Richmond Palladium (Daily), 7 May 1904 — Page 2
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THE' PRESS FOR
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LI. IS THE TITLE OF A PAPER READ AT W. 0. T. U. MEETING AT FRIENDS; CHURCH By Eliza D. H. Mendenhall and Printed by Request of the Union. -The following paper was read before the W. C. T. U. .at a meeting held recently in this city in the East Main Street Friends' church, entitled "The Press for Temperance." The Press For Temperance. In addressing temperance conventions there is a discouraging consciousness that probably no. one is present who does not already agree with every thought to be enunciated. Our temperance leetui'ers and orators speak at rare intervals and to limited numbers. Our temperance papers and magazines go mostly to the homes of those already interested in the work. While these do an untold amount of good "among the brethren," they are not gathering new converts and new workers for temperance as they ought to do. It is our fifteen thousand daily newspapers, speaking to more than twenty million daily readers that can earry our message most effectually into every home. There is now enough public opinion to back us and there are enough sound temperance men to open the editorial pages to our pens, if we have our message ready for the people. The slow coming of this great national reform is not due to the slow stepping of Jehovah but to the nanation's hike warmness and to her greed of revenue. Richmond could speedily close her fifty saloons in the same way that she got her new railroad by bringing the question as a single issue to be voted upon without respect to party by the people. True to their instinct for civic righteousness we do believe the body of our citizens would vote "rank and file" for temperance. All this cutting off of the Hydra's heads and this weary trimming of the Up as tree would then be past. Simply because there would be no Hydra to multiply its heads and no Upas tree to drop its poison. Our church members and our ministerial associations cannot hope to equal or to outwit the low cunning of the saloon element. They have not been reared in the school of treachery and deceit, nor, can the God fearing, law abiding element always stand discomfited and defeated with the saloon man leering a whole year ahead. But if they could be entirely victorious it would be at the cost of perpetual vigilance and there are nobler uses for our time and our talents "The Saloon must go." We commend the consideration of the Initiendum Referendum' to our committee on civic improvement. It would mend slippery ways for unwary feet, build bridges to moral and financial success, illume the moral atmosphere, rear happy homes and win not only the respect but the support of the people of Richmond. But if there is to be no quick deliverance from this evil a temperance corner in every paper would enlighten the people in all our, towns and cities. If every county in every state had its W. C. C. T. IT. organization and if each Union had a live press committee, it would accomplish wonders, nor need we be discouraged with the numbers, the zeal and the organization we already have. Let this organization remain as it was organized and as Frances Willard so strongly advised simply a band of mothers, with no political connection or aspirations, a federation of hearts and hands to guard the interests of the home, so that every mother in the land can find a place amongst us and however Ave may differ in creed or politics we can be one in our organization and our work for the protection of the home. There is need of great wisdom the kind that cometh from above promised liberally to them that ask of God. There is need of kindness and courage, courtesy and moderation in this press committee work. There is no necessity to draw upon the imagination nor multiply our expletives. There is already a curse noon the saloon keeper and upon his children deadlier than the hereditary curse
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pursuing the house of Atreus. -All the history of the past and our every day happenings will give the texts and the facts. They themselves will make an energetic introduction a well sustained middle and an effective peroration to every article your pen shall write. Let a well selected committee in every locality prepare short pungent articles for eaeh weekly issue. If we mix with them a little brains it won 't be a drawback, but above all is the clear enunciation of conviction and the spirit s power ? to reach the people.-' ' . ..'" ".' .. ,; Ask your local editors, whether you be on this press committee or off of it ask them as subscribers to their valued paper to place the temperance reform and the great J moral issues of the day in which you are interested upon the front page occasionallythat they may not be entirely outranked by the polo, the football, and the race track. This press committee must have tact and a great deal of good common sense in active exercise. It will need grace and grit as well as Prohibition sentiment, if it succeeds well with the managing editor. A gracious presence and a persuasive tongue are helpful adjuncts in wedging temperance convictions. This committee should-not be composed entirely of those old and tried but of those young and eager as well, who only need the breaking and the harnessing to do effectual service. The same elderly, well balanced, very much respected member of this committee need not always present the temperance report. The editor will like to look at a fresh face occasionally. He knows our spectacles and our angularities by heart and is mistakenly prone to thiuk that "There are no others and we are Hobsen's choice." Our message can always be fresh and in touch with the every day happenings in national life. When an application for license appears then should come the protest in the nick of time and not a week too late. Send the protest where it can count for righteousness and reform and don't spend all your force and time just talking it over among yourselves. When your relief corps finds cases of abject poverty the result of liquor habitually doled out to a drunkard when you can prove it to have been sold on Sunday or on election day or to a minor then is the time and the opportunity to use your fact for a pen point in the daily paper. Let the press committee reiterate high license law to be a delusion. Liquor dealers pay their license fees but they resist the enforcement of the law in every detail, moreover high license money becomes a corrupt ion fund to induce men to support the traffic because of the revenue it brings. It puts ihe people to the alternative of voting away thousands of dollars from our city, or voting to sustain the traffic that the revenue may come
in. Regulating the evil is like cutting off the rattle snake's tail. It don't make so much noise rattling its warn ing note, but it does its biting all the same. If the people must have deadly serpents, let them have them tails and all. .The only way to cure rattle snakes is to kill them and there is no other cure for the liquor traffic. An exchange sums un the year's work by the liquor traffic in the following figures: 5,000 suicides. j 0,000 murders. 60,000 fallen girls. 100,000 paupers. 100,000 orphan children. 100,000 maniacs and idiots. 100,000 criminals. 100,000 drunkards' deaths. 100,000 boys to take their places, besides the small sum of two billion dollars in money. How shall we. help you to feel a tithe of the meaning hidden in these figures? How shall we find a way to stir your apathy as you read these words in your happy homes tonight. In preparation for another year's work, the liquor league is raising a 5,000,000 dollar defense fund, with which to control temperance legisla tion in congress and in the state leg islature. They are employing the ablest legal talent in the land to pro tect their interests, and in the face of all these facts there is a report just now circulated called The report of the Committee ofFifty. This report condemns all scientific temperance instruction in our public schools. It fails to prove after ten years in vestigation that alcohol is indeed a food. It feeds our jails and our peniten tiaries, our poor-houses and our in-
sane asylums. It feeds crime and misery and brings forth projenyenervated, imbruted beings whose children and whose children's children bear an hereditary curse upon their foreheads, and in their souls, where their spiritual perceptions are blunted and the image of their Master blurred. In face of all these facts arrayed against them by the leading scientists of Europe this self constituted committee asks that the 16 million . children enrolled in our public schools be brought up in ignorance of . the death traps laid for their feet. No great political party dares put in a temperance plank to save the nation from this peril and every mother in the land, defrauded of the ballot is helpless to protect her home. She can only plead and wring her hands and pray but remember!" She prays to a God who hears and answers prayers. Let the press committee impress that fact. Already there are rifts in the horizon and we see the hand of God writing upon the wall. The people are more intelligent. The church is awakening. Strong men are coming to the rescue. Our final success depends upon that unremitting effort, that infinite patience, the tender charity that believes all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Somewhere away out in the ocean there is a place where the waives lift themselves to turn and drawn by a steady, shining influence, rush in high tide to the land, and we have almost reached some such place as that in our struggle. It is not now all against both wind and tide. Lifted by our hope in God, drawn by the steady influence of His will for righteousness in this earth, our prayers shalt have their answers brought to land, and there shall be no more curse of drink to blight our
homes and our civilization. Be Strong! "We are not here to play, to dream to drift, We have hard work to do, and loads to lift, Shun not the struggle, face it, 'tis God's gift. Be Strong! Sav not the davs are evil who's to blame And fold the hands and acquiesceOh, shame Stand up, speak out and bravely in God's name. Be Strong! It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong How hard the battle goes the day how long Faint not, fight on, tomorrow comes the song." Eliza D. H. Mendenhall. Printed by request of W. C. T. U. Wayne County Temperance Institute. RICHMOND LAWNS Would take on a beautiful green if Mertz's Bone Fertilizer were used now. Send or telephone your orders O'Tom Mertz. Both 'phones 103, or Rural Route No. 8. Send in an or der for a sample if you want your grass to grow well next summer. Testimony of a Minister. Rev. John S. Cox, of Wake, Ark.. writes, "For 12 years I suffered from Yellow Jaundice. I consulted a num ber of physicians and tried all sorts of medicines, but got no relief. Then I began the use of Electric Bitters and feel that I am now cured of a disease that had me in its grasp for twelve years." If you want a relia ble melicine for Liver and Kidney Trouble, stomach disorder or general debility, get Electric Bitters. It's guaranteed by A. Q. Luken & Co Only 50c. Best Cough Medicine for Children. When you buy acough medicine for small children you want one in which you can place implicit confidence. You want one that not only relieves but cures. You want one that is unques tionably harmless. You want one that is pleasant to take. Chamber lain's Cough Remedy meets all of these conditions. There is nothing so good for the coughs and colds incident to childhood. It is also a certain preventitive and cure for croup, and there is no danger whatever from whooping cough when it is given. It has been used in many epidemics of that disease with perfect success. For sale by A. G. Luken & Co., and W. H. Sudhoff, corner fifth and Main. Reduced Fares to Buffalo via Penn sylvania Lines. May 10th, 11th and 12th, excursion tickets to Buffalo, N. Y., account In ternational Convention Young Men's Christian Association, will be sold via Pennsylvania Lines. For particulars regarding time of trains, etc., see Local Ticket Agent of those lines.
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