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in 1908, and the next year Tennessee became entirely "dry" "dry" by prohibiting saloons within four miles of any church or schoolhouse and forbidding the manufacture of intoxicants within the state. South Carolina provided for county prohibition by referendum, and Wyoming abolished all saloons outside of incorporated towns.

By 1910 the liquor interests began to be thoroughly alarmed. They started backfires in several states against the prohibition wave. There were some reactions in 1910 and 1911, although the two years closed with important gains for the AntiSaloon League, not the least of which was the decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the 21-year prohibition law enacted by Congress for the old Indian Territory, now part of Oklahoma. And the years 1912 and 1913 have been marked by advanced temperance legislation in

seventeen states.

The two greatest victories for the League in these last two years have been the adoption, by referendum, in West Virginia, of a state-wide prohibition law to take effect January 1, 1914, and the passage by Congress of the Webb-Kenyon law, which the League regards as the crowning victory of its twenty years of effort.

If the Washington Bureau of the League had never gained anything more than this Webb-Kenyon law it would have demonstrated the political power of the AntiSaloon League. The strongest argument the League has to meet is the contention, often made in good faith by people who would be perfectly willing to see every saloon closed, that prohibition doesn't prohibit. "You can't enforce prohibition laws," is the plea on which they refuse their support. Under the famous "original package" decision of the Supreme Court, there was no power to prevent the shipment of intoxicants into "dry" territory from across state lines, and it was difficult to enforce even state-wide prohibition. Since the passage of the Webb-Kenyon law more of the legally "dry" spots of the United States are actually more "dry" than ever before.

The Washington Bureau had been blished in 1898, with the Rev. Edwin

C. Dinwiddie, a Lutheran minister, as its legislative superintendent. It began with the fight against the canteen at army posts, which it won with the help of the W. C. T. U. and other temperance organizations. It brought about the enactment of the law compelling the publication of the names of holders of Federal retail liquor tax certificates. This has been of the greatest value in the law-enforcement campaigns of the League, for few illegal liquor dealers care to ignore the Federal Government, however contemptuous they may be of local police powers. And, through the League's work, Congress in 1906 appropriated $25,000 to employ detectives to stamp out the sale of liquor to Indians.

Commissioner Leupp sent for Mr. Wil liam E. Johnson, a young man who had been active in anti-saloon work in the West, and gave him a free hand to "clean up the Indian Territory." Mr. Johnson's fourteen-months' war on the whiskey-peddlers was as exciting as any chapter in the history of the taming of the Wild West. A quarter of a million bottles of whiskey were smashed, 76 gambling houses were destroyed, more than 1,000 arrests were made, and several outlaws were killed, while in this campaign and the later work in the other reservations eight of Mr. Johnson's officers lost their lives at the hands of the whiskey ring. But the sale of liquor to Indians was effectually stopped in Indian Territory and elsewhere, and the 4,173 convictions obtained in local courts are pointed to by the Anti-Saloon League in refutation of another of the arguments against prohibition— that "you can't get juries to convict in liquor cases."

At Mr. Dinwiddie's call the Anti-Saloon League can at any time put into Washington on short notice more and abler lobbyists (I use the word without any improper implication, for the League's lobby is not one for private gain) than the supporters or opponents of tariff schedules, currency bills, or any other special legislation ever could. The lobby that backed up the Webb-Kenyon bill numbered 270, and came to Washington from 32 states.. It represented 24 tem

perance organizations and the governing bodies of 15 religious denominations. Their campaign was thoroughly organized. The forenoons were spent in personal work with Senators and Representatives. Every afternoon a meeting of the entire delegation was held to report progress. A banquet was given, to which law-makers were invited. The same tried-and-tested tactics that have won Congress a thousand times were the tactics that lobbied the Webb-Kenyon bill through.

The strength of the Anti-Saloon League, however, lies not in its work in Washington but in its habit of taking advantage,

District of the Illinois Anti-Saloon League. The League's programme for Illinois is the modest one of the passage of a residence district local option law, a better law to enforce prohibition in "dry" districts, and a county local option law. The League is opposed to voting on the saloon question in Chicago or Cook County, which includes Chicago, until the saloons have been driven out of the residence districts. This may be opportunist politics, but it is good politics because it does not demand results impossible of achievement.

As an illustration of the practical way

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A SAMPLE OF THE PRECISE AND COMPLETE REPORTS ON VOTERS THAT HAVE ENABLED THE ANTI-SALOON LEADERS IN CHICAGO TO CARRY ELECTIONS IN "WET" DISTRICTS.

of every opportunity that arises, anywhere in the country, to gain a point for prohibition. Its whole policy is opportunist. It works along the lines of least resistance and goes with public sentiment instead of against it. The methods of the The methods of the different state leagues vary, of course, with local conditions, but they are always the methods of the practical politician that is the secret of the League's success. It is the whole scheme of its work.

Perhaps as efficient a political organization as exists anywhere is that built up in Chicago under the direction of Mr. E. J. Davis, superintendent of the Chicago

in which the Anti-Saloon League goes into politics, let me call attention to the organization of the Ward, Senate District, Congressional District, Chicago Advisory, and Cook County Advisory committees of the Illinois League. The unit is the Ward Committee, made up of one member from every affiliated church in the ward, with additional members from churches of more than 350 communicants. One member from every church serves on the Senate District Committee, and one from every church on the Congressional District Committee. The Chicago Advisory Committee is made up of two members

from every Ward Committee, and the County Committee has three members from every Senate District Committee.

How the work of these committees is subdivided and parcelled out among sub-committees is an interesting point. The "Captains of Ten" are a highly important part of the political machinery of the League. They are its scouts, its They are its scouts, its collectors of information, and to a certain extent its ultimate executives in carrying out the campaigns. Whenever a polling list comes out, either for a primary or an election, the names for every ward are given to these "Captains of Ten," ten names to every captain. Within a day or two there is a report in the Anti-Saloon League headquarters on every voter in the city. One of the charts reproduced here shows the minuteness with which these reports are made such details about every voter as to whether he has a telephone, has registered, and is a church member; his attitude on county local option and the League regards this as important what newspaper he reads.

This is practical politics. This kind of minute information about the individual voters is the secret of the success of every successful political organization. And while the Illinois League is building for the future so far as Chicago is concerned, it occasionally demonstrates its present political strength as when it elected - as when it elected the Rev. Frank G. Smith to the legislature, on an independent ticket and a straight-out Anti-Saloon platform, in a Republican district against the candidate of the Lorimer machine. Three workers Three workers in every precinct in the state, who can be relied on to put in forty to fifty hours of work every election, is the ultimate aim of the Illinois League as to organization.

I have told somewhat in detail of the way the League works in Chicago because it illustrates precisely the main point of strength of the whole movement that it works in politics exactly as experience has shown political work must be done to be successful. It takes no stock in enthusiasm and does not rely upon prayer and hallelujahs to carry wards and precincts. It lobbies at state capitols just as it does at Washington. Its representatives argue

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before committees and button-hole members, but they do not rely on argument and persuasion to move legislators. They see to it that the individual members hear from the folks at home. They organize mass-meetings and circulate petitions in the members' home districts. They start local campaigns against the reëlect::a of members who oppose them. Mr Baker tells of one state where the LeagR had to defeat 87 members of the legisla ture before the politicians began to take it seriously. In short, the Anti-Saloon! League is in politics all the time and is "playing politics" all the time, according to the well-established rules of the game And it gets what it wants mainly because it wants only one thing and does not go after anything else. It is not trying to abolish murder, cigarettes, arson, turkeytrotting, gambling, divorce, or the high cost of living. It is after the saloon, in the belief that when that goes there won't be so many other things needing abolition It doesn't rest with getting local-option laws passed but goes into counties, townships, and municipalities and organizes "dry" campaigns under these local-option laws. It makes itself the champion of law-enforcement and puts its agents and detectives into "dry" territory to run down the bootlegger and the “blind tiger." It is on the trail of the saloon every minute and doesn't worry about anything else.

Its work is all directed from Westerville, a quiet little German village of 2,500, the seat of Otterbein University, twelve miles from Columbus. The League moved there from Columbus a few years ago because the village offered it a $10,000 tract of land if it would build its publishing plant there. There was no money available, but the League moved on faith. Now the $125,000 plant is practically paid for, though two frame dwellings serve as office-buildings for the headquarters staff of 700 employees. Here are published 31 different state editions of the League's official organ, the weekly American Issue, with a circulation of 430,000; the New Republic, by Mr. William E. Johnson, the man who put the Indian Territory whiskey-peddlers out of business; the American Patriot,

edited

a monthly magazine, and enough other temperance literature to bring the total output of the plant up to the equivalent of 250,000,000 book pages a year.

At Westerville, too, is the headquarters of the League's evangelistic arm, the Lincoln-Lee Legion, with the Rev. Howard H. Russell, founder of the League, at its head as general secretary. More than a million boys and girls in the last ten years have signed the Legion's pledge, said to be the same as the one drawn up by Abraham Lincoln and administered by him to Cleophas Breckenridge and other boys in the South Fork schoolhouse. The name of Robert E. Lee was linked with Lincoln's in the Legion's name this year. On November 9th, this year, the day known as "World's Temperance Sunday," Dr. Russell expects to double the membership of the Legion by enrolling a million more signers of the Lincoln pledge in a single day.

On that same day the Anti-Saloon League plans to launch its programme for "the next and final step," national prohibition, in connection with its national convention at Columbus, where governors, senators, and bishops are to be the speakers, and where the plan for raising the "Jubilee Fund" of $500,000 to carry on the campaign for national prohibition for five years is to be perfected.

The Anti-Saloon League is no one man's work, no one man's property, and no one man dominates it. To name the men in its corps of salaried workers.who have done in their respective fields work as effective in its way as that of Mr. Dinwiddie in Washington, Mr. Wheeler in Ohio, or Mr. Davis in Chicago, would be to print a roster of the League. Nor does one church or denomination control it. Bishop Wilson, still its president, is a Methodist, and so is Dr. Baker. That, however, is merely a coincidence. The roster of the Illinois League, which is typical, includes in its state board delegates chosen by and representing officially the following churches and religious organizations:.

The Baptist Church, the Illinois Baptist

State Association, four Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian, United Presbyterian, Congregational, Disciples.

United Brethren, Protestant Episcopal, M.. E. South, Christian, Methodist Protestant, German Methodist, Universalist, United Evangelical, English Lutheran, Brethren, Swedish Lutheran, Swedish Baptist, Swedish Methodist, and Norwegian Lutheran Churches; the Swedish Evangelical Free Church, the Evangelical Association, the Swedish Temperance Society, the Independent Order of Good Templars, the Christian Endeavor Union, and the Catholic Total Abstinence Society.

It would be hard to make up a list more inclusive and more representative of militant Christianity than that.

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The real work of the League that has won its victories has been done by the men in the field, four hundred and more who are giving their lives to the work and playing politics, good politics, practical politics, but always clean politics, in the name of the Church and the cause of prohibition. More than a million persons are regular contributors to the înancial support of the League. A force of volunteer workers is ready to take the field at every cross-roads in every state -the greatest army, the League's leaders claim, ever organized for a single cause. It is not a political party and it never can

be one. It has no party platforms to of America spent $14,578,000 in new buildworry over, no statesmen to educate.

Even the statistics of the Internal Revenue Office, showing an annual increase in the per capita consumption of intoxicants in the United States, do not worry the Anti-Saloon League. "Plot the curve of the increase," it says, in effect, "and you will see that the percentage of annual gain is less every year. And, since half the people of the United States now live in 'dry' territory and half the people who live in 'wet' territory do not drink, we know there are fewer people drinking. There are fewer saloons to-day than ever before." The League also directs attention to the statistics of the American Contractor, showing that whereas in 1906 the brewers and distillers

ings and extensions of their business, and the churches only $5,632,751, condition were more than reversed in 1912, when the churches spent $14,870,506 on new plants. against the liquor people's $2,937.73 and the first four months of 1913 show ten times the expenditure for new churches as for additions to the brewing and distilling facilities of the country.

With the country preacher from the Jasper circuit at its head, the Church is not only militant but practical The effectiveness of its organization and its singleness of purpose make the Anti-Saloon League a tremendous force in shaping the politics of the United States and the living conditions! of its people.

FORWARD TO THE LAND
AN AWAKENING IN RURAL NEW ENGLAND

A

BY

CONSTANCE D. LEUPP

FOUR-DAY conference was recently held at at Amherst, Mass., under the auspices of the State Agricultural College, and inspiring testimony was given that rural New England is getting together, organizing, which means becoming efficient.

Æsop's Fables have been read for a hundred years by the pupils at the little red school houses, yet the moral of the fable of the bundle of sticks is only just beginning to find acceptance in the countryside. There There are many difficulties which are insurmountable for one farmer, but which are nevertheless easily handled by a group, even though none of the group is of as strong a personality as the one individual. New England has had plenty of sturdy individuals but the New England farmers' very individualism has led to failure and abandoned farms.

At this Amherst meeting the Rev. Silas Persons, a pastor in the little town of Casanova, N. Y., told how he had been in that town for seventeen years before he himself woke up. Then he was called upon suddenly to preach a funeral sermon four miles out in the country. He found himself in a room full of people whom he did not even know by sight.

"These people's ancestors went to church," he said to himself, "and they do not. The village church is responsible for the country neighborhood, and nobody is going to take its job."

He was wise enough to know that he would have to begin with some other than a church service to get them all working together, and he began with a field day which developed into a fair. It was not the usual sort of a fair devoted to horse-racing and fakir side-shows. It was the old-fashioned fair as it used to be before the idea

But in the last half-dozen years a change became commercialized. No admission was has begun.

- charged and nothing was sold on the

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