Lyman Beecher claims the Massachusetts temperance society formed in 1813 to be the first one, the pledge of its members being to discontinue the use of liquor at entertainments, funerals, and auction sales, and to abstain from furnishing laborers with grog during haying time, as was then the custom. John B. Gough, however, mentions the constitution of a temperance society formed in New York in 1809, one of whose by-laws was, "Any member of this association who shall be convicted of intoxication shall be fined a quarter of a dollar, except such act of intoxication shall take place on the Fourth of July, or any other regularly appointed military muster."
In 1817 a committee of New York citizens appointed to investigate the causes of pauperism reported that seven-eighths of the paupers were reduced to abject poverty by the sale of liquor. As far back as 1809 the Humane Society found eighteen hundred licensed dramshops scattered over the city, retailing liquor in small quantities, and offering every inducement to the poor to drink.
New Hampshire required a selectman of each town to post the names of tipplers in every tavern and fined anyone ten dollars who sold them liquor. About this same time the legislature of Pennsylvania passed a law authorizing the governor to appoint a commission of nine to investigate the causes of pauperism in Philadelphia, and to report to the next legislature. The farmers of Upper Providence township, Pennsylvania, met in the school house just before harvest time and agreed not to give liquor to their harvest hands, nor to use it in the hay field or during harvest, nor to allow any one in their employ to use it. A general movement for temperance swept over the Atlantic states. The Portland Society, auxiliary to the Massachusetts Society for Suppressing Intemperance, reported that out of eighty-five persons in the workhouse, seventy-one became paupers through drink. A grand jury at Albany drew a picture of their city quite as dismal, and presented the immense number of dramshops and corner groceries where liquor was retailed by the cent's worth as an evil and a nuisance to society.
One of the most interesting documents in early temperance agitation is the letter of the mayor of Philadelphia in 1821, showing the condition of the liquor traffic at that time. He pointed out the dangers of the tippling houses and corner groceries, where liquor was sold by the cent's worth to children five years old, and paid for often with stolen goods.
The liquor traffic left an indelible impress upon the geography of the country. The oldest American reference to the word RUM is in the Massachusetts statute of 1657 prohibiting the sale of strong liquors "whether known by the name of rum, strong water, brandywine, etc." The Dutch in New York called rum brandywine, and it conferred its name upon the river which in turn gave its name to one of the most famous battles of the Revolution. Among places may be found such names as Rumford, Wineland, Winesburg, and others.
When in 1828 Mr. Garrison assumed the editorial control of the Journal of the Times at Bennington, Vermont, he distinctly avowed that he had three objects in view, "The suppression of Intemperance and its associate vices, the gradual emancipation of every slave in the Republic, the perpetuity of the national peace." He contributed to the third object; he accomplished the second; the first problem he left unsolved as a bequest to this generation.
[Transcribers' Notes]
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.