SUFFERING
CHAPTER II.
AWAKENING
CHAPTER III.
ORGANIZATION AND WORK
CHAPTER IV.
OUR CANADIAN W. C. T. U.
CHAPTER V.
WHY WOMEN SHOULD WORK
CHAPTER VI.
HOW WOMEN MAY WORK
CHAPTER VII.
HOW TO FORM A W. C. T. U.
CHAPTER VIII.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
CHAPTER IX.
YOUNG WOMEN'S WORK
CHAPTER X.
A DREAM
CHAPTER XI.
CONCLUSION
CONSTITUTION
BY-LAWS
ORDER OF BUSINESS
THE TEMPERANCE HAND-BOOK
FOR THE USE OF
THE W. C. T. UNIONS
OF CANADA.
CHAPTER I.
SUFFERING.
It has been said "Woman has a capacity for suffering," and during
all the years of the past, in all countries and among all nations,
woman has been proving this true. Since the dark day when "there
stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother," and there came to that
mother's heart the agony of bereavement, the human disappointment and
pangs, whose torture only the Father God could understand,--from that
day till the present, disappointment, trial and sorrow have entered
largely into the life and experience of women. But of all clouds that
have darkened their lives and among all sharp swords that have
pierced their hearts, the cloud of the liquor traffic has been the
darkest, and its blade the keenest. Myriads of women have looked with
anguish on sacrifices offered and loved ones slain, not to save
humanity or to draw men nearer to God, but destroyed at the hands of
a tyrant as relentless as death, and as pitiless.
In heathen countries, children have been left to float out of
existence, an offering to the gods, while the mother has turned sadly
and sorrowfully away; in Christian countries, children have drifted
with the tide of social customs, or inherited appetites for strong
drink, out of the boundless sea of evil and wretchedness, while women
have wept and wondered, have pondered and prayed.
Mothers have seen their sons, strong and brave in their young
manhood, venture on this stream of rapid currents, have watched them
with sad eyes, and called to them in pleading and terrified tones, as
they were carried on and on by the rushing waters. At last, it was
too late even for mother's love to save, and they were drawn into
that terrible vortex, from which there is so seldom escape,
despairing hands have reached out for help, the cry of the soul has
been an appeal for mercy, and another loved one has gone down a
victim to the nation's greed and a sacrifice to the nation's sin.
Out from a sheltered, sunshiny home has gone the tender, trusting
daughter, in her glad girlhood, her heart all aglow with true
hallowed love for him, by whose side she has chosen to spend the
coming years. The future has looked so bright, as together they have
thought, and planned, and built their airy castles; but the clouds
have come and passed, and come again and more frequently, till, at
length, the young wife has sat continually in their shadow, the
brightness and the sunshine all gone out of her life, as her husband
has yielded to the influence of strong drink. She has realized that
she was a drunkard's wife, her place by a drunkard's side, and, with
white lips and breaking heart, she has moaned out her prayer to God
for deliverance. And who will say that the fond mother, sitting in
the old bright home, has not felt every pang, every blow that reached
the daughter's heart as she saw all that the dear one in loyalty to
her husband would fain have concealed. This experience comes home to
most of us, and we easily recall not one case but many in which wives
and daughters have suffered at the hands of this cruel destroyer.
Homes have been invaded, not with noise of drums and clash of arms,
but silently as by the stealthy step of death. Their purity and peace
have been destroyed, their idols laid in the dust, and the place that
was designed to be a sanctuary for humanity, a rest from the
weariness of life and a refuge from its storms, has become, instead,
a dreary abode of waiting and watching, of enduring and weeping,
often a very Gethsemane to patient loving souls. In time the domestic
life of families is destroyed by this enemy, so strong, cruel and
determined; in many cases, the elegant abode gives place to a poorer
one; the comfortable dwelling is exchanged for all that is
comfortless and forbidding, and there is no longer a home. Cardinal
Manning, in his address at the temperance congress recently held in
England, says: "As the foundation they laid deep in the earth was the
solid basis of social and political peace, so the domestic life of
millions of our people is the foundation of the whole order of our
commonwealth. I charge upon this great traffic nine-tenths of the
misery and the destroyed and wrecked homes of our joyless people."
What is true in England is also true in our young country. The "Boys'
Homes" and "Girls' Homes" in our large cities furnish evidence of our
destroyed homes. It is safe to say that nine-tenths of the inmates of
these institutions are there provided with a home at the expense of
the public, because strong drink has robbed them of the love and care
of father and mother, or both, and taken from their innocent
childhood all the delights and happiness of home life. As women, age
after age, beheld their loved ones thus taken from them, and saw
their homes in the hands of this destroyer, it was not strange that
at last there arose from their hearts a cry almost of despair. It was
a cry that entered into the ear of God and brought a dim sense of
coming help, a consciousness that God knew and cared and had
something better in reserve. The plough of pain had torn up the
fallow soil of woman's heart; the harrow of suffering had mellowed,
and tears of agony, wept for ages, had moistened it; now the seed of
thoughtful and determined purpose was ready to be sown, out of which
was to spring the plentiful harvest of action.
Behind were the long dreary wastes of agony, marked with the myriad
grave mounds of lost loved ones, over which woman's face had bowed
low, while the heart within was breaking; before stretched the wide
unknown, full of possibilities. Should it unfold the same sad story
of patient, passive' suffering, or grow bright with the burnished
armor and glad with the hopeful songs of women gathering to the
battle, filed against the fell destroyer of their hopes? As the
Spirit of God brooded over the primeval void and brought therefrom
order, light, beauty and life, so the spirit of suffering brooded
above the torn and saddened heart of womanhood, till at last the
angel of awakening appeared, and the heart that had dumbly, patiently
endured, stirred to the impulse of defence, and opened to the thought
of freedom. The hour had struck, the call had come. The "arrow had
been hidden in God's quiver," waiting His time. When His ringers
guide to the mark, what can the arrow do but fulfil its mission?