THE TEMPERANCE OUTLOOK AT MEMPHIS.
BY PROF. A. J. STEELE.
“It was in evidence to-day that Marianna’s place was going full blast all day Sunday last, and that it was crowded with men and boys, some of them not more than twelve years old, shooting dice and playing cards. The specific charges against him were keeping house open, selling liquor on that day, and allowing minors to gamble.”
The above item, taken from a late daily paper of this city, may serve to introduce my observations in the matter of temperance—or rather of intemperance—for the ten years of my life at Memphis. The place above referred to is prominently located, rather to one side of the business portion of the city, and almost literally within the very shadows of two of the largest colored churches of the city. If there exists now in Memphis any distinctively temperance organization other than the W. C. T. U. and the Band of Hope of Le Moyne Institute, I can find nothing of it. If the churches speak with other than very uncertain tones on the subject, when they speak at all, I am not aware of it. I know of but one church, the Second Congregational, that makes abstinence a condition of membership. I know of many whose members may and do drink steadily, sometimes to drunkenness, unmolested. If there is any practical or emphatic or systematic teaching in Sunday-schools in general on the subject, I have not known of it. Strangely enough, our strongest, most effective temperance sentiment and teaching comes through the courts, and through business men and interests, where in the majority of cases no moral responsibility or solicitude is felt or expressed in the matter in question.
The legal argument and phase of the subject is the one that most readily finds a hearing and a following here; this was recently shown by the marked interest manifested in several able addresses given on the subject by Mrs. Foster, the lawyer-temperance advocate of Iowa. In the South, at all events, there is no doubt as to the right or power of legislative bodies and courts to deal with the matter. By a curious mistake some years since the General Assembly of Tennessee passed a law known as the “Four Mile Law,” which prohibits the sale of liquor within four miles of any chartered institution of learning. It was supposed that the law would be of only local force, but it so happened that the State Constitution declared that any general act of the Legislature must be of general application throughout the State. Hence in time we came to realize that we had a very effective prohibitory law, or what amounted to that. To the everlasting honor of our courts it must be said that this and such other temperance legislation as we have is fearlessly enforced and under very severe penalties in such cases as are presented for trial.
This is, to say the least, a very anomalous condition of affairs. I account for it in two ways, chiefly from the fact that in general the liquor interests of the South are poorly organized and consolidated for any purposes of opposition or defense; and secondly, in communities where the formative process is largely going on—(and be assured the new South will not be the old)—especially in all questions of public import, the heroic is oftener resorted to than is just common or fashionable in a more settled state of society. There is less allowing of quibbles and more coming straight to the end in view. So stringently have the courts applied these laws that there are several counties in East Tennessee where no liquor is now sold.
In this county many country liquor stores have been run out, a fine of $150 being not unusual for a first offense in violation of law; this was the fine inflicted in the instance at the head of this letter. In general the newspapers cast their influence on the right side; usually edited by men of position and at least of local importance, their influence is not small. In Memphis the W. C. T. U. is the strong moral force for temperance work and influence. Concerning our own work, Colman’s Temperance text book, is regularly used and taught in the school, and almost invariably our students go out earnest believers in, and workers for, temperance, accomplishing no small amount of good among their people, who almost universally suppose liquor necessary to laborers and indispensable to free men, and therefore drink as much of it as can be obtained.