I congratulate the friends of temperance upon the progress both wings have made since the beginning of their flight.

The first temperance pledge we have any record of ran thus:  “I solemnly promise upon my word of honor I will abstain from everything that will intoxicate, except at public dinners, on public holidays and other important occasions.”  The first prohibitory law was a local law in a village on Long Island and ran thus:  “Any man engaged in the sale of intoxicating liquors, who sells more than one quart of rum, whiskey or brandy to four boys at one time shall be fined one dollar and two pence.”

A sideboard without brandy or rum was an exception, while the jug was imperative at every log-raising and in the harvest field.  It was said of even a Puritan community,

  “Their only wish and only prayer,
  In the present world or world to come,
  Is a string of Eels and a jug of rum.”

When Doctor Leonard Bacon was installed pastor of the First Congregational Church in New Haven, Conn., in 1825, free drinks were ordered at the bar of the hotel, for all visiting members, to be paid for by the church.  Today all protestant churches declare against the drink habit and the drink sale.  Pulpits are thundering away against the saloon.  Children are studying the effects of alcohol upon the human system in nearly every state in the Union.  Train loads of literature are pouring into the homes of the people.  A mighty army of as godly women as ever espoused a cause is battling for the home, against the saloon.  The business world is demanding total-abstainers, and fifty millions of people in the United States are living under prohibitory laws.

Not only in this but in every civilized land the cause of temperance is growing.  Recently in France it was found there were more deaths than births, which meant France was dying.  A commission was appointed to look into the causes.  When the report was made, alcohol headed the list.  Now by order of the government linen posters are put up in public buildings, and on these in blood red letters are these warnings:  “Alcohol dangerous; alcohol chronic poison; alcohol leads to the following diseases; alcohol is the enemy of labor; alcohol disrupts the home!”

Who would have thought an Emperor of Germany would ever “go back” on beer?  Emperor William in an address to the sailors recommended total-abstinence and forbid under penalty the giving of liquor to soldiers in the world’s greatest war.  The Czar of Russia has put an end to the government’s connection with the manufacture of intoxicating liquors, and our Secretary of the Navy has banished it from the ships and navy yards.  The New York Sun says:  “The business world is getting to be one great temperance league.”  For many years it was confined to the realm of morals, but today it is recognized as a great economic question and the business world is joining the church world in solving the liquor problem.