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WOMAN'S VOTE IN KANSAS.

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thousand votes more than twenty-five thousand were cast by the wives, mothers and sisters of that glorious State. I have just received the following from one of the leading journals of Topeka, and commend it to the attention of all who deny the doctrines of this chapter.

"TOPEKA, KAN., October 16.

"Judge Adams, Secretary of the State Historical Society, has just completed a compilation of the recent municipal vote, which was the first one taken under the new law giving its women the right to vote. The compilation shows that in 232 cities of the State which voted, there was a total of 90,194 votes, of which 64,846 were male votes and 25,348 were female votes. Judge Adams' report is accompanied by the following statement:

"I have been most thoroughly impressed with the conviction that the people of Kansas, at last spring's election, completely solved the woman suffrage question. It is no longer a question whether women want to vote. They do want to vote. This is proven by the fact that they have voted at the first opportunity given them. They voted with an intelligent, zealous, earnest interest in the good of the community in which they have their homes. If the issue involved in the election of any town was one affecting merely the local material interest of the community, they voted with good judgment and for the common welfare. If the question was as to better school management they voted for the best. If it was for the street, sanitary or other reforms, they voted prudently for what seemed to be the good of all. If it was for a change of an administration notoriously involved in speculations with water-works or other corporations, they voted to deliver the city from such corrupt entanglement. If political parties, controlled by saloon influence, put up candidates with the odor of whisky on their garments, the women rebuked the party managers and voted for candidates who would better promote the moral welfare of the community. In every instance they voted for home and fireside, for the freeing of the community from those demoralizing influences and temptations from which every good woman would deliver those of her own household. I have been impressed with the reports received, showing the orderly and quiet character of the elections. There was no dissent from the testimony on this point.'

"He comments upon the unexpectedly large vote of women, and upon the healthy influence of their presence in banishing riot and disorder from the polling-place. He remarks upon the courtesies

everywhere extended the lady voters, and gives statements as to how the men of all parties vied in escorting the ladies to the polls in carriages, how the ladies came to the polls accompanied by their husbands, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, and quietly deposited their votes, and returned quietly to their homes, and how sometimes they came by scores and fifties from points of assemblage, and in some instances from churches, where they had met and prayed together before coming."

And so the truth gets along after a while; and when she comes she stays—and woman suffrage will stay. It will abide with us as a part of free government forever.

Popular demonstrations of approval are developing in all parts of the country, perhaps not to so marked an extent as these which I have just stated; but it is a feeling growing in this country that woman should have this right; that it belongs to her as an individual and not as an atom in the aggregate of her sex. As a human soul she has a right to it, and is not to be deprived of it until such time as all shall choose to exercise it. How can we deny the demand of millions who believe in suffrage for women, and who can not be forever silenced, for they give voice to the innate cry of the human heart that justice be done not alone to man, but to that half of this nation which now is free only by the grace of the other? Let us indorse, if we do not initiate, a movement which, in the development of our race, shall guarantee liberty to all, without distinction of sex, even as our glorious Constitution already grants the suffrage to every citizen, without distinction of color or race.

CHAPTER XX.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT.

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The Temperance Movement an Effort of Humanity to Unchain Itself — The Spirit of Liberty as Conceived by the Fathers of the Republic Four Valuable Volumes-Dr. Benjamin Rush's Pamphlet the Starting Point of the Present Movement- -Hon. Samuel Dexter's Picture of the Situation in 1814-The Evil at Later Dates-Rev. Lyman Beecher's Description of the Creature Comforts" at a Connecticut Ordination in 1810-Churches and Religious Associations AwakeAmerican Society for the Promotion of Temperance Organized 1826 -Massachusetts Medical Society Discourages the Use of Liquors 1827 Rush, Muzzey, Davis Jonathan Kittredge's Pamphlet — The Famous Massachusetts Fifteen-Gallon Law-The Washingtonians in 1840-The Maine Law-Neal Dow the Columbus of ProhibitionFor Thirty-Five Years Temperance has Moved on Abstinence and Prohibition.

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HE temperance movement is an effort of humanity to unchain itself. It is a rebellion conducted by the people according to law, against the further domination of personal habits and social customs which have enslaved and destroyed the world almost from the beginning. Emancipation of the individual from ignorance, passion and appetite is the first and chief element of all liberty, and civil rights are of no benefit to him whose higher nature is in subjection to the lower and grosser impulses, which were given to serve and not to control.

When the human race began its new departure in Independence Hall, on the fourth day of July, 1776, the great men who led it comprehended that true liberty is a consequence of the inherent fitness of men for its possession; that freedom comes from within, and is of the mind. They conceived of liberty as a manifestation in and through man of something higher and better than himself, and of which his emancipated and more elevated state is the evolution. They knew that all consciousness, all pleasure and all pain, appertain to the individual; that the whole is but an aggregation

of atoms or parts; and, though the sunshine may come from without, yet all life and growth are within the solitary recesses and by the processes of the individual soul. They sought to achieve the emancipation of mankind by the improvement and elevation of the units of the race. The methods of tyranny, in all its forms, are just the contrary. The one or the few repress, belittle and subject the many. Their real agencies are ignorance, passion, appetite; and these, if unrestrained, create the means of self-perpetuation in the form of superstitions, customs and laws. As soon as the exigencies of the Revolutionary War had passed away, the intelligence of the superior few at once grasped the thought that, if the whole people were to be made and kept competent for the enjoyment and preservation of free institutions, the great evils which resulted from the almost universal slavery of intoxication must be radically restrained.

There had been Englishmen, like Lord Chesterfield, and many Americans also, who had comprehended the traffic in strong drink, and denounced it with a scathing severity which has never been surpassed, even in our own time; but there had been no "Temperance Movement," such as that which, during the last century, has been rooting itself in the intelligence and conscience of the common people, and growing broad and high, like a new and mighty tree, with healing leaves and fragrant shade for all the nations of the earth. Such a movement is only possible as a part of the general progress of mankind, and must be the work of the masses of men. The temperance movement of to-day is even more logically the result of the working of free principles and institutions than was the agitation which destroyed slavery; and it will be found to be an "irrepressible conflict," until the people have liberated themselves from this most ancient, debasing and destructive form of self-imposed oppression. Wise kings and great religions have prohibited the use of intoxicants in ages past, and have succeeded in partially restraining the evil; but this temperance movement of modern times is a part of the American Revolution at home, and an overflow of that Revolution abroad; it is the sovereignty of intelligence and enlightened self-interest, sanctioned by the precepts of morality and religion, exerted by the com

RUSH'S FAMOUS ESSAY, 1785.

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mon people for their own more perfect liberation. Such a movement is completely possible only in a free country; and, once set on foot in such a country, will never stay its progress until the evil is exterminated, or the nobler impulses of the people have disappeared, and they have returned to that last state of debasement and thraldom which is worse than the first.

It will be impossible to present more than the briefest outline of the history of the present temperance movement, which is, I firmly believe, to wax stronger and stronger unto the perfect day. For its full exposition, the reader is referred to such works as "The Liquor Problem of all Ages," by Dr. Dorchester; "Alcohol in History," by Rev. Dr. Richard Eddy, the "Centennial Temperance Volume," with the history it contains written by Dr. Dunn, and "One Hundred Years of Temperance."

These four volumes are of great value, and I would give up my whole book to the commendation of them if their universal perusal could thus be secured.

The real commencement of the temperance movement now in progress, is generally identified with the publication, by Dr. Benjamin Rush, of his pamphlet, entitled "The Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Mind and Body" - in the year 1785. It was a part of the eternal fitness of things that this distinguished service to mankind should be rendered by the man who was chairman of the committee on Independence in the Continental Congress of 1776.

This essay was a new indictment of the worst form of oppression to mankind, and produced in its own field an influence almost like "Common Sense" upon the Revolution. During the next forty years it was the leading temperance document, and, although confined in its denunciations to distilled spirits, is not surpassed in earnestness and power by anything which has been written since. It must be remembered that the demonstration of the poisonous nature of all alcoholic drinks, which modern science has given to us, was not available to Dr. Rush, and that the specially destructive effects of ardent or distilled spirits, in his time, almost compelled him to attack them alone, without too violently' assailing the drinking customs

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