ANNUAL ADDRESS
— OF —
FRANCES E. WILLARD,
PRESIDENT OF
at'l Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
\"1
\ . ^ __
National Woman's Clifistian Tempeiance Union.
PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS.
Beloved Friends and Comrades :
" Great peace have they who love Thy law, and nothing shall ofiFend
them."
May this heavenly promise be abundantly fulfilled in each
and all of us. There is a prayer, uttered or unexpressed, that
brings us face to face, and it is this, " Help me to heal the
heart-break of humanity." The measureless injustice that
surrounds us like an atmosphere, and the fathomless misery
that broods over us like a malaria, make many a murmuring
heart cry out:
" Had I God's power or He my love.
We'd have a different world from this we see."
But the philosophic mind perceives that everywhere God
works by means, and that evermore the Christ-spirit must be
incarnated, or it cannot carry out its miracles of healing. In
the order of evolution, it is first of all embodied in the indi-
vidual, then in the home, then in society, then in the state
and some day shall be in that Universal Republic of which
the Laureate sings, when
'' The flags shall all be furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World."
Our meeting here hastens that coming consummation.
Mother-love works magic for humanity, but organized mother-
love works miracles. Mother-hearted women are called to be
the saviors of the race. I speak it reverently, as a loyal wor-
shiper of Him who said, " Mother, behold thy Son."
^ ORGANIZATION.
We all know that organization is the one great thought of
nature. It is the difference between chaos and order ; it is the
incessant occupation of God. But, next to God, the greatest
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JVational W. C. T. U.
organizer is the mother. She who sends forth from the sanct-
nary of her - own being a little child, has organized a great
spiritual world, and set it moving in the orbit of unchanging
law. Hence, woman, by her organism, is the greatest organ-
izer ever organized by our beneficent Creator.
But in the nature of the case, the mother-nature, patiently
pre-occupied in deeds of love for those about her, has been
slowest of all to reflect on her own innate powers, and has not
until recently so much as dreamed of the resistless force of the
world's aggregated motherhood. When I graduated from
college in 1859 there was not on the face of the earth, I vent-
ure to say—certainly there was not in my native land, the
most progressive land of all—a National society of women.
We worked on in weakness and seclusion, in loneliness and
isolation. But we learned at last the gracious secret that has
transformed the world for men and made them masters. We
learned the mighty difference between the wide-open hand, with
individual fingers impotent because separate, and the condensed,
constructive, organized power of those fingers when combined.
We learned that floating timbers on the sea are not more futile
as compared with the same timbers when Organized into a ship
than are solitary human beings as compared with the same
persons when organized and instructed, unified and equipped
in societies and guilds. The mighty work done to mitigate
the horrors of our civil war first revealed to us and to our
brothers the latent power of the nation's womanhood ; next
came the holy zeal of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Socie-
ties ; then the heavenly enthusiasm of the Woman's Temper-
ance Crusade, with its marvelous sequel, the Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Unions ; then that beautiful younger sister,
the Woman's Home Missionary Society, while the Woman's
Christian Association and Congress, the Women's Clubs, Indus-
trial and Educational Unions, Relief Corps, Protective Agency,
the mighty Uabor Movement, and the countless societies for
local help to the sick, the friendless and the poor, abundantly
testify to that esprit de corps which we women have at last ac-
quired and are now so sure to utilize for purposes of blessing
vastly wider, more pervasive, and more varied than we could
at first have dared to undertake or dreamed of compassing.
Presidents Annual Address.
3
MOTHER HEARTS TO THE FORE.
From this time on the world will have in it no active, organic
force so strong for its uplifting as its organized mother hearts.
You will notice the breadth of my generalization. I do not
say "all mothers," because all women who are technically
mothers are not mother-hearted, while many a woman is so
from whom the criss-cross currents of the world have withheld
her holiest crown.
In my own quiet refuge at Evanston, where we talk of
all these things, I once said to Susan B. Anthony, that noblest
Roman of us all:
'' Bravely as you have trodden it, and glorious as has been
your via solitaria, have you not always felt a sense of loss?"
She answered in the gentle, thoughtful voice that we all
love :
'' Could I be really the woman that I am and fail to feel
that under happier conditions I might have known a more sa-
cred companionship than has ever come to me, and that this
companion could not have been a woman?"
But that she also felt God's call, under the unhappy con-
ditions that existed, to go her own victorious way alone is
proved by her reply to a good man and leading publicist who
once said to her :
" Miss Anthony, with your great head and heart, you, of
all women I have met, ought to have been a wife and mother.''
Our noble pioneer answered him after this fashion ;
" I thank you, sir, for what I take to be the highest com-
pliment, but sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring
for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a
better state of things for mothers generally, so that their un-
born little ones could not be willed away from them."
Far be it from me to draw, by any definition, such a line
around the regnant organized womanhood of the nation as
would leave out our mother-hearted Susan B. Anthony.
Men know where their true interests lie, and women whom
men love and trust and honor are always motherly at heart.
If there is a spectacle more odious and distasteful than a
man who hates women it is a woman who hates men. If I am
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National W. C. T. U.
glad of anything it is that, while I have my playful quips and
passing sallies anent them in my own inner home circle, when
some passing injustice of thd old regime quickens my pulses,
the life-long tenor of my pen and voice and work have been
not more for " Peace on earth " than for " Good will to men."
This frank utterance may surely be permitted to one who on
this day completes the third week of her fiftieth year, and who
thanks God with unspeakable tenderness for all the pleasant
land on which she can look back from the high chronologic
vantage ground she has attained. If this had not been so,
surely these loyal wives and mothers who to-day have rallied
around me would rightfully have refused my leadership.
world's w. c. t. u.
White light includes all the prismatic colors, so the white
ribbon stands for all phases of reform, and there is no phase
which the drink curse has not rendered necessary. This we
did not see at first, when Margaret E. Winslow of New York
proposed this ribbon as our National badge. My own urgent
desire was then that the home women should wear and finally
redeem from association with the liquor power, the colors of the
nation, and at that Chicago Convention of 1877 we were all
wearing the red, white and blue ribbons I had furnished, when
the wiser vote of the majority made white our badge. I now
see how much wider was the reach of this pure emblem that
holds within itself the colors of all nations and stands for uni-
versal purity and patriotism, universal prohibition and philan-
thropy, and universal peace. For '' hearts are near though hands
are far," and women's hands and hearts all 'round the world
will be united by our white emblem ere another generation
passes out of sight. As President of the World's W. C. T. U.,
I have already sent out to every nation the purposes and plans
of that society, and there is now no speech or language where
its voice is not heard. With Mrs. Eeavitt on her way to Africa,
after planting the W. C. T. U. in Australia, India, China and
Japan ; Mary B. Willard and Mrs. Dr. Stuckenberg devoted to
our cause at the capital of Germany ; with Madame Meijerhelm
and Charlotte Gray in Scandinavia, and a W. C. T. U. organ-
ized in the world's wine center and metropolis, the city of Paris
Presidents Annual Address.
5
itself; with Alaska explored, thanks to the enterprise of Miss
Ackerman ; Great Britain, Canada, Australia and the United
States thickly planted with our White Ribbon Societies, we
may well wonder at what God hath wrought in fourteen 3^ears
from the whirlwind of the Woman's Temperance Crusade.
I wish this Convention would call upon tne Executive Com-
mittee for a special report on our relations to the World's W.
C. T. U., and also to the National Council of Women, and I
hope that we may become definiteE' auxiliary' to both. There
are two women whom I believe should visit Great Britain in
1889, and they are Mrs. Marj' A. Woodbridge, American Set-
retaiy of the World's W. C. T. U., and Mrs. Mar}^ H. Hunt, our
Superintendent of Scientific Temperance Education. Then, at
brief inter\'als, I would send out Westward Mrs. M. B. Reese of
the Puget Sound District, Miss Ackerman of California, and
Mrs. Moots of Michigan, the first to Japan, the second to Mexico
and South America, the third to Hawaii, Australia and Cey-
Ion. All of these will be almost wholly self-supporting, as
Mrs. Eeavitt has been. Meanwhile I would like to see Mrs.
Eaura Ormiston Chant, the foremost speaker among English
women, make a tour of the United States and Canada with the
White Cross and White Shield as her theme, going thence on
the trip around the world. Judging from the popularity of
Mrs. Chant while here, I am confident that she too would be
practicalE' self-supporting. Dear sisters, our field is the world,
every brain an open furrow, every word a seed sown for the
coming harvest. Our World's Petition wends its widening way,
and is fast becoming the greatest of modern poE^glots. Sam-
pies of it return to me printed in every language, and foreign
to m}^ e^^es as the tracing of Jack Frost upon a window-pane,
but my heart thrills as I remember that always its wording is
the same:
Honored Rulers, Representatives and Brothers:—We, your
petitioners, although belonging to the physically' weaker sex,
are strong of heart to love our homes, our native land, and the
world's family^ of nations. We know that clear brains and
pure hearts make honest lives and happy^ homes, and that by
these the nations prosper, and the time is brought nearer when
the world shall be at peace. We know that indulgence in
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National W. C. T. U.
Alcohol and Opium, and in other vices which disgrace our
social life, makes miser}- for all the world, and most of all for
us and for our children. We know that stimulants and opiates
are sold under legal guarantees which make the governments
partners in the traffic, by accepting as revenue a portion of the
profits, and we know with shame that they are often forced by
treaty upon populations, either ignorant or unwilling. We
know that the law might do much, now left undone, to raise
the moral tone of society and render vice difficult. We have
no power to prevent these great iniquities beneath which the
whole world groans, but you have power to redeem the honor
of the nations from an indefensible complicity.. We therefore
come to you with the united voices of representative women of
ever}^ land, beseeching you to raise the standard of the law to
that of Christian morals, to strip away the safeguards and sane-
tions of the State from the drink traffic and the opium trade,
and to protect our homes by the total prohibition of these
curses of civilization throughout all the territoiy^ over which
your Government extends.
names of women. nationality.
residence.
(N. B.—Will not any one interested in this subject cut
out or copy this Petition, and begin circulating it at once ?)
This splendid federation of all the women's societies
engaged-ill temperance and social purity work around the globe
will do for temperance what the International Council of Wom-
en, with Millicent Fawcett at its head, hopes to do for women
everywhere. The best experts and wisest methods will, by
means of it, become known to all nations; the curse of the
Congo will feel the grip of white-ribbon influence; extradition
treaties will be brought to bear against alcohol, and for the
home's protection; good influences will be thrown around
adventurous sons and daughters far from home by letters from
one white-ribbon group to another at the antipodes, and the
miracle of our noontide prayer will belt the whole great earth
with benedictions.
Australia demonstrates the higher tone of her more modern
civilization by holding a Temperance Convention to celebrate
President's Annual Address.
7
the centennial of her first colony. How far we are behind that
thought is demonstrated by the different character of own great
centennial, at which brewers and distillers had front rank
among exhibits of our "national industries." Perhaps the
fact that four W. C. T. U. women are on the Executive Com-
mittee of the Australian celebration may help to account for its
high character. The opening day is November 19, at Mel-
bourne, and I hope this Convention will send sisterly greetings
to Hon. James Munro, the presiding officer.
The latest good news of the World's W. C. T. U. comes
to us in the following letter from Miss Gray.
Christiana, Norway, October 4, 1888.
Dear Miss Wieeard :
You will be pleased to learn that Countess Vedel has consented to
act as President for the Women's Union, about to be formed in Norway,
in connection with the World's W. C. T. U. She will therefore become
one of the Vice-Presidents. I hope this will reach you in time to be
announced at the Annual Convention. Miss Vedel has been seven years
Maid of Honor to the Queen of Sweden, Norway. She is a Christian
woman who has dared to wear and advocate the blue ribbon at the Court.
She is actively engaged in Christian work in Christiana, and as soon as
she returns there (she is now at her country house), we hope to organize
and constitute the W. C. T. U. for Norway. With hearty greeting to all
my sisters assembled with you in New A'ork, and praying for a blessing
upon the meetings, I remain, Faithfully yours,
Chareotte a. Gray.
Thus our way grows always better, farther on.
THE DEMOREST MEDAL CONTESTS.
Mr. W. Jennings Demorest, of New York City, a man of
large wealth and liberality, has had the happy thought to offer
prize medals of silver, gold, and diamond, to young people of
either sex, who shall, bj'- the decision of the committee
appointed for the purpose, best recite selections on the Tem-
perance Question.
He has given away fully 1,500 silver, 100 gold, and ten
large gold medals, to winners in these oratorical contests. It
is surprising to learn what a vast field these medals cover.
Only a few days ago two were sent to Africa, a number have
been won in Australia, and other far-away countries have had
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National W. C. T. U.
their quota. An express package full of them has just been
sent to England.
Mr. Demorest authorizes us to say that this offer is open
to every local W. C. T. U. in the world, and as President of the
World's W. C. T. U., I desire especially to urge it upon our
auxiliaries in Japan, China, India, Australia—indeed, all coun-
tries where the white-ribbon movement has gained a foothold,
I know that Mrs. Leavitt, now in Ceylon, will gladly issue a
special message to all the lands she has traversed, urging our
missionaries to translate into the native languages with such
adaptations as may be needful, the speeches selected by Mr.
Demorest, and to hold these exhibitions eveiywhere. Be it
ours to seize this splendid opportunity of marching on " from
contest to conquest," stamping upon childhood's memory the
principles of a pure life in the name of " God, and Home, and
Humanity."
peace:.
President McGill, of Swarthmore College, is the first edu-
cator to introduce the study of Peace and Arbitration. I be-
lieve he has set a noble example, and that our ethical text-books
should include a careful study of these great themes.
The platform of the Prohibition party declares that "Arbi-
tration is the Christian, wise, and economic method of settling
national differences." Here, as in all things else, the Society
of the White-Ribbon is in accord with the party of the White
Rose. Poisonous drinks crazing the brains of legislators pre-
cipitated the Civil War; so said one of our most famous gen-
erals, never noted as a special pleader for the temperance cause.
No movement means so much as ours for peace. The race
brain is now so deeply leavened with gentle thoughts, that
when normal and calm, the thought of shedding human blood
is most repugnant to it. No evolution of work was surer than
that which led to the formation of our Peace Department, with
a Secretary^ selected from the Society of Friends, Mrs. Hannah
Baile}', of Winthrop, Maine, who has already sent out litera-
ture and speakers to acquaint our auxiliaries with our plans of
work among the children and with the press. We have also a
powerful friend in Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, the philanthro-
pist, who is devoted to the heavenly work of spreading far and
Presidents Annual Address.
9
wide the interest of the people in a World's Court of Arbitra-
tion as a substitute for war, and who believes that woman's
hand may carry the white flag of truce between camps other-
wise belligerent, and may, by wise and systematic action, help
to lay firm foundations for a Universal Republic—a Brother-
hood and Sisterhood wide as the world. About four months
ago the following concurrent resolution was unanimously
adopted by the United States Senate:
' 'Resolved by the Se7iate {the Hotise of Representatives con-
curving), That the President be, and he is hereby, reqrrested
to invite, from time to time as fit occasions may arise, negotia-
tions with any government with which the United States has
or may have diplomatic relations, to the end that any differ-
ences or disputes arising between the two governments which
can not be adjusted by diplomatic agency may be referred to
arbitration, and be peaceably adjusted by such means."
This was subsequently reconsidered because it was ascer-
tained that a Senator desired to speak upon the subject, but as
it was adopted unanimously, I am assured by Senator Blair
that the only question is on the concurrence of the House of
Representatives. This is the longest step forward ever taken
b}' any government, and I hope a petition, signed by every
delegate here, will be sent to Washington on our behalf with-
out delay, praying for the concurrence of the House. Congress
has also passed a bill authorizing an International Convention
at Washington, with representatives from North, Central, and
South America, the object being "to consider and agree upon
measures for the promotion of peace and amity among nations."
Now, a woman. Queen Victoria, put down the barbarous cus-
tom of duelling in England; a woman, the Princess Regent,
freed the slaves of Brazil; women are everywhere the conserva-
tors of peace and good will; let us ask for the appointment of a
woman—Elizabeth Thompson—as one of the ten Commis-
sioners to be designated by the President of the United States.
For more than twenty years this woman, whose great for-
tune is outmatched b}^ her greater heart, has given almost her
entire income, beyond her own modest personal expenses, in
deeds of helpfulness and love. Her one luxniy^ is not to spend
but to be spent. Her prophetic spirit seeks evermore to bring
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National W. C. T. U.
about the reign of universal peace, the empire of good will.
Symbolic of our part in hastening that better time, she sends
US what she is pleased to call " The Woman's Flag," an inter-
national ensign of great beauty and the noblest teaching. I
hope that Mrs. Thompson will be present to-night when this
flag is first unfurled.
health.
Yon will see that health topics set the keynote of this con-
vention. There are no more helpful specialists than those
whose names are on our program. The total study of the
white-ribbon army is wholesomeness, which means health,
which means holiness in heart and life, in soul and body, in
Church and State. Onr struggle against brain poisons has
broadened into this all-comprehending generalization, which
the banishment of these poisons alone can render possible.
our work in the schools.
It has been said that ' 'body and mind are two well-fitting
halves of a perfect whole." In Greece, gymnastics and study
were inseparable. Onr friend William Blaikie, who speaks to
US to-morrow evening on "Athletics for Young Women," writes
these golden words in his book entitled ' 'Onr Children's Bodies;''
"What chance has a bright and studious girl in one of onr
public schools to build up her health and strength? Who teaches
her about either? Ambitions to stand well in her class, no
matter how much work is set before her, she goes at it with
determination, and willingly spends not only all her school
hours, but often, as has already been seen, her hours out of
school as well, in close, exacting study. Who teaches her to
intersperse these with an hour or two, not of a dawdling walk
at a dead-and-alive gait, but with sensible, hearty exercise
and play, making her for the time wholly forget her brain
work? Not only has she no guide in this direction, but her
very lack of physical vigor makes her indisposed to anything
like continued or even momentary muscular exertion; indeed,
often she is afraid to take it, and even thinks it dangerous. Many
a day passes in which she does not take one single full breath.
Is it any wonder that she has small lungs, when she does noth-
ing to expand them ?"
Presidents Annual Address.
I know a town where the High School girls take part in the
prize speaking that raises money for the bo3"s' baseball club,
but have no exercise themselves except the walk to and from
school.
In contrast to this, the public schools of Chicago, Kansas
Cit3', lyouisville and several others, have already taken up
physical culture. Industrial education is fast being introduced,
and the leaders of the public school system are thoroughly
committed to it. Congress has made an appropriation for that
purpose to the public schools of Washington and manj^ other
cities. A beginning has been made with the Slater fund by
means of which over ten thousand colored students received
industrial instruction in the ^xar past. The Kindergarten has,
after fifteen years of faithful work, won for itself an assured
position, and it will not now be long until this later daj^ rev-
elation of God's will to the little child "becomes the basis and
an integral part of the public school sj^stem," as urged by Mrs.
Sarah B. Cooper and her committee at the recent National Con-
vention of educators in San Francisco. Our own Kindergarten
Department is working steadily toward the same end and
should have our warm co-operation.
I think our most urgent duty now is to enlist the interest
of the teachers in the enforcement of our Scientific Temper-
Education laws.
"For forms of government let fools contest.
That which is best administered is best."
The personality of the teacher is the final factor in edu-
cation, and we have 3'et to gain the hearty good-will of this
fraternity for the study and practice of hygiene.
I wish our gifted leader in this department, Mrs. Mary H.
Hunt, with the prestige of all her splendid victories, might
make a specialty of impressing, through pen as well as voice,
^her own wise enthusiasm upon State conventions of teachers.
Normal schools, and National associations of superintendents
as well as teachers, emphasizing the duty and privilege of the
teacher to so present the scientific, moral and financial side of
intemperance, as to influence for life those under her care. We
need also and especially, to reach the phj^sicians of all com-
12 National W. C. T. LI.
munities, so that their practice may confirm the teachings of
the school.
The White Cross work has not yet been reported on, as was
agreed, in the National Teachers' Association, bull am assured
by leaders that Miss Josephine C. Tocke, of St. Louis, one of
the most brilliant advocates of the White Cross and White
Shield idea, is also one of the most influential among public
school teachers, and we shall have everything to hope from
her advocacy of this work.
HEART CULTURE IN OUR SCHOOLS.
The new movement for the study of the Bible, as the finest
of English classics, introducing it into colleges and seminaries
of the highest grade, is full of possibilities for Christian prog-
ress and development. The mar\'el is that Christian scholars
should ever have permitted the heathen classics to outrank the
psalms of David, the visions of Isaiah, and the wonderful phi-
losophy of the four Gospels. But something else needs to be
done on the same line, and must become universal before we
can fairl}^ call ourselves other than a practically pagan repub-
lie. This is the teaching of those principles of ethics that are
found in the Scriptures and questioned by no sane mind,
whether Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant. No general
movement toward making our great public school system an
ethical system has yet been inaugurated, except by the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and this kingdom of
heaven has come to the children of the land, as its wont is,
"not by observation," but so quietly that our people hardly
know the good thing that has happened to them. There are
probably millions of Christian people who are not aware that
in thirty-three states and territories the white-ribbon women
have secured laws making obligator}^ the instruction of all the
children in scientific temperance with special reference to the
effect of alcohol and narcotics upon the human system, and that
a part of this legislation was secured from Congress and makes
this teaching obligatory at West Point, Annapolis, and every-
where that the United States pays money for public instruction.
While not avowedly, this is practically ethical teaching, pro-
ceeding upon the principle that God's laws written in our mem-
President''s Annual Address. 13
bers are to be sacredly obeyed, and that in obedience to them
there is great reward. Indeed, the broader study of hygiene,
which is but another name for the religion of the body, has
come into our public school system by this channel, for it is
explicitly provided that this scientific temperance instruction
shall be given in connection wuth the study of physiology and
hygiene, and the first text-book for the little ABC darians in
the lowest grade is called the "Child's Primer of Health."
Now here is a basis to go upon, a foundation thoroughly well
laid; and the effort of good women everywhere should be to
secure the introduction of a text-book of right living; one that
should teach the reasons for the social code of good manners,
every particular of which is based on the Golden Rule, and
those refinements of behavior which involve the utmost kindness
to the animal creation, including the organization of Bands of
Mercy in all our public schools. All this is sure to come, and
that right speedily, as a consequence of the awakened interest
of women everywhere in the subject of education and their
increasing power along these lines. The time will come when
it will be told as a relic of our primitive barbarism that chil-
dren were taught the list of prepositions and the names of the
rivers of Thibet, but were not taught the w^onderful laws on
which their own bodily happiness is based, and the humanities
by which they could live in peace and good will with those
about them. The time will come when, whatever we do not
teach, we shall teach ethics as the foundation of every form
of culture, and the "faith that makes faithful" in every rela-
tion of life will become a thing of knowledge to the child of
the then truly Christian republic. For we can never teach
these things and leave out Christ as the central figure, and His
philosophy as the central fact of our system of education. At
the same time our teaching must be as far removed from any-
thing sectarian or involving the statement of a creed as the
north star is from the southern cross. There will be no trouble
in those days about opening school with such extracts from the
Bible as have been agreed upon by men and women of all faiths,
and the repetition of the Ford's Prayer, with its universal
benignities, will be a matter of course. It is for the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union to work on quietly to this end.
H
National W. C. T. U.
without haste, without rest. I wish we might at this conven-
tion, appoint a committee representing all religious faiths,
authorizing through it the preparation of a series of ethical
text-books, teaching (i) The Religion of the Body, (2) of the
Brain, (3) of the Heart, (4) Religion of the State, by which I
mean the principles of peace and patriotism. I suggest that
we counsel together as to the members of such committees,
order the books brought out by our own Publishing Association,
and introduce them into such schools as we can influence. If
the plan works well it will prove its utility and pave the way
for a more general movement. These text-books should be
taught in all grades, and should have as their basis thought
and universal motto, "Peace, Growth, Brotherhood."
OUR LOYAL TEMPERANCE LEGIONS.
Our work among the children grows apace.
Of this nothing could give .stronger proof than the fact
that our Superintendent, Mrs. Helen G. Rice, of Boston, has
received a report from every State and Territory in the Nation.
I doubt if any such showing has been made before in the his-
tor>' of the temperance reform.
We find it hard to move the minds of men; it is like bruis-
ing our knuckles against marble, and we are glad to work in
the clay of a child's character, impressing our belief upon the
little minds that are " wax to receive, and marble to retain."
If every mother would but teach her children to ' 'keep
step" to the words "The saloon, the saloon, the saloon must
go," those words would mean as much to this reform as "De-
le7ida est Carthago'" meant to the success of Hannibal.
We must broaden our plan of Royal Legion work to take
in the principles of social puritjL of peace, and kindness to
animals. We must make concerted efforts to ally the kinder-
garten with the public school, and to attach to that great sys-
tem physical and industrial education for pupils of all grades.
As I think of the bright-eyed little ones that enshrine our
hopes for a redeemed republic, and of all the tenderness we
ought to feel for them, I wish to share with you some lines by
Presidenfs Annual Address.
15
a sweet, unknown poet; they will endear the children to your
purpose as well as to your heart;
They are such tiny feet !
They have gone so short a way to meet
The years which are required to break
Their steps to evenness and make
Them go more sure and slow.
They are such little hands !
Be kind ; things are so new and life but stands
A step beyond the doorway. All around
New day has found
Such tempting things to shine upon ; and so
The hands are tempted oft, you know.
They are such fond, clear eyes,
That widen to surprise
At every turn ! they are so often held
To sun or showers, showers soon dispelled
By looking in our face,
Love asks for such, much grace.
They are such fair, frail gifts.
Uncertain as the rifts
Of light that lie along the sky ;
They may not be here bye-and-bye.
Give them not love alone, but more—above
And harder—patience with the love.
THU PRESS.
Our Press Department must have a word of commentary.
It developed, as j'ou know, a weekly News Bulletin in care of
Miss Ames, and this year Miss Briggs has much enlarged its
field, sending printed copies to several hundred papers directly
and through the State Superintendents. Whatever we may
not do this year, we must have a paid Superintendent of the
press—all the work having been done free of charge thus far.
A weekly bulletin to five thousand papers, a special one
to the large religious weeklies, frequent Associated Press dis-
patches with a quarter or half column edited by a National
Woman's Christian Temperance Union officer in each of our
chief prohibition papers; all these are demanded by the growth
of our work, to say nothing of the necessity of an expert jour-
nalist to watch the constant mistakes, for ladies do not say lies,
of the press, leaving a monopoly of that word with editors
i6
National W. C. 7\ U,
political. Besides this, a monthly bulletin, like that started
for us by dear Esther Housh, at twenty-five cents per 3^ear,
filled with extracts from our best speeches, speakers, sketches
of workers, paragraphs from the latest temperance books, etc.,
would be most helpful to our local auxiliaries.
The click of the pistol has given way to the click of the
printer's t^'pe, which is a far more telling weapon; the cannon
is being re-fashioned into the rotary press; invisible piercing
swords of thought, and Damascus blades of sympathy are fight-
ing the world's only battles in these days, and erelong the
phonograph shall declare a universal armistice on the basis of
a better understanding, and the uninflamed brains of the next
centur}^ shall welcome the woman's flag of universal peace.
Is it not significant of such a possibility as this that the
greatest printing feat on record was the putting in type of the
Revised Version of the New Testament ? While the first steamer
out after its publication plowed the deep, the printers steadil^-^
set the t\'pe until a pilot tug met the ship off Sand}' Hook,
took the cases, carried them to the newspaper offices of New
York and the next morning two hundred thousand copies were
sold, and the Gospel's good news of brotherhood was for the
first time in history cried by newsboys upon city streets. This
was in the name of "enterprise" alone. What then should
be our zeal who have a purpose so much more worthy of the
Gospel ? The baseball club asks for a journalistic hearing and
succeeds; the pugilist asks it, aird bloody-nosed and bloody-
handed as he is, succeeds—to the shame of the reading public
be it spoken. With as much energy in our good and great
cause as he has in his bad and bestial one, we might succeed
as well as he.
Of our strong and steady growth at the Woman's Tem-
perance Publication Association, in Chicago, I need not speak.
Five thousand dollars' worth of stock paid for by a single
Southern lady proves how fast and far our fame has flown.
Sixty millions of pages in one year tells its own stor}^ But
this I am authorized to say, we have a corps of workers whose
habits relative to drink and tobacco are not equaled, so I am
assured, by those of any other office in the city, and our pay
Presidents Annual Address,
17
list proves that equal wages for equal work as between men
and women is the rule among our employes.
We should ask for half a column in The Voice, The Wit-
7iess, Piojieer, Lever, and other leading papers, and for a quar-
ter column in the hidepe^ident, CJudstian Unioji, and Church
papers, to be carefully edited from the Headquarters of the
National W. C. T. U.
There are in this country four papers for children, through
which a million forming minds may be reached by us if we are
wise and steadfast. Strategic points like these must be care-
fully studied b}^ our Press Department, and to do this we need
an expert at Headquarters who has for her motto ; This one
thing I do ! and whose board and clothes we furnish—that she
may do just this one.
We may well be thankful that women are coming steadily
forward into journalism. Their way of telling the world's
news to-day is always, so far as I have yet learned, such as to
make the world better to-morrow.
AT THK CAPlTOIv.
One of the noblest and most distinguished ladies in Wash-
ington writes me thus :
Just how far Mrs. Bittenbender, your Superintendent of Legal
Department, will report her work I do not know. She is wise, quiet,
and cautious, and doubtless she will do this right; but my judgment is,
your hearts will grow warm as you discover how slowly but surely your
cause has advanced when most of you thought it sleeping. Mrs Bitten-
bender takes in the real idea, the reasonable argument, and, so far, she
has shown great ability in bringing forces to strengthen her case. I feel
happy over her work. It was greatly needed. Mrs. Hunt and Mrs.
Bittenbender have exalted the W. C. T. U. in the minds of the thinking
legislators of this country. It seems to me this truth has scarcely been
appreciated by the "white-ribbon " women. One of these ladies appears
in Washington for the uplifting of the masses through the schools, the
other for a constitutional amendment; these are no trivial affairs. Your
representatives make no complaint, they speak no unkind word ; simply,
gently, womanly, they demand, though with great gentleness, in the
name of the W. C. T. U., that these great things be done.
The same may be said of the steady and successful work
of Mrs. A. F. Newman, whose "Home for Mormon Women"
has already received the favorable vote of the United States
Senate.
i8
National W. C. 1\ U.
THE WOMAN'S TEMPLE AND NATIONAL TEMPERANCE HOS-
PITAL, UNDER THEIR RESPECTIVE FOUNDERS,
MRS. CARSE AND DR. BURNETT,
are moving on like a ship at sea whose course is definitely laid
down and harbor chosen, and which takes the waves at the
best angle possible in order to surmount them and make them
bear it onward. There is enough of bufieting, but where fric-
tion aboundeth grace doth much more abound, and we shall
put the capstones of these magnificent enterprises in place with
shouts of joy and prayers of gratitude, some bright day by-
and-by.
THE Y'S.
Our work among the 5'oung women has greatly increased
this year. Mrs. Frances J. Barnes has proved herself one of
our ablest leaders, while Mrs. Rose Patten, of Pennsylvania,
heads the banner State for membership in the Young Woman's
Christian Temperance Union.
THE LECTURE BUREAU,
under Mrs. Buell's care, has proved to be an arm of power. A
Secretary of this bureau should be appointed by the General
Officers, also an office Secretar^^ for Headquarters where the
work in all departments has greatly grown this year.
AT CHAUTAUQUA.
We have had our best summer at Chautauqua, the birth-
place of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
The Training School conducted by Miss We.st, and the Bvan-
gelistic work of Mrs. Henry, have greatly informed the people
concerning our methods- and spirit, and the sale of our litera-
ture has spread far and wide the propaganda to which we are
devoted. We are most fortunate in the good-will of Mr. J. H.
Kellogg, a wealthy friend of Chautauqua, who sent us a check
for $1,000, and who is erecting a beautiful memorial building
to his mother, Mrs. Annie M. Kellogg, in which we are to
have ample accommodations for our Society. This fulfills a long
cherished desire of all our hearts, and I am sure you would
all, like me, be eager to express your appreciation and grati-
tude to our generous brother for his consideration toward us in
Presidenfs Annual Address,.
providing for us at the chief Christian summer resort of Chris-
tendom, what every woman prizes above rubies, a home of our
own.
finance:.
A method, new, at least to me, is now working admirably
in certain circles of good people, and I wish to urge it upon
the attention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
The principle is, that "ten times one is ten."
I will copy the papers just as they came to me. It will be
seen that by substituting for Bishop Garrett's work a brief
statement and appeal for whatever line of work one had in
view, the plan would be complete:
The friends of Bishop Garrett's work in northern Texas have for
years been trying to raise the money for a much needed school for girls
in that very hard missionary field. The importance of the Christian
education for our young girls, especially in the missionary field of the
far West and Southwest, cannot be overestimated.
Each person receiving this paper is asked to make two copies of it;
putting at the top the next highest number, the same number in each
copy, sending to two friends, at the same time, returning this paper with
ten cents in stamps to the
Right Rev. Aeexander Garrett,
Dallas, Texas.
The two friends, in their turn, are asked to do exactly the same, with
as little delay as possible. Those who receive No. 15 are asked to close
the matter by sending it with their ten cents to Bishop Garrett without
copies. Anyone declining to join is requested to send this paper to
Bishop Garrett, as this is the only way it can be known that the chain is
broken, and although it only means ten cents and a little trouble to each,
yet any break in the chain may involve a serious loss, as the unbroken
chain gives sixteen hundred dollars.
This help is earnestly asked " In His Name."
"No service too small to lay at our dear Master's blessed feet.
And naught too great, if He but give the strength and wisdom for it
meet."
Once more let me reiterate the conviction that until we
have salaried State and District Presidents and salaried Secre-
taries in each local Union, we shall never become the power for
God and Home and Native Land that we were meant to be. If
500 members in each district would pay a dollar apiece, each
district could salary its President, and the States and Territo-
ries would all rise to the level of the best.
20
National W. C. T. U.
Until we have an office Secretary for the Department of
Organization, it will languish. The woman of one v/ork is the
woman who causes things to come to pass.
A Department of Entertainments for young folks, presided
over by Miss Mary Mather, of Delaware, one of our trustiest
young women, would add to our exchequer, and at the same
time do much to enliven the long winter evenings.
TOTAIv ABSTINENCE.
It seems to me we should do well to spread the total absti-
nence propaganda by trying to induce all sorts of societies (as
baseball, tennis and boat clubs, the C. D. S. C. local assem-
blies and granges, even down to the brass band) to introduce
a by-law pledging the members to total abstinence from all
intoxicants. These societies all have their machinery presum-
ably in good running order, and from their respective driving
wheels they could readily put out a belt, and turn this total
abstinence wheel! Suppose we work toward this result, mak-
ing our plan along the line of least resistance, viz.: the phys-
ical culture argument in these days of athletics.
The suggestion comes to me not infrequently, "Ask for a
change in the name of your Society." It is really the "Wom-
an's Total Abstinence and National Prohibition Union."
Truly it is, and my heart rejoices in the fact, but the greatest
good we are doing is to help give a new definition to the word
"Temperance," so that it shall mean the moderate use of all
things good, and total abstinence from, and the total—which
must be the national—prohibition of all things harmful.
Uet us also have a National pledge against all stimulants
and narcotics. The word beer should be used in our National
pledge instead of malt liquors, as being more direct and more
educational against the beverage we have most steadily to
fight.
We ought to encourage the multiplication of first-class
temperance hotels, and to '' lend them our influence'' whenever
possible. A " W. C. T. U. hotel" in town or city would be a
guarantee of comfort and fair-dealing, and in almost every
case would yield a margin for our work. The word beverage
should be carefully inserted, as at Indianapolis, in all our plat-
Presidenfs Annual Address.
21
forms and resolutions, otherwise the question of sacramental
wine will come up and alienate many of our helpers, as was
painfully proved in the Michigan campaign for constitutional
amendment.
the women's national council.
It has required more than a generation of training within
the sheltering circle of the Church, where most of us have had
our schooling as organized endeavorers, to prepare us for so
large a thought as was launched at Washington, D.C., last
spring, in the International Council. We knew that by the
law of fittest survival each group of women working together
according to a plan, develops its own leadership. But there
and then began the widest evolution possible to us as women
and the last in our slow process of training for our true posi-
tion as the equal partners of men in the great world and its
work, for at Washington was evolved the idea of a society
made up of leaders only—a Council of Women, every one of
whom should be an expert and a specialist in some department
of work for the uplifting of humanity, and to which should be
eligible the leader of every society in the Nation, "the nature
of whose w^ork was either undoubtedly national in its charac-
ter or else in its value." Then, once in five years, the Inter-
national Council of Women, also organized at Washington, is
to meet, to which will be eligible only the Presidents of Na-
tional Councils. Fifty-three different organizations of women,
all but four of which were of national scope, and all of nation-
al value, were there represented. "The subjects of education,
philanthropies, temperance, industries, professions, organiza-
tion, legal conditions, social purity, political conditions, and
religion, were all discussed. While no restriction was placed
upon the fullest expression of the most widely divergent views
upon these vital questions of the age, it is cause for rejoicing
that the sessions, both executive and public, were absolutely
without friction.
"It was the unanimous voice of this Council that all insti-
tutions of learning and of professional instruction, including
schools of theology, law, and medicine, should, in the interest
of humanity, be as freely opened to women as to men; that
opportunities for industrial training should be as generally and
22
National W. C. T. U.
liberally provided for one sex as for the other, and the repre-
sentatives of organized womanhood in this Council will steadily
demand that in all avocations in which both men and women
engage, equal wages shall be paid for equal work; and, finally,
that an enlightened society should demand, as the only ade-
quate expression of the high civilization which it is its office
to establish and maintain, an identical standard of personal
purity and morality for men and women."
The general declaration of the National Council of the
United States as well as of the World's Council was as follows:
"We, women, sincerely believing that the best good of our homes and
nation will be advanced by our own greater unity of thought, sympathy,
and purpose, and that an organized movement of women will best con-
serve the highest good of the family and the state, do hereby band our-
selves together in a confederation of workers committed to the overthrow
of all forms of ignorance and injustice, and to the application of the
Golden Rule to society, custom and law. This Council is organized in
the interest of no one propaganda, and has no power over its auxiliaries
beyond that of suggestion and sympathy; therefore, no society voting to
become auxiliary to this Council shall thereby render itself liable to be
interfered with in respect to its complete organic unity, independence,
and methods of work, or be committed to any principle or method of any
other society, or to any utterance or act of the Council itself, beyond
compliance with the terms of this constitution."
No sooner was this new tbouglit launched upon the seeth-
ing waves of journalism than good women everywhere began
to say to one another: "If unification is strength in the na-
tional movements of women, why not in the states, and why
not in each city, town, and village? If, as the 'Council
Women' said in their preamble, such an organization 'will
incalculably increase the world's sum total of womanly cour-
age, efficiency, and esprit de corps, widen our horizon, correct
the tendency to an exaggerated impression of the value of one's
own work as compared with that of others, and put the wisdom
and experience of each at the service of all,' then let us all
have councils, local and State, and let us have them speedily."
Already Ohio has organized a Woman's Council for the
State and Chicago for the city; already several National Socie-
ties have become auxiliary to the National Council, among
them the Woman's Missionary^ Society of the Free Baptist
Presidenfs Annual Address.
23
Church. Most of all do I desire and urge the auxiliaryship of
the greatest society of women in the world, and that is the one
in presence of whose representatives I stand to-day.
Our attitude toward this latest and most significant move-
ment of the women, by the women, for the women, will do
more to determine its status than that of any other, because
we are the strongest, most compact and systematic of all the
great societies. As President of the Council I come unto my
own to-day and ask them to stand by me. Pet us become
auxiliary, and so set a keynote loud enough to be heard the
world around. I urge you also to speak of this movement in
your lectures and conversation, indorse it with your pens,
spread its leaflets with which you shall soon be furnished,
advise women in all towns and cities to get their heads together
in this most effective way, and so, without observation, but
surely and soon, the country will have a solidarity of women,
committed to • the overthrow of every enemy of womanhood,
home, and humanity.
OUR SUPERINTENDENTS.
If Superintendent Noah had called for a "committee" the
ark would still be on the stocks. More and more each year do
our superintendencies reflect honor upon our Society. They
speak so nobly for themselves that I have almost ceased to
speak of them. I cannot, however, fail to applaud the devo-
tion of our kegal Superintendent, Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender,
the complete antithesis in plan and purpose of Touis Schade,
the brewers' attorney at the capital. He is backed up by
both the elderly political parties, she by the young one. But
perhaps the widest difference between our lawyer at the capi-
tal and theirs is that while he has three thousands a year salary,
she has not a single cent, and pays her own board—that is, her
husband does. The present Congress, sitting for political per-
quisites only, has detained our heroic Portia already ten months
at the capital, working for prohibition in the Territories and
repeal of Internal Revenue taxes on alcoholic beverages.
Admitted as she is now, to practice in the Supreme Court
of the United States, Mrs. Bittenbender seems to me to be the
H
National W. C. T. U.
woman we should choose, not only as our Superintendent of
legal work, but also as our lawyer at the capital.
The School of W. C. T. U. Methods, Miss West's depart-
ment, has greatly grown this year, far exceeding previous
results, and as we are to have that gifted woman's time almost
wholly hereafter, devoted to this department, we may well
believe that it will soon become the right arm of the service.
We must strongly memorialize the Evangelical Alliance
for a day of prayer in the Week of Prayer. Our Superintend-
ent, Mrs. Watson, who has wrought so long and well in this
behalf, especially desires our more hearty co-operation. I
hope the committee will give us a ringing resolution on this
important subject.
Concerning the present status of the text-book question,
I have the following facts;
OUR NATIONAU SUPKRINTENDUNT,
Mrs. Hunt, has revised three books for Van Antwerp,
Bragg & Co., one for High Schools, and has offered them the
indorsement for high advanced classes in Common Schools.
She has revised a book for Intermediate Schools for the same
firm, writing herself all the temperance matter, which was
more than one-fourth of the book. This book is now in the
hands of the printer, and she is daily reading proof for it. At
the present rate of progress it will be out in less than a month.
She has revised a primary book for the same firm, rewriting
much, as well as adding whole chapters of new matter. This
whole series will be ready for the public within a few weeks.
She has revised for Ivison, Blakeman, & Co., New York
one of the Smith books, for intermediate grades, herself writing
more than one-fourth of the book. The revision of two other
books for this firm is now in hand, and in an interview which
I had with them the other day, they stated that they did not
wish to issue the books separately, but will wait until the whole
series is ready.
Mrs. Hunt has also revised, for Eeach, Shewell, & Sanborn,
Brand's primary work. It is now in the hands of the publish-
ers. As soon as she can reach it she will take up the larger work
of Brand, published by the same firm.
President''s Annual Address.
25
She has also revised a new book by Prof. Chas. H. Stowell,
of Ann Arbor, and is now reading proof of same. She is also
now at work upon books published by Harper and by Appleton.
I do not this year suggest a new department (save one of
paying entertainments, under " Finance "), but do most earn-
estly advise the re-creation of an old one under a new name.
More than once I have urged on your attention the importance
of homes for adult incapables, among whom should certainly be
classed confirmed inebriates and victims of the tobacco, opium
and chloral habits. Their number is legion, their lives are an
unspeakable burden to themselves and all connected with them,
and their conduct wears out valuable lives that could be far
better utilized. Tet the State take them as her wards, and by
putting them w^here they cannot get the poisons to which they
are devoted, let her redeem their time, turn their days to good
from evil, keep them at Avork enough to bear their own financial
weight, and give them thus their one hope of restoration, or if
they cannot be restored, owing to congenital weakness or weak-
ness so confirmed through appetite as to be chronic, let them
remain for life and come to usefulness and happiness a thou-
sand-fold greater here than would be possible to them outside.
This seems to me the missing link in work for the defective,
dependent and delinquent classes, and I urge you to appoint a
woman who may become our Dorothea Dix, on a new field and
in a reform as much needed now as insane hospitals were in her
day.
From a leading expert whom I consulted on this subject I
have the following testimony:
" Nothing is more needed than the power forciblj^ to de-
tain, for their own good, the victims of alcohol, nicotine,
chloral and kindred poisons. At present no such right is given
to us in law."
A Superintendent of a Woman's Protective Agency ought
to be appointed in every local union to stand by women in the
terribly unequal battle of the courts where a man's testimony
is not invalidated because he is a libertine, but if a woman is
unchaste she is practically disqualified as a witness, except in
a case wherein her testimony favors the man's side, whereupon
a jury of men will naturally accept it at par value. It might
26
Natio7ial W. C. T. U.
be well for us to think whether the law providing for an " age
of consent " has not wrongly educated men, so that they virt-
ually assert in court '' I a7n 7iot guilty because this woman is
guilty."
The more we study the mighty question of social purity
the more certainly we find that it is part and parcel of the liq-
uor traffic, and almost as largely mixed up with politics as that
is. The best result of this Department in our Unions is that
women are being aroused to see thei,r own subject, not to say
abject, condition before the law and to perceive the solemn obli-
gation that rests upon them to desire, demand, and use the bal-
lot for the protection of their virtue as well' as of their homes.
When this power is in our hands we will soon establish
places of detention for degraded women, where they can earn
an honorable livelihood, and be neither tempters nor tempted as
now. This is a crying need of our social purity work.
New Hampshire W. C. T. U., led by Mrs. N. H. Knox,
has secured an appropriation of five thousand dollars from the
Legislature, for a Woman's Industrial Home, to be available
whenever the Union raises as much more, which it is rapidly
doing. This can be done in every state if our women will but
try. Let me earnestly beseech you, dear sisters, to set about
this work in 1889. ,
HOME PROTECTION POEITICS.
The last Emperor of Germany, Frederick the Noble, would
not suffer in his presence any word that was to the disparage-
ment of women. When he was Crown Prince an officer re-
marked to him that a soldier comrade who had been wounded
in battle was "weeping like a woman." " Never make that
comparison," said " Unser Fritz," " sa}'rather that he was
crying like an unweaned child. The truth is, women have
more fortitude than men."
I congratulate you, my soldier comrades, on having furn-
ished a fresh illustration of this fact. In this battle autumn
your white ribbons mark the adventurous frontier, and of all
temperance societies 3-011 are the onL' one—as of all christian
organizations of equal membership 3-011 are the first and last—
to declare your lo3-alty to the Prohibition Part3^
Presidents An7iual Address.
27
Moral suasion leads to legal suasion, and that involves in
its national phases political suasion. It takes time to build the
party, but then time comes as fast as it goes, and we have all
the time there is. The person who would win must follow a
chosen path, as the engine does the track, or the telegraph
message the wire. This you have seen, and it has made you
skilled laborers in the temperance cause. You know whereof
you affirm; you have learned by the logic of events and the
argument of defeat, many things not to do and not a few things
to do. It is hard to be patient with those who are still in the
A B's of total abstinence, when you are away over in the poly-
syllables of prohibition and its derivatives; but we were all
back there once, and it is a very hopeful place in the temperance
spelling book. Tet us possess our souls in patience till the
storm be over-past, confident that those who begin where we
began, with personal prohibition, will at a day not distant see
that National Prohibition is the necessary sequel of the law
they have made unto themselves, on the principle that what is
morally wrong can never be legally right; what is legally
wrong can never be politically right, and that as our grand
Mary Lathrap says, a new issue can only enter the temple of
law through the portal of politics. Parties are controlled
externally by majorities, but internally by that element within
them that is most inclined to bolt. The liquor element in the
old parties keeps them both feverish and uncertain in their
movements. The temperance reform requires a party that is
calm of pulse, sober and steadfast of purpose, and whose mem-
hers would bolt on any issue under the sun sooner than on
that of prohibition.
In 1840, in the State of Maine, there were twenty-nine
townships in each of which just one man voted all alone for
the incipient and despised party that twenty years later and
under a different name elected its candidate for President. In
1844, when the tariff was the fetich, as it is now. Prof. Taylor
of Yale College said : "If one of two devils is candidate, I
must vote for the least of the two,'' and ministers preached, as
some do now, the solemn duty of voting for a man who is
likely to be elected, as against an issue that you are deter-
mined to elect.
28
National W. C. T. U.
The two candidates now leading the largest hosts have both
explicitly declared themselves opposed to prohibition, and yet
both will poll the votes of an army of saloon keepers and an
army of saints. This one unchallenged fact shows that the
times are out of joint and that a reassorting of the voters is
imperative. A great writer has said: "It is impossible to
license crime by halves; impossible to authorize injustice at all
and hope to regulate the measure of it." The truth of these
words is clear as sunlight. But in the great State of New
York this is just what Warner Miller proposes to do, and
claims credit for proposing, though a Methodist and member
of the General Conference recently held in this great audito-
rium, where he approved and applauded the declaration that
the liquor traffic "cannot be licensed without sin." Sooner
than temporize like this, let the minions of that accursed busi-
ness elect their candidates, and so fill up the measure of their
wrath, while Christians say, '' This is your hour and the power
of darkness." A resurrection shall follow speedily upon that
night wherein the Star of Truth will be revealed to thousands
of well-meaning men now dazed by the glittering sophistries
of party leaders who are fighting desperately in the last ditch
to retrieve their irretrievable defeat.
A widow brought her petition to the King of Macedon.
He denied it, and she said, " But I appeal." " To whom can
you appeal?" he cried in wrath. She answered quietly,
" From Philip drunk to Philip sober ! "
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, to-day
maligned and vilified by one party at the north and another at
the south, in the blind rage of these crisis hours, gently and
quietly proceeds to take an appeal, not to the King of Mace-
don, but to Old King Majority, and to Old Father Time.
Meanwhile out of white rose :
" A wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true,
Who for sake of the many dare stand with the few."
Lugubrious prophecies have been put forth concerning
the results of our righteous partisanship, but none of them have
come to anything more substantial than their own melancholy
echoes. We are the only temperance society that has specific-
Presidents Annual Address.
29
ally declared its loyalty to the Prohibition Party, and we are
to-day the strongest and most successful society in Christen-
dom. Our Woman's Temperance Publication Association out-
ranks all others except the chief Prohibition Party paper itself,
The Voice, our powerful friend and ally. We said we would
print sixty million pages this year—one for ever>^ resident of
the United States—we have printed over that number (60,272,-
000).' Our cash receipts this year are $129,740.75, or $42,-
293-75 excess of last year, and our employes number
ninety, with constant growth in all departments; and our offi-
cial organ. The Union Signal, fast climbing to an edition of
fifty thousand per week. Our National W. C. T. U., which,
during the first eight of its fourteen years' duration averaged
but a thousand dollars per year, received last year about $11,-
100, and has this year $21,081.59.
New York, perhaps the most partisan of all our State
Unions, has the largest membership of any State—over 21,000.
Pennsylvania, which has a large partisan minority, comes next,
and Illinois, the pioneer partisan State of all, ranks third. No
State is overwhelmingly non-partisan save Iowa, and while we
all rejoice in its prosperity, there is hardly State that does
not make as good a showing of increase in membership, in
dues, and all that goes to prove substantial growth.
To-day our National W. C. T. U., while recognizing the
liberty of each State to be partisan or not, as it elects, is prac-
tically partisan, with exceptions so small that they but prove
the beauty of the rule. Rhode Island and California have
fallen into line this year by large majorities, but with these two
States the relations of the National W. C. T. U. have always
been most pleasant, notwithstanding our difference of opinion
upon one vital issue.
Whenever such relations prove difficult of maintenance
with any State auxiliary, I solemnly believe we should go on
the "even tenor of our way, opposing sweet reasonableness to
severe epithet, and serenely confident in the immortal truth
of great Gamaliel's words :
" For if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come
to nought; but if it be of God ye cannot overthrow it, lest
haply ye be found even to fight against God."
30
National W. C. T. U.
A gentle and dignified denial of any wrong intent toward
any of our number, and a reiteration of what has always beeh
our policy, and which was stated in these words by our
National Convention of 1887, will amply cover every^ case that
can arise :
"No State Union shall be bound by any principle espoused, or plan
devised by the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, except
that all States auxiliary must subscribe to the total abstinence pledge and
to the Constitution of the National Union."
Our non-partisan sisters often recur to the non-sectarian
basis of our movement as an overmastering reason wh}^ we
should not declare ourselves in favor of the party that declares
for the home. But this is clearly an analogy that will not
analyze; a proof that proves too much.
The churches of this nation have cradled the temperance
reform; the parties, nationally, have stifled it; the churches
are the homes in which we have been nurtured as temperance
reformers; the Republican party in Congress has, according to
the testimonj^ of the brewers themselves, done all for them that
they have asked, while the Democratic party openly espouses
the interests of the liquor traffic; the churches are the strong-
est supporters of the movement for prohibition, both in law
and politics; the two old parties are its greatest obstacles.
The very same reasons that render it consistent for us to re-
cruit our meftibership from all the churches, and declare
specifically for none, should lead us to recruit all the members
that we can for the Prohibition party, and '' lend our influ-
ence" for its success. The liquor dealers know that a triangle
of forces is fast surrounding them, and it is composed of the
churches on one side, the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union on another, and on the third, of the " Third Part5\"
God hasten the day when these allied powers, as closely
linked together as are cause and effect, shall close in on the
embodied forces of Perdition and crush their power for ever-
more.
At Washington, in 1881, I first urged the advantage to
our common cause of an alliance between the W. C. T. U. and
the Prohibition party, which had then polled but ten thou-
sand votes as its maximum after a struggle of ten years'
Presidents Annual Address. 31
duration. Not until then had I risen to the perception of
prohibition in those national aspects which alone can bring
substantial victory; not until then had I visited the South,
and learned the acceptance in good faith by the good people
there, of nationality. Steadily we have moved forward in
these years, until, as Chief Justice Waite said of prohibition,
so can we say of our oneness in purpose with the Prohibition
party, " That is no longer an open question in this Court."
Marching in its procession throughout this campaign,
have been men who knew that curses and not offices, would
be their sure reward; Junior Prohibitionists—braving the jeers
of schoolboy friends—and women wearing white ribbon and
white rose mingled, while they gently kept time to the com-
pany's music, and all sang together, ' 'When Election Day comes
'round we'll all be there." No purer hands ever lifted a
standard, and no followers more valiant ever gathered around
an ensign than the one this year displayed, bearing the noble
and chivalric names of Fisk and Brooks. In this historic hall
they accepted the ordeal of battle, and our generous chieftain
said, that no matter what others might do or say, we must be
kindly and considerate.
No leader in America understands better than he how
true it is that '' A wise man on a crowded street winneth his
way by gentleness."
The resolution recently adopted by Rhode Island W. C.
T. U. sets forth so admirably the platform of the party—as it
affects the home—that I give it here, congratulating that
most thoroughly organized of all the States on such a concen-
trated and convincing utterance:
Resolved, That we sympathize with any party which makes its
dominant issue the suppression of the liquor trafl&c, declares its belief in
Almighty God as the source of all power in government, defends the
sanctity of the Christian Sabbath, recognizes equal suffrage and equal
wages for woman, demands the abolition of polygamy and uniform laws
governing marriage and divorce, and aims to remove sectional differen-
ces, promote national unity, and insure the best welfare of our land.
Resolved, That we follow the example of the National Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, and lend our influence to the National
Prohibition party so long as it remains true to the declarations of its plat-
form.
32
National W. C. T. U.
The magnificent convention of the Prohibition party at
Indianapolis was a vision of the New America that men and
women shall together build, and proved that the prophets of
impending danger to the suffrage cause had not rightly meas-
ured the loyalty of Prohibition voters to non-voting Prohibi-
tionists. A thousand blessings on the men who then and
there stood by our cause, from Gov. St. John and George W.
Bain, to the chubby-cheeked young voters who thus explained
to some of us their action: " Why, I could do no less—my
mother is a woman!''
In the nation, Fisk and Brooks; in New York, J. Martin
Jones, our candidate for Governor; in the city, William T.
Wardwell, our candidate for Mayor—white-ribbon women will
do all they can to help all these to win, and while we are
here to review our forty departments of work—none of which
are political—and to plan the work of 1889, we shall be glad
if any word we speak may be influential and persuasive in
winning ballots for the issue to which these men are dedicated,
knowing that this is the utmost desire of their patriotic and
Christian hearts, who are themselves but standard bearers,
around whom the new army of Home Protection voters rally,
but whose defeat is certain from the first.
There are very many localities where our white-ribbon
women will find it practicable to go to the polls and help our
Prohibition brothers upon election day.
Wishing to know the opinion of our National Chairman,
I wrote him on the subject, and received the following reply:
Dear Sister:
In reply to your card of October 8, I would say that such an an-
nouncement as you suggest, urging the women to work at the polls,
would, in my judgment, be a matter of inestimable value to our party,
and I trust that such an announcement will be sent out promptly, and
have no doubt that it will receive immediate and valuable attention.
Yours truly, SamuEL Dickie.
I therefore bring this to your serious consideration, and
urge it upon the attention of every State and local president
from Tampa Bay to Puget Sound. We have rallied to the
polls for Prohibition measures, but it will mean far more for
the cause to which we are devoted when we rally there to ask
President''s Amiual Address.
33
for votes for Prohibition men. The hour could not be more
propitious than it is for a Prohibition vote. Northerners have
lived to be eye-witnesses to the fact that we have not gone to
ruin under a Democratic administration, and Southerners know
that outside the office-seeking circle they have fared equally
well under Republicans. Both parties perceive that a rectifica-
tion of the tariff is to be desired, and neither wants free trade;
civil service reform is not in high favor with either, but the
people will slowly wring its advocacy from both. There is
positively no vital issue before us nationally except the prohi-
bition of the liquor traffic, and as if to remove the only doubt
from candid minds, that have been anxious lest changes in the
Supreme Court might imperil our cause, we had a decision
rendered just before the dawn of this very Presidential year,
that forever stamps Prohibitory law with the highest sanctions
of the nation's highest tribunal, and its decision can never be
reversed. When good men grieve over the liquor curse, but
fail to dedicate their ballots to saloon destruction, white-ribbon
women are reminded of Jehovah's words to Moses: "What
could I have done for this people that I have not done ? Why
liest thou upon th}- face ? Speak unto the children of Israel
that they go forward." Whatever may be the issue on elec.'-
tion day, we believe that as the prophet Zechariah said: "It
shall come to pass, that in all the land saith the Dord, two
parts therein .shall be cut off and die; but the third part shall
be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the
fire, and will try them as gold is tried; thc}^ shall call on my
name, and I will hear them; I will say, it is my people; and
they shall say, the Dord is my God."
Our gifted brother, Henry A. Delano, of Connecticut,
gives the true keynote for the W. C. T. U., in the following
splendid illustrations:
" 'Wait till the iron's hot and then strike,' said somebody to the old
lion, Cromwell. 'I'll strike and make it hot,' was the terse reply. 'If
we could have rain we might whip the Austrians,' said a soldier to Na-
poleon. 'Then we'll have the rain,' said the great warrior, and he
ordered steady cannonading for six hours. Men tell us that rain fob
lowed and the muddy road delayed the Austrians to their defeat."
Sisters, if the iron of public sentiment is not hot, we must
34
National W. C. T. U.
pound awaj' until it is; we must do the steady cannonading;
let this great hall resound with it, and we shall get some day,
and sooner than we think, the rain of home protection ballots,
that shall rout this liquor traffic and give National Prohibi-
tion to America.
The high-water mark of all that has ever been ecclesiastic-
ally said on the temperance question is the following bugle
blast from the Pacific Coast, Columbia River Conference, Sept.
2 1, 1888, where God's breath is in the mountain air rather
than the poisoned breath of men so oft inhaled as to make the
mind lethargic with the carbonic acid gas of conservatism:
"We liail with joy the indications of the approaching overthrow of
rum, and the speedy downfall of the American saloon. The Methodist
Episcopal church has shouted the American people to their feet, and its
recent ringing utterances have done much to set the battle in order for
the final onset, in which rum rule in the social circle and saloon rule in
politics will go down in overwhelming, everlasting defeat. Hear what
our bishops said in their able address to the last General Conference:
' The liquor traffic is so pernicious in all- its bearings, so inimical to the
interests of honest trade, so repugnant to the moral sense, so hurtful to
the homes, to the church, and to the body politic, and so utterly antago-
nistic to all that is precious in life, that the only proper attitude toward it
for Christians is that of relentless hostility. It can never be legalized
without sin. License, high or low, is vicious in principle, and powerless
as a remedy.' Hear, also, what the General Conference said: 'Saloons
and corrupt politicians constitute an equation, both members of which
have a ballot box value, and are easily transferred. We urge it as an
imperative duty of Christian men to attend the primaries to wrest the
sovereignty of the caucas from the grip of the saloon, to purify and ele-
vate the caucus by their presence, and make it a promoter of morals and
good order. Beginning with the caucus, let us work upward through all
the departments of legitimate civil action until our entire citizenship is
emancipated from its bondage. We must supplant the five or six thou-
sand legislators, and the tens of thousands of municipal officers, who
have long stood as the body-guard of the saloon in its ravages upon the
home.' These utterances we most heartily indorse. We would further
declare that it is the judgment of this body of Methodist preachers that
every loyal Methodist should follow these principles to their outspoken
political recognition, regardless of past political affiliations. We are fur-
ther of the opinion that before final victory perches upon our banners we
will be compelled to acknowledge ' that the right of suffrage rests on
no mere circumstances of race, color, sex, or nationality,' for we cannot
break the fetters of a nation with a shackled ballot. The whole cannot
be free while a part is bound. We recognize as powerful agencies in the
President''s Amitial Address.
35
great struggle, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Good
Templars, and all other organizations that have for their supreme object
the extermination of the liquor traffic. We urge our people to circulate
our temperance and prohibition literature, to scatter broadcast our Advo-
cates, the Union Sig7ial, and all other similar publications. Finally,
with prayer and song and shout, trusting in the living God, let us go for-
ward, taking as our motto: 'Total abstinence for the individual, and pro-
hibition for the state.' "
With this as a fitting climax, I leave the subject of politi-
cal prohibition.
woman's ballot.
There have been many marvelous discoveries in this much-
lauded nineteenth centurjL but chief among them is woman's
discovery^ of herself. To come to consciousness is evermore to
come to power. Christ said: " I am come that ye might have
life and that y& might have it more abundantly." Conscious-
ness deepened, varied, and extended, is doubtless all there is of
life in any world. When women come to consciousness they
must inevitably ask questions like these: Why should we have
no voice in making the laws under which we ma3' be imprisoned
or executed? Whj^ should women have no hand in pleading
woman's cause or determining her penalties? Whj- should
men, and men alone, have the power of life and death over
women, and in all cases of indecorous, cruel or outrageous con-
duct toward us? Whj' should men, and men onljq fix the pen-
alties of their own crimes against the other half of the human
race, and appoint themselves legislature, judge, jur^q and ex-
ecutive, in ever}- case like this? Who has so great a stake in
the Government as the Nation's motherhood? Yet everj- law
and penaltj' on every statute book of this and ever}^ land was
placed there bj- men, and men onhy
There is no reason and no justice in all this, and there
can never be. Good men know it right well, and they are tr}'-
ing to bring us into the government that we may be tried by
our peers.
In the earl3" historj^ of this countr^q as Judge Waite of
Chicago shows in a recent remarkable article, women were en-
titled to vote in nian^- of the states. He saj^s:
"The right of suffrage was without distinction of sex, in Massachu-
setts, for i6o years; in Rhode Island, for about i8o years; in Connecticut,
36
National W. C. T. U.
for nearly i8o years; in New York, for over 120 years; in New Jersey, by the
Constitution, for 170 years, and by the laws for over 100 years; in Penn-
sylvania, by the Constitution nearly 200 years, by the laws for over 100
years; in Delaware, by the Constitution for 130 years, and by the laws
over 100 years; in Maryland, nearly 100 years; in Virginia, by Charter
and Constitution, 170 years, and by the laws nearly 100 years; in South
Carolina, for nearly 200 years; in North Carolina, 150 years; in Georgia,
for nearly 100 years; in New Hampshire, until the Constitution of 1784;
in Vermont, by law for nearly 50 years, and by the Constitution until the
present time; in Tennessee, for over 70 years; and in Texas, under the
Constitution of the citizen Republic of Texas, thus remaining until, by
admission into the Union, Texas became a part of the male Republic of
the United States."
Even now, and for the second time, the most strenuous
efforts are made in Washington Territory to deprive the women
of the ballot. As usual, this effort is made in the interest of
sin. Women on juries, determining the guilt of saloonkeep-
ers, gamblers and procurers, are not an edifying spectacle to
the criminal class, and a venal court decided against women as
jurors and voters two years ago, and this year has pronounced
once more against them as voters. In Arkansas and Kansas
the hopes of the most sanguine are being fulfilled, and in
Boston twenty-five thousand women have registered, proving
that on an issue deemed vital by the home folk they can be
counted on to serv^e the best interests of the State.
There is so much significance in what our Kansas sisters
say of their experience, that I copy the report on Franchise of
Mrs. H. B. Wall, their Superintendent:
franchise department.
MRS. H. B. WALL, SUPT.
A work which has attracted the attention of the whole world might
seem to reqnire much space given to its review, but the limitations of our
State Minutes—with its necessary consideration of all departments—are
well understood.
In one word, then, our State Woman's Christian Temperance Union
President, other officers, and the consecrated membership of onr organiza-
tion, did their full duty in the recent noble and victorious battle. The
two years covering municipal suffrage petition work in Kansas have been
3'ears in which my position has given me the glad knowledge that fully
one-half the toil was accomplished by the valiant workers of our Woman's
Christian Temperance Union.
Undaunted by heat or cold, or by poverty of their local treasuries,
bravely they carried the petitions; hopefully they engaged the suffrage
Presidents Annual Address.
37
speakers; freely they sustained their own, and aided other workers in the
common cause.
Let it also be recorded of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union,
that, having secured the municipal ballot, they, by previous education
and training, were well prepared for its wise use; that they will most faith-
fully continue its use for the promotion of temperance and morality none
will question.
Neither will they shrink from additional responsibility, but seek it
for the good that they can do. Not long hence, it will be by them de-
creed that each and every future occupant of the highest office in the land
shall be fully able to see that the "liquor interests" are by no means
the best interests of the whole people.
In connection with State work, just a line to record the rapidly grow-
ing sentiment among our workers in almost every state and territory.
These reports, just at hand, bring great encouragement; but bring, also,
a more vivid realization of the fact that the unusual opportunities secured
by Kansas women are accompanied by great requirements of duty. But,
as in the past, so in the future; volunteer service from every interested
woman will bring the desired results. And then, as now, it may be said,
not merely of one, but of each: " She hath done what she could."
Most respectfully,
Henrietta b. Waee,
Supt. of Franchise, Kan. W. C. T. U.
The testimony of a leading paper of that state has also
great significance:
"points that are settled."
The Lawrence (Kan.) Joiir^ial thus sums up the result of
the woman's vote:
"The following points our eastern friends should consider settled by
the recent municipal elections in Kansas:
" i. Prohibition has come to stay in Kansas. The last stave in the
whisky keg has been broken in by granting suffrage to women in the
cities.
" 2. Contrary to the general expectation, the good women do vote, and
their votes are cast as their conscience and judgment dictate. They take
a deep interest in political questions, and in a few years all intelligent
and good women will gladly vote. With them it will be a matter of duty,
and woman always does her duty. If good men always did their duty,
the vote of the women would not be so much needed at the polls.
"3. The women vote independently—more independently of party
than the men. They cast their own votes. If in accord with those of
their husbands or brothers, it is well; if not, the vote goes in all the same
as they choose to have it.
"4. Woman's municipal suffrage in Kansas has guaranteed the
nomination of good men on both tickets. The personnel of candidates
38
National W. C. T. U.
in the future is to be vastly improved. The personality of the candidate
is very closely analyzed by the female voter.
"5. The vote of women does something more than to increase the
vote. It is not the rule of multiplication and amplification simply, but
that of permutation as well, and finally a proper equation is educed.
"6. The revolting and disgusting scenes formerly witnessed at the
polls are greatly mitigated, and many of the evils and corrupting influ-
ences are finally and completely exorcised.
" 7. The experiment can be fairly classed as a success. The vote of
the future will be a more thoughtful, considerate, and intelligent vote. It
will be a more conscientious vote, and it will be a vote cast for better
men than formerly." '
English women have this year gained the county fran-
chise; French statesmen are speaking out in favor of the
movement, and although voted down in Italy, it had a strong
affirmative minority.
The first mention of the ballot in any party platform since
the world began, was at Columbus, Ohio, in 1872, when the
Prohibition part}" held its first nominating convention, and
adopted without a dissenting voice the following noble declara-
tion:
" The right of suffrage rests on no mere circumstance of color, race,
former social condition, sex or nationality, but where in the nature of
man, and when from any cause it has been withheld from citizens of our
country who are of suitable age, and mentally and morally qualified for
the discharge of its duties, it should be speedily restored by the people
in their sovereign capacity."
As Miss Cleveland eloquently says:
" I dare affirm that the American mother who to-day, being pressed
on every side by the aggressions of King Alcohol, confronts American
men—the infant in her arms her only scepter, the motherhood upon her
brow her only crown, and cries to them for protection of her kingdom,
the home, carries in her cry an argument."
That argument has prevailed with the on-coming party,
to which we are devoted, and the Home Protection ballot is a
watchword sacred to Prohibitionists as to white ribboners.
Retreating from the outposts of old-time argument, based on
the inherent inferiority of women, our opponents now intrench
themselves in
THE KNOCK-DOWN ARGUMENT,
as I may justly call it, viz.; "They that will not fight, neither
shall they vote." But if ever there was a last ditch, this is
Presidents Annual Address.
39
the one, for when in all history did any controversy divide any
people along sex lines ? When Eve started a rebellion Adam
immediately joined it; when Ananias falsified the returns Sap-
phira followed him; Deborah had her Barak, and St. Paul his
Phoebe; men and women have "paired off" in every great
movement since the world began, and always will. From the
mother of the Gracchi to the mother of Neal Dow, women
have always been part and parcel, not only of all that great
men are, but of all that they achieve. Whatever side any
body of warriors ma}' take, there will be women not a few to
join them.
While Susan B. Anthony stands up for our cause in the
convention, John Stuart Mill, in the library, writes the most
convincing book on women's right that the world has ever
seen; the Prohibition party pledges its faith to the cause of the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union; every Darby has his
Joan, and by the laws of nature and of God there can never be
a war between the sexes, save now and then, in the retirement
of the family circle a war of words.
Whatever side of any question gains most women as its
supporters, will, erelong, gain most men; laws for the conser-
vation of the home will always gain most women, ergo, they
will in the long run gain most men.
"The Empire means peace," says a great European des-
pot, whose throne bayonets alone can bolster. "The enfran-
chisement of women means peace," say the White Ribboners,
because men and women will no more fight each other than
would a pair of pet canaries, and with men and women in the
governments their empire would mean peace.
Upon this subject Rev. Heber Newton has uttered the
best word. Uet me reproduce it here:
"Woman as a citizen will compel the state to a higher function than
that of merely policing property. She will police manhood and woman-
hood. She will make rulers what Pluto dreamed of their being—'the
guardians of society.' The preservation of morals will be as much to
the state as the protection of vested rights now are. Woman's voice
will be lifted resolutely against that crowning barbarism of civilization—
war. She who suffers most from its horrors; whose whole nature revolts
against such a crime; whose very physical feebleness indisposes her to
the brutal arbitrament of the sword, will use her new-formed power to
40
National IV^. C. T. U.
end this wickedness and folly under which Europe groans to-day.
Woman will carr}' her religious nature into the state, not to establish a
state religion—the latest new religio-political 'fad'—but to keep alive
within the body of its laws and institutions the spirit of essential religion,
which will make the state the conscience of the people.
"Man has fashioned the true form of the state in our own free self-
governing democracy. Eet woman breathe within it the true spirit,
and we shall see a city of God coming down out of Heaven upon earth."
No women ever had upon their souls responsibilities so
sacred as have those who have already received in an}^ degree
the power to vote. Behind them stand the poor wage-workers
waiting for that potent weapon; the drunkard's wife, into
whose life more tortures enter than words would dare to tell;
but these must wait, forsooth, because women who have the
ballot do not vote.
"Arise ye women who are at ease in Zion—hear my voice, ye care-
less daughters; who knoweth if ye be come into the kingdom for such a
time as this ?"
Do not be guilty of judging all the world by your own in-
dividual standard, and thus saying, "I have all the rights I
want," but in Christ's name be intent to give to those in want
their rights by grandly using yours.
The educational test is now attached to the demand we
make for voting power, and meets the views of the conserve-
tive, nor do the more progressive deem the test severe, since
under our system of public education all ma}* learn to read and
write who will.
Whittier has spoken golden words of prophecy to this Re-
public:
"Alone to such as fitly bear
Thy civic honors let them fall.
And call thy daughters forth to share
The rights and duties pledged to all."
I believe that ministers are the greatest helpers or the
chief and most devoted hinderers of woman's development,
along the lines of what may be fitly called her more complete
naturalization. For the spirit of Christ's Gospel is so broad
and kindly*towards every human being, that those who do not
fall in with it, will, in the nature of the case, go to the other
extreme, and the man who can in these days be habitually
President''s Annual Address.
familiar with the sacred oracles, and meanwhile grow more
narrow and intolerant, will become, according to his measure,
a soul who verily thinks that he does God service when he
prosecutes and hales to prison the Church's gentler two thirds.
The most striking figure on this Continent stands yonder
in the harbor of New York, Bartholdi's Statue of Tiberty. It
has a woman's form and depicts his mother's face. It is the
genius of America, the prophecy of our oncoming future, dedi-
cated not to personal liberty, but to liberty according to law.
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame.
With brawny limbs astride from land to land,
Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman, with a torch whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles."
To what shall she welcome the exiles from less happy
countries—the generous Irishman, the kind-faced Swede, the
German, with the home-ache in his heart, that calm, tender,
motherly face, looking out toward the unpitying sea in the
magnanimous century so soon to come?
She shall welcome them to a Republic based on the idea
of protection for the home; to a system of education that ex-
tinguished Plutonian that it may light Promethean fires; to a
Gospel country where woman and the wage-workers have both
come into their kingdom and where the liquor traffic shall no
more hurt or destroy in Redeemed America the Holy Mount-
ain of our God.
the ecceesiastical emancipation of women.
By a strange and grievous paradox, the Church of Christ,
although first to recognize and nurture woman's spiritual
powers, is one of the most difficult centers to reach with the
sense of justice toward her, under the improved conditions of
her present development and opportunity. The sense of an-
thority is here so strong, and woman's capacities for reverence
and humility are still so great, that, while we cannot fail to
deprecate, we need not wonder at the present situation. Here,
as elsewhere, enlightened womanhood will come with the
magic open sesame which shall erelong prevail even against
42
National W. C. T. U.
these gates so sedulously barred: Woman, like man, should be
freely permitted to do whatever she can do well.
Who that is reasonable doubts but that if we had, in every
church, a voice in all its circles of power, it would be better for
the church, making it more homelike and attractive, more en-
deared to the people, and hence more effective in its great mis-
sion of brotherly and sisterly love? By what righteous principle
of law or logic are we excluded from church councils when we
so largely make up the church's membership? Who that did
not know it beforehand would believe that good men actually
desire to keep us out? Antecedently I would have made my
affidavit that nothing could have pleased them so much as to
have had us come in and share with them the power and honor,
as we do the burdens and responsibilities, of the church home.
Indeed, I cannot help thinking that it might be said of us,
"O fools, and slow of heart; to believe all that the prophets
have spoken." We have not ourselves rightly understood the
liberty wherewith Christ hath made woman free by introducing
a religion that removes the world from a war footing to a peace
basis, thus rendering science possible, with invention as its con-
sequence, from all of which comes a civilization having as its
choicest blossom the material comforts and contrivances of the
modern home. We have not seen that old-time duties have
been taken from our hands that we might enter upon higher
ones, and that to make the whole world homelike is the prov-
ince of one half the race. But as these truths take possession
of our inmost hearts we shall go gently to our brothers, asking
them to open to us every opportunity and to share with us
every prerogative within the Church of Christ. In the United
States, the generous spirit of whose manhood has nowhere been
excelled, we have a vantage ground in any effort that may be
quietly and unitedly put forth for the opening of closed doors,
ecclesiastical or otherwise. I have long thought that the spec-
tacle of well nigh a hundred thousand church edifices closed,
except at brief intervals where meetings were in progress, was
a travesty of the warm-hearted gospel of our Uord, and I re-
joice to see that just as woman's influence grows stronger in
the church, those doors stay open longer, that industrial schools,
bands of hope, church kindergartens, reading rooms, and the
Presidents Annual Address.
43
like, may open up their founts of healing, and put '' a light in
the window for thee, brother."
The time will come when gates of Gospel Grace shall stand
open night and day, while woman's heavenly ministries shall
find their central home within God's House, the natural shrine
of human brotherhood in action, as well as human brotherhood
in theory.
This has been a year of unequaled public discussion rela-
five to woman's church relations, when it is a question of an-
thority and honor rather than of church repairs and debt-lift-
ing. And I must say, in sorrow, not in anger, our brethren
have won no laurels for themselves nor endeared the gentle
gospel of Him who was always woman's friend to the great
jury of fair-minded men who, from the outer court, have watched
the fray. When everything else pertaining to the great con-
ference gathered here in May last shall be forgotten, the fact
that it rej ected dul}^ chosen women delegates j ust because they
were women, will still be remembered and recounted as an in-
justice fitted to make angels weep. The Methodist Protestant
Conference that refused to license women, and sent forth its
dictum against its own act whereby at a former session it or-
dained that good and gifted woman. Rev. Anna Shaw, made a
record equally unenviable. The Baptist Association of Roui-
siana, which refused seats to women delegates, enacted on its
little stage the same tragedy witnessed in this great auditorium
by all the world. The Presbyterian General Assembly in Phil-
adelphia had the following memorial presented to it on your
behalf:
To the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.
Honored Brothers: The National Woman's Christian Temperance
Union sends you its sisterly greeting, and earnestly congratulates you
upon the constant growth of your denomination, now celebrating its
centennial year.
We remember with pleasure that the Women's Temperance crusade
of i883-'4 began in the Presbyterian Church of Hillsboro, Ohio, and had
upon it the benediction of the pastor, Rev. Dr. McSurely; also that the
convention from which resulted the organization of our society was held
in a Presbyterian Church in Cleveland. Tens of thousands of devout
women of your communion are united with us in the temperance work,
and we ask you, in their name, to adopt resolutions favor-able to the work
44
National W. C. T. U.
of our Uuion, •which is preventive, educational, evangelistic, social, and
legal; also we ask a friendly word for the World's Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, now being organized by the help of missionaries of
all the churches in all missionary countries. Our representative, Mrs.
Mary Clement Leavitt, has been five years engaged in this work in Aus-
tralia, Japan, China, and India, and your approval of her efforts will
greatly strengthen her heart and hands in her lonel}^ pilgrimages.
We are confident of your indorsement of the efforts to secure scien-
tific temperance instruction in the public schools, put forth by our society,
and which have resulted in laws requiring such teaching in twenty-four
States and all the Territories.
We earnestly pray that in this national crisis, the growing cause of
social purity, and an equal standard of morality for men and women, may
command the mighty influence of your assembly, and that your declara-
tion may ring out loud and clear for the protection of the home and the
prohibition of the liquor traffic.
If objection be made to this memorial, as coming from a national or-
ganization, we beg you to remember that we represent a part, at least, of
the unrepresented class that forms two thirds of your great denomination,
namely, the women; and we ask you in view of a fact so significant, to
accept and respond favorably to our petition.
Praying the blessing of heaven upon your hearts and homes, we are,
with great esteem, your sisters of the household of faith.
In reply to this memorial, Christian women's temperance
work was indorsed in general terms with no allusion whatever
to our society. Women go to other learned professions and are
politely treated; they are admitted to practice in the Supreme
Court of the United States and as delegates to the National
Medical Association; but no matter how considerately their
words are ordered, and although they, as the unrepresented
class, might naturally look for the courtesies which are held by
some to be a compensation for that feeble-minded estate, they
oftentimes receive from the class of men whom they do most
to help, no adequate notice or reply. Reverently I say it: they
come unto their own and their own receive them not,
I do not forget the minority of large-natured men who
pleaded our cause with holy zeal and gracious eloquence before
the General Conference. If ever my heart paid the tribute of
happy homage and unforgetting gratitude to mortals, it does to
them, and I know that your hearts are as mine in this earnest
recognition.
If anybody thinks that a finality was reached on that mem-
President''s Annual Address.
45
orable day of our defeat he must be so loftily insulated on
some official non-conductor that the swift currents of the peo-
pie's thought and purpose have not reached him with their
electric shock. " What shall be done about it?" is everywhere
the question.
"Stay in the church and help reform it," says one. "No
that is impossible; old churches and old parties are equally crys-
tallized," comes the repl3\ " ket the W. C. T. U. organize a
church, and we will join it every man of us,'' is the declaration
of an influential group of earnest men. " No, we have too many
churches already," objects a listener, " let the wheat and tares
grow together until the harvest." Meanwhile many letters
and consultations with men and women high in church circles
develop on the part of some plan like this:
An organization to be formed, called the " Church Union,"
made up of those who are unwifling longer to leave inopera-
tive the protest of their souls against a government of the
church by its minority; this Church Union to be open to any
and all who will subscribe to the Apostles' Creed, and the
triple pledge of total abstinence, anti-tobacco, and social purity;
none of the members obliged to leave a church to which they
now belong in order to join this; men and women to be on
terms of perfect equality, and women to be regularly licensed
and ordained. The special work of this Church Union would
be among the masses of the people, still, alas, so generally un-
gospeled, and in foreign lands, especially among the women.
In this country, buildings now devoted to amusements to be
utilized rather than new ones erected, and everywhere the
steadfast effort made to go, not send, and to go rather than
stay at home and say '' come '' to the great humanity that
beats its life along the stony streets.
But for myself, I love my mother-church so well and
recognize so thoroughly that the base and body of the great
pyramid she forms is broader than its apex, that I would fain
give her a little time in which to deal justly by the great house-
hold of her loving, loyal, and devoted daughters. I would
wait four years longer, in ferv^ent hope and prayer, that the
great body of her ministers and of her membership may make it
manifest to all the world, that the church of Uady Hunting-
46
National W. C. T. U.
ton, Barbara Heck, and Phebe Palmer does not hesitate to
march with the progressive age it has done so much to edu-
cate, nor fear to carry to their logical sequence its lifelong
teachings as to woman's equality within the house of God. I
say this frankly from my present outlook, though so often
urged, and not a little tempted, and sometimes quite deter-
mined to take a new departure. The time will come, however,
and not many years from now, when, if representation is still
denied us, it will be our solemn duty to raise once more the
cry, " Here I stand, I can do no other," and step out into the
larger liberty of a religious movement, where majorities and
not minorities, determine the fitness of women as delegates,
and where the laying on of hands in consecration, as was un-
doubtedly done in the early church, shall be decreed on a basis
of "gifts, graces and usefulness," irrespective of sex.
A church that officially declines to license as preachers
such women as Mar}^ T. Latlrrap, Jennie F. Willing, Sarah O.
Robinson, and Maggie Van Cott, has surely taken a long step
backward, and the earnest women of its great membership
must join hands with the growing element of progressive
minds among its men, to regain ground already lost, and win
a fair footing throughout its wide domain. Though I have
spoken as a Methodist, I grieve to know that my words are
applicable to almost everj^ church in Christendom, and that
the Quakers even manifest a growing conservatism as to the
power of women in their blessed fold. The presence of an
iceberg cools all the air around it, and the action taken in this
auditorium by the greatest of American churches incalculably
lowered the spiritual power of all churches by strengthening
the prestige of official utterance and the dominance of might
over right within the household of faith.
W. C. T. U. DEACONESSES.
I wish that we might here state with all considerateness,
but fearless honesty, our position on the mighty question of
women in the church. But, as I have already said, women
are, if possible, ev^en more to blame than men that they are so
discounted in church as well as state at this late day. A
majority of men in this country and age have so far outgrown
Presidenfs Annual Address.
47
the ignorant notion of their divine right to rule over women,
that if we had but the courage of conviction, and that sense ot
dignity that ought to mark us as daughters of the kord Al-
mighty, men would, within a twelve-month, seat us beside
themselves upon the throne of government in church and
state, ruling the world jointly, as He meant they should, when,
as the Bible says, " He gave to theyn dominion."
Truly we have what we take the most pains for, and wom-
en must be up and doing if they expect the co-operation and
fealty of men in politics, ecclesiastical or secular. It also
seems to me we should, at this convention, provide for White-
ribbon Deaconesses to be trained in our Evangelistic Depart-
ment, taught to be skilled nurses at our National Temperance
Hospital, and employed by our local unions in preaching,
teaching and visiting the sick and poor. I am confident that
there are men of the best standing in the pulpit, who will not
hesitate to set them apart to this sacred office and ministry
in accordance with the custom of the Early Church. There
are thousands of women j'-oung and old, whose hearts the
Eord hath touched and who would rejoice to find a vocation
so sacred and so full of help within the sheltering fold of the
W. C. T. U.
" She spoke of justice, truth and love.
How soft her words distilled;
She spoke of God and a^l the place
Was with His presence filled."
Of how many a sweet soul within our borders those words
are true ! What hindereth that they be set apart with every
guarantee and safeguard that can emphasize their gospel min-
istry ? Of them how long has it been said as of Christ's early
servants, " the people magnify them," and " the common peo-
pie hear them gladly."
Rev. Dr. Black, of Mississippi, says in his new book:
" The offices of deaconesses formed a part of the machinery of the
church for many centuries. The deaconess received ordination by the
imposition of hands. The ordination ritual is given in the Apostolical
constitutions, from which we extract the following prayer of the officiat-
ing bishop:
" ' Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of man
and of woman, thou who didst fill with thy spirit Miriam, Deborah, Han-
48
National IV. C. 7\ U.
nah, and Huldah, thou who didst vouchsafe to a woman the birth of the
only begotten Son, thou who didst in the tabernacle, and in the temple,
place female keepers of thy holy gates, look down now a Is© upon this thy
handmaid, and bestow on her the Holy Ghost, that she may worthily
perform the work committed to her, to thy honor and the glory of
Christ.' "
What a practical element the Deaconesses would introdtice
into religion. Doubtless, in early days, when the conflict was
between idolatry and the worship of God, "divine service"
may have rightly consisted largelj^ in sermon, song, and prayer,
but to call that '' service '' now—as is universally done—seems
to me a mockery. That is a delight, a coveted and blessed
means of growth; but " ser\dce " now is to our fellow-men, and
he whose purse and work are not invested there knows nothing
about '' divine ser\'ice,'' and might well name his place of
Sunday lounging and aesthetics the '' Church of the Divine
Emptiness," or the " Church of the Celestial Sugar Plum."
What the world most needs is mothering, and most of all
in the .spirit's natural home, the Church, and on the Sabbath
Da3v It needs the tender sweetness of the alto voice, the jubi-
lant good-will of the soprano, in sermon as in psalm; tenor and
bass become monotonous at last, and the full diapason of power
and inspiration is impossible except we listen to the full chorus
of humanity. God hasten that great chorus, in church and
.state alike, with its deep-hearted love and its celestial hope!
Rev. Dr. Alfred A. Wright, of Cambridge, Mass., is with
us in our efforts to enlarge and strengthen the evangelistic work.
He came last j-ear to Nashville, Tenn., without expense to us,
and gave instruction to many of our Bible students, as he will
do this year. He is in conference with our Superintendent of
Evangelistic Work, and will co-operate with us henceforth, I
hope, in that department. A brilliant scholar, a devoted Chris-
tian and a completed prohibitionist. Dean Wright, who stands
at the head of the Chautauqua School of Theology, is with
Bi.shop Fallows, Rev. Dr. Townsend, Rev. Dr. Bristol, Dr. Tab
mage, Joseph Cook, and a host of other men, great as thej^ are
good, a devout believer in the exegetical as well as the eccle-
siastical emancipation of women.
In a recent sermon at Ocean Grove, New Jerse}^ Mrs. J. F.
Presidenfs Annual Address.
49
Willing, who presided over our first National W. C. T. U.
Convention, made the following conclusive answer to popular
objections to women in the pulpit:
"Again we hear the question ' But why should the daughters proph-
esy?' It is said that they are too weak. Weak in what? In physical
endurance? Every woman who stands at the head of a family has en-
dured enough to kill a half-dozen men. Invoice? You can hear the
soprano as far again as you can the bass. In will ? It has passed into a
proverb 'When a woman will, she will, and yon may depend on it.'
In reason ? Any candid man will tell you that when he has toiled up the
stairs of his argument, he finds a woman at the top. She seems to have
cleared the flight at a bound; but we know it is only her quick way of
putting this and that together. Her rapid reasoning has watched the con-
elusion, far ahead of him with his more clumsy methods. Weak in schol-
arship ? How does it happen that women bear off so many of the prizes
of our colleges and universities? Weak in spiritual perceptions? Two
of them follow Christ where one man becomes his disciple. But this
poor, heathenish, old world calls them weak. Then they have the best
chance of success, for God hath chosen the weak things of the world to
confound the things that are mighty."
THE SABBATH.
The following personal pledge I hereby take (works of
nece.ssity and mercy always excepted), and I ttrge all my dear
comrades to do the same, not only as a religious observance,
but in the interest of the wage-workers who, to the number of a
million and a half, or one in every eight families, are deprived
of their rest day largely through the inconsiderateness of the
Christian public.
SABBATH OBSERVANCE PEEDGE, RECOMMENDED BY THE NA-
TIONAL W. C. T. U.
i agree
I. To observe the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship.
H. To neither purchase nor patronize Sunday newspapers.
HI. To use my influence by word and example, against railroad and
steamboat travel and excursions.
IV. Not to patronize any store, barber-shop, newsstand, drug store
(except for medicine), bakery, or any other place of imneces-
sary work on the Sabbath, and to use my influence to close them.
V. Not to send or call for mail on the Sabbath.
VI. To make the Sabbath work at home as light and simple as possible,
that all may enjoy the privileges of the day.
VH. To use my influence for legislation that will protect the Sabbath as
a day of rest and worship.
N.\me,
JVational H\ C. T. U.
Over four inillion petitioners have asked Congress for a law
prohibiting Sunday trains, etc., and before many years the
Church and the wage-workers will win what would, perhaps,
have required a generation to have achieved but for their join-
iug hands. I hope there will be a special vote of urgency on
this subject, and that we shall make it the specialty of spe-
cialties for three months after election.
THE EABOR MOVEMENT.
It is in the air nowadays to live for others; it has even be-
come "good form." Princes must be philanthropic or they
are looked down upon, and the statement concerning a society
woman, that " she lives for herself," sets her somewhat askew
in the eyes of her associates. It is better to do good work be-
cause etiquette requires it than not to do it at all. This gen-
eral drift of the fortunate class toward a study of the unfortu-
nate, with a helpful motive as its basis, is the most hopeful
feature of the times. Beside it must be placed the strongl}^
growing tendency to study causes rather than effects, and this
brings the whole labor problem into view. For the more we
study causes, the more certainly we find that justice, not char-
ity, must be the watchword of the future. I am glad that the
\V. C. T. U. takes a broad view of this question, and belongs
to the newer school of political economists represented by Prof.
Ely, of Johns Hopkins University, rather than that of Prof.
Sumner, of Yale College. One cares onl}^ for the survival of
the stronger, the other would fain help the under dog in the
fight to such conditions as would develop all his inherent pow-
ers of becoming the upper one himself. I wish all our women
would read the four essays of Ruskin entitled, "Unto this
East,'' and the leaf on '' Political versus Commercial Economy,''
by Dr. Ingersoll, both of which have recently been brought out
by our own publishing house under the supervi.sion of our in-
valuable editor, Mrs. Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew^ and whose
entrance on another field of labor occasions to .so many of us
sincere regret.
For one, ni}^ study of the question convinces me, that
while prohibition of the liquor traffic would be an inestimable
blessing to the wage-workers, there is more in the labor move-
President''s Annual Address.
ment than we have perceived from our special point of view.
For instance, as our good Dr. DeCosta said recently, in Exeter
Hall, England, at the annual meeting of the White Cross
Society with half a dozen Bishops, an Earl, a Dean, and a
Canon on the platform, "Starvation wages to women are one ^
main cause of the evil we are met to combat." The revela-
tions in New York, Chicago, and all our large cities, show
that the yoke on the workingman's neck rests still more heav-
ily on the workingwoman.
The Knights of Labor are to-day the most efficient body
in this land for the protection of women, in equal pay for
equal work, and of children from the stunting of body and
mind through ser\dtude that is little better than slavery. The
eight-hour law would increase wages, and add one-fourth to
the number of the employed, thus almost disbanding the army
of tramps. Arbitration, co-operation, state control of all the
means of public locomotion and communication, would help to
verify or refute the theory, now rapidly becoming prevalent,
that if corporate powers are good for capital, labor might ap-
propriately share them.
Stephen Girard once said, after listening to the s^mipa-
thetic lament of kindly-do-nothings over a case of destitution;
"Gentlemen, I feel sorry a thousand dollars worth—hosv sorry are
you ?"
The question is, are we willing to help on the Labor
Movement when it costs us something—perhaps in our social
status, perchance in our worldly goods ? I look now always
at my dear cottage home, and ask myself, "Would 3'ou let it
go into the Brotherhood if the great 'trust' should prevail ?
and I am glad to say I would with joy. When, at Grinnell,
Iowa, that awful cyclone came, some good fellow said, "You
ought to be thankful that your meeting came the week before,"
but something in my soul queried, "Why should I escape,
and others so much better than I be crushed and mangled
out of recognition ?'' When I read about that shuddering
horror in the Lehigh Valley, on Father Mathew's day, I could
but think, ' 'Why .should I go these fourteen years so painless
and unharmed? Na^q what is good enough for the Brother-
52
National W. C. T. U.
hood is good enough for me; I decline to believe myself a
favorite of Heaven." As the great German said, "Perhaps
God sees no mortal accident can injure an immortal soul," and
in his sight this earthly life comes to us each more equally
than we have thought. But one thing we can do, invest our
lives to make its conditions as equal as we can; believe in,
pray for, work toward, the Brotherhood, when all men's weal
shall be each man's care.
The climax of the Labor Movement will be reached when
wage-workers cease scoffing at the Bible, and perceive it to be
above all others the Book of Brotherhood.
Even men of the world admit that London's four hundred
city missionaries mean more for peace and quiet than four
thousand police would mean. Even infidels admit that Mc-
All's mission in Paris prevents barricades and riot, by teaching
the French workman a more excellent way to the brotherhood
of which he dreams. For the Book of Peace and Good-will
says:
"This is the fast that I have chosen, that ye break every yoke."
And then think of Christ's words:
"The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they
that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors, but ye shall
not be so; but he that is greatest among you let him bear the younger; and
he that is chief as he that doth serve. For whether is greater he that
sitteth at meat or he that serveth ? is not he that sitteth at meat ?
"Bid I am among you as he that serveth.'''
The brotherhood of man, the sisterhood of woman, the
holy land of America—these are all j^et to come through His
words that are Spirit and Life.
When all is said, but three questions to-day enlist the
nation's heart: The temperance, the labor, and the woman
questions, and these three are really one. The solution of any
one of these in accordance with the wishes of its friends, would
mean an incalculable uplift to the others. Total prohibition
would make the world a new and blessed place for woman,
while her enfranchisement would be a death blow to the liquor
traffic; co-operative commonwealths, the final goal of the labor
agitation, would so humanize and harmonize the world that
the drink desperation would be reduced to zero; with the
Presidenfs Annual Address.
53
triumph of the wage-worker's cause, woman's would mount to
victory, since, to their everlasting honor be it said, all laborer
reformers demand equal wages for equal work, and are openly
committed to equal suffrage also. I wish every woman here
would read the book by Edward Bellamy, entitled " Booking
Backward,"* and see how the tyranny of " Trusts " may per-
haps be yet transformed to the boon of brotherhood, if only
"We, Us & Company," can agree to organize one great
" trust " in our own interest, whose dividends shall be declared,
and whose combinations concentrated for the greatest numbers'
greatest good. Competition has been a useful spur in cruder
ages, but at last it bows before its master, corporate control,
and the bigger the corporation the better for the corporators,
because the more there are to be enriched. Carryin g out this
condition of things to infinity may yet prove that ht. nanity is
the one humane and righteous " syndicate," the only " combi-
nation " that can be permitted to combine, the only trusted
" Trust."
But this can never be until heads are clear, hands steady,
and hearts true. Hence be it ours to work right on for the
downfall of the drink traffic, and the regnancy of home folks
in Church, in State, and everywhere.
" I have compassion on the multitude;" this is the key
that Christ has set for each one's psalm of life, and deeds are
the only voices sweet enough to sing it in.
white; cross and white shiedd.
There is a steady growth along these lines of work. The
report will be made by Mrs. Dr. Kellogg, who has the Mothers'
Meetings under her care, and who has wrought with her usual
faithfulness and skill to make such meetings general among
white-ribbon women. Dr. Kate Bushnell has had a j'ear of
remarkable success, and has investigated the horrors of the
north woods in Wisconsin especially, bringing to us facts, not
fictions, and work done, rather than theories dreamed. So
highly do I value Dr. Bushnell's gifts, devotion and experience,
that I covet for her the widest field, and earnestly recommend
the founding of a paper to be edited by her and to carry the
*Ticknor & Field's 25 cent edition.
54
National IV. C. T. U.
evangel of a white life to every nook and corner of the world.
Its standard must be the permitting in ourselves of no open
habit upon which we could not on our knees invoke God's
blessing, and no secret habit that we would be ashamed to
have known by the best and purest persons of our acquaint-
ance. Having thus wrought that clearing of ourselves which
is the only adequate preparation for a work so hoi}', let us
through the pure pages of that publication send out our plans
and purposes to the wide world of manhood and of woman-
hood, calling upon all to climb the heights whence alone we
shall see God. Our Mothers' Meetings cannot attain the uni-
versality and power we seek for them except through such a
medium of communication. Of all the specialists on earth,
the mother brings the poorest, training to her immortal task.
As the country grows richer the average mother becomes en-
grossed with society and in the homes that pride themselves
upon their opportunities, such a spectacle as I witnessed in one
grows frequent: A little girl not eight years old, went regu-
larly to dancing school bedecked in all the colors of the rain-
bow and complaining of the tight gloves and tight slippers
that squeezed her pudgy little hands and feet. When there a
little boy led her out upon the floor, and after the perscribed
salutation, they danced together, waltzes and all, after which
she was led back to her seat by her small escort and treated to
confectionery and compliments. What culture had the mother
missed who could thus handicap her little one, and what a de-
teriorated mother was that little one getting ready to be ? But
notwithstanding grevious and typical instances like these, I
can but think that we are moving onward in the social world.
There is less etiquette and more reality; less veneering and
more real grain of the wood. Once the business of well-to-
do woman was society. What did that mean ? That the be-
all and end-all was to dress in fashion, dance a minuet with
stateliness, preside at a dinner of several hours' duration with
mastership, and so on. Now, to be sure, there are large circles
of women to whom the decollete dress, whirling waltz, pro-
gressive euchre party, and box at the theatre, are the world's
chief charm. But the spell of this sort of life is broken. The
special inclosure known as "society," grows smaller and less
Presidenfs Annual Address.
55
fascinating to the great many-sided world of women. Chris-
tianity is emancipating us, and showing us so many other
things to do. Women more gifted, cultured and rich than
these who give themselves wholh^ to societ}', devote themselves
nowadays to things they find so much more worthy of them, that
"society women" have become a subdivision, quite clearlj^
marked, of the real womanhood that has a broad, free life and
outlook on the world. Just as in the early days, one who did
not take wine was almost ostracized; but it is now respectfully
regarded and even praised, so '' not to be in society " is no longer
a mark of singularity, but a "differentiation from the type"
that is clearly recognized and held in high esteem. Perhaps
"society" itself will pass away. Who knows? One feels
like saying this below one's breath, and yet, who knows f
There are so many better things to do than to sit for two hours
as devotees around the stomachic altar of a dinner table, or to
spin in a waltz, taking attitudes elsewhere indecent or intolera-
ble. But society dissected down to the marrow, jdelds but
these two spectacles, and these two will pass away. Banish wine
from the dinner, dancing from the "evening entertainment,"
and " society " with its late hours and indigestions, would ere
long collapse. Nothing is surer than that wine is to be ban-
ished, and that with the growing uplift and dignity of woman-
hood, dancing and the outrageous mode of dress that goes
along with it, will one day be held as a mere relic of barbar-
ism. That was a prophetic innovation at the White House
when our gracious Mrs. Hayes replaced the dinner with its wine-
glasses by the stately and elegant reception. Perhaps while
men rule the State, in their government of '' the minority, b}'
the minority, for the minority," its highest expression will still
be the dinner table with its clinking glasses and plenty of tobac-
CO smoke afterward, but when men and women both come into
the kingdom for the glad new times that hasten to be here, the
gustator}^ neiA'e will be dethroned once and forevermore. For
there are so many more worthy and delightful waj'S of in-
vesting (not "spending") one's time; " there are so many
better things to do.'' The blossoming, of woman into deeds of
philanthrop3^ gives us a hint of the truer forms of society that
are to come. Emerson said, " We descend to meet," because
5^
National W. C. T. U.
he claims that we are on a higher plane when alone with God
and Nature. But this need not be so. Doubtless in the out-
worn and stereotyped forms of society, where material pleas-
ures still hold sway, we do '' descend to meet,'' but when
a philanthropic purpose determines our companionships and
leads to our convenings, then we climb together into purer and
more vital air. The "coming women "—nay the women who
have come, have learned the loveliest meaning of " society."
Indeed some of us like to call it '' comradeship '' instead, this
interchange of highest thought and tenderest aspiration, in
which the sense of sellhood is diminished and the sense of
otherhood increased.
But our social purit}' work contemplates as its highest
object the harmonization of men and women into one circle of
worth, work and winsomeness. Why do they now so poorly
comprehend each other? Largely because their daily interests
are so largely separate, their occupations, friendships, pleas-
ures are so wide apart, their themes of mutual conversation
few; their worlds not worlds that intersphere, but only touch.
Hence come class dinners even in co-education schools, from
which women are ruled out. The wine-gla.ss and cigar have
an accursed spell to separate women from men. The physical
conditions they induce, and the themes to which they tend, are
foreign to the purity of woman's habitudes. The Modern Club
is the Home's rival in the circles of the rich as is the saloon in
circles of the poor. Indeed, man in the home has had as yet
but the faintest evolution, and yet Home has already done more
for man than for any other member of its favored constituency.
It is his special humanizer, the garden where his choicest virt-
ues grow. Man's heart is lonesome often, and the feeling
does him honor, for his lonesomeness is always for the home
that was, but is not, or else that is not, but that ought to be
or to have been.
When the White Cross gospel shall have been embosomed
in young manhood's life for one blessed generation, the sane-
tities of fatherhood shall be seen to exceed all others to which
a manly spirit can attain in this state of existence, and the
malarious dream of wicked self-indulgence shall slowl}^ but
surely give place to the sacred self-restraint which waits to
Presidents Auniial Address.
57
crown with all good fairies' gifts the little life which noble love
alone may dare invoke.
"Then comes the statelier Edeii back to men,
Then reign the world's great bridals chaste and calm,
Then springs the crowning race of humankind."
The doll question has figtired largely in the public prints
of late and I have been set forth as little less than monstrous,
because of my belief that while the old-fashioned, simply
attired doll is a delightful playmate, the modern doll is apt to
foster a love of dress and display in little girls; that the fatherly
instinct needs developing more than the motherly, and h^nce
the doll should be as much for bo^'s as girls. That the top
exclusive devotion of the latter to the care of dolls often
deprives them of needed outdoor exercise, dulls their curiosity
concerning the mechanism of the world, and ma}- help to
explain why women are not yet inventors save in a small
degree. I claim that the care of dolls does not impart the
instinct of motherliness, but that in every woman's heart that
instinct is the motive power, whether their activities are in
their own homes, or the wider home of Humanity.
It has been a solace to me in these latter days to learn
that the famous New York magazine entitled "Babyhood,"
where this controversy began (a magazine, by the way, that
I warmly commend to ever^^ mother of little ones), has declared
that the views I hold, albeit somewhat new, are altogether
"orthodox" in the judgment of those expert friends of infancy.
I cannot forbear congratulating all our British sisters on
their great victory^ this year in securing the abolition of the
hideous laws by which degraded women were systematically
provided for English soldiers in India.
I am glad that a young man, pure as he is gifted, has
promised me to take up our White Cross, White Shield, cause.
The Ej'Ceum platform has no figure of more brilliant promise,
so say discriminating critics. His name is Rev. Jahu De Witt
Miller; he is a most generous and loyal friend of the W. C. T. U.,
and I wish our members would confer with me about securing
his help in this department.
Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, whose bright presence we so
regretfully miss to-day, and who is our loss and England's gain,
58
National W. C. T. U.
urges us to take up in our local unions a method most helpful
in England. It is called the "Travelers' Aid," and by means
of placards placed in all railway stations, in the women's quar-
ters of steamship steerages, in shops, lodging-houses, etc.,
warns women to beware of designing persons, and chance ad-
vertisements, at the same time giving names and addresses of
trusty women to whom they may go for help and counsel—
thus extending its protection to those who go from town to
town, as well as those who emigrate. For example, a placard
in Manchester is thus described:
" On the wall was a card which I had not before noticed, inviting
young women obliged to journey alone to a strange city to write before-
hand to the Travelers' Aid Society, hondon, giving the name of the sta-
tion and the hour of the expected arrival, and promising that such
unprotected folk should be met by women who would see them into com-
fortable lodging-houses. Young girls who had not taken this precaution
were warned not to accept help from men or women unknown to them,
and not to go to any situation obtained through an advertisement without
first getting some certain knowledge of its respectability. At the foot of
the placard were appended the names and addresses of half a dozen
women in Manchester, who would advise girls coming as strangers to
that city with regard to boarding-houses and help them to obtain work."
Dr. Buslinell will soon prepare the " White Shield Man-
ual," a companion to my " White Cross Manual," and has
furnished the following pledge, which we both ask you to an-
thorize as better adapted to us than the one used by our British
friends:
WHITE SHIEED PLEDGE.
/ promise by the help of God:
1. To exercise a spirit of charity toward the outcast woman, and
endeavor to protect her from further wrong and degradation.
2. To maintain the law of purity as equally binding upon men and
women, and carry out my principles in all social relations.
3. To endeavor, especially, to discourage the association and mar-
riage of pure young women with corrupt young men.
4. To endeavor to discourage all extravagance in dress, decollete
costumes, and extremes of fashion.
5. To be a defender of the virtue of the orphan and'working-girl.
6. To educate and train all young people who are under my control
or guardianship in these principles, and use all possible means to promote
the purity of our homes.
PresidenCs Annual Address.
59
mrs. Thompson's words.
"Render nnto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."
These are the words that our benefactress, Mrs. Thompson,
has written as the heading to some thoughts for us which I am
sure will be read with thoughtful interest at many a fireside.
" It seems to me if the womeu propose to come to the front, and
take up the loose threads and look after neglected opportunities that now
stare us in the face, they would do well to remember that man has been
from the beginning up to the present time working along and doing just
about as much good, and making about the same progress that one-half
of a pair of shears would make in the hands of a tailor who wished to
cut a garment, and if women take up the other half without the former,
they will do about the same work, though it may be of a different order.
It is only when the two are harmoniously joined and come together for
the purpose of work that the keen sharp set edge of both will result in
good and beautiful work in humanity. Looking at things as they are,
let us ask ourselves. What there is for women to do that men do not.
1. We want temperance and sobi iety instead of drunkenness and
dissipation.
2. We want clear, cool brains, instead of those deadened by tobacco
or maddened by alcohol.
3. We want justice instead of selfishness.
4. We want examples instead of precepts.
5. We want to look after causes rather than dealing wholly with
effects.
6. We want to reward virtue instead of punishing crime.
Lastly, but not least, we want peace instead of war, not only between
nations but individuals. But if we have not peace within ourselves, how
can we teach or inspire it in others? Should not women, one and all (and
myself included), look deeply into themselves to see whetherthese instru-
ments which are going forth to work in the great battle for better condi-
tions for humanity, are as perfect and exemplary as it is possible for them
to make themselves, and if not, then let each one endeavor to pick the
beam out of her own eye before looking for the mote that might be found
in the eyes of the "lords of creation."
It is said that " Order is Heaven's first law." To me it is Heaven's
onlv law. By observation we see that order brings all things into their
proper time, proper place, and proper use; from order came peace, har-
mony, beauty, and repose. Then let us first endeavor to have order in
ourselves, that we may produce it outside of ourselves. Disorder brings
confusion and destruction; force, ill-regulated is not only wasted, but
brings ruin upon its cause; force should be regulated by love and guided
by reason—then deeds produce permanent results; then comes real prog-
ress. It is because forces are ill-regulated that revolutions prove failures.
We need repose in ourselves, harmony in our homes, simplicity in our
6o V - National W. C. 1\ U.
surroundings. Why this mad chase after exorbitant wealth and display?
May there not be as much happiness, as great peace in well-regulated
homes, that run from twenty-five hundred to twenty-five thousand, as it
is possible to find in these palatial mansions where mistress and maid
alike are servants of Mammon? Where was there ever a person who was
thoroughly loved and respected simply for their wealth or its display?
Emerson has said, if people have nothing in themselves they must make
up for the lack by fine surroundings. Might we not profit by keeping
constantly in mind that it is better to be than to have? It seems to me
that the one object to be kept in view is exemplary lives that may be
looked up to with respect and esteem, not so much by the adult of to-day
as for the young of to-morrow, who are so soon to come into the field of
action to wield their power for good or evil. It seems to me that sin is
ignorance, and wisdom is righteousness. It has long been said: " Cursed
are they who know not the law, but thrice cursed are they who know, yet
obey it not," and again it has been said: " That wisdom is the better
part ^f valor." Can we make a better beginning than to resolve to try
and be wise?
THOSE THAT WE " EOVED AND EOST—AWHIEE."
ft is a holy and happy thought to us that the W. C. T. U.
has been acclimated in heaven. So many of our best and
bravest have passed over, that we grow way-wise, following
them in thought.
It lies around us like a cloud,
A world we do not see.
And the sweet closing of an eye
May bring us there to be.
Kind eyes look on us as we toil
Sweet helping hands are stirred.
And palpitates the veil between
With breathings almost heard.
Mrs. Mary Whitall Thomas, for nine years President of
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Maryland, as-
cended in the pleasant springtime from her summer home on a
Blue Ridge Mountain to the Mount of God.
We have not a State auxiliar>^ more gracious than that of
Maryland, and we have grieved with our sorrowing sisterhood
over the loss of that bright personality, so strongly individual,
whose head, heart and hand were a trinity of blessing; whose
presence has embodied health, whose record is an epistle of
right living, and whose faith was sturdier than most men's
facts.
Presidenfs Amiual Address.
6i
Rose Phillips, so long Corresponding Secretary of Missouri,
the heroine of that dauntless auxiliary, lay long upon the
molten altar of pain, praying only that she might not be left
to murmur, and her prayer was answered; which fact is an elo-
gy upon her character transcending the power of words to
translate.
Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Superintendent of Franchise for
Indiana W. C. T. U., one of the trustiest physicians and larg-
est-hearted of our Grand Army of Reform, passed from her
wide work suddenly, and 'was borne to her rest by the sisters
who had loved her long, and who gave her the royal title
" Mother of Women."
Mary H. Villars, of Illinois, whose ample figure and
ever-pleasant face have grown familiar through all our Nation-
al Conventions, an Evangelist who conducted meetings nearly
a hundred successive nights last year, her powerful voice in
speech and song ringing out like a bugle-call, left us from her
Eake Bluff home this autumn after an illness—long and pain-
fill—but illuminated by a faith and fortitude not of this
world.
Thinking of this rare group of God's saints and of the
great company who have '' allured to brighter worlds and led
the way " in this eventful year, I wonder on what embassy
they went to other realms of the Universal Power, for Tenny-
son's consoling words are with me;
" So many world.s, so much to do.
So little done, such things to be;
How know I what had need of thee.
For thou wert strong as thou wert true ?"
Thinking of their welcome in that better country, with
sounds of chariots and horsemen, and smiling faces "that they
had loved and lost* awhile,'' my spirit says with yours and
with the dreamer who watched Christiana's welcome, " which
when I saw I wished myself among them."
FINAhhY.
One day last week an Irishman, at the age of twenty-
seven, imprisoned for taking two men's lives in self-defense
while under the influence of liquor, was pardoned out of Sing
62
National IV. C. 7. f .
Sing prison after thirty-three years' incarceration within its
awful walls. If men were fiends, as some would have us think,
his wretched fellow-prisoners would have gnashed their teeth
upon him in impotent envy and rage, that he was going out
into the blessed light of day, while they were bound to stay
inside, many of them till their death. But no, because even
in their hearts there was any amount of human kindness, they
sent a great .shout of joy through those gloomy corridors, such
as almost never waked the echoes there before. Moving pain-
fully in that pitiable "lock-step," that, " like a wounded
snake, drags its slow length along,'' they cheered for old
Mike Gorman like boys at school. And when he passed the
cells where they were shut away out of the sunshine, they
called kindly after him, '' Good-by, Mike," " Good luck Mike,''
he waved his handkerchief in grateful answer, because he could
not speak. What gentleness in human nature after all, when
a deep chord is struck in the heart's great diapason! But it
takes " a stroke of nature to make the whole world akin,"
that better nature born in us from God and perfectly revealed
to us in Christ. Oh, may this great convention bring to each
of you, beloved, to me, to all of us, growth in that better
nature which is generous as it is gentle, and through which
we shall all seek not our own but each of us another's good.
A celebrated man who thought himself a seer, once said
to me:
"My latest reports from the infernal regions are more encouraging;
a few of the bad spirits, less deprived than the majority, are beginning
to combine; this indicates decided progress, for the most wicked spirits
trust ea( h other least."
There was a deep philosophy under his words, and their
deep converse is equally true—for the best spirits trust each
other most.
Dear sister women, the sine qua no7i of our success in
mutual faith and fellowship. We must, as the Good Book tells
us, "have ferv^ent charity among ourselves." We must be
harmonial philosophers. We must remember that wherein we
impute bad motives to another we confess them in ourselves.
It is not uncharitable to judge an act as good or bad, but
we should be very slow to judge the actor bad. Only by rising
President''s Amiual Address.
63
to the sublime sense of our sacred sisterhood with every woman
that breathes, be she good or bad, foreign or native, bond or
free, shall we find our individual pettiness covered and flooded
out of sight by the most inexorable force of all the universe,
and that is hove.
If I could have my wish for all of us, it would be that in
our measure we might merit what was said of that seraphic
woman, Klizabeth Barrett Browming. Here is an ideal that
we shall all delight to share:
" Persons were never her theme, unless public characters were under
discussion, or friends were to be praised, which kind office she frequently
took upon herself. One never dreamed of frivolities in her presence,
and gossip felt itself out of place. Books and humanity, great deeds,
and, above all, politics, which include all the grand questions of the day,
were foremost in her thoughts, and therefore, oftenest on her lips. I
speak not of religion, for with her everything was religion. Her Chris-
tianity was nPt confined to church and rubric; it meant civilization."
Kuvy and jealousy light the intensest fires that ever burn
in human hearts; gossip and scandal are the smoke emitted
by them. If, as has been said, these passions could, like some
modern chimneys, be consumers of their own smoke, a purer
and a better atmosphere would then prevail.
In all the battle of opinion that rages, and must rage on
until a better equilibrium is reached in this great nation, be it
ours, beloved sisters, to remember that " when either side
grows warm in argument the wiser man gives over first."
Good breeding has been called "the apotheosis of self-re-
straint." But the higher evolution is not to need restraining,
but to have that inward quietness, which, when God giveth it,
' 'who then can make trouble ?'' All strife in manner, word
and deed, grows out of worldliness, and to this there is but
just one antidote, and that is Other Worldliness.
One look into the silent heavens, and all our earthly jar-
gons seem unworthy; one deep tone of the forests' mystical
aeolian, and our deeper hearts respond in tenderness; one sol-
emn strain out of the sea's unutterable anthem, and the soul
hears in it that '' something greater '' that speaks to the heart
alone.
All true souls know that this is true; "Let my soul calm
64
National W. C. 7\ U.
itself, oh God, in Thee," sings the stormy spirit of St. Angus-
tine. '' lyive without father and mother, but not without God,''
cries Count Tolstoi from Russia, that center of the world's
unrest.
" We should fill the hours with the sweetest things,
If we had but a day.
We should drink alone at the purest springs,
If we had but a day.
We should love with a lifetime's love in an hour,
If the hours were but few."
are the sweet lines of our own Mary Towe Dickinson.
And these are the words of a great but unnamed saint;
"The strongest Christians are those who from daily habit
hasten with ever3'thing to God."
But I have seen no words of greater sweetness in all this
\'ear than those of the great French author, with which I close.
They have been to me at once an admonition and a reproach.
Perhaps they may help you, as the^^ have helped me, nearer to
the calm, exalted, loving atmosphere of that other worldli-
ness, which alone can keep us in perfect peace and untiring
gentleness throughout this meeting.
"That which, at the hour of death, must needs assume a character
of absolute sincerity, is love. I often imagine that if humanity were to
acquire the certain knowledge that the world was to come to an end in
two or three days, love would break out on every side with a sort of
frenzy; for love is held in check only by the absolutely necessary restric-
tions which the moral preservation of human society has imposed.
When one perceived one's self confronted by a sudden and certain death,
nature alone would speak; the strongest of her instincts constantly
checked and thwarted, would resume its rights; a cry would burst from
every breast when one knew that one might approach with perfect law-
fulness the tree guarded by so many anathemas. . . . The world's
last sigh would be—as it were—a kiss of sympathy addressed to the uni-
verse—and to somewhat that is beyond. One would die in the seiiti-
ment of the highest adoration, and in the most perfect act of prayer."
"B}' this .shall all men know that jq are my disciples
because ye love one another."
TABULATED SUGCxESTTONS.
1. The Department of Organization can never be devel-
oped as we desire until it has a clerk.
2. Organizers should be requested b}' the Convention to
Presidenfs Annual Address.
65
go wherever the Department requires their services; other-
wise their names should not be retained on the list, for the}-
are c.x-officio members of the Convention, while Lecturers are
not, and should render the Society some return for this dis-
tinction. We must be more aggressive in our Organizers'
work next year. It is true that Miss Ackerman went on a
reconnoitering expedition to Alaska, Miss Perkins to Indian
Territory, while Miss Moore and Mrs. Wells have done excel-
lent work in the Territories, and Mrs. Goodale in the Southern
States, but there are localities in great need from which come
pleading voices, as Fort Worth and other points in Texas,
though Mrs. Dr. Acheson, the new President, has herself
made the most general tour of her immense parish ever under-
taken by any of our Presidents; Wyoming and Montana,
Nevada and Utah, Arizona and New Mexico are in great need
of help. Idaho has shown an indomitable spirit, and I hope
will keep calling oiit until well answered; and we ought to
send help to the Puget Sound region, in view of the dastardly
decision of Washington Territory judges against the women's
ballot.
3. Our undignified method of electing the Superintend-
ents will be superseded this year I hope by that of balloting.
The Constitution makes this possible, and I hope the Conven-
tion may so order.
4. I suggest that in 1889 all official addresses, including
the President's, and all reports, be presented to the conven-
tion in printed form, and that none of these, except the Treas-
urer's, be made in person. Thus we shall clear the decks for
action, and have our entire time for forward movements. In
the earlier days we were not equal to this method, but now we
are, and it will, I am confident, send us forward faster in our
work, and along better pathways.
5. One of the choicest lots at Lake Bluff has been pre-
sented to Mrs. Sallie F. Chapin, our Southern leader. I hope
that we women. North and South, may this year unite to place
upon that lot a cottage which shall be the summer home of
this heroic woman, and through which North and South alike
may testifs' appreciation of her inestimable services to the
white ribbon cause.
66
National W. C. T. C.
6. Carefully define the extent of powers of the Executive
and the Superintendents' committees, severally and relatively;
the scope of their sessions, separate and joint.
7. It is very desirable that the membership fee of the
W. C. T. U. and the Young Women's Christian Temperance
Union should be uniform in the same State, otherwise confu-
sion and dissatisfaction are likely to arise.
8. We must put our evangelistic work upon a firmer
basis. As a step in the right direction, I recommend the .set-
ting apart of deaconesses, and the employment of a .secretary
who .shall give all her time to the work.
9. The colored vote is our momentous problem in the
South. If our workers there will e.stablish local Temperance
Eegions in every colored school and church we shall solve the
problem to our satisfaction in ten years; but if they do not it
will not be .solved at all.
ID. A re.solution expressing appreciation of Department
of Labor, and requesting Carroll D. Wright, at its head, to
make a scientific investigation of the alcohol question in all
its economic bearings, and as much further as possible.
11. After consultation with Mrs. Bittenbender, I recom-
mend; First, That the National Prohibitor}^ Constitutional
Amendment and repeal of internal revenue taxes on alcoholic
beverages, be made special lines of work this year. Second,
The appointment of legislation and petitions in every State,
Territorial, District, County and Local Union, through whom
vigorous campaigns in the.se lines may be carried on.
12. Mrs. Bittenbender was admitted to practice in the
Supreme Court of the United States, October 15, at the in-
stance of our good friend. Senator Henry W. Blair, and is the
third woman who has won this high honor. I suggest that
she be made our attorney at the capital, and that other Tem-
perance societies be invited to join us in raising the necessary
salar>'.
13. I recommend that each State organize its .superin-
tendents into a board, and have a joint session with them
before and after the Convention, as does the National W. C.
T. U.
14. What shall be done with inebriates, is one of
Presidenfs Annual Address.
civilization's most complicated questions. There are three
things for which I think we ought to work:
(i.) Institutions, to be provided by the State, in which
these men can be kept away from the temptation and mean-
while kept at work.
(2.) A municipal regulation requiring them to work out
their fines at hard labor on the .streets instead of .sending them to
the Bridwell, or leaving their poor wives to work out the fine
at the washtub, as the}^ so often do.
(3.) A law disfranchising for the }^ear any man found
drunk* during that 3'ear. In like manner, I believe that we
should sedulously work on toward the State care of degraded
women in industrial homes, as the surest means in the present
distress of winning them back to a respectable and useful
life.
15. I suggest that each State have its own banner and
honor the local Union or District, that in an^^ 3-ear makes the
greatest pro rata gain in membership, making such District
the custodian of the banner, that district in turn placing the
banner in care of its own banner local auxiliar3o
16. I would restore the department for presenting the
temperance (not W. C. T. U.) cause before influential bodies;
would include a lectureship on Dress Reform under Health
Department; and Po.stmen and Police under Kvangelistic.
17. Incorporate a carefull3' framed pledge of purit3'into
the children's work, also of kindness to animals.
18. It is desirable that this Convention call upon the Ex-
ecutive Committee for a special report on our relations to the
World's W. C. T. U. and the National Council of Women.
19. Arrange Demorest Medal Contests ever3uvhere, but
especialE* in foreign countries.
20. Appoint a committee which shall be authorized to
prepare a series of ethical text-books for public schools.
21. A paid Superintendent of the Pre.ss, who .shall send
out weekl3^ and monthh' Bulletins.
22. A department for the preparation and suggestion of
paying entertainments.
23. Appoint a Secretary for the Decture Bureau and an
office secretar3' for headquarters..
68
National W. C. T. U.
24. Appoint an office secretarc- for tlie Department of Or-
ganization.
25. \V. C. T. U. read " Unto tliisUast," by Ruskin and
" Political Commercial Plconomy " (Dr. Ingersoll), pub-
lished by W. C. T. U., 161 Da Salle Street, Chicago.
26. Found a paper in the interest of the department of
White Cross and White Shield, to be edited by Dr. Kate Bush-
nell.
27. Adopt Dr. Bushnell's pledge for White Shield work.
28. Women work at the polls for National Prohibition
ticket wherever practicable.
29. Provide for White Ribbon Deaconesses to be trained
in our Evangelistic department, taught to be .skilled nurses at
our National Temperance Ho.spital, etc.
30. Special attention to Sabbath Obser\'ance pledge and
to petitions for better Sunday laws.
31. Memorialize the Evangelical Alliance.
32. Incorporate "The Travelers' Aid" under Social
Purity Department.
33. Superintendent of a Woman's Protective Agenc}- in
every local Union.
34. Secure a Woman's Indu.strial Home in evrej^ State.