Some local unions do as much work as a whole State society: for instance, the Chicago Union, which last year sheltered 60,000 friendless men in its great lodging house; which maintains a temperance restaurant, an anchorage for degraded men and women, where 5,000 were cared for last year, a kindergarten, daily gospel meetings, and many other forms of Christian philanthropy.
In 1883, on the suggestion of the National President of the W. C. T. U., a World’s Union was projected, and Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt, of Boston, started out to organize all civilized countries. She has now (1890) been seven years absent, and is reaching a greater variety of nationalities than any woman who ever lived. She has thus far traveled over fifty thousand miles; held over a thousand meetings; more than eleven thousand pages have been written; she has spoken, through interpreters, to people in twenty-three languages. Other missionaries are constantly being sent to follow Mrs. Leavitt, and the white ribbon is acclimated in every country in the world. Its methods are the universal circulation of a pledge against the legalizing of the sale of brain poisons, including of course, and chiefly, alcoholics and opium. This is to be presented to all governments by a deputation of women to which the petition will be entrusted when the number of signatures reaches two millions, and they will carry it round the world. The methods of the National W. C. T. U. have been universally adopted, of which the principal ones are total abstinence for the individual, and the effort to secure total prohibition for the State. The noon hour of prayer is everywhere observed, asking God’s blessing on the work and workers. The white ribbon—emblem of purity, prohibition, patriotism, and philanthropy—is the badge worn, and the motto, “For God and Home and Every Land.”
The first president of the World’s W. C. T. U. was Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, sister of John Bright, and president of the Woman’s Temperance Association of Great Britain. The second and present president is Frances E. Willard.
Australia is organized, also Japan, China, Ceylon, Madagascar, the civilized portions of Africa, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. In continental Europe the progress is slow, as drinking habits are well nigh universal; but much progress has been made in Switzerland, also in Berlin. In the former country through the efforts of Miss Charlotte Gray, in the latter city through Mrs. Mary Bannister Willard, of the Home School for Girls.
A World’s W. C. T. U. convention is to be held in connection with the World’s Fair in Chicago, in 1893.
Wherever white ribboners are found, will be found friends of woman’s complete enfranchisement and admission to all professions and trades, on the ground that no artificial barrier should be thrown in her way, but that she should be freely permitted and welcomed to enter every place where she has capacity to succeed. Perhaps no motto of the W. C. T. U. is more frequently quoted than the following: “Woman will bless and brighten every place she enters, and she will enter every place.”
XVIII.
THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF THE RED CROSS.
BY
CLARA BARTON.
In no way, perhaps, is more clearly proven the just necessity for some explanation concerning the subject of the Red Cross than by the fact that I am asked to make these explanations as a contribution to woman’s work, when, in fact, every original idea of the humanities sought to be organized, and the methods of relief ordained, were, like the terrible and needless cruelties which led to them, the work of men, and have largely continued to be such.[[219]]