TOUGALOO AND TEMPERANCE.
BY REV. A. HATCH, TOUGALOO UNIVERSITY.
Within the last four or five years, the temperance question has in one form or another been brought before the people of Mississippi with some prominence. The revised code is emphatic in the following points: the sale of vinous or spirituous liquor is forbidden except under a license, at least two hundred dollars; the sale to minors is strictly prohibited under severe penalties; the sale of liquor on Sunday is made unlawful, as also is the keeping open on that day of the bar or place where liquors are sold. Two years ago a State temperance convention was called at Jackson. This was an intelligent body of men representing nearly every county in the state. It adjourned without accomplishing a great deal, but the animus of the body was strongly in favor of a constitutional prohibitory amendment. Being an initiative movement, however, on the ground of expediency the final action was conservative.
As everywhere, the liquor men are active and shrewd, gaining over to their side many an ignorant and unwary voter. Their strong point of influence with the colored people is connected with the attachment of the latter to the free public school system. No institution is more fondly cherished by any class of people in our land than the free school system of the South by the negro race. The State constitution provides that “all moneys received for licenses granted for the sale of intoxicating liquor” shall be applied toward a common school fund. The schools, indeed, are in large part supported by this means. Liquor men accordingly put the case thus: Prohibit the manufacture and sale of liquor in this State and you cut off the support of the common schools.
In one county in the State the sale of intoxicating drinks is entirely prohibited by the local authorities, and there is at least one town outside of that county under a like restraint. At the present time there is very little doing for the cause throughout the State. It does not as yet enter into the sphere of politics, unless prospectively in slight degree. Nothing is seen in the leading papers relative to the subject as a matter of State interest. Occasionally we hear of a lecturer speaking for the cause, or rarely of some local movement in the way of organized effort.
The foregoing is believed to be a fair representation of the public mind and movement in relation to the subject. In general the colored people are easily influenced in favor of temperance. They are ready for the work as grain for the harvest.
There is need of the most earnest work. Of the 876 convicts in the State penitentiary, according to the last official report, 782 are colored persons, and it is estimated that four-fifths of these committed their crimes under the influence of liquor. This fact in the criminal list is a sure index of what is generally prevalent. Intemperance is alarmingly widespread among the colored people in Mississippi. The habit, too, is fixed within the churches of this people to a shocking extent. Church membership is no sort of guarantee that an individual is not habitually intemperate, even to the degree of drunkenness. When we consider all this and the terrible, degrading influence resting over the children and youth, the need of specifically temperance work seems almost equal to that of Christian education.
What has been done in this direction by Tougaloo University through its teachers, we take great pride and satisfaction in looking over and summing up. During the past five years this institution has been represented in temperance work in the State by no less than 150 different individuals converted to the cause while here, and becoming themselves signers of the pledge to total abstinence. These have done their temperance work in connection with the teaching of children in the common schools, and many of them in various fields. The little army has thus been able to reach a very great number of children and parents and homes. Their work was very direct. They taught the principles of temperance, and had their total abstinence pledge for young and old to sign. Nor was this all. All of these workers felt the necessity of exercising from year to year as they returned to their old places, or as circumstances made it possible, a watchful care over those induced to sign. One year the total number of signers obtained by our students was not less than 1,300. But this does not include the whole of the work done. Many of our students not as yet teachers have been energetic in their efforts to bring the subject to the attention of friends and neighbors where they have lived and to win these over to the cause, often gaining a greater influence and success than many who worked as teachers.
NEGRO CABINS.