Frances Willard: Address before the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

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The Do-Everything Policy

Beloved Comrades of the White Ribbon Army:

When we began the delicate, difficult, and dangerous operation of dissecting out the alcohol nerve from the body politic, we did not realize the intricacy of the undertaking nor the distances that must be traversed by the scalpel of investigation and research. In about seventy days from now, twenty years will have elapsed since the call of battle sounded its bugle note among the homes and hearts of Hillsboro, Ohio. We have all been refreshing our knowledge of those days by reading the “Crusade Sketches” of its heroic leader, Mrs. Eliza J. Thompson, “the mother of us all,” and we know that but one thought, sentiment and purpose animated those saintly “Praying Bands” whose name will never die out from human history. “Brothers, we beg you not to drink and not to sell!” This was the one wailing note of these moral Paganinis, playing on one string. It caught the universal ear and set the key of that mighty orchestra, organised with so much toil and hardship, in which the tender and exalted strain of the Crusade violin still soars aloft, but upborne now by the clanging cornets of science, the deep trombones of legislation, and the thunderous drums of politics and parties. The “Do Everything Policy” was not of our choosing, but is an evolution as inevitable as any traced by the naturalist or described by the historian. Woman’s genius for details, and her patient steadfastness in following the enemies of those she loves “through every lane of life,” have led her to antagonise the alcohol habit and the liquor traffic just where they are, wherever that may be. If she does this, since they are everywhere, her policy will be “Do Everything.”

A one-sided movement makes one-sided advocates. Virtues, like hounds, hunt in packs. Total abstinence is not the crucial virtue in life that excuses financial crookedness, defamation of character, or habits of impurity. The fact that one’s father was, and one’s self is, a bright and shining light in the total abstinence galaxy, does not give one a vantage ground for high-handed behaviour toward those who have not been trained to the special virtue that forms the central idea of the Temperance Movement. We have known persons who, because they had “never touched a drop of liquor,” set themselves up as if they belonged to a royal line, but whose tongues were as biting as alcohol itself, and whose narrowness had no competitor save a straight line. An all-round movement can only be carried forward by all-round advocates; a scientific age requires the study of every subject in its correlations. It was once supposed that light, heat, and electricity were wholly separate entities; it is now believed and practically proved that they are but different modes of motion. Standing in the valley we look up and think we see an isolated mountain; climbing to its top we see that it is but one member of a range of mountains many of them of well-nigh equal altitude.

Some bright women who have opposed the “Do-Everything Policy” used as their favourite illustration a flowing river, and expatiated on the ruin that would follow if that river (which represents their do-one-thing policy) were diverted into many channels, but it should be remembered that the most useful of all rivers is the Nile, and that the agricultural economy of Egypt consists in the effort to spread its waters upon as many fields as possible. It is not for the river’s sake that it flows through the country but for the sake of the fertility it can bring upon adjoining fields, and this is pre-eminently true of the Temperance Reform.

Joseph Cook, that devoted friend of every good cause has wisely said: “If England were at war with Russia, and the latter were to have several allies, it would obviously be necessary for England to attack the allies as well as the principal enemy. Not to do this would be foolishness, and might be suicide. In the conflict with the liquor traffic, the policy of the W.C.T.U. is to attack not only the chief foe, but also its notorious and open allies. This is the course dictated not only by common sense, but by absolute necessity. If the home is to be protected, not only must the dram-shop be made an outlaw, but its allies, the gambling hells, the houses of unreportable infamy, the ignorance of the general population as to alcoholics and other narcotics, the timidity of trade, the venality of portions of the press, and especially the subserviency of political parties to the liquor traffic, must be assailed as confederates of the chief enemy of the home. … It is certain that the broad and progressive policy of the W.C.T.U. in the United States makes the whiskey rings and time-serving politicians greatly dread its influence. They honour the Union by frequent and bitter attacks. It is a recognised power in international affairs. If its policy were made narrow and non-partisan, its influence would immensely wane in practical matters of great importance.…

Let us not be disconcerted, but stand bravely by that blessed trinity of movements, Prohibition, Woman’s Liberation and Labour’s uplift.

Everything is not in the Temperance Reform, but the Temperance Reform should be in everything.

There is no better motto for the “Do-Everything-Policy,” than this which we are saying by our deeds: “Make a chain, for the land is full of bloody crimes and the city of violence.”

If we can remember this simple rule, it will do much to unravel the mystery of the much controverted “Do-Everything-Policy,” viz: that every question of practical philanthropy or reform has its temperance aspect, and with that we are to deal.

Methods that were once the only ones available may become, with the passage of years, less useful because less available. In earlier times the manly art of hunting was most helpful to civilization, because before fields could be cleared and tilled, they had to be free from the danger of wild beasts, and no method of obtaining food was more important than the chase; but when the forests have been cleared away and the pastoral condition of life has supervened, nay, more, when the highest civilization peoples the hills and valleys, it certainly evinces a lack of imagination to present such a spectacle as do the hunters who in England to-day place a poor stag in a van, convey him on four wheels to a wood, let him out through a door, and set trained dogs upon him, while they follow with guns and halloos, and call it “sport”! The same absurdity has been illustrated by Baron Hirsch, who recently imported 6,000 caged partridges to his country place, let them loose in the groves, and set himself and friends peppering away at them. Surely such conduct is the reverse of manly, and must bring what was once a noble occupation into contempt. But, in a different way, we illustrate the same principle, when we forget that:

• “New occasions teach new duties,
• Time makes ancient good uncouth.”

We are too apt to think that what makes for us makes for the truth, and what makes for the truth must be true. Such a circle of reasoning leaves us, so far as logic goes, in the attitude said to have been assumed by the coffin of Mohammed-suspended between earth and heaven. A reformer is very apt to fall into this line of argumentation, a tendency which is perhaps most likely to be corrected by studying the correlated movements of other groups of men and women equally excellent, and by allying to the reform of which he is an advocate as many others germane to it as may be practicable, always asking this question as the touchstone of the natural selection he would make “What is the Temperance aspect of this cognate reform and what its aspect toward the liquor traffic?”

The Temperance cause started out well night alone, but mighty forces have joined us in the long march. We are now in the midst of the Waterloo battle, and in the providence of God the Temperance army will not have to fight that out all by itself. For Science has come up with its glittering contingent, political economy deploys its legions, the woman question brings an Amazonian army upon the field, and the stout ranks of labor stretch away far as the eye can reach. As in the old Waterloo against Napoleon, so now against the Napoleon of the liquor traffic, no force is adequate except the allied forces.

A General Survey

There are two changeless sources of solid happiness; first, the belief in God, and second, the habit of hard work toward useful ends. The first affords a sunshiny mental atmosphere, the second keeps that ever-active engine, the brain, from working on itself. For it cannot be idle, and if its energies are not directed toward objective occupation, it will find employment in such dissection of its own powers as will weaken them, and tend toward morbid views and general bewilderment. The recoil of an engine upon itself, when that engine is the brain, means, in the last analysis, insanity. Looking out upon the world we perceive that it is continually improving as to the comforts of life, the tools of mind and hand, the inventions that help on the annihilation of time and space, and the incentives to noble character. We know that this great improvement has not happened but has been caused to come to pass; and we know that human beings are the necromancers who have wrought these wonders. If we are not wandering savages, it is because of some systematic power put forth to produce that totality of improvement which we call Civilization. This was done man by man, woman by woman, step by step, thought by thought, hand by hand. Into the vast and fruitful harvest of their sowing who have passed across the stage and out of sight, we have been welcomed for a while, and the least that we can do is to add our increment of power to the totality of achievement,-to leave the world, materially, mentally, sympathetically, conscientiously, spiritually, as much better than we found it, as the addition of our personality and rational effort during the years allotted to us, can cause it to become. This is a very practical view of life, I am aware; but it is one that commends itself to this practical age, and as I understand it, the women of the White Ribbon, banded together in the name of “God and Home and Every Land,” propose to do just what I have described in a systematized and consecutive fashion, so long as life and health remain to them. In view of such a purpose, our Association can but command the respect and goodwill of all rational minds, and we do not care what the irrational may say, because their blame is praise.

The great philosopher, Emanuel Kant, says that “every action carries with it its own punishment and its own reward,” and the putting in of our powers to help our race is its own exceeding great reward.

There are higher considerations expressed in more technical language to which I have often asked your attention; but it seemed to me that to put the whole movement on this matter-of-fact and common-sense basis might be a helpful and healthful thing in this year of the great Exposition, when the long result of time has been concentrated into a magnificent object lesson which “he who runs may read,” and when the public mind is asking with quickened interest of nations, societies, and individuals, “What have you wrought, and why?”

The three requisites for success are ability, availability, and responsibility. The first is native, the second acquired, the last conferred. In every White Ribboner, whose work is worth the name, these three must meet, and the greatest outcome of the crusade in its original and organic form was that it gave to women of ability the schooling in which they acquired availability, and helped them to the positions in which, through responsibility, they grew from what they were to what they had the power to be.

General Booth says that the qualities of generalship are latent, and only awaiting development in one out of every 35 men, and in one of every 30 women.

The Church that within the next generation opens widest doors of ecclesiastical freedom to women will be the church of Gospel triumph and heavenly benediction. And the reforms that women lead shall win men’s will and work, as certainly as a true mother can count upon her son. For tact is talent working by love, and winning by worthiness.

The history of the reformer, whether man or woman, on any line of action is but this: when he sees it all alone he is a fanatic; when a good many see it with him they are enthusiasts; when all see it he is a hero. The gradations are as clearly marked by which he ascends from zero to hero, as the lines of latitude from the North Pole to the Equator.

A wooden bowl is soon turned on the lathe, but the making of a golden bowl which must be beaten and burnished is quite another thing.

It is quite likely that in the long, slow, and often weary march of these 20 years since the Crusade impulse came to us from heaven, we have not seen as much accomplished on the specific lines where we have wrought as we had hoped; but we must all remember how little it is possible for us to realize the outcome of our work. I do not know how it may be with other speakers and writers in the cause of temperance, woman, and labor, but for myself I seldom hear that anything has come of what I have tried to do. Yet now and then in ways most unexpected I have learnt of changes in the lives of individuals and even of communities, that have astounded me as results of my poor labors, and I conclude from this that if we were but to know all the good that is developed or conserved by our united and systematic efforts, we should indeed take heart of hope. At first the Crusade light was like that in Rembrandt’s pictures, a pure, limpid, vivid ray across the gloom, but as the years went on it has widened into the Raphaelesque light that approaches noontide, but whose beams are so diffused that the intenseness of the early and concentrated ray is gone.

Concerning the Temperance Movement in our land and throughout the world to-day, the pessimist says-and says truly “There was never so much liquor manufactured in any one year since time began as in the year 1893, and as a consequence never did so much liquor flow down the people’s throats as in this same year of grace.” “But,” says the optimist, “there is each year a larger acreage from which the brewer and distiller may gather the golden grain and luscious fruits, there are more people to imbibe the exhilarating poison; but, per contra, there was never so much intelligent thinking in any one year as to the drink delusion, there were never so many children studying in the schools the laws written in their members, there were never such gatherings together of temperance people to consult on the two great questions what to do and what not to do as in this year; there was never such a volume of experience and expert testimony and knowledge so varied, so complete, as we have had this year at the International Congress; there were never so many total abstainers in proportion to the population, never so many intelligent people who could render a reason scientific, ethical, aesthetic, for their total abstinence faith as now; there were never so many pulpits from which to bombard the liquor traffic and the drink habit; there were never so many journalists who had a friendly word to say for the Temperance Reform; there was never such a stirring up of temperance politics; for the foremost historic nation of the world, Great Britain, has this year, for the first time, adopted as a plank in the platform of the dominant party the principle that the people shall themselves decide whether or not they want the public house; and as a natural consequence of this political action there was never a public sentiment so respectful toward the Temperance Reform. The great world-brain is becoming saturated with the idea that it is reasonable and kind to let strong drink alone. The vastness of these changes can only be measured by the remembrance that a few generations ago these same drinks were the accredited emblems in cot and palace alike, of hospitality, kindness, and good-will.

So far as the White Ribbon movement is concerned, this has been its best and brightest year from the outlook of the World’s W.C.T.U., and that is the only point of view that is adequate. How little did they dream, those devoted women of the praying bands, who with their patient footsteps bridged the distance between home and saloon, and in their little despised groups poured out their souls to God, and their pitiful plea into the ears of men, that the “Movement” would be systematized twenty years later into an organization known and loved by the best men and women in every civilized nation on the earth; and that its heroic missionaries would be obliged to circumnavigate the globe in order to visit the outposts of the Society. How little did they dream that in the year of the World’s Columbian Exposition well nigh half a million of children would send their autographs on the triple pledge cards of our Loyal Temperance Legions, and Sunday School Department; that we should have a publishing house, owned and conducted by the Society itself, from which more than a hundred million pages of the literature of light and leading should go forth this year; how little could they have conceived of the significance that is wrapt up in the lengthening folds of the Polyglot Petition, signed and circulated in fifty languages, and containing the signatures and attestations of between three and four million of the best people that live, praying for the abolition of the alcohol traffic, the opium traffic, and the licensed traffic in degraded women. How little they dreamed of that great movement by which the study of physiology and hygiene were to bring the arrest of thought to millions of young minds concerning the true inwardness of all narcotic poisons in their effects on the body and the brain. How “far beyond their thought” the enfranchisement of women in New Zealand and Wyoming, Kansas and “Michigan, my Michigan!” How inconceivable to them the vision of our House Beautiful reared in the heart of the world’s most electric city, and sending forth its influence to the furthest corner of the globe. How little did they dream that the echo of their hymns should yet be heard and heeded by a woman whose lineage, and the prowess of whose historic name may be traced through centuries,-and that not alone from the cottage and the homestead, but from the emblazoned walls of splendid castles, should be driven the cup that seems to cheer, but at the last inebriates. But we must remember that, after all, these are but the days of small beginnings compared with what 20 more years shall show. Doubtless if we could see the power to which this movement of women’s hearts for the protection of their hearthstones shall attain in the next generation, the inspiration of that knowledge would exhilarate us beyond that which is good for such steady patient workers as we have been, are, and wish to be; but I dare prophesy that twenty years from now woman will be fully panoplied in the politics and government of all English-speaking nations; she will find her glad footsteps impeded by no artificial barriers, but whatever she can do well she will be free to do in the enlightened age of worship, helpfulness and brotherhood, toward which we move with steps accelerated far beyond our ken. The momentum of the centuries is in the widening, deepening current of 19th century reform; the 20th century’s dawn shall witness our compensations and reprisals, and as these increase humanity shall pay back into the mother-heart of woman its unmeasured penitence and unfathomed regret for all that she has missed (and through her, every son and daughter that she has brought into the world), by reason of the awful mistake by which, in the age of force, man substituted his “thus far and no farther,” in place of the “thus far and no farther” of God; one founded in a selfish and ignorant view of woman’s powers, the other giving her what every sentient being ought to have-a fair field and a free course to run and be glorified.

The Prohibition agitation in America has not been as great in the past year as formerly, and the reasons are not far to seek. A presidential campaign always lowers the moral atmosphere for a year before it begins and a year after it is over. Legislators become timid, politicians proceed to “hedge,” journalists, with an eye to the loaves and fishes, furl their sails concerning issues that have at best only a fighting chance; the world, the flesh, and the devil get their innings, and the time is not yet. In the past year the attention of the nation has been focused on the World’s Fair and the endless difficulties to which that has given birth. There has been an incalculable amount of ill-will set in motion as the result of personal financial interest and ignoble ambition. All this savours not the things of God or of humanity. The re-adjustment of political parties is still inchoate; men’s hearts are failing them for fear; leaders in the traditional party of moral ideas have thrown off all disguises and grounded any weapons of rebellion they may once have lifted against the liquor traffic. The financial panic has rivetted the attention of the public on their own dangers and disasters, and the spirit of money-making has lamentably invaded the ranks of the temperance army itself; but Prohibition is as lively an issue to-day as emancipation was in 1856; an issue that stirs such deadly hatred is by no means dead. It is still quick with fighting blood, and its enemies know this even better than its friends.

Strange to tell, Iowa is once more the battle field; that brave young state so grievously wounded in the house of its friends by politicians who are not statesmen; but so gallantly defended by its Methodist Conferences; its Congregational rank and file; its Baptist contingent; its Quaker “remnant,” and its New England farmers. Iowa, the hawk-eye state, hallowed by Haddock’s blood and disgraced by the would-be murderers of Muscatine, birth place of republican “non-partisanship,” battle-ground of Prohibition, and Moloch of persecution for principle’s sake, through which White Ribboners walked with the smell of fire on their garments and the crusade fire burning in their hearts;-it would be the top of life to take the torch of truth once more and wave it on those prairies! But 1882, when I worked “for the amendment” seems long ago, and campaigning is beyond me; among so many voices mine will not be missed. God grant that victory may turn on Zion’s side in Iowa’s partisan battle at the ballot box in October, 1893!

Kansas, true to its traditions, is still the torch bearer of progress. Prohibition and the people’s money, woman’s ballot and the banishment of bond holders are all issues tingling with life on yonder plains. We may yet live to see all this commotion condense into the war cry: “Down with John J. Ingalls; up with John P. St. John!”

The situation in South Carolina is difficult to judge. At this distance I do not know the exact status of the law at present; but have heard that it was controverted in the Supreme Court. Whatever attitude is taken toward the movement in South Carolina by our Temperance leaders there, trusty and devoted as they have been, seems to me worthy to be accredited by those of us who have not the means of judging intelligently nor watching the changing phases of the struggle as they have who “Hold the Fort.”

The economic view of Prohibition is one that appeals to the largest number of our people, and none will deny that more and more they are separating into two camps, the industrious and thrifty favouring Prohibition, the idle and spendthrift class opposing it. This is no doubt the most helpful report that can be made upon the present situation. The general drift, or as a great statesman in England has said, “The flowing tide’s with us.” Those who let strong drink alone must always be the most forceful and in the long run successful and potential portion of the country. Our fathers were as good as we, but they took no stand against the drink habit or the liquor traffic. There is hardly a woman here upon the side-board of whose grandfather’s home would not have been found a decanter if not a demijohn. The same influences that have brought us out of the passive into the active voice may be trusted steadily to swell the number of recruits who shall join their intelligence, energy, talents, and sobriety with ours. The Temperance cause has everything to gain and nothing to lose from free discussion, from experimental study of its results, whether physical or financial, moral or mercantile, ethical or aesthetic. These are the hidings of our power; the strong foundations on which, as on a rock, we have begun to rear the edifice of a clear brain, an edifice that shall extend and rise until it becomes the Pharos of humanity.

A Bill has been for many years before Congress for the appointment of a commission on the investigation of the liquor traffic; and I have never failed to call attention in my Annual Address, to this great movement inaugurated by the National Temperance Society nor to urge the co-operation of the W.C.T.U., which I need not say has been always given. The vast importance of this measure is demonstrated by the ceaseless efforts of the whiskey power to defeat its passage, in which they have thus far been successful, and are likely to be for many years to come. The power of the saloon is nowhere more conspicuously manifested than in the annual defeat of this great measure. Congress has appointed commissions on well-nigh every conceivable subject,-the investigation of the slums of our cities, of sweating establishments, of agricultural interests, of farm mortgages, of immigration, quarantine, railroads, monetary problems, cattle diseases, fisheries, and I know not what besides; but to investigate the liquor monopoly is to touch the very ark of the covenant with hell, and agreement with damnation to which the American people has been sworn by their political leaders. In spite of all this, we have gained an intelligent idea of the business from the internal revenue reports and from state and police records; but what we want is the attestation of the national government to the truth of these figures of perdition. If Congress persists in its refusal, why shall not the W.C.T.U. make a sweeping, and thorough investigation of the liquor traffic? Undoubtedly the political machinery of state and nation would place all possible obstacles in our way; but we have a personnel in every community throughout the republic, than which none that exists is more intelligent and devoted. Such a commission would be absolutely reliable so far as information could be obtained, and unless Congress in creating such a commission would agree to place upon it two or three prohibitionists or White Ribbon women the returns would be unreliable; for no politicians of the two leading parties would dare to weaken their great stronghold-the saloon. One of our best superintendents of legislative work has written of her devotion to this idea, and I bring it forward hoping the Convention may take favourable action.

 

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Source: Minutes of the Second Biennial Convention of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publishing, 1893.