Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/552

Rh mind, and so long as women consent to make licentious, drunken men the fathers of their children, no power in earth or heaven can save the race from these twin vices. The following letter from Miriam M. Cole makes some good points on this question:

If the "woman's war against whisky" had been inaugurated by the woman suffrage party, its aspect, in the eyes of newspapers, would be different from what it now is. If Lucy Stone had set the movement on foot, it would have been so characteristic of her! What more could one expect from such a disturber of public peace? She, who has no instinctive scruples against miscellaneous crowds at the polls, might be expected to visit saloons and piously serenade their owners, until patience ceases to be a virtue. But for women who are so pressed with domestic cares that they have no time to vote; for women who shun notoriety so much that they are unwilling to ask permission to vote; for women who believe that men are quite capable of managing State and municipal affairs without their interference; for them to have set on foot the present crusade, how queer! Their singing, though charged with a moral purpose, and their prayers, though directed to a specific end, do not make their warfare a whit more feminine, nor their situation more attractive. A woman knocking out the head of a whisky barrel with an ax, to the tune of Old Hundred, is not the ideal woman sitting on a sofa, dining on strawberries and cream, and sweetly warbling, "The Rose that All are Praising." She is as far from it as Susan B. Anthony was when pushing her ballot into the box. And all the difference between the musical saint spilling the precious liquid and the unmusical saint offering her vote is, that the latter tried to kill several birds with one stone, and the former aims at only one.

Intemperance, great a curse as it is, is not the only evil whose effects bear most heavily on women. Wrong is hydra-headed, and to work so hard to cut off one head, when there is a way by which all may be dissevered, is not a far-sighted movement; and when you add to this the fact that the head is not really cut off, but only dazed by unexpected melodies and supplications, there is little satisfaction in the effort. We learn that, outside of town corporations that have been lately "rectified," the liquor traffic still goes on, and the war is to be carried into the suburbs. What then? Where next? Which party can play this game the longer? Tears, prayers and songs will soon lose their novelty—this spasmodic effort will be likely soon to spend itself; is there any permanent good being wrought? Liquor traffic opposes woman suffrage, and with good reasons. It knows that votes change laws, and it also knows that the votes of women would change the present temperance laws and make them worth the paper on which they are printed. While this uprising of women is a hopeful sign, yet it cannot make one law black or white. It may, for a time, mold public opinion, but depraved passions and appetites need wholesome laws to restrain them. If women would only see this and demand the exercise of their right of suffrage with half the zeal and unanimity with which they storm a man's castle, it would be granted. This is the only ax to lay at the root of the tree.

Springfield, Ohio, has just had a case in a Justice Court which attracted much attention and awakened much interest. A woman whose husband had reduced his family to utter want by drunkenness, entered a suit against the rumseller. An appeal from the drunkard's wife to the ladies of Springfield had been circulated in the daily papers, which so aroused them that a large delegation of the most respectable and pious women of the city came into the court. But the case was adjourned for a week. During this time the excitement had become so great that when the trial came on the court-room was full of spectators, and the number of ladies within the rail was increased three-fold. Mrs. E. D. Stewart made the plea to the jury. A verdict was rendered against the rumseller. An appeal will be taken; but the citizens of Springfield will never forget the influence which the presence of women, in sympathy with another wronged woman, had upon the court. And what added power those women