The way out, a solution of the temperance question

Front matter

Wa re 9

Hrom the Library of Professor Benjamin Breckinridge Warkeld Beqwathed by him in the Library of Princeton Chenlogiral Seminary

THE WAY OUT.

Introduction

For twenty-five years I have known Rev. Hugh Montgomery. He is one of the livest of Irishmen. Witty, quaint, bold, eccentric, but withal tender, gentle, and persistent; as devoted to humanity as Wilberforce, as incessant in labor as Wesley, as abundant in resources as General Grant, and as true to God masot Paul,

As a minister, as a reformer, and as a friend, Mr. Montgomery always has had a large following. He soon gets a hearing in every new community entered. In reform work he is always at the front, and with him counsel many public men of large influence.

A radical of radicals, yet he is not hidebound, dry, or bitter, but cheerful, sympathetic, and tactful. The variety of his expedients, the freshness of his methods, and the buoyancy of his spirits is wonderful. In his hands no enterprise drags.

Probably no man is so much feared and at the same time so much revered by the liquor dealers as is Montgomery. He has been the most efficient of all the men I have known in bringing such offenders to justice, and multitudes who have been ensnared in the toils of the alcohol demon call him ‘‘ blessed.”

If any man can show ‘‘the way out” of this evil of intemperance Mr, Montgomery can do it. He knows

6 Introduction.

the case, not as a mere theorist, but as a practical expert from personal inspection and contact.

I am glad this ‘‘apostle of reform” has put his views into a volume that the public may have the benefit of them. His style is ofttimes quaint; abrupt, and epigrammatical, but altogether his own. It is certain that at the present time the prime need in the temperance reform is work by fundamental, practical methods such as he outlines.

DANIEL DORCHESTER.

Natick, Mass.

CON- FEN TS.

’ PAGE EDITORIAL NOTE, . : , : : é 23 INTRODUCTION, : : : é : ; : 5 CHAPTER I, THE TEMPERANCE LEG, : : ; eat fe Be FOLITICAL LEG, : A : : 26 Lis THE RELIGIOUS iLEG, . ; : : eS IV. ENTHUSIASM, . z : : ; ; 59 V. CHRISTIANITY IN POLITICS, . ; : ek: VI. CHURCH UNION IN ANTISALOON WORK, . 71 VII. THE PRESS: On the Liquor and Romish Question, . ae SBE On the Treatment of Woman, . : : g2 VIII. MISCHIEF FRAMED BY A LAw, . : ~ 1.99 IX. CAN THE LAW BE ENFORCED? : : 119 X. THE PREJUDICE AGAINST DETECTIVES, Sh Be XI. AN OUTDOOR SERMON, . : : 137 XII. ROMANISM NOT THE RELIGION OF ees 145 XIII. RuM, RAGS, AND WRETCHEDNESS, ; . 159 XIV. HORRORS OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC, : 166 XV. PAUL’S PORTRAIT OF A RUMSELLER, . Boh '3.* XVI. THE DEVIL’S FIT PARTNER, ; : 179 XVII. THE RADICAL METHOD THE WAY Cue wod XVIII. Gop’s STAMP ON IMPURITY, . : 190 XIX. AN APPEAL TO THE MINISTERS OF THE Na- TION eo. : ; ; ; : ; 197 KAP OING PERILS: OFT, : ; : : : . 204

XXI. THE LoRD’sS MONEY, e ‘ . ; 206

CHAPTER

XXII.

XXIII.

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XXV,.

XXVI.

XXVIT.

XXVIII.

XXIX, 2», BOS XXXI,

XXXII.

XXXII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

AXXVIII.

XXXIX, XL.

Contents

PaGE THE VALUE OF A SOUL, j . 218 «“ A GoopD CREATURE OF GOD,” . : 216 PROFIT AND LOSS, . 5 ’ “ , 2 THANKSGIVING, . : : : : 220 CHRIST’S HABITS, . ; ; : on ST. PATRICK IN HISTORY ws. ST. PATRICK IN ROMANCE, . ; ; eer THE WORK OF A “ raae: ; . 242 WHO IS THE GUILTIER? . : ; 246 AN EXPOSITION OF LAw, f . 248 AN APPEAL TO MODERATE DRINKERS TO VOTE NO LICENSE, : ‘ : 254 DELUSIONS, . . : : : . 250 AcPLEA FOR A NO) VOTES Ie : 262 ‘‘AN HOUR IN MONTGOMERY’S OFFICE,” . 268 LABOR REFORM, : ‘ ; : 270 HERE AND THERE, . j : : , 262 FISHING IN A MUDDY POND, . 3 288 FUTURE PUNISHMENT, . ; « 202 TOTAL ABSTINENCE THE WAY Own ; 301

HOLINESS, - : : F : 2 ohe

CHAPTER I. The Temperance Leg

My life might be considered under the similitude of a three-legged stool, the legs being Temperance, Politics, and Religion. I was born on the old Montgomery estate, which has been three hundred years in the family, near Enniskillen, County of Fermanagh, in the. north of Ireland, in the year 1839, of excellent parents, named Alexander and Hannah. Originally from France, the Montgomery family is known principally for its military record through well-nigh a thousand years. The name “ Hugh ” began with the family and has continued through all its branches. They were Protestants, and bore their full share in the sacrifice and heroism by which the reformed faith had so largely penetrated the British kingdom.

Their daily lives were in harmony with their profession, and their children graduated from the best of schools—a godly home.

When I was fourteen years of age I came to America, and on account of the famine in Ireland, which brought my father into poor circumstances, I was obliged to work. I lived in Lower Canada, and was employed in astore where they had groceries on one side, dry goods on the other, and a bar in the back end, which was then a department of all stores that did any business.

The proprietor was a religious rumseller ; he belonged to the church, and one night he put me at the bar to wait on the customers. Previous to that time I had never heard a lecture on temperance; | had only had the advice of a godly mother, who impressed on me the declaration of Scripture that “no drunkard ” could inherit the kingdom of God. That night an Irishman got drunk in our place, and, as usual, he was boisterous in his talk and very wicked and lewd in his language. This pious rumseller didn’t want that kind of talk on his premises, and so took him by the collar to put him out, but couldn’t do it, and called on me to help him. He finally got him out of the door and threw him into a snowbank five or six feet deep, and then kicked him.

I got along very comfortably about it until I got on my knees that night to repeat the prayer my mother taught me. I got through with the Lord’s Prayer all right, but when I came to that prayer that mother taught me, which I hope I never shall get too big to repeat, “Now I lay me down to sleep,’ I couldn’t repeat it. There was that poor unfortunate man before my eyes. Then I thought, if he gets frozen to death he will be damned; or if he goes home and destroys the life of his wife, as he will be liable to do, then what will become of him? I had the tremors that night without drinking rum. I lay all night without sleep, and I went to my employer in the morning, and I said to him: “Sir, God being my helper, I never will

The Temperance Leg. el again, under any circumstances, deal out a drop of liquor to any man, nor will I ever touch it myself.” That is the way I commenced this warfare against the liquor traffic, and I have kept it up forty years, and intend to till the infernal business is dead. The liquor seller did not discharge me, and respected me as an honest crank in that tippling age.

For years after this episode I was a champion of total abstinence, and influenced many of my companions to walk in the same safe road.

It was an adage in my childhood that an Irishman was sure of three drinks, if he failed to get in any more. One when he was born, “to set the hair;’’ another at his wedding, ‘‘to show how much he loves his wife;”’ and the third at his death, ‘‘so as to scatter the gloom of purgatory and stil] the pains.”

This boy of fourteen who refused to sell liquor continued stanch in his principles and would ‘ touch fot, taste not, handle not,” in the midst of a dissipated community till he reached his majority.

In 1860 I came to Littleton, N. H. My temperance work was blended with my religious work, and contributed to my usefulness among the people, and the intensity of my religious life made it impossible for me ever after to compromise with the drinking custom, and for forty years I piled up facts and legal weapons and fought “this gigantic crime of crimes.”’

In 1862, at Newbury, Vt., my trial was greatly intensified when a tipsy man met me, hugged me in his arms, and blubbered out, ‘* You're the kind of a minister I like. You give us the pure Gospel of the Son of God, and don’t mix it up with temperance or politics.” I then and there resolved that I would mix it. In many States and on both sides the sea I have presented this cause in all its aspects and relations, not less than twice and sometimes ten times a week for thirty-five years, my audiences ranging from the rustics of the ‘“‘ way back”’ schoolhouse to the elite of London, in the largest auditorium of the world. In these three thousand five hundred or more speeches every phase of this wide question, physiological, social, moral, industrial, legal, political, and religious, has been thoroughly canvassed to the conviction of unbiased minds, while even liquor sellers by the hundred have been forced to exclaim, ‘‘ Well, Montgomery’s honest, anyway.”

From preaching temperance I was soon led to more vigorous efforts against the liquor evil. Some of the incidents which led me to take the matter into the courts may be of interest. :

The first was when a reformed man who had received fifty dollars from an absent son was enticed into a “speak easy,” got drunk, and I found him beating his pious wife, whose blood was running over her body to her feet. She went to the rumseller and begged him not to sell Colley more rum. He responded to her plea with the vilest epithets, and set a big dog on her, to her great peril and alarm. I went to the selectmen of the town to close up the dirty hole, and got the reply, ‘We deplore the whole thing, but Clark [the rumseller] is a Republican, the nation is in danger, and it will not do to” hurt the party and risk an election. We can’t do

The Temperance Leg. es anything.” I replied, ‘‘ While we need to save the country, we need help to protect suffering humanity.” Next Sunday all these facts: were published from the pulpit. This incident fixed my decision that these foul dens can only be suppressed by unflinching use of law, so I tried it on Clark and bottled up the only grogshop in town.

In the towns of Piermont and Grantham my aid enabled the town officials to suppress the ‘speak easies.” In Seabrook, a suburb of Newburyport, the drunken town of the State, I found Frank Jones’s lieutenants in open and defiant rebellion, and the place was noted for squalor, vice, and rags. Meeting a parishioner under the swim of rum, I saluted him: ‘ Well, Dudley, what's, the matter?” “O, I have got the colic.”

‘‘ Nonsense, a man don’t have the colic in his legs.” Dudley replied, “You attack the liquor dealers at the wrong end. They don’t care a snap if you pray your kneepans off, so long as you don’t prosecute them.”

I took the reproof as a bit of wisdom. While pondering this matter,a man woke me up in the morning: ‘‘Sir, I have criticised you severely for meddling with that which is none of your business, but my boy of sixteen came home drunk last night, fell over a lamp, and came near burning himself and the house up. I have a few thousand dollars saved by hard toil, but I am willing to sacrifice my money and democracy that the rumshops may be shut up.”’

I answered, ‘“That’s a noble resolve, but it would have been wiser to have come to it before he was burned.”

P»

14 The Way Ot.

I now felt the obligation, which every conscientious citizen ought to bear, to make these wolves obey the law. Summoning to court at Exeter about forty citizens and two selectmen with whom some of my own converts had drank and played cards, I persuaded the State solicitor to have them testify one by one, the rest excluded from the room, and got forty indictments against the five liquor dealers—such a dose of law that they did not venture to open again during my stay. This resulted in the grandest reformation that ever occurred in this section. I also attended more temperance meetings than the four other ministers put together, and, curiously enough, celebrated more marriages and funerals than all of them. At my departure the liquor dragons held a high jubilee ; but they shouted before they were out of the woods. About six months after I returned and gave them a similar dose of bitters. One of the witnesses was tried and convicted for perjury at this same court for his testimony in the defense.

The shadow of this history cast itself before me to Greenland, N. H., my next appointment. The rummies here, like Davy Crockett’s coon, shouted, “Are you Montgomery? Well, then, don’t shoot, we ll come right down.”

The Portsmouth Times, Frank Jones’s journal, said that Montgomery would set a half barrel of flour, a pair of boots on it, and a chromo added, to induce drunkards to get religion, because so many of the drunkards were converted there. Many indignant Democrats stopped the paper. In contrast with the chromo theory, we give an illustration of the means sr

The Temperance Leg. 15 which were successfully used. Winning a little ragged girl to me with a silver coin, who could not be caught with candy, I gained her confidence and secured her attendance at Sunday school. The father was putting her to bed, and had to listen to her evening prayer; she earnestly cried out, “O God, take this nasty whisky out of my papa, and put thy Holy Spirit into his heart.” This brought conviction to the hearts of the father and mother, and worked out the conversion of eleven heads of families who were intemperate.

At Great Falls, which had been one of the most debauched and rum-sodden communities in New England, I had a great variety of tragical episodes.

First, I secured the cooperation of the agent of the mills, so that all tipplers who neglected or spoiled their work would not be allowed in the mill unless they signed my temperance pledge and told me where they got their liquor. This furnished the best ammunition for the war, and gave direct testimony for convicting lawbreakers. The officers, who respected their oaths, cooperated faithfully, so that the gin peddlers were driven to great straits, and had to use the most elaborate devices to supply their thirsty customers. Some carried the stuff around in tin bosoms under their jackets. This enforced prohibition had a most happy effect on the population, socially, industrially, financially. For instance, the aid to outside poor dropped from eight thousand to one thousand dollars in a year. The mill agent said that his three thousand operatives netted thirty dollars each per year more to the corporation. A splendid reformation was begun in which all the churches shared, and a new society was built up on the east side of the river. The Rev. A. J. Church was the occasion of my transfer to another field of work. He shall tell how it came about:

“In 1877 my presiding elder used to come and say, ‘ What shall I do for Norwich? I wish we could do something for Norwich; they have had our brightest young preachers for years, and the churches are going the wrong way all the time; thin congregations, few conversions, societies disheartened, property running down.’ I listened to this plaintive strain two years, when I answered, ‘Send for my Irishman.’ ‘Well, whois he?’ I told him. ‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘he will never do. They are so scholarly and refined that they would not listen to a man whose rhetoric limps and whose grammar is broken. O, no, he cannot help me.’ ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘if their faith stands in literary taste and finished manners, let them godown. This man can accomplish as much as anyone in New England with a fair chance, for he is a man of energy and resources. If your people wish a preacher to convert, and not a neat performer to entertain them, he will fill their demand.’ After close querying and doubting he authorized me to send for Mr. Montgomery without stipulated salary or conditions, except they should find no fault with him the first quarter. In one year the handful in old Central was a crowd demanding extra chairs, and his pastorate of three years is the brightest chapter in its chronicles. The church dressed up in fine shape, a new roof, a one thousand five hun-

The Temperance Leg. inf dred dollar organ, a membership doubled, a chapel built on the west side, generous benevolences, a debt for current expenses of other years canceled, more dissipated men reformed than the same period ever brought about in the Rose of New England, are some of its items. His first year they consecrated five thousand dollars to God’s service. His genial tact in dealing with eccentric people is shown in his success with Father Bently, the most liberal and ‘set’ man in the church. He always hotly opposed the organ scheme, even driving away noble families who offered to put in an organ free. He declared ‘it was a device of the devil,’ and he ‘ would as soon hear a two-year-old bull roar when his tail was twisted as to hear an organ in the church; there is as much worship in one as the other.’

“When Montgomery got through with him fifty dollars of his money had gone into that organ, and he listened to it every Sunday till his infirmities shut him out from the house of God.”’

That there was hard work to be done at Norwich may be judged from this program of a single Sunday. Ato A.M.I held a spirited reform meeting in one of the largest halls in the city. At 10:30 A. M. I preached my best sermon of the day. At twelve a large Bible class, sometimes one hundred present. Many drunkards and others were converted. AtthreeI preached or found asubstitute at the Tabernacle. On pleasant Sabbath evenings I — spoke to crowds on the wharf at six. At half past seven I preached in the church; and these six taxing services were so effective that few Sabbaths passed without signers to the pledge and accessions to the church. There were four meetings in the week which I attended if in town. In addition I published The Vim, which cost about twenty dollars a week, and was paid for by out-of-town lectures. I delivered about as many temperance lectures in New England as the State agents, and the congregations seemed anxious to hear me a second time. Another achievement of the three years was the prosecution and conviction of over two hundred liquor sellers, rebels against the laws of Connecticut—more than any attorney or committee had ever secured in the same time—and holding those who sold by license in terror-stricken obedience to stipulated conditions. As prosecuting agent my jurisdiction extended over two cities, Norwich and New London, and twenty-one small towns. During two years of my pastorate, many times going to the towns before dawn, I would arrange my forces at daylight to search every suspected den. Seizing their bottles, barrels, and stuff, I would have them arrested and tried, and as soon as they found I could not be scared or bought, the larger portion of the culprits would plead guilty and take their punishment on the spot. This shows that prohibition not only prohibits, but that it also prevents a large part of the accursed traffic where men are in earnest to make it and care as much for the public weal and honor as they do for their ease and dignity. Dr. Leander T. Chamberlain found after careful analysis that no license during this period had reduced criminal and pauper expenses two thirds in New London County.

Half a dozen leading citizens heard some one say,

The Temperance Leg. 19

“ Montgomery is going away.” ‘ For what reason? ’ “Three years is all his Church allows in one place.” “Go away?” they all exclaimed; “no, never!” That old hero, Moses Peirce said, “ Go away? no, he must _not go away. He shall not go away. Why, Norwich would go back to where it was. He has done morethan any other man here.’’ So I was engaged to ask Conference to be appointed to a little church and be free for this temperance work. The citizens supplied me with an office and clerk, and paid him two thousand dollars a year.

Some one suggested that Dr. Palmer write out a contract and rules for my guidance. That noble benefactor, John F. Slater, exclaimed, “‘ Not a line will I sign of anything of the kind. Here he has done magnificent work three years without any contract or backing in his own way, and paid his own bills! Send him out on this mission with only this limit and charge, ‘Go for ’em, and we will pay the bills.’ ”’

“For six years from that time,’ writes a friend, ““Mr. Montgomery went on seeking the lost, lifting up the weak and broken, reforming the fallen and helpless, preaching all over New England to sublime reformation, making life a joy to many who were sick and sad, and making it a burden to those who kept what Father Griffith denounced as the ‘Sinks of iniquity and schools of hell.’”

Securing one hundred convictions a year I made the liquor sellers’ contributions to the county treasury large, and the profits of the dirty trade very small. Their feelings were very bitter. While making a search in Baltic, some rum miscreant, with intent to kill, flung a four-pound stone on my head from above, knocking me down, and disabling me for months. I resigned my position because I thought it incumbent on me to do so. In accepting it a series of most complimentary resolutions were passed, closing with these words: ‘“‘ He has fulfilled the duties of his mission with most self-sacrificing fidelity, with great wisdom and kindness, and with the most praiseworthy efficiency; and we would hereby express our profound appreciation of the high value of his services, and the great benefit they have been to the interests of morality and charity in Norwich, and to the general welfare of our community.’’ The committee that signed it represented probably as much wealth and character as any group of men in the place.

Perhaps it was something in my old country blood that generally helped me out of tight places. On one occasion a crowd of angry Irishmen had come to the wharf meeting with pockets full of stones to fusilade me and rush me into the river. The chief of police gave warning beforehand, and begged me as I loved my life not to go. But the service went on. A crowd of the roughs grouped about heard me say, “It is interesting to look into the faces of so many of my countrymen. There is one grand quality about Irishmen, they are always devout. Unlike so many of the Yankees, they are always religious, if not pious.” Following a vivid picture of Mary, the holy mother, seeking her resurrected Son, I shouted, ‘‘ Where is the Irishman who would not promptly take off his hat at the mention of the holy mother and her Son, the

The Temperance Leg. Z1

Saviour of the world?” Instantly every Irish head was bare, and everyone was attentive to the service. Then I said, ‘‘See these Yankees, who have not respect enough for the occasion to take off their hats,” when one Irishman hunched his neighbor and said, ‘‘ Begorra, don’t he give it to ’em?”’

Dr. Leonard Woolsey Bacon said one day toa wholesale liquor dealer, ‘‘ You could well afford to send ey to Europe fora year and pay all his expenses.’

Ves; we could; she reslicd: “and we would be

mighty glad to do it too, if he would only let us alone.”

A few months after I left Norwich I addressed a large audience at Worcester, Mass., on the enforcement of law. At its close Dr. D. O. Mears, the most influential clergyman in the city, said, “I believe that God has decreed that this man shall be here,’ and moved that all who were in favor of calling Montgomery to this place should rise. The whole audience affirmed the motion with cheers. A committee was appointed to secure a transfer; after six weeks’ consideration I took up quarters in Worcester, planted my batteries, and opened fire.

A Worcester paper gives this picture of the first public demonstration: ‘‘Curiosity was on tiptoe last Sunday to hear what Montgomery had to say. There was a feeling that he would not have the nerve to tell out in public meeting the names of hotels and drug stores that he found in open violation of law. Others believed he would do it. Mechanics’ Hall was crowded like a sardine box, though the largest hall in the commonwealth. Hundreds, and some say thousands, went away. All classes of society were present... . Rumsellers had a large representation; more than sixty of those in the liquor business were present. . . . The temperance people with hardly an exception think Montgomery is the right man for the work, and they propose to stand by him and see him through. A man of wealth and influence said, ‘The present movement is the most practical one that I have ever known. It means business. Another said, ‘The temperance tide was never so high in Worcester as at the present time.’

“Professor Fuller, of the Polytechnic School, introduced him in an eloquent speech.

“Some questioned the propriety of his reading out in public the names of the druggists and liquor sellers whom he had caught selling. Others thought that was all right and proper, and others insisted that he ought to prosecute them. Montgomery explained to the people at this meeting that he did not make these purchases as an official or a detective, but for his own information. But if the city marshal sees fit to take up the matter it is open to him to do so. If, however, they are caught selling liquor hereafter this ammunition is ready for service. His explanation was satisfactory, and all approved the operation. A most ludicrous variety of opinions concerning Montgomery and his mission were given in interviews with the liquor sellers during the succeeding week, but it is safe to predict that the hotel keepers and druggists will not frame his picture to hang upon their walls, and they frankly stated they would contribute liberally to buy him off.”

The Temperance Leg. Zo

Now for want of room the meetings were adjourned to the rink, which would seat six thousand people, and Sunday afternoons each Sunday school of the city which was organized as a No License League marched from its church in a body to the rink. Every Sabbath the rink was filled. A grand chorus choir led the devotion, and to the throng I related a chapter of the doings of the week, closing each address with an earnest appeal in behalf of total abstinence and prohibition. Local speakers rendered efficient service in this splendid educational campaign.

The reports of the work in Worcester going out through the State created a desire for a like agitation everywhere. Answering an invitation for each town and ward to send two delegates to a grand State rally, there came together the best temperance representative body ever gathered in the Bay State. Here was organized the Massachusetts No License League, and a demand went forth which was echoed so heartily from all parts of the State that the Legislature was forced to submit the Constitutional Amendment to a vote of the people. The representative committee of sixteen which was elected to select officers for the State League unanimously requested the Worcester people to surrender their agent for general of this campaign. After deliberation they consented to this arrangement, stipulating only that he must reside in Worcester still, in order to render aid and to counsel them in their local work. Addressing more than one thousand audiences, making up more than half a million of people, holding private conferences almost nightly before or after the lectures, furnishing something for the press almost every day, taking collections enough to pay all the expense of my own campaign, and pressing these matters with the most urgent motives of humanity, economy, patriotism, and religion, made up my record of service for the next two years anda half. Welcomed to nearly all the Protestant pulpits of the State, greeted with kindest hospitality and cheerfully assisted by all classes of temperance people, it developed a strength of conviction and a unity of action which promises to carry on the reform in the Bay State to a complete and final victory over this ‘infernal business.”’