ing its work, moulding her "into the likeness and form of Christ." But the conflict deepened. Two years later the Republicans of Ohio in their platform proposed an amendment to the Constitution permitting the taxation and license of the liquor traffic. This act roused Mrs. Woodbridge to the depths of her soul. Her annual address in 1882 rang out with a keenness of relentless logic, a vigor of pithy English, and a sweep and force of eloquence that would bring glory and honor to any male orator in America. She said of this proposed amendment to license: I can hardly think that any woman sufficiently interested in the cause of temperance to attend this convention, can need reasons adduced for opposition to this form of legislation; but, in response to earnest requests, I state : First. To tax a crime, thus virtually permitting and licensing it, is a sin which Christian women cannot endorse. Second. If the liquor traffic is not a crime, but is right, it should not be especially taxed; if wrong, it should be prohibited. Third. Though it might close numbers of the so-called "lower saloons," the higher would multiply their attractions, and an increased number would become victims of their allurement. Our sons do not learn to drink in the lower, but the higher places. If any were legalized mothers would choose the lower. Fourth. The diminution in number of saloons would be temporary, and lead to final increase. Those entering the temples of death would in a few years be unfit for palatial residences and the lazar houses would be a necessity. Fifth. "Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also." We hear the financial benefit to county and to state arrayed as argument in its favor. Were such a law upon our statute book the state and liquor traffic would be allied, and stand as partaker and thief. Sixth. In the Mosaic ritual, upon which we are told law is founded, sin is nowhere sanctioned or regulated, but condemned and prohibited, and God's blessing will not rest upon a nation whose laws are not in harmony with His. As the tax law passed for Ohio was copied very nearly from the Michigan law, I believe Mrs. Lathrap, president of the W. C. T. U. of that state, who is familiar with every feature of its working, will permit me to repeat to you her words of experience, given to her constituency at their annual meeting two weeks ago. CRIMINAL FRUITS OF THE LIQUOR TAXATION SYSTEM IN MICHIGAN. The annual drink bill of our state is about $21,000,000, one million more than it took to run the state government for the twenty years between 1860 and 1880, including the erection of public buildings. As a partial result of the money put into the 5,000 saloons, we have In Jackson prison, inmates. In Ionia prison In Lansing Reform School In House of Correction, Detroit 678 Total. Outside of this more fixed and settled prison population the sheriffs' reports for the year 1881 give us the following jail statistics: In jail Jan. 1, 1881. Received during the year Total... 258 9,159 9,417 Of these 8,627 are males and 544 females. The increase over the year 1880 was 1,268. The Northwest is athrill with the determination to carry the question to the ballot box, where the clamor of the whisky ring may be silenced by the voice of the people. Failing to reach this through the existing parties after years of patient waiting and seeking, the demand for separate political action is deemed imperative; and such action will come, if the parties much longer ignore the most important moral question of the hour. should not, and do not, forget that the Republican party of Kansas was grand enough to fight the battle for Con. stitutional prohibition to the victorious end, and that brave St. John is a Republican Governor. We We should not, and do not, forget that the same party is at the front in Iowa, and stand now, God bless them, in the heat of the conflict; but the same results cannot be reached everywhere. These states have such a party majority that they can risk the loss of a few thousand votes without defeat. In states more doubtful in the great campaigns, the parties will never take a dangerous issue until forced to do so. These two states have no overwhelming forces massed in great cities to which all else must bow, and can therefore be more easily brought to their present position; but in others, which have these great centers, and therefore face the danger of loss to party, the temperance victory will scarcely be reached, except by revolution, and revolution means the overthrow of the old, and the incoming of the A moment's thought will bring proof of the state new. ment. What governs the Empire State, stretching in its pride from the eastern sea to the western lakes? New York city. What controls the Crusade State, baptized first of all into this greatest reform of our day? Cincinnati. What beclouds the vision of the average Wisconsin candidate to public honors? Milwaukee lager. What speaks with a tone that moves all Illinois? Chicago. What silences the voice and drugs the conscience of the Michigan legislature in a great moral crisis? Detroit and the liquor interests of the first district. These things being so, party success does not lie along the track of a reform that cuts through the greed of avarice, appetite and ambition for place. The golden calf is enthroned in the midst of an enslaved and war-fed public opinion. What is to be done? Go in among the worshipers and bow the knee with them in the name of expediency, or in the hope of a far-away good? No, NEVER; to the gate, rather, with the cry of separation. "Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come." That cry is in the land, and God is in it; let all the brave remember that after that call in Israel the calf was ground to powder. As we stand where we mark this slow but mighty lift of the tide of public opinion, and hear its beat on the shore that girds the to-morrow of our country's destiny, we naturally ask what of woman's work and part in the present aspect of affairs, and in that yet to be accomplished? When we look on the coral islands that lift themselves from the ocean there is a voice forever in their caves that speaks of the patient toilers at the bottom that made what is seen, possible; and no one may look at the temperance reform to-day and forget the women of this republic. A song floats on the air from the southern part of Ohio; a psalm falls on the ear as if freshly spoken from heaven; a band of gentle women go out with solemn but shining eyes in the strength of God, to face for the first time, in his own horrid lair, the hyena of our civilization. A prayer from the mouth of hell falls on the outer air, and shakes with a trembling, such as came to the Philistines' camp, the moral foundations of society. That song swelled to a chorus; that band grew to an army; that prayer brought salvation straight from heaven to hopeless souls, and a reform to the nation. In that heroic day of womanhood, kings were crowned, prophets anointed, apostles chosen to lead in the oncoming struggle, and the temperance question was lifted on a level with the eyes of the civilized world, and it will never go down again until settled in righteousness. After nearly a decade we pause to ask, what of these aroused daughters of our people, whom a saloon-keeper honored by calling "The Rock of Ages Women"? and the answer comes, "Here we are." Meanwhile organization has run from ocean to ocean until there is no state or territory where their voice is not heard. Children have listened until boys and girls of ten years know more of the nature and danger of alcohol than their grandfathers ever knew. The church has listened until it has declared against the wine of commerce on the table of the Lord. The nation has listened until within two years past nearly every legislature has faced the problem in some form. Within this year the conservative South has been invaded by the matchless President of the National W. C. T. U.; and down the Mississippi, along the gulf and into the Lone Star State has been carried the law and the gospel of this movement. The "Rock of Ages women" still live. This convention is only a division drill, for we are "in the army ""to fight it out" "till prohibition or eternity." CHAPTER VII. THE PROHIBITION AMENDMENT CAMPAIGN. The crisis is upon us! face to face with us it stands, This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin. Even now from misty Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown, Call we the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down. The crisis is upon us, face to face with us it stands, With lips of solemn question, like the sphinx on Egypt's sands. Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, IN N the year 1882, under the constantly increasing influence of the Ohio W. C. T. U., the public mind began to be generally agitated on the question of how to deal with the liquor traffic. It was recognized to be too vast and growing an evil to be allowed to go on longer unchecked. Three different methods of restraining it were proposed, viz. to tax it, to license it, or to prohibit it. But taxation and license are practically the same. Senator John Sherman proved himself a logician on August 31, 1882, when |