Governor St. John the New "Pathfinder."

399

route by a temperance delegation whose anxiety was so great they had come to protect him, he showed them the letters of which, until that moment, no one had been aware, saying: "Our cause must have its martyrs as well as heroes, and I might as well be ready."

It seems to me the world must have in every age the object-lesson of new lives dedicated to all that most exalts humanity, and here we have this one which God has set up high where all may read.

I never heard John P. St. John traduced, save by the myrmidons of the saloon. The party that now reviles would have adored him had he been even a little less loyal to our cause. The Senate's open door would have been just before him if indeed he had not entered it already. But now, forsooth, he is "an office seeker" when he holds on high the standard for us who can give him nothing but our gratitude; when he lays his lofty fame a sacrifice upon the altar of our holy cause!

I yield to none in admiration of these glorious veterans, John Russell, James Black, and Gideon T. Stewart. History will place their names beside those of Phillips and Garrison upon her roll of honor; they were the adventurous pioneers who struck out into a forest of prejudice and “blazed the trees." But to make our way across the Sierras of difficulty that still separate us from the Eldorado of success, we want a "Pathfinder," and we believe St. John to be the "Frémont" of our battles.

For Dr. R. H. McDonald I have the highest esteem, his lofty character and generous help command my admiration and my gratitude; but as between two noble men we must choose the one who, as a sun-glass, will focus the most votes, and I believe Governor St. John to be that man.

Dear women of the white ribbon, here assembled, you know that from all this land went up the voice of supplication when the call for prayer was made just before the first of these party conventions, in May last! We prayed that America might have a plank in some platform declaring for national prohibition for the sake of home protection, and a candidate whose character and personal habits mothers might safely commend to their sons. In Governor St. John we have an answer to that prayer. When I think of what he is to the temperance people of the nation, I know that in ten thousand homes these words of England's laureate will strike responsive chords :

"As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;

"Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;

"Who makes by force his merit known,
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees
And shape the whisper of the throne;

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Woman's Ballot Indorsed.

"And moving on from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,

The center of a world's desire."

On behalf of the Kansas delegation, I second the nomination of John P. St. John, of Kansas.

When it was announced that all the votes of the convention had been cast for Governor St. John, the tumult was tremendous, and as we all stood up and sang,

"Mine eyes have seen the glory

Of the coming of the Lord,"

there were tears on many a cheek.

I was a member of the Committee on Resolutions, and especially interested in the one on equal suffrage. It read as follows, and was mainly written by James Black, of Pennsylvania, the Prohibition party's first candidate for president; my own part I will print in italics :

Resolved, That the activity and coöperation of the women of America for the promotion of temperance has, in all the history of the past, been a strength and encouragement which we gratefully acknowledge and record. In the later and present phase of the movement for the prohibition of the traffic, the purity of purpose and method, the earnestness, zeal, intelligence and devotion of the mothers and daughters of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union have been eminently blessed of God. Kansas and Iowa have been given them as "sheaves" of rejoicing, and the education and the arousing of the public mind, and the now prevailing demand for the Constitutional Amendment are largely the fruit of their prayers and labors. Sharing in the efforts that shall bring the question of the abolition of this traffic to the polls, they shall join in the grand “Praise God from whom all blessings flow," when by law victory shall be achieved.

Resolved, That believing in the civil and political equality of the sexes, and that the ballot in the hands of woman is her right for protection, and would prove a powerful ally for the abolition of the liquor traffic, the execution of law, the promotion of reform in civil affairs, and the removal of corruption in public life, we enunciate the principle, and relegate the prac tical outworking of this reform to the discretion of the Prohibition party in the several states, according to the condition of public sentiment in those

states.

I had been so much in the South that its delegates confided to me their earnest hope that we would "draw it mild," but I felt that they would hardly disown their traditional doctrine of state rights as here expressed. They did not, nor do I believe

"Home Protection" as a Name.

401

that, as a class, they will antagonize those of us who are committed to the equal suffrage plank in the Prohibition platform.

There was some debate, lively and courteous, but the resolution was adopted with but little dissent. Not so the party name. Rev. Dr. Miner, of Boston, a chief among the old liners, moved that the old name "Prohibition" be restored. "Our side" amended with the proposition to retain the name given two years before at Chicago, viz., Prohibition Home Protection Party,"-ten syllables! and on this rock we foundered. It was not in human nature to put up with a decahedron name, and one parted in the middle at that! If we had moved to substitute "Home Protection," we should have done much better. I remember uttering a few sentences in favor of retaining the long name, but the old liners were too strong for us, and almost without debate, the change was agreed to. This action scored another of those huge disappointments through which one learns "to endure hardness as a good soldier." Away back in 1876, I think it was, when our great and good Mrs. Yeomans, of Canada, spoke at Old Orchard Beach, my ear first caught the winsome and significant phrase "Home Protection." My impression is that she did not coin, but adapted it from the tariff vocabulary of the Dominion. Listening to her there in the great grove of pines, with blue sky overhead and flashing sea waves near, it flashed on me, "Why not call this gospel temperance work the 'Home Protection Movement,' for that's just what it is, and these words furnish the text for our best argument and go convincingly along with our motto: 'For God and Home and Native Land?'' The more I thought about all this, the more it grew on me, and in 1877, when invited by Henry C. Bowen, of the New York Independent, to speak at his famous "Fourth of July Celebration," I chose "Home Protection" for my theme and brought out from the Independent office my "Home Protection Manual," which I distributed among our white ribbon women throughout the nation. We called our petitions, "Home Protection," our great Illinois campaign in 1879 went by that name, and when I was converted, heart and soul, to the Prohibition party, I believed, as I do still, that its strength would be immeasurably increased by adopting Home Protection as its name. But the old name was endeared to those who had suffered for it, and

402

My First Campaign Speech.

they were not disposed to give it up. In this I then, and always, believed them to be unwise.

Directly after the convention I went, by the earnest request of Mr. Daniels, vice-presidential nominee of the Prohibition party, to speak at a ratification meeting in Cumberland, Md. I dreaded the encounter, for, except at our temperance conventions, I had but once in my life, so far as I can recall, spoken on politics.* To meet the "world's people" in the opening of a fierce campaign was painful to me, and I did it only as a token of loyalty to our new candidate. This town among the hills is fore-ordained to be provincial, by reason of its physical geography. Its pretty little opera house was well filled that night; but the air felt cold as winter to my spirit, though July's heat was really there. Curiously enough did its well-dressed women look on me, standing forlorn before the footlights, on a bare stage, and sighing for the heart-warmth of a Woman's Christian Temperance Union meeting, where women would have crowded around me, flowers sent forth their perfume, and hymns and prayers made all of us at home. I spoke, no doubt, forlornly; anyhow, I felt forlorn. The gainsaying political papers said next day, that I was poor enough, and our candidate even poorer than I! Major Hilton, of Washington, D. C., was with us, and I think if there were honors that evening, he bore them away.

Meanwhile, we had heard that our noble martyr of the Prohibition army had accepted the sacrifice, not without intense reluctance and most bitter heartache, and our campaign began. I say "ours," because the white ribbon women were so thoroughly enlisted in it. By going as delegates to its convention, many of our leaders "lent their influence," and our five "general officers," Mesdames Buell, Woodbridge, Stevens, and Miss Pugh, with myself, issued a card expressing our hearty sympathy, and our belief that, since the Prohibition party, of all the four then in the field, had indorsed our memorial, we were bound to take its part. At the annual meetings of that battle autumn, nearly all our state unions did this in one form or another, Iowa and Pennsylvania being then, as now, on the opposing side.

The single exception occurred in Canandaigua, N. Y., September, 1875, when, having spoken by invitation before the Conference Temperance Society of the M. E. Church, I also briefly addressed the first Prohibition party audience I had ever seen, by invitation of Rev. Mr. Bissell; but I did not speak as an adherent.

CHAPTER III.

THE ST. LOUIS CONVENTION.

When our National Woman's Christian Temperance Union Convention met in St. Louis, just before the swift arbitrament of the memorable election day that changed the national administration, the air was full of thunderbolts. For the first time, there was much ado to get a church. The Central Methodist agreed, and then disagreed to our assembling there. "Will you promise not to mention politics?" was the question. "Nay; but we will promise that the politics believed in by us shall most assuredly be mentioned," was the reply. "We can give up the high-toned churches, but not our high-toned ideas; we will meet in a tent in a public square, if need be, but we will never smother a single sentence that we wish to speak."

Our St. Louis women were brave and staunch, but not a little tried and tossed in the seething counter-currents of the time. Where to put either delegates or convention they hardly knew. But all their difficulties dispersed in due season. Good church-people of liberal spirit opened their houses; Rev. John A. Wilson, a generous-hearted pastor of the United Presbyterian denomination, secured for us the use of his church, saying, "I traveled with your national president some years ago in Egypt and the Holy Land, and I don't believe she will permit anything very bad"-albeit he was an ardent Blaine man and I fear he repented his bargain before we were through.

In my annual address I used as a theme Mrs. Lathrap's new and suggestive phrase, and spoke on

(( 'GOSPEL POLITICS."

DEAR SISTERS-By the laws of spiritual dynamics this has been one of our best, perhaps because one of our most progressive, years. Stationary pools and people tend toward stagnation. The most senseless of proverbs is that about the rolling stone that gathers no moss. What does it want of moss when it can get momentum ?