Part 3

This is, to say the least, a very anomalous condition of affairs. I account for it in two ways, chiefly from the fact that in general the liquor interests of the South are poorly organized and consolidated for any purposes of opposition or defense; and secondly, in communities where the formative process is largely going on—(and be assured the new South will not be the old)—especially in all questions of public import, the _heroic_ is oftener resorted to than is just common or fashionable in a more settled state of society. There is less allowing of quibbles and more coming straight to the end in view. So stringently have the courts applied these laws that there are several counties in East Tennessee where no liquor is now sold.

In this county many country liquor stores have been run out, a fine of $150 being not unusual for a first offense in violation of law; this was the fine inflicted in the instance at the head of this letter. In general the newspapers cast their influence on the right side; usually edited by men of position and at least of local importance, their influence is not small. In Memphis the W. C. T. U. is the strong moral force for temperance work and influence. Concerning our own work, Colman’s Temperance text book, is regularly used and taught in the school, and almost invariably our students go out earnest believers in, and workers for, temperance, accomplishing no small amount of good among their people, who almost universally suppose liquor necessary to laborers and indispensable to _free men_, and therefore drink as much of it as can be obtained.

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TEMPERANCE IN TEXAS.

BY PRES. WM. E. BROOKS, TILLOTSON INSTITUTE.

It may be said with truth, I think, that the strongest temperance 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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.”

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.

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CHILDREN’S PAGE.

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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.”

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RECEIPTS FOR MARCH, 1883.

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MAINE, $935.95.