The hindrance occasioned by intemperance in connection with our work, in church and school, differs only in intensity from similar evil found elsewhere. The social and spiritual atmosphere is depressing to our work, because of drinking habits. Total abstainers number less than ten per cent. of our population, all colors. A well-informed colored man assures me that not one in a hundred among men between 18 and 45 years of age are, in his judgment, total abstainers. Of arrests by our city police during the year 1882, 1,460 were for offenses usually arising more or less directly from drink, against 538 for all other crimes and 536 for drunkenness only. Drinking on our field is not yet driven to the dramshops, but is common in homes. A father is known to drink every day in the presence of his children. His name is Legion. The shops are closed in many country places hereaway where there is little total abstinence. The demijohn is all-present. The way-trains out of our city are whiskey trains. Of fourteen men in a car with your missionary recently, twelve drank spirits from one to four times in an hour.
At present the great majority of influential people are not only not total abstainers, but by example and often by precept teach our colored people, who naturally pattern after the ruling class, that drinking is the correct thing. This is a sample hindrance. A promising convert was found to be giving intoxicating drink to wife and children. When remonstrance was made he asked: “How can it be wrong when my employer, a good church member, makes me pass it to his guests every day?” It is needless to say that he is still outside the church.
Here the general church opinion does not demand total abstinence; in fact, rebels against such a doctrine. Until very recently the ministers of our colored churches in no case known to me would be able to enforce anything like total abstinence however earnestly they might desire so to do. This, then, is the atmosphere in which your agents and a very small but earnest band of fellow-helpers are attempting to build churches and schools demanding total abstinence. An ignorant, but careful mother, said only a few days since: “I don’t know but I must leave my church and come over to you, there is no other temperance church here.” This after one of our usual monthly total abstinence meetings, and she added as reason, “I never knew drunkards could not go to heaven before.” Standing, then, as our church has, as the only religious society refusing continued membership to drinking men and women, and that in the presence of the spirit and customs named, it is not strange that we have been opposed by the uninstructed as interfering with their liberties, and righteous over much. One at least of our small churches finds the “social unions” and similar societies, which are very numerous, almost breaking up their Sabbath service once each month. The charm in these society meetings is the wine provided.
THE TEMPERANCE OUTLOOK AT MEMPHIS.
BY PROF. A. J. STEELE.
“It was in evidence to-day that Marianna’s place was going full blast all day Sunday last, and that it was crowded with men and boys, some of them not more than twelve years old, shooting dice and playing cards. The specific charges against him were keeping house open, selling liquor on that day, and allowing minors to gamble.”
The above item, taken from a late daily paper of this city, may serve to introduce my observations in the matter of temperance—or rather of intemperance—for the ten years of my life at Memphis. The place above referred to is prominently located, rather to one side of the business portion of the city, and almost literally within the very shadows of two of the largest colored churches of the city. If there exists now in Memphis any distinctively temperance organization other than the W. C. T. U. and the Band of Hope of Le Moyne Institute, I can find nothing of it. If the churches speak with other than very uncertain tones on the subject, when they speak at all, I am not aware of it. I know of but one church, the Second Congregational, that makes abstinence a condition of membership. I know of many whose members may and do drink steadily, sometimes to drunkenness, unmolested. If there is any practical or emphatic or systematic teaching in Sunday-schools in general on the subject, I have not known of it. Strangely enough, our strongest, most effective temperance sentiment and teaching comes through the courts, and through business men and interests, where in the majority of cases no moral responsibility or solicitude is felt or expressed in the matter in question.
The legal argument and phase of the subject is the one that most readily finds a hearing and a following here; this was recently shown by the marked interest manifested in several able addresses given on the subject by Mrs. Foster, the lawyer-temperance advocate of Iowa. In the South, at all events, there is no doubt as to the right or power of legislative bodies and courts to deal with the matter. By a curious mistake some years since the General Assembly of Tennessee passed a law known as the “Four Mile Law,” which prohibits the sale of liquor within four miles of any chartered institution of learning. It was supposed that the law would be of only local force, but it so happened that the State Constitution declared that any general act of the Legislature must be of general application throughout the State. Hence in time we came to realize that we had a very effective prohibitory law, or what amounted to that. To the everlasting honor of our courts it must be said that this and such other temperance legislation as we have is fearlessly enforced and under very severe penalties in such cases as are presented for trial.
This is, to say the least, a very anomalous condition of affairs. I account for it in two ways, chiefly from the fact that in general the liquor interests of the South are poorly organized and consolidated for any purposes of opposition or defense; and secondly, in communities where the formative process is largely going on—(and be assured the new South will not be the old)—especially in all questions of public import, the heroic is oftener resorted to than is just common or fashionable in a more settled state of society. There is less allowing of quibbles and more coming straight to the end in view. So stringently have the courts applied these laws that there are several counties in East Tennessee where no liquor is now sold.