES E. WILLARD, Evanston , 111.
Lady Henry Somerset, London , Eng.
Mrs. Hannah J. Bailey, Winthrop Center, Me.
Mrs. Mary T. Lathrap, Jackson, Mich.
MRS. Helen M. Barker, Chicago.
Mme. Louise Demurest, New York City.
Mrs. L. H. Plumb, Streato r. III.
Mrs. E. B. Ingalls, St. Louu , Mo. OFFICERS OF THE NATIONAL W. C. T. U.
President.— Mies Frances E. Willard, Evaustou, 111.
Vice- Piesident-at- Large — Mrs. L. M. N. Stevens. Portland, Me.
Corresponding Secreraty Mrs. Katharine Lente Stevenson, The
Temple, Chicago.
Recording Secretary.— Mrs Clara C. Hoffman, Kansas City, Mo, Assistant Recording Secretary.— Mrs. F. E. Beauchamp, Lexington, Ky. Treasurer.— Mrs. Hei.en M. Barker, Office: The Temple, Chicago, 111.
CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER.
SINCE OUR LA8T ISSUE AND EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS.
Contributed:
Poem, The New Year. By W. Evans Darby, LL. D.... 2
Pierre and Jean, Twins. By Elizabeth Cumings 2
The English Cradle of the Temperance Reform. By
Frances E. Willard 2
The Mother-Spirit. By Rev. W. Howatt Gardner •
“When Doctors Disagree.” I. By Kate C. Bushnell,
M. D.... 3
Third Biennial Convention of the World’s W. C. T. U. 4
CORRESPONDENCE t
Local Union.. 5
Temperance Temple Items 5
The Household:
Poem, The Past. By Mary Lowe Dickinson 6
The Secret of Her Devotion. By Edith Gray. . 6
Another Page Written in Blood. By Hon. A. B. Rich- mond • 6
r Children:
Poem, “Sign the Pledge.” By Frederick Sherlock 7
Gypsie Linnett. By Ada M. Melville 7
Soft-Shelled Nuts 7
AUNT JANE’8 COZV CORNER 7
Editorial articles:
“Faithful are the Wounds of a Friend” 8
Report of the Government Commission on the Railway
Strike 8
Give Us the Facts 9
Self-seekers in Politics 9
The Watch Tower 9
State Reporters :••• „ 10
News from the Field:
Wisconsin— Pennsylvania — Alabama — New Mexico-
New Hampshire. < 10,12
News in a Nutshell 12
Corresponding Secretary’s Notes 12
organizers’ Corner: 13
Treasurer’s Corner 13
National Temperance Hospital 13
Temple Receipts 13
Publisher’s Department
Our Library Table 14
Signal Notes * 16
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.— Luke 12: 13.
“FAITHFUL ARE THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND.”
Perhaps no foreigner has condensed into a sentence so much keen observation and good sense as the great labor leader, John Burns, in answer to the inevitable newspaper question, What do you think of this country? He says:
Schools splendid, libraries excellent, jails too good, roads bad, streets worse, drainage the same, art museums good for the age of the country, corporations exacting, tyrannical and extravagant; railway traveling palatial for the rich and better than any I have ever seen tor the poor; cut off the headlines of your newspapers and you have a good carcass left, but still too much of a journalistic slaughter-house; municipal life considerably below that of any in Europe.
“Oh wad somo powor the giftie gie us To see oursel’s as ithers seo usl”
This petition is being answered by varied and compe- tent witnesses in these later times. As a stranger recog- nizes the family likeness in its various members, so the eye of an intelligent observer from a distance brings out the typical traits of a nation in the composite word- photograph of John Burns. Many dislike him for his plainness of speech, but we must not forget that he is jnst as straightforward with his own people. When he talks to the slums in London he says, “Nobody can help you out while you continue to be sots.” As for ourselves we know that municipal misrule is the price paid by the
man” power is better calculated to keep those cities clean, and* to lift the submerged tenth out of the gutter, than the government by half the population expressing their party idolatry and personal cupidity at the ballot-box; for the management of a city is but a larger form of housekeeping, and men working at it alone have intro- duced the same untidy, unsystematic, spendthrift ways that they do into their own habitation when they keep bach- elor’s hall. It is not good for man to be alone anywhere, and least of ajl when he sets up housekeeping individu- ally or by municipal organization. When the women of New York city band together it is first of all to clean the streets, to improve the drainage, to send a breath of fresh air through the foul tenement districts; to scour out the filthy sweating dens. Their gospel is first of all a gospel of soapsuds, using the wholesome emblem in a sense sym- bolic as well as practical.
John Burns is right; the plague spotf of the land are its municipal corporations as men have organized them. Whatever may be said of women voting generally, noth- ing but good has come of their participation in munici- pal affairs. But for the liquor system and the baser ele- ments of the foreign vote, we have every confidence that the men of this country would call us to the rescue by enacting statutes in the legislatures this winder that should give to the housekeeping element of the nation full power to “housekeep” in its untidy towns and cities that they might become wholesome and sane, “clothed and in their right mind.”
But the way to bring this about in the face of organ- ized and brutal opposition is for all women with heads on their shoulders and hearts in their breasts to organize municipal leagues and set about doing with the left hand what they have not yet been empowered to do. with the right. It is better to work that way to clean up the towns and cities in which they are obliged to live and rear their children than to let them go unclean.
The women who have endeared themselves to the peo- ple in their respective communities by friendly and help- ful work should lead this movement, calling a meeting of women for the express purppse of organizing a munici- pal league, and all the good men will be glad and gracious and will help them all they can. Let the league begin by improving the condition of the sidewalks and streets, by cleaning off from the bill boards the odious placards and advertisements that extend *from Portland to San Antonio and Boston to San Francisco; let them try to induce the good people in the churches to open the base- ments or at least one room in the basement where hot coffee and sandwiches are offered for sale at a less price than the saloon charges for the “refreshments” that it sets out as a decoy. Let the helpfulness of the life of Christ be manifest in the daily proceedings of those who “profess and call themselves Christians” not only in their individual but corporate capacity as a Woman’s League, and we shall soon have a different atmosphere, a turning of the hearts of the less protected to the more protected classes, a sense of community and interdependence, with- out which no amount of prayer and psalm and sermon can possibly make the people believe that those who go to church really mean what they say.
Go on, John Burns, speak your full mind. The polit- ical papers of the old parties are doing their best to dis- count you with the reputable home folk of the nation. They cannot attack your character and so they will try to build up a wrong estimate of your words. This is the only way in which they can minimize the influence of our reformers in the present seething tide of public opinion. But they treat you no worse than they do their own peo- ple who dare to antagonize existing evils. It is but a few days since we saw a picture of the President of our Na- tional Woman’s Christian Temperance Union hawked about in a metropolitan newspaper with this sentence under it: “Here is thq woman who wants to reform the world by having alcohol and living pictures abolished, women to be on the police force and the ships christened with water instead of champagne.”
It is not because he is an Englishman that the capital- istic and liquor press assails John Burns, but it is be- cause he is a deadly foe of corporations and of saloons.
National Convention news has necessarily crowded out much important current matter, yet the report of the commission appointed by the government to investigate the great railway strike of last summer is too full of in- terest to be ignored by us, oven though its appearance is tardy.
The importance of this commission is apparent at a glance. To get at the facts is the first step necessary to a solution of the difficulties in the labor problem and the facts in even one case will give the clue to the causes which underlie all strikes. Such a commission affords the only chance of discovering these facts. Newspaper accounts and interviews will be necessarily limited to partial state- ments by the parties to the controversy and will inevita- bly be colored, even though unintentionally, with preju- dice, and there can be no sifting of the evidence. But a commission appointed as this one was is likely to reach, in the main at least, the truth.
The chief important facts which it presents are these: First, in regard to the self-assumed prerogatives of the famous “General Managers’ Association.” This associa- tion had no corporate existence, could not have legally, yet the powers and functions which it had already arro- gated to itself, or was evidently preparing to assume, were of the most far-reaching character. The association was composed of the high railway officials of all railroads centering or terminating in Chicago, twenty-four in num- ber, and while its avowed purpose was simply the consid- eration of problems arising from the management of these roads, it really undertook very different tasks. At one time when the switohqien of these roads asked for higher pay, the discussion of the subject was carried on entirely by the general managers’ association as one party, and its dictum was decisive in the matter. The association also prepared a full schedule of the prices paid the employes of each of the twenty-four roads, and each member was given a copy. No attempt at equaliza- tion of wages had yet been made, but the import of such an action is too clear to be disputed. One function of the association was to assist each of the twenty-four roads in any trouble it might have with its employes, and as one* means to this end agencies were formed through which to secure men to take the strikers’ places. Other actions of similar character established beyond a peradventure the fact that in case of any trouble between any of these roads and its employes, the laborers had to meet the combined power of the twenty-four roads. The report characterizes this unwarranted usurpation of power as “dangerous to the people and their liberties, as well as tg employes and their rights.”
In its just and discriminating discussion of the associa- tion the report makes the further significant comments: “Until the railroads set the example, a general union of railway employes was never attempted. ... So long as railroads are thus permitted to combine to fix wages and for their joint protection, it would be rank injustice to deny the right of all labor npon railroads to unite for similar purposes. . . . The refusal of the general
managers’ association to recognize and deal with such a combination of labor as the American railway union seems arrogant and absurd.”
In regard to the condition of affairs at Pullman, the following facts are given: The Pullman Company was organized in 1867, with a capital of $1,000,000; it has now, twenty-seven years later, a paid-up capital of $36,- 000,000; how much of this is new capital invested the report does not say. For over twenty years the company has paid two per cent quarterly dividends, and it has laid up a surplus of nearly $25,000,000. The claim of the Pullman Company that it kept its works running at an actual loss in order to keep its laborers employed takes an altogether different aspect in the light thrown upon it by this investigation. The commission says that the sys- tem at Pullman “enables the managers at all times to assert with great vigor its assumed right to fix wages and rents absolutely and to repress that sort of independence which leads to labor organizations and their attempts at mediation, arbitration, strikes, etc.” On the other hand, the same conditions made the cessation of work more dis- astrous to the company than to most companies. “The Pullman Company,”, says the report, “could hardly shut down for seven and a half months at a cost and loss of less than one per cent upon its capital and surplus. To continue running was for its obvious and unfair advantage so long as it could divide losses equally with labor. . . . The commission thinks that the evidence show$ that it (the company) sought to keep running mainly for its own benefit as a manufacturer, that its plant might not rust, that its competitors might not invade its. territory, that it might keep its cars in repair, that it might be ready for resumption when business revived with a live plant and competent help, and that its revenue from its tenements might continue.” Moreover, the commission indicates that this claim of the company to be doing work at a loss
f
(9) 9
January 3, 1895.
was that most deceptive and misleading of all statements, a half truth, for “the company based its entire contention as to every department upon the facts in reference to car- building. The purpose of the management was obviously to rest the whole matter upon cost, etc., in its most crip- pled department, excluding from consideration the facts as to wag 3s in its repair department.”
The i eport recommends some system of arbitration and conciliation as temporary expedients, and urges that whatever any one may think of labor organizations they are with us to stay, and asks, “Is it not wise to fully recognize them by law, to admit their necessity as labor guides and protectors, to conserve their usefulness, in- crease their responsibility, and to prevent their follies and aggressions by conferring upon them the privileges en- joyed by corporations, with like proper restrictions and regulations?”
These facts confirm statements already made in these columns; that there is on the part of capital a widely con- certed effort to so combine its forces as to be able to dic- tate its own terms to laborers; that the success of this attempt would result in a slavery of the laboring classes as abject and hopeless as any which has ever existed in the history of the world; that it was the perception of the dangers which threatened them, even more than pres- ent suffering, which goaded the laborers to their desper- ate struggle of last summer.
The strike has been very generally termed a failure and in a certain sense it was. It did not reach the immediate ends aimed at, but in the face of the report of this com- mission, we do not regard the strike as having failed of its mission. We would not be misunderstood as approv- ing of strikes. We fully agree with the commission that “strikes, boycotts and lockouts are barbarisms unfit for the intelligence of this age. . . . They are war —
internecine war — and call for progress to a higher plane of education and intelligence in adjusting the relations of capital and labor.” But if the contest of last summer with all of its disastrous results to the business interests of the nation shall have the effect of bringing the facts clearly before the thinking people of the nation, there is reason to hope that greater and more disastrous conflicts will be averted, and that we have already entered upon the road which shall lead to the final solution of our compli- cated financial and labor troubles.
“GIVE US THE FACTS.”
A committee of fifty men — no women — representing different communities and occupations and presided over by Seth Low, LL. D., president Columbia College, New York city, has decided to take up the study of the liquor question in its personal aspect. There is a sub-com- mittee on the physiological and pathological aspects of the drink problem which sends out the following ques- tions:
1. Is the regular consumption of a moderate quantity of whisky, wine or beer conducive to the maintenance of health and working power in any class of men? If so, in what class, and what is the average quantity thus useful?
2. What is the quantity of whisky, wrne or beer which the average man in good health may consume daily with- out special risk of injuring his health? Does this vary in connection with variations of age, of climate or of oc- cupation, and what are those variations?
It seems to us it would be better to say “what, if any, is the quantity of whisky.” The questions are all formulated in the affirmative, whereas to our thinking they should have been perfectly colorless. In a letter which has been prepared by the sup-committee to be circulated all through the country the questions are as follows:
1. Age. 2. Occupation. 3. Arc you a total abstainer? 4. If so, have you always been so? 5. Do you drink spirits, wine, or beer occasionally as a social function, but not daily? 6. Do you drink spirits, wine or beer every day as a matter of habit? If so, please state the kind and the amount of liquor thus consumed. (If affirmative answers are given to either of the last two questions please state whether any particular form of alcoholic drink is in your case found to be specially desirable or undesirable.) 7. Are you aware of any chronic disturb- ance of your health; and if so what is its nature? 8. Give any facts derived from your personal experience which will throw light on the problems under investiga- tion.
The sub-committee is presided over by Dr. John S. Billings, of the Army Medical Museum, Washington, D. C., and so far as we can form an opinion its “leanings” toward total abstinence are not so strong as to render its personal preference formidable to the liquor monopoly. On the larger committee there are many staunch teeto- talers, and the treasurer of that committee is William E. Dodge, who certainly ought to be a teetotaler; whether he is or not we do not know. However this may be, we are disposed to accept the movement in good faith and wish it every success. It is a little odd, however, that at this stage in the proceedings women are as much ignored in the investigation as if they were not in the world, for they are neither on the committee nor is there any inti- mation of sending circulars to them. Probably it i3 recognized that as a class they are teetotalers.
THE UNION SIGNAL.
It seems to us that it would have been a very reason- able scientific inpvement to have sent an inquiry to all those institutions where strong drink is ruled out — as in jails and penitentiaries — and to have ascertained whether the health of the inmates has suffered from the total dis- use of alcoholics. Another point that occurs to us relates to the scientific fact that those who use intoxicating liquors are in direct proportion to the amount used rendered less normal in their judgment, so that what they report as the effect of intoxicants on their “minds, bodies and estates” might be altogether different from what would be reported by those who “take the consequences” in their homes and among their business associates.
In the famous Lexow committee Mr. Goff asked one of the captains of police to “tell us how many Christmas presents he received from liquor dealers.”
“None — hold on there, Mr. Goff,” said the captain.
“That is right, captain,” said Mr. Goff, while a laugh went round the court-room, “just tell us about a few of those presents. We have the evidence right here, and there is no use denying it.”
The witness said that he frequently received baskets of wine and fruit. Mr. Goff then asked:
“There were collections made for the presents for you, were there not?”
“Not to my knowledge; I didn’t know of any such thing, Mr. Goff,” answered the captain.
“Well, captain, what were you doing all those years that you had no knowledge of what was going on right around you?”
“Oh, I was busy.”
It is refreshing to think that men like these are still to report concerning the violations of the excise law by the saloon-keeper and to settle for the home people, who have no voice whatever in settling the question of purity or impurity, living pictures, theatrical exhibitions, Sunday concerts, etc. In fact, we live in a country beautiful by reason of its justice and startling on account of its rapid progress toward decent standards of public life, public amusement and public conduct generally.
“SELF-SEEKERS” IN POLITICS.
In a recent editorial note on Joseph Cook’s words, “no sex, no shirks, no simpletons in suffrage,” The Christian Advocate of New York says: “It seems to us that Mr. Cook has omitted two very important s’s; ‘no self-seek- ers’ and ‘no swindlers.’ ”
Now will any one tell us why Mr. Cook should have mentioned these two classes in connection with woman’s suffrage? There is no possible reason unless women are more generally self-seekers and swindlers than are men. Is this what The Advocate means to insinuate? It is quite possible. Fortunately, however, the facts are overwhelm- ingly against this chivalric (?) position. Women as a rule have not sought the ballot for their own selfish advance- ment, but from the most disinterested motives. Does any one question this statement?
At the woman’s congress in Chicago a yeiar ago, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave her testimony as to women seeking the ballot. She said: “It is a surprising fact that we have never been able to enlist women in any consider- able numbers to labor for their own emancipation They will work with the greatest enthusiasm for the church, for missions, for temperance, for anything and everything but their own emancipation.” Mrs. Stanton ought to be authority on the subject and the opposers of woman’s suffrage cannot deny her statement with very good grace since it has, until very recently, been their stock-in-trade argument that women did not want the ballot.
But if it has been proved that women could not be in- duced to demand the ballot for their own interests, they are surely acquitted of the charge of being generally self- seekers. However, something within the last twenty years has been making suffragists of the women with great rapidity. It is impossible to explain away satisfactorily to any candid mind the significance of the New York petitions for and against woman’s suffrage. Six hundred and fifty thousand women asking for the suffrage, fifteen thousand asking that it be withheld, mean to the ordinary, unsophisticated mind, that among intelligent women about forty to one want the ballot. Besides this, the Ad- vocate has long ago characterized the Woman’s Christian Temperance. Union as “little more than a suffrage associ- ation.”
It is difficult to decide whether the ignorance which this statement evinces of a great world movement should be denominated as lamentable or laughable. When the great paper which claims to be the oldest paper of American Methodism has time to spare for the consideration of such a small matter as an organization which Joseph Cook de- clares to be “the most powerful and the most useful ever formed by women,” of which Bishop Vincent says, As to the work of the organization as a whole, it is beyond praise,” and which the Ohio liquor dealers, in convention assembled, honored as being their “only enemy, we will gladly furnish said paper some enlightening literature.
It has been well said that three women, his mother, sis- ter and the daughter of Pharaoh, gave Moses to Egypt, and the babe hid in the bulrushes had more power than the rushing river that threatened to bear him away, though it is the most beneficent of all the rivers in the world.
* *
A young fellow who is rising above the level to which intoxicants early brought him, and seems likely to join the ranks of usefal men ere long, makes a good point in a recent letter to a friend: “I am getting strength, and trying to get where, in a year or two, they will not look on me as a person who is not likely to stay sober, but rather as one whom they can have confidence in. A drunkard has uphill work of it in business. The fact is, no busi- ness wants him unless it is the saloon, and the saloon- keeper can make so many to order that I guess he is not particular in catering to a confirmed toper; there is not so much profit in that kind of a man as in a young fellow just starting.”
***
It is stated that a notice is posted up in a library at Oxford University, England, forbidding women and dogs to enter the sacred enclosure.
***
Professor William James, of Harvard, in his text-book on psychology, says: “Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle in Jeffer- son’s play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, ‘I won’t count this time.’ Well, he may not count it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and stor- ing it up, to be used against him when the next tempta- tion comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict, scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we becomo permanent drunk- ards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres by so many separate acts and hours of work.”
***
The trouble with many women is they live in a teacup ii^tead of a world. Their unselfishness is a kind of expanded self-love for those to whom they sacrifice, those who are their own nearest kindred and life-long associates. The most of them have by no means learned that the possession of a true mother-heart involves the giving of sympathy and help to those who need it most; their mis- ery being their mortgage on the affections and help of the real mother-hearted woman. The reason that women take such narrow views is that their mental horizon is narrow; their minds are not like a great landscape stretch- ing away inimitably with every variety of scene, with heights, with mountains and plains, forest and prairie, country and town, and over all the great unfathomable moonlight heavens. Instead, they see the four walls of their home and do not look beyond its roof.
***
There are a thousand students in the Chicago University this year, of whom three hundred and eighteen are girls, and of these ninety-two are college graduates.
***
A young man who was run over by the cars and taken to a hospital was told that both legs must be amputated, and when he asked what was likely to be the result the surgeons were obliged to admit that his recovery was im- probable and if he had anything in particular that he wished to say this was the time to say it. He was lying on the operating table, and it was just before he was put under the influence of chloroform. The scene was one of infinite pathos. The surgeons stood around him, most of them men who had embraced a materialistic view of human destiny. The young man’s face was contracted under the pain he suffered; his manly form was mutilated beyond remedy. Nerving himself for the announcement, he said in a deep, steady voice: “My mother has begged me to declare myself for Christ; I have never done so. I regret it beyond what I can express, and I wish here and now to declare myself a soldier of the cross and to express my faith in Christ and what He has wrought for us, lifting up my heart to Him that He may prepare me for that which is preparing for me.” It is needless to say that among all those men of science and the world there was not one whose eyes did not fill with tears at the young man’s loyalty to the greatest principles and powers of which we know, — God and his mother. On Duty.
1 " *
* i , /
January 3, 1895.
1 0 (io)
STATE REPORTERS.
Alabama— Mrs. Julia H. McBryde, 308 St. Louis St., Mobile.
Arizona — Mrs. L. C. Hughes, Tucson.
Arkansas — Mrs. U. P. Edmonson, Little Rock.
California— Mrs. Dorcas J. Spencer, 826 Waller St., San Francisco. California (S.)— Miss G. T. Stickney, Temperance Temple, Los An- geles.
Carolina (N.) — Mrs. 3. V. Tomlinson, Greensboro.
Carolina (8.) — %
Colorado— Mrs. Dinnie McDoyle Hayes, Denver.
Conn ecticut— Miss M. Belle Smith, Rockfall.
Dakota (North)— Mrs D. W. Shinn, Casselton.
Dakota. (South)— -Mrs. Chestina S. Thorp, Britton.
Delaware— Mrs. Mary L. Cox. Middletown.
District of Columbia— Mrs. Clinton Smith, Y20 19th street, N. W. Washington.
Florida — Sallie J. Glenn, Tampa.
Georgia — Mrs. Isabella Webb Parks, South Atlanta.
Idaho — Mrs. Mary E. McGee, Nampa.
Illinois— Mrs. G. H. Read, 412 E. North street, Bloomington. Indiana— Mrs. Cornelia Meadows, 114 Line St., Evansville.
Indian Ten'itory — Mrs. Sarah Ford. Crosby, Muscogee.
Iowa— Mrs. Clara P. White, Volga.
Kansas — Mrs. S. S. Weatherby, Le Roy.
Kentucky— Miss Mary Rogers, 128 E. Maxwell street, Lexington.
Loti isia na-^-M rs. S. A. lvnupp, Lake ( harles.
Maine — Miss Mary French, Auburn.
Maryland — Mrs. Margaret A. Lake, 2231 St. Paul St, Baltimore. Massachusetts— Dr. Louise Purington. 23 Allston St., Dorchester, Michigan — Mrs. C. H. Johnson, Flint.
Minnesota — Mrs. Amy A. Green, 2208 Oakland avenue, Minneapolis Mississippi — Mrs. Annie E. Harper, Fayette.
Missouri — Miss Lilian Wood, Maryville.
Montana — Maggie E. Templeton, Helena.
Nebraska — Mrs. Dora V. Wheelock. Beatrice.
Nevada— Mrs. Lucy M. Vandeventer, Reno.
New Hampshire — Mrs. Mary E. Partridge, Claremont.
New Jersey — Mrs. N. L. Caminade, Trenton.
New Mexico — Mrs. Eva May Tucker, East Las Vegas.
New York — Mrs. Frances Graham, l.ockport.
Ohio — Mrs. Antoinette Clevenger, Wilmington.
Okl ihoma — Mrs. Sue Brown, Oklahoma City.
Oregon — Mrs. L. A. Nash, Corvallis.
Pennsylvania — Miss Adda Burch, Smethport.
Rhode Island— Miss Miriam Earle, ‘Valley Falls.
Tennessee — Mrs. T. P. Holman, Fayetteville.
'Texas — Mrs. Cornelia Keith Carter, West End, San Antonio.
Utah — Miss E. E. Shepard, 826 E. 7th East St., So. Salt Lake City. Vermont — Mrs. E. S. Farr, Bristol. $
Virginia — Mrs. Howard M. Hoge, Lincoln.
Virginia (TF.)— Miss Kate Ebert, Fairmont.
Washington (E ast)-
Wnshingtan ( West)— Mrs. Etta Jones, Kent.
Wisconsin — Miss Lois Russell, Eau Claire.
Wyoming— Mrs. F. A. Jones, Green River.
Canadian Reporter— Mrs. Margaret G. Ure, 772 Palace St.. Montreal.
WISCONSIN.
A DIGEST OF CONVENTIONS.
During the last few months our white-ribboners have seen busy with convention work. From every part of che state come cheering reports of helpful conventions, district and county.
We have suffered this year in Wisconsin from terrible forest fires; we keenly feel the “hard times”; we are suf- fering some confusion and loss through changing onr dis- tricts to correspond with the congressional districts; there are other hindrances to our work heretofore un- known to Wisconsin workers; but despite all these obstacles, which account for a rather smaller attendance than is usual at our conventions, yet the most encourag- ing enthusiasm and loyalty are reported, wise and broad plans of work were laid, and are now being prosecuted with self-sacrificing zeal and devotion.
In several cases part of the time of the convention was devoted to a school of methods, which will doubtless re- sult in good to our cause. More and more our women desire to be skilled workers, and they find the school of methods a wonderful help to that end.
There seemed to be a disposition on part of most qf the conventions to take up fewer departments of work, and to concentrate the energies on them, thus making a thorough success of the few, rather than accomplishing a little in many liues. Our women are learning the value of reporting their conventions and work. In one conven- tion a reporter was appointed for each organized county and one for all the unorganized counties, their duty being to send a report of the convention, written in a style to be interesting to outsiders, to every newspaper in their respective territories. Thus it was hoped, by means of all the newspapers in the district, to send to all the homes in that district a message of cheer, telling what “the tem- perance women” have done, and are planning to do.
A feature of several of the conventions was a “yonng people’s evening.” Sometimes it was a Demorest con- test, sometimes a miscellaneous temperance program, but always one result was that some young people were up- lifted and helped by this close contact with earnest work- ers, and ihe blessedness of helping so appealed to their hearts that more than one young life was reverently ded- icated to our cause.
In one convention the consecration service led by the district president assumed the form of each woman’s con- secrating herself to some special line of our work for one month. Who can estimate the good that will grow out of the faithful performance of such vows? Here are some of them, “To devote all my spare time for a month to working for subscribers to The Union Signal.” “The same for The Motor , our state paper.” “I will work with all loving tact and patience and faithfulness to secure the introduction of proper physiologies in our schools.” “I will work to interest people in and raise money for our W. 0. T. U. home for unfortunate girls.” “I can seldom go away from home, but I will promise that every person who comes into my home during the month shall be spoken to about the temperance work, and if possible enlisted in it.” “I will wear my white ribbon constantly, on ray work dress so that my children and the grocery boy and meat man shall know I ’don’t wear it ’for show.” “I will devote one month to helping make our L. T. L. more of a success.”
Much interest is reported in the Demorest contest work, one union having held nine silver and two gold medal contests.
THE UNION SIGNAL.
It is interesting to note the unanimity of sentiment in the resolutions of the various conventions. Almost with- out exception, though in differing phraseology, they pledge our snpport to that political party which in its platform and by its ballots declares for the prohibition of the liquor traffic and the enfranchisement of women. The equal suffrage resolutions grow more and more nu- merous and earnest and meaningful; and the intelligent white-ribboner who is not also an equal suffragist is now a rarity.
At several of onr conventions her comrades had great pleasure in again greeting our former state president, Mrs. Amy Kellogg Morse, whose old time ready helpfulness and unselfish, optimistic spirit were hailed with joy by our workers. We are more than glad to welcome back to Wisconsin Mrs. Morse and husband who is also a devoted and tireless Christian worker. The Congregational church at Tomah is to be congratulated on having secured Mr. Morse as its pastor.
We are all grateful for the convalescence of our beloved state treasurer, Mrs. Hetta S. Hastings, of Green Bay, who was long shut in with typhoid fever.
The hearts of onr white-ribboners go out in sympathy and prayer to 'our state president, Mrs. V. H. Campbell, who has recently been bereaved by the death of her father. May the God of all comfort be consciously and helpfully near her in these sad days when she tries to comfort her mother, and in the days when she comes back to begin again the constant jonrneyings, the wide correspondence, the heavy responsibilities of the office wherein she works so unremittingly for God and Home and Native Land.
Lois Russell, State Reporter. Eau Claire. .
PENNSYLVANIA PENCILINGS.
The rapid flight of time warns your reporter that she must be “up and doing” if she would begin the new year aright; so with this as an incentive we hasten to make the most of the material now on hand.
The great conventions are over and we have time to plan onr work for the coming year. The one special work of our state this year is to be organization, and to aid in the work two good women have been appointed, Mrs. Augusta Goodale Fairchild, of Frutcheys, Monroe county, and Mrs. U, K. Brown, Danville, Montour county.
May their efforts be abundantly blessed and they have the hearty cooperation of all the white-ribboners.
One new name has been added to the lecture bureau this year, that of Miss Lee Anna Starr, of Bellevue, Pa.
The following items of interest from Lehigh county are sent us. The superintendent of L. T. L. work dis- tributed, duringjthe past year, over twenty thousand pages of literature in the temperance school, besides this four thousand pages were distributed by the superintendent.
The press superintendent reports that the Allentown city papers have given nearly four and one-half columns of space for temperance items.
The Girls’ Parlor and Reading Room is doing a grand work for the young women of Allentown. This room is under the auspices of the white-ribboners and is the only one of its kind in the city. It has a fine circulating library, together with magazines and papers, and a fine piano is one of its attractions. This county held its sixth convention in September, and has taken up nine depart- ments of work.
Bucks county held its semi-annnal convention at Quaker- town, with a representation of twenty unions having a membership of 605 members, besides 79 honoraries, 42 Y’s and 20 Loyal Temperance Legions; 39 new members were added this past year.
This county shows a remarkable record for good work done as the following items will testify: eighty of the public schools use the indorsed text books, leaving fifty- three yet to be won over. They have contributed to the Temple fund, $194, $17.30 to Temperance Hospital, $25 for convention expenses, and have $132 balance in the county treasury.
Rev. C. H. Mead and the Silver Lake Quartette were the evening attractions at the convention. The Wakefield union has enjoyed the services of Mr. and Mrs. Dr. Whit- ney, who conducted a series of gospel temperance meet- ings. Emma D. Eyere, comity superintendent of temper- ance instruction, gave a delightful talk to the Wakefield L. T. L. Yardly L. T. L., under the efficient management of Mrs. Sarah B. Knowles and ten teachers, meets weekly, — one meeting in each mouth is devoted to Band of Mercy work. This Legion sent one dollar to L. T. L. room in the National Temperance Hospital.
Lawrence county holds a school of methods on the first Friday of each month at the home of the president, 118 East North street, New Castle. Any white-ribboner who should chance to be in the city or could make it conven- ient to come, is cordially invited to meet with the ladies. The first one tfiis year was conducted by Mrs. Butler, superintendent of temperance instruction, and who hopes to secure a local superintendent for every township in the county as well as to visit personally many of the schools. She urged unions $o put Mrs. Hunt’s Monthly Advices into every school. Croton union held a pastor social at the home of their president, Mrs. Lide Rhoads. Several delegates from the state convention were present and gave their reports. This union was the banner union for increase of membership. Its president is a recent con- vert to the white ribbon sisterhood.
Slippery Rock union held a parlor meeting at the home of Mrs. M. Hunt, at which several fine recitations were given, and Mrs. Alford spoke on the duty of the W. C. T. U. toward county fairs.
Lawrence county has elected Mrs. Maggie Speir Gibson to act as special reporter to help the state reporter for The Union Signal, an exarqple to other unions to “go and do likewise.”
Philadelphia Y’s gave a reception to Miss A. E. Thomas at First Y Headquarters on her return from National Convention, to which she was a delegate. A very pleasant social time was enjoyed. Speeches were made by Volney B. Cushing, of Maine, and Dr. Harriet B. French. Miss Thomas presented an excellent report. First Y also held a successful Donation Day on December 10. Fancy arti- cles were sold, and donations came in to gladden the hearts of the workers. First Y leads in good, practical
work. Their motto is “United for Victory.” A pretty souvenir bearing this inscription was given to every Y present Y night at state convention.
Darby nnion has erected and presented to the borough a free drinking fountain; the trough is a solid block of granite bearing the following inscription cut in the stone, and the letters gilded so as to be very plain:
“No drink is so good as pure water,
’Tis the one that never makes sad.”
On the end is inscribed, “Presented to the Borough by the Darby Women’s Christian Temperance Union, September 28, 1894.” The L. T. L. and school children took part in the dedicatory exercises.
Clearfield county sends out a very systematic and excel- lent plan of work, and we wish that space were granted us to specify a few of the many good points. Bradford union held a successful mothers’ meeting in December.
Grove City union, Mercer county, is arranging for a franchise contest, to be held in the near future. Mill- brook union has been bereaved by the death of their treas- urer, Miss Maria Smith. Among the number who have gone to join the great majority in the heavenly kingdom from our state, we name the following: Mrs. Mary Mc- Kee, McKees Rocks; Annie Moore, Drumore; Mrs. Asher Ecslin, Gravity, and Mr. Stearns, husband of our state superintendent of mercy.
Our state superintendent of L. T. L. being as yet unable to resume her work (though improving), has selected Mrs. Elma Preston as her assistant.
Pennsylvania was represented by thirty-four delegates at the National Convention.
Will not every county do as Lawrence county has done; appoint some one in every county who shall be expected to report to the state Reporter? But don’t wait for this. If no other way, will the corresponding secretary of each union send postal card reports? Don’t wait till the news is stale. During the past year I have been under special obligations to the press reporters of Bucks, Chester, Fay- ette, aud Luzerne counties, for good reports sent promptly. I hope tl^eyear to come may be richly crowned with God’s blessing on our work, and wish you all a merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Adda Burch,
State Reporter, Smethport.
ALABAMA.
THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION
of the W. C. T. U. is already to be marked as one of our most stirring ones; most probably it will be pronounced in time the most fruitful one yet held.
Miss Belle Kearney, always inspiring, always eloquent, was one of the speakers from a distance. Mrs. Tomlin- son, of North Carolina, and Miss Ellen Groenendyke, missionary from South Africa, were also appreciated guests.
The election of officers was especially happy. Mrs. Martha L. Spencer was unanimously elected president. She enters now on the fourth year of her leadership. Every year since the union of the state lias been in her hands it has increased its interest, widened its work and deepened its spirituality. Mrs. Spencer, though a North- ern woman by birth, is the incarnation of Southern sun- shine; she has a great, warm, sunny heart that enables her to see the best of everything and everybody, to smooth over all rough places, to press strongly on to the highest goal. Her sunny face and her bright smile inspire all with trust in her justice, amiability and unfaltering courage. She has that invincible softness that Miss Willard so ear- nestly recommends. No better officer could be chosen to lead the nnion.
Mrs. Sallie M. Eskew was elected recording secretary. Since the formation of the union she has, with the excep- tion of one year, ably filled that office. That one year her resignation was accepted with deep regret and only on condition that she fesume the office the next year.
Mrs. Annie R. Searcy was reelected treasurer; Mrs. Searcy is the right woman in the right place.
Miss Julia Tutwiler was reappointed superintendent of prison and jail work. She has long held that position in her native state, Alabama. She is the founder of the convict schools at the camps in the state, and holds from the governor of the state, office of superintendent of con- vict schools. No one gives to her department more self- sacrificing work than Miss Tutwilei;.
’ The new appointments are of women, equally earnest and zealous as are these, the tried and true. Of all the faithful W. C. T. U. workers in our state not one receives, or has ever received, a salary or any money recompense for labor. All is the free and eagerly offered gift of con- secrated women.
For the first time a fund is being raised by special call for state workers; an appropriate call and a much needed fand, for there should be in each state one or more women who give their whole time to the work; this cannot be
A cream of tartar baking powder. Highest of all in leavening strength. — Latest United States Government Food Report.
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Januaby 3, 1895.
THE UNION SIGNAL.
(ii) 1 1
done by any one without some sort of “liv- ing wage.” A new and important appoint- ment is to be made by the executive com- mittee: A woman, able and consecrated to the work, is to be sent by the union to the state capitol to remain all during the ses- sion of the legislature in the interest of tem- perance legislation. Delegates appointed to the next National are Mrs. Spencer and Miss Tutwiler. Mabtha Young,
Qreensborough.
NEW MEXICO.
GOOD WOEK OF THE CATSKILL UNION.
November 14, 1893, Mrs. M. J. Borden, territorial president of New Mexico, organ- ized a Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of seven members at Catskill. At the second meeting twelve members were enrolled a#d growth in strength has been the watchword since that time.
At their third meeting they discussed the question of building a church as their year’s work. Committees were appointed to di- rect and assist in raising the necessary amount of funds. Entertainments were given, mill owners waited upon for dona- tions of lumber, Mr. Pels interviewed con- cerning lots on which to build, and citizens allowed to give as much money as they wished.
The profits from entertainments were vastly more than the women expected in so small a place as Catskill. Men responded generously to this call for aid from the W. C. T. U. and seem to have left nothing un- done which would help to accomplish the task undertaken. Some donated their ser- vices, thus lessening the cost of the build- ing very materially. Step at a time the carpenter’s, plasterer’s and painter’s work was completed. The W. C. T. U. ladies themselves, with some volunteer assistance, painted the inside woodwork.
The church is comfortably furnished with chairs, stoves, lights — indeed, it has all that is required to make it a very neat, pleasant house in which to worship.
On Easter Sunday, 1894, Deaconess Mar- tin, then of Raton, laid the corner-stone. September 9, Mrs. Borden, assisted by Rev. J. M. Whitlock, dedicated the church to the Master and His cause. (It is interesting to note that the men of Catskill thought a woman should dedicate the church, as the women were the instruments in having it built.)
So far, ministers from neighboring Pres- byterian, Methodist and Christian churches have held services the first, second and third Sundays in the month. A Sunday- school flourishes and the good men and women of Catskill are rejoiced to have a knowledge of the Saviour taught each Lord’s day.
This prodigy of a union, just one year old, impresses one with the belief that even a small number of earnest women can do much in the name of Him who said, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
October 15, Mrs. Bcrden preached at Catskill; in the afternoon addressed the L. T. L. (at which meeting many mothers were present) and in the evening lectured on her favorite theme — temperance. Her listeners were deeply interested and at the close of her address five ladies and five gentlemen signed the pledge and donned the white ribbon.
This union understands how to secure new members — its president solicits names and always gets them.
There is no union at Cerrillos, but Mrs. N. A. Jackson is the leader of an L. T. L., and is doing all in her power to make it interesting and profitable to the little ones. She has them meet every two weeks to study temperance literature. Temperance leaflets dre distributed where they will do most good. In various ways she is trying to teach the children that the only safe, use- ful, beautiful life is that of the total ab- stainer, and ’tis the
Little drops of whisky,
Little grains of opium.
Makes the mighty army That yearly goes to ruin.
Eva May Tucker, Territorial Reporter, E. Las Vegas.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
With the coming of December’s frost and snow the needs of the department of work among lumbermen comes into greater prominence. This department is under the efficient charge of Mrs. W. A. Loyne, of Jefferson, N. H., and in her third annual report, which lies beforo me, I fin'd these items of interest. To reach the men and their families in these northern forests it has been found needful to have a camp mis- sionary. In the past year this faithful worker, Mr. A. H. Drury, has traveled 5,042 miles, many of them on foot, visiting 263 camps and mill boarding houses, distribut- ing 350 large bundles of reading matter, 425 Bibles and Testaments, and 400 comfort bags, besides conducting 115 services. In
addition to this the superintendent, Mrs. Loyne, has distributed a large amount of reading matter and library cases among such of the lumbermen as she could reach. This is a grand field for Christian work, as many of these people have no religious priv- ileges at all, until brought to them in this way.
The W. C. T. U. of New Hampshire ie much indebted to friends in sister states for their kind interest and liberal donations to this cause, for only by earnest individual thought and labor can this valuable work go on. Many of the lumbermen and their families are leading Christian lives, being first awakened to their needs by this work of the W. C. T. U.
STATE JOTTINGS.
Hampton Falls union, comprising only eighteen members, reports excellent work the past year, parlor meetings, Demorest medal contests and good growth and inter- est in the L. T. L.
Meriden union has added sixty-six names to its pledge book the past year, having aroused interest by parlor meetings and lectures, sending literature to the lumber- men and aiding their local poor.
The union at Derry, saddened and dis- heartened by the death of their beloved president, Mrs. Haskins, are bravely rousing themselves to carry on the work she so faithfully aided with her counsels; they have sent ten dollars to Mercy Home as a me- morial of Mrs. Haskins.
The Newport union reports sixteen dol- lars and a barrel of literature sent the lum- bermen.
Every saloon is at present closed in the city of Nashua, by the efforts of the Law and Order League.
The reports of the annual county conven- tions of Strafford and Merrimack counties are full of encouragement and interest; lunches and hot coffee served at state fairs, money and supplies 6ent to Mercy Home, literature and funds sent Mrs. Loyne 4or work among lumbermen, medal contests and L. T. L. entertainments; surely no work is more valuable for the cause than that which interests and educates our chil- dren rightly.
New Hampshire women rejoice with all their hearts over the grand and successful National Convention, and from the many wise and earnest plans there counseled we shall gain fresh impetus for our work the coming year.
M. Elizabeth Partridge, State Reporter , Claremont.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
EXPECTING COMPANY.
The World’s W. C. T. U. expects to hold a series of meetings in Washington about the middle of February next, when the Polyglot Petition will be presented to our government. Mrs. La Fetra who was for many years our District president, and Mrs. Griffith, our present District president, have been appointed to prepare for it. They think it is none too early to begin. The time set is just previous to the two weeks’ meeting of the national council of women, when many distinguished visitors will be here and a multiplicity of good things may be expected. Those ladies were requested by Miss Willard to confer together and pre- pare for the coming of the World’s officials. They selected a few helpers from the execu- tive board of the District union and have gone to work in earnest. The local unions will assist in a reception at the home of the District president. They have the refusal of the largest hall in the city for the even- ing of February 15, the time selected for the presentation speeches to be made.
The W. C. T. U. of the District of Colum- bia has the advantage of state unions in one thing. Its territory is so compact that the members can be brought together quickly and inexpensively. Our annual meeting is usually held in some large church in the cen- tral part of Washington. The noon lunch- eon is like a basket picnic, the entertain- ing union furnishing tea and coffee. The delegates pass the night in their own homes. The various lines of street cars make ac- cessible distant points, such as Anacostia and Brookland; while Washington and Georgetown are virtually one city. In all these places there are auxiliary unions.
The general officers and presidents of local unions, together with the superintend- ents of departments, form an “executive board” whjch meets at least once a month to supervise the work, plan and discuss methods and review the departments. Mrs. Griffith, the president of the W. C. T. U. of the District of Columbia, can call the board together very quickly when necessities arise. We are blessed above many state unions in being able to hold “quarterly meetings,” where reports from secretary, treasurer and all departments are submitted.
A large amount of interesting master is al- ways coming up at these meetings, which helps keep the rank and file interested. The quarterly meeting, like the annual meeting, is a delegated body, but members of local unions have all the privileges ex- cept to vote.
Mrs. M. Platt, our able superintendent of literature and president of North Capitol auxiliary, has instituted a new departure which resulted in something very fine. She invited the District W. C. T. U. to hold in North Capitol M. E. church a meeting sim- ilar to a quarterly meeting but not dele- gated, so every one could have full privi- leges. Her program was interesting and well carried out. The whole day was spent pleasantly and profitably in discussing questions vital to our work without any of the fatigue or routine of business.
A law prevails in the District of Colum- bia that no policeman on duty or wearing a uniform can drink intoxicants on pain of being discharged.- The unusual specta- cle is presented of policemen seeking mem- bership in temperance societies. Many of those aspiring to positions on the police force seek the influence of Mrs. Griffith and other temperance women to recommend them to the commissioners. This influence is not given without a personal knowledge of the character of the applicant.
Mrs. Clinton Smith,
District Reporter .
720 19th St., N. W,
NEW YORK STATE NEWS.
ALBANY COUNTY
met at Delmar, thirteen unions being rep- resented. Plans Were matured for estab- lishing a coffee house in Albany. Excellent papers were read, strong resolutions adopted and a most profitable session in every re- spect was held. Many good points were brought out by the free discussions on the several lines of department work. This county has six hundred paying members and has taken up twenty-seven departments.
COLUMBIA COUNTY
held its tenth annual at Chatham Centre. Mrs. Mary J. Weaver was present and gave one of her beautiful Bible readings and an evening address. Reports, papers and dis- cussions filled the time most profitably, a paper on “Non-alcoholics in Medicine” being especially fine and instructive. Many helpful suggestions were contained in the annual address of the president.
CLINTON COUNTY
met at West Chazy, and judging from the report sent me, this was a most profitable convention. The devotional exercises were especially helpful. Mrs. Helen L. Bullock, of Elmira, gave a forceful and eloquent ad- dress at the evening meeting, and at the close several new names were added to the membership roil. Interesting papers were read. Mrs. Frances D. Hall has been presi- dent of this county ever since its organiza- tion, eight years ago, and Mrs. 0. K. Smith, vice-president. Mrs. Bullock conducted a parliamentary drill the morning of the sec- ond day. This county has a beautiful new silk banner which will henceforth appear at all conventions.
SULLIVAN COUNTY
although long silent has not been inactive. Her eighth annual convention was held at Roscoe, nine unions being represented and all the county officers being present. Re- ports showed that the women there are working systematically. Five new depart- ments were adopted. L. T. L. work has been made prominent during the past year, and a report of the state L. T. L. meeting at Cortland was given by one of the boys and was especially interesting, and the fu- ture hope lies'm these boys and girls. My correspondent says, “even for a cider-tip- pling, rum-steeped county like Sullivan, there is hope in the thought that hundreds of her boys and girls are being taught in temperance schools, that cider contains a deadly poison.”
Many amusing incidents were related in the franchise report, and at the close a strong suffrage resolution was adopted, ex- pressing faith in the ultimate triumph of the cause. The president’s address was ex- ceedingly helpful, and the parliamentary drill, Bible reading and lecture by Mrs. Boole added greatly to the interest of the convention.
DUTCHESS COUNTY
convention was held at Madalin, in the De Peyster Memorial church. A steady down- pour of rain made the attendance smaller than usual, but the lack of numbers was made up in enthusiasm, and a most profit- able meeting held. The regulaj business was carried forward with promptness and the welcome and response were both well received. Mrs. Nelson, the president, gave a brief summary of the work done through the county and spoke tender words in mem- ory of those who have laid down the work here forever. She referred to the new workers coming on to take their places, of
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THE UNION SIGNAL.
Januaby 3, 1896.
jyw unions organized. Reports were heard, i question* box conducted by Mrs. Masso- neau, and resolutions adopted. The reso- lutions committee referred very feelingly to Mrs. E. V. Seaman, who for years has served faithfully as corresponding secretary, but who has been obliged to resign owing to ill health. The evening address was deliv- ered by Rev. Fields Hermance, of Pough- keepsie, who drove through the rain a dis- tance of fifty-two miles to keep his engage- ment. All honor to our brother!
JEFFERSON COUNTY
held its convention at Adams Centre, and every union but one sent delegates and visitors. A fine program was carried out to the letter. The address of the first evening was given by the county president, Rev. Ella Gurney, and a gold medal contest occu- pied the second evening. Each contestant was presented with a book, and Miss Viola Davis was the winner of the medal. Ten departments of work were taken up for the coming year, the finances are in good con- dition and the women enthusiastic and per- sistent. There are twelve unions in the county, and each one is alive to the im- portance of our work. Interesting papers were read during the session. At the elec- tion of officers everything remained the same with the exception of president, Mrs. Gurney not wishing to continue. Mrs. T. B. Knowles, of Watertown, was elected. The next convention goes to La Fargeville.
KINGS COUNTY
held an exceedingly interesting quarterly meeting in Calvary Baptist church, Brook- lyn, which opened with a Bible reading by Mrs. E. Patterson, of Rescue union. Mrs. Braman read a paper on the work of the evangelistic department, which was followed by a discussion on the need of immediate action in the department of purity in liter- ature and art. An interesting hour was given to the work of the Y’s, under the direc- tion of the county organizer. The program consisted of singing, an dssay on King Al- cohol and a leoture on the relation of cook- ery to temperance. Excellent addresses by Rev. A. Cameron and Rev. G. T. Berry closed the meeting.
OSWEGO COUNTY •
convention was held at Phoenix and was a wonderfully bright and Interesting meeting. After the welcome and response, two minute reports of local unions were heard. Fulton has the largest union, having 118 members. Oswego comes next with seventy-five. The work has been pushed untiringly by the county president, Mrs. S. M. Barker, four new unions having been organized in the county.
Mrs. Ella A. Boole gave a parliamentary drill, and in the evening an address on “Ne- hemiah and the walls of Jerusalem.” Mrs. Mary D. Ferguson, of Syracuse, was pres- ent and gave an interesting talk on her de- partment of soldiers and sailors; Miss Vin- nie R. Davis, of Orwell, followed with a report on franchise, and she reminded her hearers that in New York state last fall twenty thousaud women did actually vote for school commissioner. Excellent reso- lutions were adopted and the convention adjourned feeling that this had been one of the best of conventions. And this ends the list of conventions.
Mbs. Fbanoes Gbaham,
State Reporter , Lockport.
NEWS IN A NUTSHELL
All white-ribboners will be glad to learn that Mother Stewart is recovering from her severe illness, and will join sending her, as does The Union Signal, best wishes for the coming year.
The Reading, Mich., union recently had the pleasure of listening to two very inter- esting lectures, by Mrs. E. N. Law, state organizer of Michigan. Mrs. Law held the dose attention of the audience during both lectures, and closed each with a line recita- tion which was appreciated.
Special prayer was offered for Mrs. Mary T. Lathrap at the prayer-meeting held in the Y. M. C. A. building, Cleveland, on De- cember 23, to mark the twenty-first anni- versary of Crusade beginning in Ohio, that she might be sustained to the last and have a joyful entrance into the upper kingdom.
An unusual proportion of honorary mem- bers graces the McComb, Miss., onion which has a membership two-thirds honoraries who number 120. They are planning for permanent headquarters. At a recent meet- ing the president gave a stirring talk ad- dressed principally to the honorary mem- beiship.
One of our state presidents sends the fol- lowing plucky declaration: “We are moving slowly, as we have butted our heads against the stone wall of the M. E. Church South this year by indorsing the Prohibition party and woman’s suffrage. Just think of it! But we are holding our own with clear Saxon grit and it will be better farther on.”
COUGHS ANi) Hoarseness. The irritation that Induces coughing is immediately relieved by using “ Brown's Bronchial Troches:1
The North Nebraska Teachers’ Associa- tion has three women upon its list of state officers; Mrs. Charlotte M. White, of Wayne, being the president, Mrs. F. Wallis, the sec- retary, and Mrs. Emily Hornberger, of Nor- folk, treasurer. This is the first instance in which a woman has been elected to a state presidency of the Teachers’ Associa- tion in the West, and probably in the United States.
A loyal woman from Virginia writes: “I am the only wearer of the white ribbon in our village. I belong to the Staunton W. C. T. U. which Miss Willard organized four- teen years ago. I pay my dues, wear ^he white ribbon everywhere I go, subscribe for and read The Union Signal and indorse it in almost everything, and wish we had a union here, but there is opposition on ac- count of our progressive views.”
Db. and Mbs. Whitney contemplate a temperance trip to Jamaica this winter. It is a happy thing that they can make this journey because an urgent request has come from the vice-president on that island, Miss Constantin Maddix, of Kingston, that a worker be sent. Mrs. Whitney will be re- membered as Mrs. Woodbury, whose efficient work did so much to place the Demorest medal contest on a firm basis.
Rev. Db. and Mbs. Boole are well ranked among the able exponents of the temper- ance reform. There is not in this country another pair equally endowed and devoted who are equally zealous for the white rib- bon cause. Last year in the city of Utica Mrs. Boole spoke under the auspices of a union of all the Christian Endeavor socie- ties of the city. Mrs. Boole is young and strong and may be expected to lead the van of much good work in the future, as she has done in the past.
Ihe attention of Michigan workers is called to the petitions which are being pre- pared for signatures to be presented to the legislature at its next session asking for a submission to popular vote of a state constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture, importation and sale of in- toxicating liquors except for sacramental, medicinal and scientific purposes. All who can aid in this work by circulating peti- tions are requested to send name and ad- dress to J. Benson Hill, M. D., Box 455 Ovid, Clinton county, Mich.
White-bibbonebs are again warned against the machinations of a Mrs. A. D. Bellah who goes about misrepresenting her- self as an accredited W. C. T. U. worker. She thus gains the confidence of workers which she uses to further her dishonest ends. Recently she introduced herself to a South- ern leader as a “confidential friend of the late Mrs. Woodbridge” and numerous state presidents. In this way she secured a letter of introduction and other favors, among them the cashing of a check for $125. The check was worthless, and the innocent white- ribboner is the loser in money but richer in experience. Fortunately there are very few such developments in the W. C. T. U. ranks, and when they do occur, The Union Sig- nal stands ready to warn its constituency against such wolves in sheep’s clothing.
An earnest correspondent gives the fol- lowing practical hint: “It is possible to secure a strong ally in the railroads of our land by urging managers to issue orders that no employ^ can sign applications for license. Let all license states try this promptly. In one town of twelve thousand the order to that effect from one railroad cut off forty-seven names that had figured on that black list for years. Every little helps; we must seize our opportunities great and small. There was never a time in the history of the work when there was so much need of urgent, uncompromising, consecrated, incessant work as now, because our enemy feels the quicksand under his feet giving, as our work exposes it, and he is bringing the skill of all evil to bear against us.”
St. John’s, Newfoundland, is the scene of a work of faith, the Puritan Mission of Love, conducted by G. W. Singer. They are desirous of building a temperance tem- nle and Puritan homes of love for little orphans. Mr. Singer writes: “Already in about twenty villages I have small lending libraries where temperance and other books are on the shelves. Last year four hundred villages received tracts from myself, and over seventy Eskimo settlements were served the same way. I have j ust got ready parcels for the prisons and the house for the poor and the hospitals. The lonely men in lighthouses are to have a Christmas parcel each and so are the police in every New- oundland district. I need tracts and books against opium, tobacco, impurity -and gambling as well as against the thrice cursed drink cursed by Father, Son and blessed bpmt, aye, and even by the millions of those|who touch, taste and handle it. May God quickly banish the drink from thi‘s colony— the oldest and most neglected of Britain’s possessions.”
A W. C. T. U. mass-meeting, composed of four unions, Bromley, St. Anthony, Bevins Grove and Bangor, met at Bangor, la., De- cember 15. Owing to the inclemency of the weather many were absent, so subjects for discussion were substituted. The ques- tion, “Why am I a white-ribboner?” was responded to by quite an experience meet- ing. The question, “Why are you not white-ribboners?” was responded to freely. One brother’s reason was that he is not a woman. Paper and pencil were passed, and this brother and six other individuals joined the union and are wearing the white ribbon.
Extbact from a letter: “I am away down
in the mountains of speaking and
organizing W. C. T. unions. The people in this part of the state are so very poor that even when they are deeply interested and desire to join our society they cannot find the five or ten cents a month with which to pay dues, Tmt the home I am in is an inspiration to me. The people are very poor as everybody here is, but they joined the W. C. T. U. in another state seventeen years ago, and through its influence the power of heredity, of home influence and religion found lodgment in their minds and hearts. They told me that they began to economize in order to purchase books, and one thing after another was given up, be- ginning with coffee in order that they might subscribe for certain magazines they felt their children needed, and so on until their lives, shaped and moulded by these ideas, have been entirely changed, and a more in- telligent and appreciative family it would be hard to find.”
Cor. Secy s J2otes .
The National Minutes are printed, and the National officers are ready to receive orders for the same. They are also in an extremely self-congratulatory frame of mind, owing to the fact that the somewhat ponderous volume is before the public in a little less than a month from the close of Convention. The fact that the reports were printed before the Convention was a help in certain respects, but as each plate had to be refolioed it was not so great an one as would seem at first thought. Mrs. L. M. N. Stevens has been the moving spirit in their publication, but great credit is also due the W. T. P. A. printing force, and especially its superintendent of printing, Mr. D. C. Chris- tophel, both for the quality of the work and the speed with which it has been executed.
Will you .kindly note in the aforesaid Minutes what is said under the head of Gen- eral Officers’ meeting, concerning the action requesting speakers who desire to make en- gagements sending their names and terms to Mrs. M. B. Horning, the Temple? Mrs. Horning has had experience for Rome time in making her mother’s, — Mrs. Barker — en- gagements, and for the past year has had charge of Mrs. Hoffman’s dates. She will attend to the matter on the basis of a per- centage and it is hoped that a permanent lecture bureau may be the outgrowth. This is of course purely .optional with the speaker and does not in the least affect the fact that the corresponding secretary is expected to arrange, so far as possible, for the routes of the National organizers and lecturers. That arrangement, however, must cover states only, and any individual lecturer preferring to have her dates and route arranged by Mrs. Horning is, of course, at perfect liberty to do so on the basis above mentioned.
There will be of necessity some minor errors in the Minutes. Several corrections of addresses did not arrive until too late for insertion, and among the National evangel- ists should be inserted the names of Eliza- beth S. Tobey, Boston, and Elizabeth P. Gordon, Auburndale, Mass. These correc- tions will be made in the Annual Leaflet, and if there are any other errors which may be corrected there will you kindly call my attention to them, as tho preparation of that leaflet will be my next immediate work.
Even as I write tho car-wheels are re- volving to the magic rhythm of “Home, Sweet Home,” and I am being whirled through Connecticut — Boston- ward — with Long Island Sound, bathed in the glory of the sunset, lying at my left, and the inde- finable, but nevertheless unmistakable New England atmosphere all about me. Neces- sary business carries me home for a few days, and it is a gladness to ray soul that business can be so combined with pleas- ure as to give me that most holy of holi- days— a home Christmas. Miss Willard’s presence in Boston will make the time spent there, I trust, of especial value to the work as well as of personal interest, and the early New Year will find me again at my desk. Meantime, our dear Mrs. Barker, Mrs. Horning and Mies Grow are holding the fort.
God grant to each member of our brave army a blessed New Year.
Kathabine Lente Stevenson.
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Christmas, with all its joys, is over. All our hearts have been stirred anew by the loving tokens given and received, and I trust we have all felt our hearts uplifted and warmed by the Christ-love that must ever be the inspiration of all true Christ- mas festivities. After all our friends have been remembered and greeted in the love and memory of Him who hath brought life and immortality to light, and hath made life worth the living, may we not look for a deeper interest in our work, a more faithful performance of its duties and more unself- ish sacrifice in behalf of our beloved W. C. T. U.? Some of our good friends, even in the midst of Christmas giving to home friends, have not forgotten the National but have sent their mites that we trust will be so greatly multiplied after the holidays, that we shall this year be able to carry on the legitimate expenses of the work with- out the necessity of paying interest on bor- rowed money, and if a few thousand of our white-ribboners will follow the example of these good sisters we shall be able to do this.
Self-denial tokens have come from Mattie A. Richards, Natick, Mass., 30 cents. Mrs. M. E. Pease, Radcliffe, la., $4: (30 ten cent fund). Mrs. Webb, Plymouth, Conn., $2.50. Port Gibson W. C. T. U., (N. Y.) $1. Miss Eldred, Barneyville, $1. Mrs. Fox, Plain- ville, Conn, $1.
While a few thoughtful ones have sent in their loving contributions to our birthday fund, don’t think that these good friends are one hundred years old because they have found it more convenient to send a good many more pennies than a careful counting of their years would warrant. Margaret T. W. Merrill sends $1 with kindly words of appreciation from Portland, Me. Mrs. Dora Terry, Glasgow, Ky., sends 50 cents, while Emily R. Gorham, Chester, Conn., sends $1.06 as birthday remembrance from her- self and a friepd. Send for the birthday en- velopes and give them out to your friends. Many will be glad to help our work by a small gift if their attention is called to this simple plan.
Just a word about the Minutes. We are now sending them out. They contain 528 pages, giving full account of the Convention doings — all the reports of secretary, treas- urer, superintendents, with greetings from many notables as well as Miss Willard’s address in full. It is a volume unusually full of excellent matter, and every temper- ance worker, whether W. C. T. U* or not, should have a copy. They are sent for the nominal price of fifteen cents per copy, which very little more than pays the postage. Send in your orders at once if you wish a copy, or copies. A few more of Miss Wil- lard’s addresses at ten cents are left, but will very soon be gone.
Wisconsin follows Ohio in remitting duos, and gets to the front in sending one hun- dred dollars the first month after Conven- tion. That is a good record. Mrs. Camp- bell, president, called upon us the day after Christmas en route to her home from Kan- sas, where she was called from Cleveland by the illness of her father. He died soon after her arrival. She will have the loving sympathy of ail white-ribboners in this sorrow.
Happy New Year to every one.
Helen M. Baekeb.
PROHIBITION PARTY’S NATIONAL PLATFORM.
Adopted at Cincinnati, 0-, June 30, 1892-
The Prohibition Party, in National Convention assembled, acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all true government and His law as the standard to which human enactments must con- form to secure the blessings of peace and pros- perity, presents the following declaration of prin- ciples:
1. The liquor traffic is a foe to civilization, the arch enemy of popular government and a public nuisance. It is the citadel of the forces that cor- rupt politics, promote poverty and crime, degrade the Nation’s home life, thwart the will of the peo- ple and deliver our country into the hands of rapa- cious class interests. All laws that, under the guise of regulation, legalize and protect this traffic, nr make the government share in its ill-gotten gains, are “vicious in principle and powerless a9 a remedy.” We declare anew for the entire sup- pression of the manufacture, sale, importation, exportation and transportation of alcoholic liquors as a beverage by federal and state legislation. The full powers of government should be exerted to secure this result. No party that fails to recog- nize the dominant nature of this issue in Amer- ican politics deserves the support of the people.
2. No citizen should be denied the right to vote on account of sex, and equal labor should receive equal wages without regard to sex.
3. The money of the country should consist of gold, silver and paper , and be issued by the general government only, and in sufficient quantity to meet the demands of business and give full oppor- tunity for the employment of labor. To this end an increase in the volume of money is demanded. No individual or corporation should be allowed to make any profit through its issue. It should be made a legal tender for the payment of all debts, public and private. Its volume should be fixed at a definite sum per capita , and made to increase with our increase in population.
4. Tariff should be levied only as a defense
against foreign governments which levy tariff upon, or bar out our products from their markets, revenue being incidental. The residue of means necessary to an economical administration of the government should be raised by levying the bur- den on what the people possess instead of upon what they consume.
6. Railroad, telegraph and other public corpora- tions should be controlled by the government in the interest of the people, and no higher charges allowed than necessary to give fair interest on the capital actually invested.
6. Foreign immigration has become a burden upon industry, one of the factors in depressiu * wages and causing discontent; therefore, our im- migration laws should be revised and strictly en- forced. The time of residence for naturalization should be extended, and no naturalized person shoifldbe allowed to vote until one year after he becomes a citizen.
7. Non-resident aliens should not be allowed to acquire land in this country, and we favor the lim- itation of individual and corporate ownership of land. All unearned grants of lands to railroad companies or other corporations should be re- claimed.
8. Years of inaction and treachery on the part of the Republican and Democratic parties have re- sulted in the present reign of mob law, and we demand that every citizen be protected in the right of trial by constitutional tribunals.
9. All men should be protected by law in their right to one day of rest in seven.
10. Arbitration is the wisest and most econom- ical and humane method of settling national dif- ferences.
11. Speculations in margins, the cornering of grain, money and products, and the formation of pools, trusts and combinations for the arbitrary advancement of prices should be suppressed.
12. We pledge that the Prohibition party, if elected to power, will ever grant just pensions to disabled veterans of the Union army and navy, their widows and orphans.
13. We stand unequivocally for the American public school and opposed to any appropriation of public moneys for sectarian schools. We declare that only by united support of such common schools, taught in the English language, can we hope to become and remain a homogeneous and harmonious people.
14 We arraign the Republican and Democratic parties as false to the standards reared by their founders; as faithless to the principles of the illus- trious leaders of the past to whom they do homage with the lips; as recreant to the higher law, which is as inflexible in political affairs as in personal life; and as no longer embodying the aspiratious of the American people, or inviting the confidence of enlightened, progressive patriotism. Their protest against the admission of “moral issues” into politics is a confession of their own moral degeneracy. The declaration of an eminent au- thority that municipal misrule is “the one conspic- uous failure of American politics,’* follows as a natural consequence of such degeneracy, and is true alike of cities under Republican and Demo- cratic control. Each accuses the other of extrav- agance in Congressional appropriations, and both are alike guilty. Each protests, when out of power, against infraction of the civil service laws, and each when in power violates those laws in letter and in spirit. Each professes fealty to the inter- ests of the toiling masses, but both covertly truckle to the money power in their administration of pub- lic affairs. Even the tariff issue, as represented in the Democratic Mills bill and the Republican McKinley bill, is no longer treated by them as an issue between great and divergent principles of government, but is a mere catering to different sectional and class interests. The attempt in many states to wrest the Australian ballot system from its true purpose, and so to deform it as to render it extremely difficult for new parties to ex- ercise the right ol suffrage, is an outrage upon popular government. The competition of both old parties for the vote of the slums, and their as- siduous courting of the liquor power and subserv- iency to the money power, have resulted in placing those powers in the position of practical arbiters of the destinies of the nation. We renew our protest against these perilous tendencies, and iu- vite all citizens to join us in the upbuilding of a party that has shown, in five national campaigns, that it prefers temporary defeat to an abandon- ment of the claims of justice, sobriety, personal rights and the protection of American homes.
15. Recognizing and declaring that prohibition of the liquor traffic has become the dominant issue in national politics, we invite to full party fellow- ship all those who, on this one dominant issue, are with us agreed, in the full belief that this party can and will remove sectional differences, promote national unity, and insure the best welfare of our entire land.
POPULIST PARTY’S NATIONAL PLATFORM, ADOPTED AT OMAHA NEBRASKA, JULY 4, 1892. Assembled upon the one hundred and sixteenth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the People’s Party of America, in their first na- tional convention, invoking upon their action the blessing of Almighty God, puts forth, in the name and on behalf of the people of this country, the following preamble and declaration of principles: The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and mate- rial ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures and congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the states have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling' places to prevent univer- sal intimidation or bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, our homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists.
The urban workmen are denied the right of organization for self-protection; imported pauper- ized labor beats down their wages; a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is estab- lished to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to buildup colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of govern- mental injustice we breed the two great classes— tramps and millionaires.
The national power to create money is appro- priated to enrich bondholders. A vast public debt payable in legal-tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people.
Silver, which has been accepted as coin since the dawn of history, has been demonetized to add to the purchasing power of gold by decreasing the value of all forms of property as well as human labor, and the supply of currency is purposely abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprise and enslave industry. A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civ- ilization, or the establishment of an absolute des- potism. We have witnessed for more than a quar- ter of a century the struggles of the two great po-
litical parties for power and plunder, while griev- ous wrongs have been inflicted upon a suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them.
Neither do they now promise any substantial re- form. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered peo- ple with the uproar ot a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demoneti- zation of silver, and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives and children on the altar of mam- mon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.
Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand generation who established their independ- ence, we seek to restore the government of the republic to the hands of “the plain people,” with whose class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the national Constitution, to form a more perfect union, estab- lish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.
We declare that this republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the love of the whole people for each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that the civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew out of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact as we are in name one united brotherhood of free men.
Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent in the history of the world. Our annual agricultural productions amount to billions of dollars in value, which must, within a few weeks or months, be exchanged for billions of dollars worth of commodities consumed in their production; the existing currency supply is wholly inadequate to make this exchange; the results are falling prices, the formation of combines and rings, and the impoverishment of the produc- ing class. We pledge ourselves that, if given power, we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable legislation in accordance with the terms of our platform.
We believe that the powers of government— in other words, of the people — should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidlyand as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.
While our sympathies, as a party of reform, are naturally on the side of every proposition which will tend to make men intelligent, virtuous and temperate, we, nevertheless, regard these ques- tions—important as they are— as secondary to the great issues now pressing for solution, and upon which not only our individual prosperity, but the very existence of free.institutions depend; and we ask all men to help us to determine whether we are to have a republic to administer, before we differ as to the conditions upon which it is to be administered; believing that the forces of reform this day organized will never cease to move for- ward until every wrong is remedied, and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country.
Ve declare, therefore,
'hat the union of the labor forces of the United ites, this day consummated, shall be perma- nt and perpetual. May its spirit enter into all arts for the salvation of the republic and the up- :ing of mankind!
Vealth belongs to him who creates it, and every [lar taken from industry without an equivalent robbery. “If any one will not work neither all they eat.” The interests of rural and civic •or are the same; their enemies are identical.
We believe that the time has come when the iroad corporations will either own the people the people must own the railroads, and should
> government enter upon the work of owning d managing any or all railroads, we should favor
amendment to the constitution by which all rsons engaged in the government service shall placed under a civil service regulation of the >st rigid character, so as to prevent the increase the power of the national administration by the 2 of such additional government employes.
! We demand a national currency, safe, sound d flexible, issued by the general government ly a full legal tender for all debts, public and ivate, and that without the use of banking cor- rations; a just, equitable and efficient means of itribution direct to the people, at a tax not to ceed two percent per annum.be provided as set th in the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers’ Alli- ce, or some better system; also by paynients in ^charge of its obligations for public lmprove-
t n\Ve demand the free and unlimited coinage of ver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1.
[ we demand that the amount of circulating ?dium be speedily increased to not less than |60 r capita. , , . . .
> We demand a graduated income tax.
We believe that the money of the country ould be kept as much as possible in the hands of e people, and hence we demand that all state d national revenues shall be limited to the nec- 5ary expenses of the government, economically
id honestly administered.
j We demand that postal savings banks be es- blished bv the government for the safe deposit thfe earnings of the people, and to facilitate ex-
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