Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink

by T. S. Arthur

From this beginning the new temperance movement increased and spread with a marvelous rapidity. The incidents attendant on the progress of the "Crusade" were often of a novel and exciting character. Such an interference with their business was not to be tolerated by the liquor men; and they soon began to organize for defense and retaliation. They not only had the law on their side, but in many cases, the administrators of the law. Yet it often happened, in consequence of their reckless violations of statutes made to limit and regulate the traffic, that dealers found themselves without standing in the courts, or entangled in the meshes of the very laws they had invoked for protection.

In the smaller towns the movement was, for a time, almost irresistible; and in many of them the drink traffic ceased altogether. But when it struck the larger cities, it met with impediments, against which it beat violently for awhile, but without the force to bear them down. Our space will not permit us to more than glance at some of the incidents attendant on this singular crusade. The excitement that followed its inauguration in the large city of Cleveland was intense. It is thus described by Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton in her history of the Woman's Crusade, to which we have already referred:

HOW THE CRUSADERS WERE TREATED.

"The question was constantly asked: 'Will the women of a conservative city of one hundred and fifty thousand go upon the street as a praying-band?' The liquor-dealers said: 'Send committees of two or three and we will talk with them; but coming in a body to pray with us brands our business as disreputable.' The time came when the Master seemed to call for a mightier power to bear upon the liquor traffic, and a company of heroic women, many of them the wives of prominent clergymen, led by Mrs. W.A. Ingham, said: 'Here am I; the Lord's will be done.'

"On the third day of the street work, the whisky and beer interest seemed to have awakened to a full consciousness of the situation. Drinkers, dealers and roughs gathered in large numbers on the street to wait for the praying women. A mob, headed by an organization of brewers, rushed upon them, kicking them, striking them with their fists and hitting them with brickbats. The women were locked in a store away from the infuriated mob, who, on the arrival of a stronger body of police, were dispersed, cursing and yelling as they went. The next day, taking their lives in their hands, a larger company of women went out, and somewhat similar scenes were enacted. Meantime, public meetings, called in the churches, were so crowded that standing room could not be found. The clergy, as one man, came to the front. Business men left their stores and shops, ministers their studies, and a thousand manly men went out to defend the praying women. The military companies were ordered to be in readiness, resting on their arms; the police force was increased, and the liquor interest soon made to feel that the city was not under its control. The mob never again tried its power. For three months, with scarcely a day's exception, the praying-bands, sometimes with twenty in each, working in various parts of the city; sometimes with five hundred, quietly and silently, two by two, forming a procession over a quarter of a mile in length, followed by scores in carriages, who could not bear the long walks, went from saloon to saloon, holding services where the proprietors were willing, and in warehouses which were thrown open to them, or in vacant lots near by, when they were unwilling. Men took off their hats, and often wept as the long procession went by. Little children gathered close to the singers, and catching the words, sang them months afterwards in their dingy hovels. Haggard women bent their heads as they murmured with unutterable sadness, 'You've come too late to save my boy or my husband.' Many saloon-keepers gave up their business and never resumed it. Many who had lost all hope because of the appetite which bound them, heard from woman's lips the glad tidings of freedom in Christ, and accepted the liberty of the Gospel."

In many other places the crusaders met with violence from exasperated liquor-dealers and their brutish associates. A pail of cold water was thrown into the face of a woman in Clyde, Ohio, as she knelt praying in front of a saloon. Dirty water was thrown by pailfuls over the women at Norwalk. At Columbus, a saloon-keeper assaulted one of the praying-band, injuring her seriously. In Cincinnati, forty-three women were arrested by the authorities for praying in the street and lodged in jail. In Bellefontaine, a large liquor-dealer declared that if the praying-band visited him he would use powder and lead; but the women, undeterred by his threat, sang and prayed in front of his saloon every day for a week, in spite of the insults and noisy interferences of himself and customers. At the end of that time the man made his appearance at a mass-meeting and signed the pledge; and on the following Sunday attended church for the first time in five years.

DECLINE OF THE CRUSADING SPIRIT.

From Ohio the excitement soon spread to other Western States, and then passed east and south, until it was felt in nearly every State in the Union; but it did not gain force by extension. To the sober, second-thought of those who had, in singleness of heart, self-consecration and trust in God, thrown themselves into this work because they believed that they were drawn of the Spirit, came the perception of other, better and more orderly ways of accomplishing the good they sought. If God were, indeed, with them—if it was His Divine work of saving human souls upon which they had entered, He would lead them into the right ways, if they were but willing to walk therein. Of this there came to them a deep assurance; and in the great calm that fell after the rush and excitement and wild confusion of that first movement against the enemy, they heard the voice of God calling to them still. And, as they hearkened, waiting to be led, and willing to obey, light came, and they saw more clearly. Not by swift, impetuous impulse, but through organization and slow progression was the victory to be won.

In the language of Frances E. Willard, in her history of "The Woman's National Christian Temperance Union," to be found in the Centennial temperance volume: "The women who went forth by an impulse sudden, irresistible, divine, to pray in the saloons, became convinced, as weeks and months passed by, that theirs was to be no easily-won victory. The enemy was rich beyond their power to comprehend. He had upon his side the majesty of the law, the trickery of politics and the leagued strength of that almost invincible pair—appetite, avarice. He was persistent, too, as fate; determined to fight it out on that line to the last dollar of his enormous treasure-house and the last ounce of his power. But these women of the Crusade believed in God, and in themselves as among His appointed instruments to destroy the rum-power in America. They loved Christ's cause; they loved the native land that had been so mindful of them; they loved their sweet and sacred homes; and so it came about that, though, they had gone forth only as skirmishers, they soon fell into line of battle; though they had ignorantly hoped to take the enemy by a sudden assault, they buckled on the armor for the long campaign. The woman's praying-bands, earnest, impetuous, inspired, became the woman's temperance unions, firm, patient, persevering. The praying-bands were without leadership, save that which inevitably results from 'the survival of the fittest;' the woman's unions are regularly officered in the usual way. They first wrought their grand pioneer work in sublime indifference to prescribed forms of procedure—'so say we all of us' being the spirit of 'motions' often made, seconded and carried by the chair, while the assembled women nodded their earnest acquiescence; the second are possessed of good, strong constitutions (with by-laws annexed), and follow the order of business with a dutiful regard to parliamentary usage. In the first, women who had never lifted up their voices in their own church prayer-meetings stood before thousands and 'spoke as they were moved;' in the second, these same women with added experience, and a host of others who have since enlisted, impress the public thought and conscience by utterances carefully considered. The praying-bands, hoping for immediate victory, pressed their members into incessant service; the woman's unions, aware that the battle is to be a long one, ask only for such help as can be given consistently with other duties."

As the result of this intelligent effort at effective organization by the women who inaugurated and were prominent in the "Crusade," we have "The Woman's National Christian Temperance Union," with its auxiliary and local unions in nearly every State; one of the most efficient agencies in the practical work of temperance reform which the country has yet seen.