Volume IV Part 144 (1/2)

Its object was further stated as follows: ”To confirm and enforce the rationale of this pledge, we declare our purpose to educate the young; to form a better public sentiment; to reform, so far as possible, by religious, ethical and scientific means, the drinking cla.s.ses; to seek the transforming power of divine grace for ourselves and all for whom we work, that they and we may wilfully transcend no law of pure and wholesome living; and finally we pledge ourselves to labor and to pray that all these principles, founded upon the Gospel of Christ, may be worked out into the Customs of Society and the Laws of the Land.”

The W. C. T. U. is held to be the most perfectly organized body of women in existence. It originated the idea of Scientific Temperance Instruction in the public schools and has secured mandatory laws in every State and a federal law governing the District of Columbia, the Territories and all Indian and military schools supported by the Government; 16,000,000 children in the public schools receive instruction under these laws as to the nature and effect of alcohol and other narcotics on the human system. Through its efforts the quarterly temperance lesson was included in the International Sunday School Lesson Series in 1884, and a World's Universal Temperance Sunday was secured; 250,000 children are taught scientific reasons for temperance in the Loyal Temperance Legions, and all these children are pledged to total abstinence and trained as temperance workers. W. C.

T. U. Schools of Methods are held in all Chautauqua gatherings.

This organization has largely influenced the change in public sentiment in regard to social drinking, equal suffrage, equal purity for both s.e.xes, equal remuneration for work equally well done, equal educational, professional and industrial opportunities for women. It has been a chief factor in State campaigns for statutory prohibition, const.i.tutional amendment, reform laws in general and those for the protection of women and children in particular, and in securing anti-gambling and anti-cigarette laws. It has been instrumental in raising the ”age of protection” for girls in many States and in obtaining curfew laws in 400 towns and cities. It aided in securing the Anti-Canteen Amendment to the Army Bill (1900) which prohibits the sale of intoxicating liquors at all army posts. It helped to inaugurate police matrons who are now required in nearly all the large cities of the United States. It organized Mothers' Meetings in thirty-seven States before any other society took up the work.

Illinois alone has held 2,000 Mothers' Meetings in a single year.

It keeps a superintendent of legislation in Was.h.i.+ngton during the entire session of Congress to look after reform bills. It aided in preventing the repeal of the prohibitory law in Indian Territory, the resubmission of the prohibitory const.i.tution of Maine, and in preserving the prohibitory law of Vermont. It has secured 20,000,000 signatures and attestations, including 7,000,000 on the Polyglot Pet.i.tion to the governments of the world. Thousands of girls have been rescued from lives of shame and tens of thousands of men have signed the total abstinence pledge and been redeemed from inebriety through its efforts.

The a.s.sociation protests against the legalizing of all crimes, especially those of prost.i.tution and liquor selling. It protests against the sale of liquor in Soldiers' Homes, where now an aggregate of $253,027 is spent annually for intoxicating liquors, and only about one-fifth of the soldiers' pension money is sent home to their families. It protests against the United States Government receiving a revenue for liquors sold within prohibitory territory, either local or State, and against all complicity of the Federal Government with the liquor traffic. It protests against lynching and lends its aid in favor of the enforcement of law. It works for the highest well-being of our soldiers and sailors and especially for suitable temperance canteens and a generous mess. It works for the protection of the home, especially against its chief enemy, the liquor traffic, and for the redemption of our Government from this curse, by the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes.

The organizing of this great society in the various States and Territories, and the systematizing of the work under forty different departments, is due to the efforts of Miss Frances E. Willard more than to any other one person, and its success is indebted largely to her ability and personal popularity. As its president until her death in 1898, she not only perfected the organization in this country, but originated the idea of the Polyglot Pet.i.tion and of the World's W. C.

T. U., which was organized under the auspices of that of the United States. It now includes fifty-eight different countries and has 500,000 members.

The official organ, _The Union Signal_, a weekly of sixteen pages, is issued by the Woman's Temperance Publis.h.i.+ng a.s.sociation of Chicago, which publishes also _The Young Crusader_ and many books and leaflets.

The National W. C. T. U. gives away 5,000,000 pages of literature per year, exclusive of that circulated by the States and different departments. It has received and expended since its organization in round numbers $400,000. This does not include the large expenditures of the various State and local unions.

Every State and Territory in the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, has a W. C. T. U., and one is beginning in the Philippines.

These are auxiliary to the National. It is organized locally in over 10,000 cities and towns. The Young Woman's Christian Temperance Union is called a branch, also the Loyal Temperance Legions among children.

There are thirty-eight other departments, and it is usual to include the two branches and speak of forty departments. The members.h.i.+p paying dues is 300,000. There was a gain of 15,000 members this year above all losses.

The Frances E. Willard National Temperance Hospital and Training School for Nurses, in Chicago, is owned and controlled by an incorporated board of thirty trustees. Its basic principle is the cure of disease without the use of alcohol as an active medicinal agent.

Eminent physicians are on the staff and every effort is made to have it rank with the very best of hospitals.

At the national convention in Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., in 1900, fifty States and Territories were represented by 509 delegates. Mrs. Lillian M. N.

Stevens succeeded Miss Willard as president.

THE AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS SOCIETY was organized March 1, 1882, with headquarters at Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C. Its object is the relief of suffering by war, pestilence, famine, flood, fires, and other calamities of sufficient magnitude to be deemed national in extent. It is governed by the provisions of the International Convention of Aug.

22, 1864, at Geneva, Switzerland.

Up to the present time relief has been given on fields as follows: Michigan forest fires, 1881, material and money, $80,000; Mississippi floods, 1882, money and seeds, $8,000; Mississippi floods, 1883, material and seeds, $18,500; Mississippi cyclone, 1883, money, $1,000; Balkan war, 1883, money, $500; Ohio and Mississippi river floods, 1884, food, clothing, tools, housefurnis.h.i.+ngs and feed for stock, $175,000; Texas famine, 1885, appropriations and contributions, $120,000; Charleston, S. C., earthquake, 1886, money, $500; Mt.

Vernon, Ill., cyclone, 1888, money and supplies, $85,000; Florida yellow fever epidemic, 1888, physicians and nurses, $15,000; Johnstown, Pa., flood disaster, 1889, money and all kinds of building material, furniture, etc., $250,000; Russian famine, 1891-2, food, $125,000; Pomeroy, Ia., cyclone, 1893, money and nurses, $2,700; South Carolina Islands hurricane and tidal wave disaster, money and all kinds of supplies, material, tools, seeds, lumber, $65,000; reconcentrado relief in Cuba, 1898-9, $500,000; American-Spanish War, 1898-9, $450,000; Galveston flood and hurricane, 1900, $120,000; total, $2,016,200.

Miss Clara Barton was its princ.i.p.al founder and has been its president continuously.

THE a.s.sOCIATION OF COLLEGIATE ALUMNAE was organized January 14, 1882; incorporated by special act of the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature, April 20, 1899, to unite the alumnae of different inst.i.tutions for practical educational work.

From 1890 to 1901 the a.s.sociation gave fourteen $500 European fellows.h.i.+ps (sharing two others) and ten $300 American fellows.h.i.+ps.

Among those holding the fellows.h.i.+ps was the first woman admitted to the laboratory of the United States Fish Commission, the first woman to receive the Ph. D. degree from Yale, the first woman admitted to Gottingen University, the first woman permitted to work in the biological laboratory at Strasburg University, the first American woman to receive the degree of Ph. D. from any German university, and the first American woman to receive a Ph. D. from Gottingen and Heidelberg Universities.

The character of the work accomplished by those holding fellows.h.i.+ps made it possible for the a.s.sociation to establish, three years ago, a Council to Accredit Women for Advanced Work in Foreign Universities.

Any woman applicant, college graduate or otherwise, found qualified in work, character and serious purpose, receives a certificate properly signed and attested which will secure for her, if possible to any woman, the courtesy and privileges desired at a foreign university.

The organization contributes to the support of the a.s.sociation for Maintaining the American Woman's Table at the Zoological Station at Naples and to that for Promoting Scientific Research by Women. The latter pays $500 annually for the support of the Woman's Table, and to promote research has just offered a prize of $1,000, which offer, it is expected, will be renewed biennially.