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 ; which originated in the United States. Since the beginning of the colonization of the Western Hemisphere Americans have been heavy consumers of rum, whiskey, and other intoxicating liquors. "Everybody drank, and on all occasions, says a writer who has left us a pen picture of these bibulous days. Drunkenness and all the evils resulting from it increased with the gradual development of the "saloon" and the habit of "treating," two institutions peculiar to America and almost unknown in Europe.

For generations the women were the greatest sufferers from the intemperance of the men, because many husbands came home besotted, their faculties benumbed to an unconsciousness of their own degradation, with wages gone, and employment forfeited. The purer and gentler the wife in such case, the more intense her suffering. So it was but natural, that when the first "Anti-Spirits Association" was formed in 1808 in Greenfield, Saratoga County, New York, several women should join it. The movement made rapid progress, and in 1826 the "American Temperance Society" was founded. In 1829 and 1830 similar associations were started in Ireland and England; and in 1846 the first "World's Temperance Convention" was held at London. In 1873 women became a real force in the field when the women inhabitants of Hillsborough, a small town in Ohio, started what became known as "The Women's Crusade."

Frances E. Willard, one of its principal leaders, described the proceedings in the following graphic manner: "Usually the women came in a long procession from their rendezvous at some church, where they had held a morning prayer meeting. Marching two and two in a column, they entered the saloon with kind faces, and the sweet songs of church and home upon their lips, while some Madonna-like leader with the Gospel in her looks, took her stand beside the bar and gently asked if she might read God's word and offer prayer. After that the ladies seated themselves, took their knitting or embroidery, and watched the men who patronized the saloons. While some of them cursed the women openly, and some quietly slunk out of sight, others began to sign the pledge these women brought with them. In the meantime one of the ladies pleaded with the proprietor to give up his business. Many of these liquor dealers surrendered and then followed stirring scenes, and amid songs and the ringing of the church bells the contents of barrels and bottles were gurgling into the gutter, while the whole town assembled to rejoice in this new fashion of exorcising the evil spirits.

"Not everywhere the ladies met with success. In Cincinnati such a procession of women, including the wives of leading pastors, were arrested and locked up in jail; at other