On and Off the Wagon. Donald Barr Chidsey

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СКАЧАТЬ had struck a mighty blow in the cause of temperance. It had been rather silly, but still a man could not help but admire those ladies with their poke bonnets, their bustles, their determination. The nation laughed but was impressed. Furthermore, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was organized only a short while later, also in Ohio, as what Frances Willard called a “sober second thought” of the “women’s crusade,” and nobody laughed at it.

      The WCTU, as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union has always been called, was and is a formidable institution. It began as a series of conferences at Lake Chautauqua, New York, in 1874, though its formal birth was in November of that year at the Second Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer of Philadelphia, a Methodist, was elected president, and vice-presidents were chosen from each of the seventeen states represented.

      There was no mealymouthed reference to “gradualism” in the stand taken by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. These women agreed with the Prohibition party that “traffic in intoxicating beverages is a dishonor to Christian civilization,” and they proposed to erase it, not merely to limit and control it. “We hold prohibition to be essential to the full triumph of this reform,” they said flatly.

      Women had one more triumph in the 1870’s—the election of 1876, when Rutherford Birchard Hayes became president by exactly one electoral vote. The drys, especially the women, were delighted, for not only was Hayes an abstainer, but his wife Lucy was emphatically a prohibitionist.

      “Lemonade Lucy” lived up to her nickname. The first thing she did when the Hayeses moved into the White House was to order the sideboard taken down to the cellar. The famous mansion, for the first time in its existence, was drinkless. It was a bit hard on members of the State Department, not to mention foreign ambassadors, who from time to time had to dine there. “Oh, it was very gay,” one of them reported after a state meal. “The water flowed like champagne.” Lucy paid no attention to such remarks. She was also the first First Lady who happened to be college-educated.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      A Methodist Saint

      Frances Willard—“Do everything!”—Hall of Fame

      A petition weighing fifty-five pounds and containing 110,000 names pasted on a roll of white muslin bound with red and white ribbon was ceremoniously presented to the Illinois state legislature on March 6, 1879. It was the largest petition ever to be presented to this body, and possibly the largest ever to be presented anywhere in the United States. It read:

      Whereas, In these years of temperance work the argument of defeat in our contest with the saloons has taught us that our efforts are merely palliative of a disease in the body politic, which can never be cured until law and moral suasion go hand in hand in our beloved state; and

      Whereas, The instincts of self-protection and of appreciation for the safety of her children, her tempted loved ones, and her home, render woman the natural enemy of the saloon:

      Therefore, Your petitioners, men and women of the State of Illinois, having at heart the protection of our homes from their worst enemy, the legalized traffic in strong drink, do hereby most earnestly pray your honorable body that, by suitable legislation, it may be provided that in the State of Illinois, the question of licensing at any time, in any locality, the sale of any and all intoxicating drinks, shall be submitted to and determined by ballot in which women of lawful age shall be privileged to take part, in the same manner as men, when voting on the question of license.

      The petition was incorporated into a bill called the Hinds bill, which failed to pass. This did not matter. What mattered was that the sponsor of the petition, and the manager and arranger of the ceremony that attended its presentation, had entered politics, and that was a momentous event. She was a slim woman with auburn hair, and her name was Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard.

      Teaching school was about the only career open to a woman in America at that time, and Frances Willard could be spotted without hesitation as a schoolteacher. For a while she had been president of the Evanston (Illinois) College for Ladies. At the time of the petition, she was president of the Illinois Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and corresponding secretary of the national union.

      There was nothing scolding about Frances Willard’s manner. She did not waggle a reproving finger or raise her voice. Like Gail Hamilton and Margaret Fuller, but unlike Susan B. Anthony and the redoubtable Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she never treated man as the inevitable enemy. She was always every inch the lady.

      She was as smart as a whip, and exceedingly ambitious.

      When the WCTU was organized in 1873, the name of Frances Willard was mentioned for president, but she withdrew it, knowing that she was not yet ready for such a job, and Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer of Philadelphia was elected instead. As corresponding secretary, however, Miss Willard visited state and local organizations all over the East and the Middle West. (The WCTU at that time was virtually nonexistent in the South and the West.) She encouraged members to work simultaneously for temperance and woman suffrage and, indeed, for many other causes.

      Mrs. Wittenmyer was opposed to the WCTU’s extension and diversification of interests, and soon the union was split into a liberal midwestern wing and a conservative eastern wing. An amazingly large number of women, especially in the East, were opposed to suffrage because they regarded it as unfeminine, but the liberals in the WCTU gained strength every year.

      It was only a matter of time before Frances Willard would take over as president, and she did so in November, 1879, at the national convention in Indianapolis.

      For the following twenty years she was in complete control of the WCTU, which greatly increased its membership and established local chapters in every state and territory. Eventually, the WCTU could boast that it was the biggest all-woman organization in the world.

      Miss Willard did not limit expansion to the United States. She sent foreign missionaries to Australia, Japan, and China, and later to most of the civilized countries of the world. These missions were consolidated into a World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, of which Frances Willard was president. (She was also president of the National Council of Women, president of the Alpha Phi sorority, and a member of more national committees than she could count.) By the time of the fourth biennial convention of this world body, there were delegates from Australia, Belgium, Burma, Brazil, the Bahamas, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, India, Japan, Madagascar, New Zealand, North Africa, and every state and territory of the United States.

      Frances Willard puzzled and fascinated reporters, who were wont to say that her words on paper had nothing of the charm they had when she spoke them. She stood five feet three inches and she weighed scarcely one hundred pounds, yet without ever losing her head or resorting to cheap tricks she could command the attention of thousands, holding huge conventions under control and, when she felt like doing so, playing on their emotions as glibly as a master pianist. She had a way with slogans, mottoes, adages. For instance, she invented and often used the telling expression “home protection.” The many WCTU-sponsored petitions modeled on that first huge one presented to the Illinois legislature were called home protection petitions. It covered a lot, that name, and she hammered at it. Who could vote openly against a home protection measure? “Do everything!” was another slogan she gave to the WCTU.

      Miss Willard always stood well to the left of center. She was always looking ahead. Temperance was to her no more than an excuse to get into action. Soon she was forming new departments for specialized work, some of it only remotely connected with the antialcohol cause.

      One of the best-known departments was the White Cross, members of which petitioned for, and eventually gained, a raising of the state СКАЧАТЬ