Alcoholism: The Woman's Crusade : Part 2

The Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink
by T. S. Arthur

(Page 12 of 20)

Within two days, the women of Washington Court-House, a neighboring town, felt the inspiration of their sisters, and inaugurated the movement there. A description of what was done at this place will afford the reader a clear impression of the way in which the "Crusaders" worked, and the results that followed their efforts. We quote from the account given by Mrs. M.V. Ustick:

"After an hour of prayer, forty-four women filed slowly and solemnly down the aisle and started forth upon their strange mission, with fear and trembling, while the male portion of the audience remained at church to pray from the success of this new undertaking; the tolling of the church-bell keeping time to the solemn march of the women, as they wended their way to the first drug store on the list (the number of places within the city limits where intoxicating drinks were sold was fourteen - eleven saloons and three drug stores). Here, as in every place, they entered singing, every woman taking up the sacred strain as she crossed the threshold. This was followed by the reading of the appeal and prayer, and then earnest pleading to desist from their soul-destroying traffic and to sign the dealers' pledge. therefore, all the day long, going from place to place, without stopping even for dinner or lunch, till five o'clock, meeting with no marked success; but invariably courtesy was extended to them.

"The next day an increased number of women went forth, leaving the men in the church to pray all day long. On this day the contest really began, and at the first place the doors were found locked. With hearts full of compassion, the women knelt in the snow upon the pavement to plead for the Divine influence upon the heart of the liquor-dealer, and there held their first street prayer-meeting. The Sabbath was devoted to a union mass-meeting. Monday, December 29th, is one long to be remembered in Washington as the day on which occurred the first surrender ever made by a liquor-dealer of his stock of liquors of every kind and variety to the women, in answer to their prayers and entreaties, and by them poured into the street. Nearly a thousand men, women and children witnessed the mingling of beer, ale, wine and whiskey, as they filled the gutters and were drunk up by the earth, while bells were ringing, men and boys shouting, and women singing and praying to God, who had given the victory.

"On the fourth day, the campaign reached its height; the town being filled with visitors from all parts of the country and adjoining villages. Another public surrender and another pouring into the street of a larger stock of liquors than on the day before, and more intense excitement and enthusiasm. In eight days all the saloons, eleven in number, had been closed, and the three drug stores pledged to sell only on prescription.

"Early in the third week the discouraging intelligence came that a new man had taken out license to sell liquor in one of the deserted saloons, and that he was backed by a whiskey house in Cincinnati to the amount of five thousand dollars to break down this movement. On Wednesday, 14th of January, the whiskey was unloaded at his room. About forty women were on the ground and followed the liquor in, and remained holding an uninterrupted prayer-meeting all day and until eleven o'clock at night. The next day - bitterly cold - was spent in the same place and manner, without fire or chairs, two hours of that time the women being locked in, while the proprietor was off attending a trial.

On the following day, the coldest of the winter of 1874, the women were locked out, and remained on the street holding religious services all day long. Next morning a tabernacle was built in the street just in front of the house, and was occupied for the double purpose of watching and praying through the day; but before night the sheriff closed the saloon, and the proprietor surrendered. A short time afterwards, on a dying bed, this four-day's liquor-dealer sent for some of these women, telling them their songs and prayers had never ceased to ring in his ears, and urging them to pray again in his behalf; so he passed away."

From this beginning the new temperance movement increased and spread with a marvelous rapidity. The incidents attendant on the progress of the "Crusade" were often of a novel and exciting character. Such an interference with their business was not to be tolerated by the liquor men; and they soon began to organize for defense and retaliation. They not only had the law on their side, but in many cases, the administrators of the law. Yet it often happened, in consequence of their reckless violations of statutes made to limit and regulate the traffic, that dealers found themselves without standing in the courts, or entangled in the meshes of the very laws they had invoked for protection.

In the smaller towns the movement was, for a time, almost irresistible; and in many of them the drink traffic ceased altogether. But when it struck the larger cities, it met with impediments, against which it beat violently for awhile, but without the force to bear them down. Our space will not permit us to more than glance at some of the incidents attendant on this singular crusade. The excitement that followed its inauguration in the large city of Cleveland was intense. It is therefore described by Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton in her history of the Woman's Crusade, to which we have already referred:

How The Crusaders were Treated

"The question was constantly asked: 'Will the women of a conservative city of one hundred and fifty thousand go upon the street as a praying-band?' The liquor-dealers said: 'Send committees of two or three and we will talk with them; but coming in a body to pray with us brands our business as disreputable.' The time came when the Master seemed to call for a mightier power to bear upon the liquor traffic, and a company of heroic women, many of them the wives of prominent clergymen, led by Mrs. W.A. Ingham, said: 'Here am I; the Lord's will be done.'

"On the third day of the street work, the whiskey and beer interest seemed to have awakened to a full consciousness of the situation. Drinkers, dealers and roughs gathered in large numbers on the street to wait for the praying women. A mob, headed by an organization of brewers, rushed upon them, kicking them, striking them with their fists and hitting them with brickbats. The women were locked in a store away from the infuriated mob, who, on the arrival of a stronger body of police, were dispersed, cursing and yelling as they went.

About the Author

Timothy Shay Arthur (1809 - 1885) was a popular nineteenth-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. Virtually forgotten now, Arthur did much to articulate and disseminate the values, beliefs, and habits that defined respectable, decorous middle-class life in antebellum America.