Constitutional prohibition best accords with correct principles of law-making, the constitution being a general statement of principles, rights and obligations. It can not be repealed by the legislature, since every member of that body on being “qualified” raises his hand in solemn oath that he will defend the constitution. It holds the law already on the statute book as with a clinched nail, and therefore furnishes a stronger cage and better lock for the tiger of license and the lion of taxation. If it does not kill him it chains the mad dog of rum and beer with a short chain and puts up a sign—THIS IS A MAD DOG! So that few will go near him and nobody can let him loose without the consent of the people.
For these reasons, and many others cogently set forth by Rev. H. C. Munson, Secretary of the Maine Temperance Alliance, the people pursued the legislature and the amendment was submitted at its last session. Public interest was at once concentrated on Maine; nor in America alone, but wherever English is spoken the heart of the people was aroused. From New Zealand came a letter to Hon. John B. Finch, the great prohibition orator and chief Good Templar of the world. It read in this fashion: “We hear that the parliament in your province of Maine has submitted prohibition to a vote of the people to know if after thirty years’ trial they think it the best method of handling the liquor traffic. Tell them for the sake of humanity to stand by their law, for a vote in Maine counts one in New Zealand either for or against outlawing the dram shop.”
Mrs. Emily Pitt Stevens, the gifted California lady who came to help in the campaign said: “If you defeat the prohibition amendment I can not go back to my vineyard-cursed state, and tell them so, but prefer to be buried face downward under a lone pine in the state that went back on its record.”
Mrs. Pearson, vice president of the Woman’s Temperance Association of England, and associate of its president, Margaret Lucas (sister of John Bright), declared that if Maine failed she would be glad that three thousand miles of brine separated her from the faces she would have no courage to look into. And so on every side rang the refrain of warning. Three hundred speakers went up and down through the state, most of them “to the manor born,” nearly all freely giving their services. This was perhaps our most effective argument as “speakers from a distance.”
Your verdict will be that of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. Sometimes a part stands for the whole, and to-day you are the world’s jury. Arnold of Winkelried stood for all the republics of the wide world. Luther stood for all Protestants. The men at Gettysburg stood for the nation. Who will ask, or who remember what man was chosen Governor in Maine this year? Only a handful of people for a little time, but humanity cares what decision you give on the outlawing of those dealers who would sell alcoholic poison as a drink, because we are in the midst of the great fight for a clear brain, and everybody has a vital interest that victory shall be won.
The “sword marks” of John B. Finch were everywhere; Mary A. Woodbridge, chieftain of Ohio’s gigantic battle, told how fields were won; Col. Chevis, a gallant Southron, “who served under Stonewall Jackson,” but whom the temperance cause has reconstructed, did admirable service. Mrs. McLaughlin, with her winsome eloquence; Mrs. Kimball, with her polished style; Mrs. Lucy H. Washington, with her rapier-like logic, all were there. Ministers of every denomination entered the field; a Catholic priest “stumped” one of the fifteen counties; the temperance societies were a unit in their devotion, and while the seething caldron of politics was at its height, the temperance campaign, perfectly distinct, went on beside it; with prayers instead of processions, torches of truth rather than pine knots, and “Coronation” instead of “We’ll vote for Blaine and Robie.”
Speaking in eleven chief towns on as many successive nights I found the W. C. T. U. had worked up the meetings with great care. For “a success” in this line does not “happen,” but is organized, preëmpted, captured by consecrated common sense. I can readily tell a meeting that is a work of art and “made up of every creature’s best” from one thrown together with a pitch-fork. In most towns they had the opera house and banked up the stage with flowers; in one there was a veritable hedge of golden rod; in nearly all the cross and flag were foremost, side by side, and our W. C. T. U. motto, “For God and Home and Native Land” was sometimes in gilt letters on emerald velvet, others in delicate tracery of decorative work, or in evergreen on a white ground. Always they gave our anthem of the national W. C. T. U., composed by Drs. J. E. Rankin and Bischoff, of Washington, and beginning:
“‘For God and Home and Native Land,’
Our motto here we write it;
There is no foe we’ll not withstand,