The Famous By-Law.

409

This was in force at Nashville only, and was rescinded by an overwhelming majority at New York. At Nashville an amendment to our Constitution offered the previous year by Mrs. Foster, was voted down. It read as follows:

"This association shall be known as the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and shall be non-sectarian in religious, and non-partisan in political work."

The convention held that our non-sectarian character had been thoroughly established from the beginning, and as to being non-partisan, it was far from our intent. In St. Louis we had crossed the Rubicon forever, and with us it was a case of "sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote." We could not as a national society consent to remain in relations of equal friendship toward one national party that ignored, another that denounced, and a third that espoused, the cause of prohibition. But we did not appreciate the anger of a party in defeat-indeed, we had not supposed that defeat was in store for the Republicans.

CHAPTER IV.

WOMEN IN COUNCIL.

we now called the What it hoped and

Patiently the "Old Guard" (for so National W. C. T. U.) held on its way. prayed for came true, the good men who were angry thought better of the situation after awhile. Ministerial brethren, even, who had declared that our pulpit notices should be read no longer, changed their minds and let us hold meetings in the dear old home churches as aforetime.

At our next National Convention in Philadelphia (autumn of 1885), forty churches were opened to our speakers on the Sabbath day, though we chose Association Hall in preference to the beautiful edifices that were offered us. Among the beautiful decorations of this Hall were the banners and other devices that had made our booth at the late Exposition in New Orleans a fitting symbol of our womanly work. That the woman-touch is thus to brighten every nook and corner of earth, has always been a cardinal doctrine of my creed, coming to me first as an intuition, later on as a deduction, but always as an emphatic affirmation.

Two hundred and eighty-two delegates were present from torty states and territories. Nearly eleven thousand dollars had been received by our treasurer and our convention was conceded to be by far the strongest and the best that we had ever held. Clearly, our branch of the temperance work had not "been set back twenty years." Forty-four district and national departments of work were provided for; a new constitution was adopted, requiring ten cents per capita to be paid into the national treasury, instead of five cents, as heretofore; our superintendents were organized into a committee to confer with the Executive Committee. Headquarters were removed from New York, where they had never flourished, to 161 La Salle Street, Chicago, Ill.,

Pageants of the New Crusade.

411

where, in conjunction with our Woman's Temperance Publishing House, they have greatly gained in power, and the White Cross movement was adopted as a feature of our work.

I was made, per force, superintendent of this new department, also of our national department of publications, and had that of organization assigned me as an ex officio duty.

The Philadelphia Convention was remarkable for the large number of white ribbon women in attendance as visitors, for the number of distinguished persons outside our ranks who addressed it, also for the deference manifested by ministerial and other bodies in sending us fraternal delegates. Probably no convention ever assembled in America in an auditorium more beautifully decorated. The escutcheons of states, the banners of the forty departments, the gay pennons of state and local unions, of young women's societies, and of the children's Loyal Temperance Legion, recalled the pictures and pageants of the mediaval Crusaders and knights of olden chivalry. Mrs. Josephine R. Nichols, national superintendent of introducing temperance work at expositions, state and county fairs, and other great assemblies of the people, had set our women at work preparing these beautiful bits of color and emblems of sentiment and purpose, for the New Orleans Exposition, where we had a handsome booth. I fear, lest in setting forth the political attitude of our society and my relation thereto, I am doing injustice to its real, though less observed, activities. For example, at St. Louis nearly thirty distinct departments were passed in review by their chiefs, in reports printed and circulated throughout the convention, and methods for improving all of these departments were duly discussed and acted on; a strong corps of national organizers was selected, and all our publishing interests provided for.

Indeed, the versatility of our W. C. T. U. can hardly be better illustrated than by the fact that this same convention not only swung us into politics, but adopted the following petition to editors of fashion-plate magazines, reported to us from the Press Department, which sends out news, temperance literature and bulletins to thousands of papers, from Tampa Bay to Puget Sound, and of which Miss Mary Henry is our present Superintendent:

DEAR FRIEND-Knowing that the fashion in woman's dress which requires the constriction of the waist and the compression of the trunk