Petitions are the Temperance Sun-glass.

435

with the uaited voices of representative women from every civilized nation under the sun, beseeching you to strip away the safeguard and sanctions of the law from the drink traffic and the opium trade, and to protect our homes by the total prohibition of this twofold curse of civilization throughout all the territory over which your government extends.

Names of Women.

Nationality.

Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge, Ravenna, Ohio, is American Secretary of the World's W. C. T. U., and is doing earnest work for the petition, which will not be presented until we have two million signatures gathered up from all nations of the world.

It is translated into the language of every civilized nation, and is to be circulated in every country. The entire list of names secured will be presented to each government. Thus the American Congress will be petitioned to abolish the liquor traffic in America by women in Great Britain, Australia, Japan, etc. The same will be true of the Dominion of Canada. The British Parliament will, in like manner, be petitioned to abolish the alcohol traffic and the opium trade by women from America, and all over the world. Indeed, the first thought of this petition came to the president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the United States, when reading an English book about the opium trade in India and China. To carry out this idea, an organized movement seemed necessary, that the women of the whole world, immeasurably cursed as they are by the results of these gigantic evils, might unitedly appeal to the men of the world, convened in all its great legislative Assemblies, and represented by its Potentates, to protect and deliver them.

There is a vast amount of righteous sentiment on the subjects of temperance and social purity that is scattered, and is, therefore, comparatively powerless. It needs a standard around which to rally; a focus for its scattered rays; and the great petition supplies this need. Besides all this, the reflex influence of the petition as an educational force upon the people will be of immeasurable value. It will create or confirm the arrest of thought in a million heads, and the arrest of conviction in a million hearts. It will be, in effect, a muster-roll for our army, and those who circulate it will be virtually recruiting officers in everybody's war. Their words of sweet reasonableness uttered in a million ears will mightily augment the sum total of moral

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"The Federation of the World."

influence. The Gatling gun of pulpit, press and platform, sending out our many-sided arguments and loving pleas, will gain incalculably in directness of aim and force of impression from the clear-cut issue furnished by the great petition. Nor will our work prove to have been "love's labor lost," in the great councils to which it is addressed. Nothing within the scope of our possibilities could be so influential and commanding. What two million of the most intelligent and forceful adults on this planet ask for, over their own signatures, will not long be disre garded or denied by their representatives. This petition will be the beginning of the end. Many years will be required in which to work it up, and it is believed that in no way can the same amount of effort be turned to better account in the interest of unifying and forwarding the reforms which are of equal importance to all the nations of the earth.

Far-sighted philanthropists are looking toward a time in the distant future, when, in the words of the poet

"The war drums throb no longer, and the battle flags are furled, In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World."

All modern thought and effort are tending toward this universal federation, which it is hoped will one day control the world's forces in the interests of peace and of every right reform.

CHAPTER VII.

THE GREATEST PARTY.

The contradiction and malignity of political debate have long since ceased to mar the tranquility of my spirit. I will do what I can do to mitigate the asperities of politics, believing them to be altogether needless, and unnatural, but for myself I have entered the region of calms and "none of these things move me." If this work be of God, it can not be overthrown; if it be not, then the sooner it comes to naught, the better for humanity.

The year 1888 will always rank as having been, up to its date, the most remarkable in the history of the Temperance Reform. Being the year of a Presidential campaign, it was, for sufficiently apparent reasons, the one in which politicians of the old school would do least for prohibition; but the presence of the new school in politics and of women as an active power in public affairs to a degree before undreamed of, mark it as a sort of moral watershed. In England the Primrose League of women antagonizing Gladstone's policy, and the Women's Liberal League presided over by that great statesman's wife, counting among its officers, Jane Cobden (Richard's daughter), and devoted to Home Rule, had already demonstrated the power of women in politics. Meanwhile, the Prohibition party had enjoyed since 1881, the active cooperation of the white ribbon women, and its vote had risen from ten thousand for Gen. Neal Dow, of Maine, as President (in 1880), to over one hundred and fifty-one thousand for ex-Governor St. John, of Kansas, in 1884. The Democratic party, led by President Cleveland, projected the tariff issue squarely across the path of the campaign; Republicans took it up eagerly, distorted the revision of the tariff, which was the actual issue, into the abolition of the tariff, to which the traditions of

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66

The Famous Catnip Tea" Resolution.

the money-getting Yankee nation were totally opposed, and won the battle of the ballot-box by making good temperance people believe that they must save their country, just once more, within the old lines of political warfare, by unblushing bribery, and by secretly assuring the liquor element that its interests would be as safe in Republican as in Democratic hands. In this campaign, Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, of Iowa, went before the Republican Convention with representatives of the anti-saloon association, and asked for a temperance plank. The report of the Committee on Resolutions contained no reference to this subject, and its reaffirmation of its previous platform served to leave the infamous "Raster Resolution" in full force. Subsequently, on the night of the adjournment, the following resolution was hurried through under circumstances proving to fair-minded lookers-on that it was but a sop in the form of a subterfuge to the prohibition Cerberus :

Resolved, That the first concern of all good government is the virtue and sobriety of the people and the purity of the home. The Republican party cordially sympathizes with all wise and well-directed efforts for the promotion of temperance and morality.

Concerning this resolution, the liquor men's leaders and newspapers declared that it was "no stronger than the brewers themselves had adopted;" was no hindrance to their remaining in the Republican fold, since it was agreed to by their chiefs at the convention before being offered, and was declared by the doughty Sheridan Shook, a notable New York liquor politician, to be only a little harmless catnip tea for the temperance element. But upon this basis, as well as because of their supposed devotion to "the heart side of the tariff question, "-whatever that may be Mrs. Foster called upon the women of the nation to rally to "the party of great moral ideas. " She was elected by the Republican National Campaign Committee, Chairman of the Women's National Republican Committee, which, like the former, had its headquarters in New York City, and sent out literature in which the tariff, not temperance, had the right of way. Though in other years an advocate of prohibition and denouncer of high-license, she vigorously championed the highlicense campaign of Hon. Warner Miller, in New York state, and fought the Prohibition party with a vehemence worthy a better

cause.

This was the first time that women had ever been recog

The Prohibition Party Convention.

439 nized as helpers by either of the great parties, and shows the gathering force of the great woman movement in America as everywhere. No doubt the attitude of the Prohibition party, which had from the first recognized women as integral forces in its organization and which had for many years given them a place upon its National Committee, and invited them as delegates to all of its conventions, did much to pioneer the way for this surprising new departure.

The success of Mrs. Foster's effort to organize Republican Clubs of women was not conspicuous, but, chiefly through her efforts, no doubt, some clubs were formed, women participated in the campaign as speakers,—notably Anna Dickinson and Mrs. Foster, women escorted speakers, paraded on foot in processions, and in several instances occupied the ancient and honorable place always heretofore accorded to the brass band.

Democratic women were hardly heard from, except as occasional wearers of the "red, red rose” or wavers of the bright bandana. Women appeared before every one of the national conventions where a president was to be nominated, and asked that an equal suffrage plank be placed in their platforms. This was done by the Prohibition and by one wing of the Labor party, an educational test being attached to the franchise plank. It goes without saying, that women were out in force at the Prohibition party convention, held May 30, at Indianapolis in Tomlinson Hall. Over a thousand delegates were present, of whom about one hundred were of the steadfast sex.

Every state, except South Carolina and Louisiana, and all the territories but four-Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Wyoming-were represented. It was a gathering of the home-folk, but included nearly every leading nationality.

Not a taint of tobacco smoke was in the corridors; not a breath betrayed the fumes of alcohol. Clear-eyed, kind-faced, well-dressed, these men and women were familiar with the inside of the school-house, the church, the home, but not with that of the saloon.

Promptly at 10:00 o'clock A. M., the manly form of Samuel Dickie, chairman of the National Committee, was seen upon the elegantly decorated platform, and he called the other members of the committee and the National Officers of the Woman's Christian