element in the State of Texas to-day is among the colored people.
I am informed that where they are in the majority, and they have
an opportunity to express themselves, they vote for prohibition.
There are exceptions. They are very apt to be North or South. If we
can believe Milton, there was one in heaven once. The _excepting_
member, however, found it to his advantage to leave, if I remember
correctly. They say he came to earth. We must not wonder,
therefore, if he has some slight following among the colored people
on the whiskey question; but if they had the say, they would
largely be for prohibition.
Take it here at Tillotson, we have a large and flourishing society,
the members of which are pledged to total abstinence from the use
of intoxicating drinks, and of tobacco. This pledge was adopted
more than a year ago, after a prolonged discussion, but nearly
all the students are now enthusiastic members of the society. The
meetings are held on the third Sabbath evening of each month. They
are full of interest and well attended. But this, like all good
things, is the result of effort. A committee, appointed for this
purpose, has at each meeting a well-filled programme. The more
advanced students have essays upon some phase of the temperance
work; others read articles bearing on the special subject before
the meeting. Thus, at one time, the object is to make manifest the
ill effect of rum and tobacco upon the human system; at another
the cost; the whole interspersed with appropriate music, reading
the Scripture and prayer. In this way there is variety, increase
of light, and the building up of a strong, because intelligent,
opposition to intemperance. And all this is under the direction
of the students. Of course the faculty is present, to do or say
any thing that may be helpful, but the real work is done by the
students, and these meetings are not only full of interest but
reflect great credit on those that have them in charge.
We are thus training up a noble band of young men and women,
whose influence is sure to be felt far and wide, and to become a
great and, I trust, controlling power in Texas, especially among
the colored people. This is our aim, and that our hope shall be
realized, we are confident, since God is in the work.
Thus it can be seen that the great rising tide of temperance, which
is sweeping over the North and Northwest, is making itself felt
here. Not strongly yet, but there is an underswell, a movement
among the more thoughtful, a shrinking back from the wasting,
impoverishing curse of strong drink, and from the filth and fume
of tobacco, which indicates, more clearly than words can, that
the day is close at hand, when the question of temperance, even
of prohibition, will become a living, and (may we not hope?) a
life-saving and a life-imparting issue here in this great, grand,
empire State.
* * * * *
TOUGALOO AND TEMPERANCE.
BY REV. A. HATCH, TOUGALOO UNIVERSITY.
Within the last four or five years, the temperance question has in
one form or another been brought before the people of Mississippi
with some prominence. The revised code is emphatic in the following
points: the sale of vinous or spirituous liquor is forbidden
except under a license, at least two hundred dollars; the sale to
minors is strictly prohibited under severe penalties; the sale of
liquor on Sunday is made unlawful, as also is the keeping open on
that day of the bar or place where liquors are sold. Two years
ago a State temperance convention was called at Jackson. This was
an intelligent body of men representing nearly every county in
the state. It adjourned without accomplishing a great deal, but
the animus of the body was strongly in favor of a constitutional
prohibitory amendment. Being an initiative movement, however, on
the ground of expediency the final action was conservative.
As everywhere, the liquor men are active and shrewd, gaining over
to their side many an ignorant and unwary voter. Their strong
point of influence with the colored people is connected with the
attachment of the latter to the free public school system. No
institution is more fondly cherished by any class of people in
our land than the free school system of the South by the negro
race. The State constitution provides that “all moneys received
for licenses granted for the sale of intoxicating liquor” shall
be applied toward a common school fund. The schools, indeed, are
in large part supported by this means. Liquor men accordingly put
the case thus: Prohibit the manufacture and sale of liquor in this
State and you cut off the support of the common schools.
In one county in the State the sale of intoxicating drinks is
entirely prohibited by the local authorities, and there is at
least one town outside of that county under a like restraint.
At the present time there is very little doing for the cause
throughout the State. It does not as yet enter into the sphere of
politics, unless prospectively in slight degree. Nothing is seen
in the leading papers relative to the subject as a matter of State
interest. Occasionally we hear of a lecturer speaking for the
cause, or rarely of some local movement in the way of organized
effort.
The foregoing is believed to be a fair representation of the public
mind and movement in relation to the subject. In general the
colored people are easily influenced in favor of temperance. They
are ready for the work as grain for the harvest.
There is need of the most earnest work. Of the 876 convicts in the
State penitentiary, according to the last official report, 782 are
colored persons, and it is estimated that four-fifths of these
committed their crimes under the influence of liquor. This fact in
the criminal list is a sure index of what is generally prevalent.
Intemperance is alarmingly widespread among the colored people
in Mississippi. The habit, too, is fixed within the churches of
this people to a shocking extent. Church membership is no sort of
guarantee that an individual is not habitually intemperate, even
to the degree of drunkenness. When we consider all this and the
terrible, degrading influence resting over the children and youth,
the need of specifically _temperance work_ seems almost equal to
that of Christian education.
What has been done in this direction by Tougaloo University through
its teachers, we take great pride and satisfaction in looking over
and summing up. During the past five years this institution has
been represented in temperance work in the State by no less than
150 different individuals converted to the cause while here, and
becoming themselves signers of the pledge to total abstinence.
These have done their temperance work in connection with the
teaching of children in the common schools, and many of them in
various fields. The little army has thus been able to reach a very
great number of children and parents and homes. Their work was
very direct. They taught the principles of temperance, and had
their total abstinence pledge for young and old to sign. Nor was
this all. All of these workers felt the necessity of exercising
from year to year as they returned to their old places, or as
circumstances made it possible, a watchful care over those induced
to sign. One year the total number of signers obtained by our
students was not less than 1,300. But this does not include the
whole of the work done. Many of our students not as yet teachers
have been energetic in their efforts to bring the subject to the
attention of friends and neighbors where they have lived and to
win these over to the cause, often gaining a greater influence and
success than many who worked as teachers.
[Illustration: NEGRO CABINS.]
* * * * *
“HIGHER LAW” AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHT ON OUR SIDE.
BY REV. E. T. HOOKER, CHARLESTON.
South Carolina has the _license_ system, with the _local option_
attachment. One-third of the voters in any municipality may require
the question of prohibition to be submitted to the people, and a
majority prohibits. But the legislature last winter went further
than this, and in a truly paternal manner “exempted” certain towns
from the necessity of a majority for prohibition, and gave it to
a large but defeated minority. As the State power is now in the
hands of the white Democrats, it may be inferred from this action
what their temperance sentiments are, in those towns and in the
Legislature. It was a jewel of consistency also in those who now
“make no bones” of confessing, that a minority “had to” take the
government from the (colored) majority a few years ago. It was the
_summum jus_ made legal in spite of republican principles—and was
opposed on that ground by some—which is perhaps symptomatic of
certain peculiarities of the South Carolina people, that have not
always pleased the rest of the country so well. But we will not
quarrel with them this time.
Also the tendency is to make licenses high and higher. They cost
$225 in Charleston, and it has been proposed to raise the figure
thirty per cent.
A daily reader of the _News and Courier_ is almost constantly
seeing instances, noticed with approval, of the success of the
local option law, with such headings as “Greenville doesn’t want
any in her’s.” “Sumter will go dry.” And to-day’s paper, March 21,
states that “the W. C. T. U. has induced several of the teachers
in Spartanburg, [where are the school board? We are a free country
down here, after all.] to introduce text books on temperance. The
cause is having a boom in S.
Mrs. L. Chapin, of Charleston, is President of the Union; and not
long ago they held a busy and thronged session of days, in the hall
of our aristocratic military company in this city. The delegates
from abroad were not wined, but dined and fêted, shown the harbor
and the forts by our city worthies, all with great cordiality and
éclat. More recently still, Hibernian Hall has been twice filled,
as seldom for any political cause, once to hear Miss F. E. Willard,
and, since her visit, Mrs. Foster. Messrs. Stearns and Mead are
coming next week from a busy campaign south and west of us, to hold
two meetings in two of the largest colored churches, and will have
big crowds.
Nearly every grocery in Charleston is also a liquor store; but few
keep bars; and the saloons proper are not numerous. This shows
that most of the drinking is in a domestic and quiet way, and
not on an empty stomach, _standing up_. Beer is not sold in such
large proportion as in Northern cities, but distilled or fermented
liquors, and beer carts are not absent. There is yet a “smart
chance” of illicit distilling in the up-country, and of unlicensed
selling in the backwoods.
On public days not much intoxication is visible. Christmas, also
observed with heathen fire crackers, is the day of greatest
indulgence in firewater, especially among the blacks. But it is
said that the colored men very seldom become drunkards. Their
drinking is occasional rather than habitual, and when intoxicated
they are not combative, but weak and nerveless, or garrulous; while
the up-country man (white), when in liquor, with or without his
pistol, is bellicose in the extreme.
An incident is in place here, which may be called the last spark
of light in the morally dark closing hours of the late House of
Representatives at Washington. It relates to both the colored race
here and the temperance interest.
Sam Lee, a colored man, of good character it may be inferred,
partly from the fact that the _News and Courier_ has not loaded
him with obloquy, true or false, had been for two years contesting
the seat occupied by one Richardson, who, it was voted in the last
hours of that dubious session, was not the choice of his district,
but Lee was. The long-pending whiskey bill, virtually giving
millions from the United States Treasury to the lobby, who had
pushed it through the Senate, was the next thing on the calendar. A
formality remained to be accomplished giving Lee actual possession
of his seat and pay. Over this the Democrats were filibustering,
when the whiskey lobby offered Lee $15,000 to withdraw his claim
and permit their bill to come on, which they had reason to expect
would pass. But, no! He would stand for his right and _the_ right,
and thus did more good for the temperance cause in his few moments
of legal, but unpaid, membership of the House, than possibly he
might have done in a long session, for that or any other cause. The
fact is worth preserving, to the praise of a mighty Providence,
that used that Sabbath morning to defeat one grand move of Satan,
and by means of a colored man from South Carolina, sticking to a
right which he would not exchange for whiskey money.
* * * * *
NOTES AT THE ALABAMA STATE SUNDAY-SCHOOL CONVENTION, MARCH 23.
BY REV. A. W. CURTIS, MARION.
At Alabama Furnace, there is much interest on temperance in the
Sunday-School, and frequent talks on the subject in church.
Mobile. Temperance organization growing, also the sentiment against
the use of tobacco.
Shelby Iron Works. Temperance society doing well. Whiskey has been
driven out of the beat for nearly a year.
The Cove. There is a temperance society of 46 members. The children
have turned their backs on strong drink, tobacco and snuff.
King’s Chapel has a temperance society of 34 members, and is
struggling against whiskey, but so many love it that the fight goes
hard.
Childersburg. Rev. A. Jones had his church burned after giving a
temperance lecture, but instead of surrendering, his people have
rallied and they are building better than before.
At Lawson, the pastor has preached against liquor drinking, but
can do very little to stay the tide. There is a vast deal of
drunkenness. Men will buy whiskey first, meat and bread afterwards
if there is money enough for both.
At Marion, there is a regular temperance catechising in the
day-school against rum and tobacco, also in the three mission
Sunday-schools, frequent preaching on the subject, and mass
meetings alternating at the different churches for free discussion
for some weeks before Christmas.
Montgomery. Doing thorough work in temperance, especially in the
Sunday-school, using the Careful Builders and other literature of
Dr. Cook’s temperance library. The same is true of Selma where they
are also putting in strong licks for temperance in the Burrell
day-school. Here, too, temperance concerts and recitations are
frequent.
Talladega. Their Union Temperance Society holds monthly meetings
full of interest. All of the Sunday-school and all the college
students are members, many of the students going out into the
neighboring beats to lecture. They keep the work lively among
all their mission schools. Next August comes the test vote for
prohibition.
* * * * *
TEMPERANCE AMONG OUR CHINESE.
REV. W. C. POND.
The Chinese have never patronized to any appreciable extent the
saloons of California. It is shrewdly suspected that this is the
very front of their offending. If the money these laborers earned
went into the tills of our liquor dealers, the conventions these
liquor dealers so largely control would look at the laborers
themselves with different eyes. But a Chinaman asked to drink
replies (so the story goes): “Me no drinkee whiskee. Make one
Chinaman allee same Melican, No. 1 fool.”
[Illustration: HOODLUMS AT STREET CORNER, SAN FRANCISCO]
I think, however, that American civilization is at last making
itself felt among our Chinese, for I believe that I have passed, in
this city, one small saloon where a Chinaman stood behind the bar,
and some of his countrymen in front of it. I never saw a Chinaman
drunk, though I have heard that the sight might be seen. But this,
too, is recent, and my impression of the aversion to intoxicating
drinks, as a national characteristic, was, till lately, so strong,
that for many years I had nothing to say to our Christian Chinese
on the subject, except as it came up incidentally in the course
of Bible study. It is within a year that it came to my knowledge
that a stimulating and slightly intoxicating drink, which they
call in English, wine, is made from rice, and used among them
more or less at banquets, though not, I think, at ordinary meals.
The discovery of this fact, and that even our most advanced and
reliable Christians were not total abstainers, has led us to preach
among them this gospel also. It has been readily accepted. The
duty, under _our_ circumstances, of _total_ abstinence seems to
be understood, and duty understood becomes, I believe, with these
brethren, unquestioned law.
Respecting opium, the voice of the mission has from the first been
clear, positive and unmistakable. I cannot claim that we have
reached many who had become addicted to this vice; indeed, I cannot
now recall one among those whom I have baptized who had used the
drug enough to make it hard to do without it. Generally I have been
told that they have never used it at all. It ought perhaps to be
a shame to us that we have not reached and rescued slaves to this
vice. Certainly, if any door should open by which an effectual work
of this sort could be set forward, it ought to be entered upon with
intensest zeal. But the most that we have seen it possible to do
thus far has been to pledge all who come into our Congregational
Association of Christian Chinese, not to gamble and not to use
opium. These are the items of external conduct upon which special
emphasis is laid. A brother overtaken in either of these faults
would be dealt with at once in a discipline, the chief danger of
which would be that it might be too prompt and too severe: a zeal
to make the protest of the brotherhood against the sin decisive
and unmistakable preventing due patience and long suffering in the
effort to “restore” and “gain” the erring one.
* * * * *
CHILDREN’S PAGE.
* * * * *
SEQUEL TO TED’S TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.
BY MRS. THOS. N. CHASE.
Now, children, I shouldn’t a bit wonder if some of you remember a
story about Ted’s Temperance Society written for the Children’s
Page a year ago. If you have the Missionary for June, 1882, just
read it again, then you will enjoy this story better. Ted, you
remember, was a real live Atlanta boy, ten years old, who got his
school-mates to come to his home to sign a pledge. Ted’s mother
often helped him in making the children who came fully understand
what a solemn thing they were doing. She read the pledge very
slowly to each. Then she had them sign their names on a little
card, and some other child must put down another name underneath
as a witness. This was all there was to the Society, so simple
and easy that any child could do it, no bands, badges, banners or
prizes, yet they were so interested that they came in scores to
enroll their names, and the best of all was, that many who signed
seemed to catch Ted’s missionary zeal, and became centres of little
circles which they drew into Ted’s home, to help swell the noble
army marching against the cruel old despots, tobacco and whiskey.
One little fellow, who had brought many before, came one day with
an overgrown girl of fifteen, and finding several new boys in
the house ready to take the pledge, he felt the dignity of the
situation and tried to help Ted’s mother in her little sermon by
shouting: “Now, boys, this is a good thing if you only mean to keep
it, but it don’t do to put your name down here for a form or a
fashion.”
I recently met dashing little Susie Hall. I knew her as one of the
head centres of those temperance circles. How her black eyes danced
as she told me of her contempt for mince-pies, egg-nog, etc. Few
Southern cooks know how to make mince-pies without brandy. I asked
Susie who gave her the egg-nog she told me of refusing so bravely.
“Oh, ma cooks for white folks and we lives in the yard, and on
Christmas the white lady called me to scrape out the bowl, but I
couldn’t touch it.”
I have just come in from a visit to the Gate City Grammar School,
an eight room city school for colored children, all the teachers
being former students of Atlanta University. I noticed upon the
wall of each room, as soon as I entered a sheet of fools-cap with
names written upon it. For a border it had the beautiful rainbow
pasting which the children in the Storrs Kindergarten make. As
the brilliant setting of those names caught my eye, I supposed
it was some roll of honor, and so it was, but it seemed to me an
enrollment of honor far greater than that given for perfection
in scholarship or school deportment. This is the heading. “We,
the undersigned, do promise not to drink, or ask others to drink,
any wine, cider, whiskey, beer, egg-nog, or anything that can
intoxicate, from this day, Dec. 18, 1882, to Feb. 1, 1883.” From
Dec. 18, to Feb. 1, is only six weeks to be sure, so this is only
a bridge-pledge to bridge over that awful chasm which yawns and
buries so many during those fearful days of the old and new year
when we honor the birthday of the Christ-child, and which ought to
be the purest of all the year. If the children get safely through
these feasting days of egg-nog, brandy-peaches, and syllabubs, they
are pretty safe the rest of the year.
“Weary watching, wave on wave,
But still the tide heaves onward.”
Ted’s Society has a growing mission. I take courage as I think of
Hale’s beautiful story, “Ten Times One is Ten,” and see how easily
these children can carry on a grand temperance work, and
“Look up and not down,
Look out and not in,”
If somebody would only
“Lend a hand.”
* * * * *
RECEIPTS FOR MARCH, 1883.
* * * * *
MAINE, $935.95.
Bluehill. Ladies of Cong. Ch., _for Freight_ $2.00
Brewer. Dea. John Holyoke, to const. NATHAN H.
HARRIMAN L. M. 30.00
Brunswick. Young Ladies’ Miss. Soc, by Miss
Edith J. Boardman, _for Student Aid,
Talladega C._ 10.00
Castine. Mrs. Lucy S. Adams, to const.
ROLASTON WOODBURY L. M. 30.00
Falmouth. A. N. Ward 5.00
Falmouth. First Cong. Ch., Bbl. of C., 5 _for
Freight, for Selma, Ala._ 5.00
Farmington. Hiram Holt 150.00
Garland. Cong. Ch. 5.00
Gorham. Ladies of Maine, by Miss M. E. Smith,
_for Lady Missionaries, Wilmington, N.C.,
and Selma, Ala._ 543.89
Gorham. Bbl. of C., 2 _for Freight_; Mrs.
Truesdale, 5 _for Selma, Ala._ 7.00
Hallowell. Mrs. H. K. Baker 5.00
Hermon. Mrs. M. A. Peabody, from pocket of a
deceased young lady 1.00
Lyman. Cong. Ch. 12.37
Machias. Centre St. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 6.21
New Gloucester. Cong. Ch. 71.00
New Gloucester. Cong. Ch. Sab. Sch., _for
Student Aid, Talladega C._ 10.00
Orono. Cong. Sab. Sch. 1.64
South Berwick. Ladies of Cong. Ch., Bbl. of
C., _for Wilmington, N.C._
South Paris. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 7.00
Yarmouth. Central Ch. 15.84
Washington. Miss A. L. McDowell, _for Selma,
Ala._ 1.00
Weld. Rev. D. D. Tappan 3.00
Windham. Cong. Ch. 14.00
NEW HAMPSHIRE, $1,590.17.
Amherst. L. and L. K. Melendy 500.00
Antrim. “A Friend” 5.00
Bennington. Cong. Ch. 11.00
Brentwood. Cong. Ch. 6.00
Candia Village. Jona. Martin 5.00
Concord. “A Friend” 1.00
Exeter. 2 Bbls. C., _for Tillotson C. & N.
Inst._
Lancaster. Mrs. A. M. Amsden 4.50
Lyme. Cong. Ch. 37.05
Marlborough. Cong. Ch. 14.62
Portsmouth. Rev. W. W. Dow, _for Tillotson C.
& N. Inst._ 1.00
Wilton. Cong. Ch. and Soc., Bbl of C., _for
Macon, Ga._
Wolfborough. Rev. S. Clark 5.00
-------
$590.17
LEGACY.
Concord. Estate of Maria P. Woods, by Dutton
Woods, Ex. 1,000.00
---------
$1,590.17
VERMONT, $328.87.
Berlin. Cong. Ch. 11.46
Brattleborough. E. Crosby & Co., 25 _for
Student Aid_; Ladies of Center Cong Ch. and
Soc., 3 bbls. C. and 6.50 _for Freight, for
Talladega C._ 31.50
Cambridge. Madison Safford, 5; John Kinsley,
5; bal. to const. HARMON MORSE L. M. 10.00
Charlotte. Nettie A. Parker 25.00
East Poultney. A. D. Wilcox 10.00
Fair Haven. Cong. Ch. 22.33
Middlebury. Cong. Ch. Sab. Sch., 19.50; “A. G.
S.”, 5 24.50
Morrisville. Cong. Ch. and Soc. 13.25
North Bennington. Cong. Ch. 10.49
Northfield. Cong. Ch. 12.75
North Ferrisburg. Cyrus W. Wicker, to const.
Miss ALICE H. WICKER, L. M. 30.00
Quechee. Cong. Ch. 24.22
Saint Johnsbury. South Ch. Sab. Sch. _for Sab.
Sch. Work_ 60.00
Saint Johnsbury. E. & T. Fairbanks & Co.,
Scales, value $55, _for Atlanta U._
Saxton’s River. Rev. Wm. Sewall, Box C.
Wallingford. Cong. Sab. Sch. _for Lady
Missionary, Savannah, Ga._ 15.00
West Charleston. Cong. Ch. 5.00
Weston. Mrs. S. A. Sprague and Miss L. P.
Bartlett, In memory of their father, Jotham
Bartlett 8.00
West Rutland. Cong. Ch. 15.37
MASSACHUSETTS, $5,325.93.