LEGISLATION AND PETITION.
"The law of the wise is a fountain of life."—Prov. xiii., 14.
s "all roads lead to Rome," so the legality of temperance measures is reached through legislation; and many times has the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, with memorial, petition, and protest, marched over the roads leading to the legislative halls of municipality, state, and nation, asking for the enacting of new laws or the better enforcement of old ones.
This policy was inaugurated at the first convention, in the memorial prepared for presentation to President Grant and Governor Dix, and has been continued with varying success through the subsequent years. At the second annual convention a memorial was prepared for congress and the state legislature, from the last of which a single article is quoted, viz.: "That no license to sell intoxicating drinks in any place be issued except when a majority of women residents, as well as men, above the age of twenty-one years, desire such license granted." This memorial enrolled 6,328 names, and was presented to the legislature by Mrs. Allen Butler and Mrs. Mary T. Burt. Had the request been granted at that time, and its enforcement continued, the license question would now be solved.
April 12, 1882, the first petition to the state legislature for a prohibitory constitutional amendment was presented by Mrs. Mary T. Burt and Mrs. E.M.J. Decker. The petition contained 10,431 names. Mrs Burt, in reporting the work at the next convention, said "A page carried the bulky document to the desk, and during its passage thereto a smile crept over faces of members and dignified speaker alike, so large was its circumference."
As early as 1877 a memorial had been prepared relative to temperance teaching in the public schools, but not until 1884 was the law secured. After the annual convention of 1883 this work was prosecuted with vigor. Public meetings were held and petitions circulated in its behalf. These petitions recorded 57,419 names. February 5, 1884, the bill passed the senate, twenty-two voting for and two against it; March 3 it passed the assembly, the vote being ninety-eight to two; March 10, 1884, Grover Cleveland, then governor of the State of New York, signed the same, and it thus became a law of the state. The text of the law is as follows:
AN ACT relating to the Study of Physiology and Hygiene in the Public Schools.
SECTION I. Provision shall be made by the proper local school authorities for instructing all pupils in all schools supported by public money, or under state control, in physiology and hygiene, with special reference to the effects of alcoholic drinks, stimulants, and narcotics upon the human system.