The blue ribbon

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Great Social Change of which the

Blue Ribbon is Typical, i II. The Founder of the Blue Ribbon Movement, Francis Murphy, ... 31 III. The Making of a Blue Ribbon Orator,

Chapter I. The Great Social Change Of Which The Blue Ribbon Is Typical

In the year 1887, the jubilee year of Queen Victoria, Walter Besant, the well-known novelist and philanthropist, the man whose good fortune it was to originate the People's Palace, brought out a book entitled " Fifty Years Ago." The idea of the book is to contrast the life of the English people in 1837, when the Queen ascended the throne, with what it was fifty years after in the Queen's jubilee year.

The book naturally and appropriately opens with a sketch of the conspicuous points of difference distinguishing the life then from the life to-day. " Rank was still held in the ancient reverence," writes Mr. Besant ; " religion was still that of the eighteenth century Church ; the rights of labor were not yet recognized ; there were no trades' unions ; there were no railways to speak of ; nobody traveled except the rich ; their own country was unknown to the people; the majority of country people could not read or write ; the good old discipline of Father Stick and his children, Cat-o'- Nine-Tails, Rope's End, Strap, Birch, Ferule, and Cane, was wholesomely maintained ; landlords, manufacturers, and employers of all kinds did what they pleased with their own ; and the Blue Ribbon was unheard of."

In this last little sentence of seven words a great historical fact has been compressed. The idea of traveling thousands of miles by railway, of recognition of the rights of laboring men, or of modern methods of pedagogy, would have been no less strange to the people of the young queen's reign than the idea of voluntary total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages. The man who had then predicted the great influence of the modern temperance movement would have been counted by his neighbors a visionary lunatic, as surely as if he had predicted that people across the water in America would travel a thousand miles from New York to Chicago in twenty hours.

The symbol of this great change is the Blue Ribbon. That is the contribution of Francis Murphy to the nomenclature at least of the temperance movement. The Blue Ribbon is the " outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual state," and as such is now recognized on two continents.

The question is sometimes asked, What has temperance reform accomplished after all ? Saloons still abound in all large cities ; one of the chief duties of the policeman is still to keep the streets clear of drunkards ; the dockets of the petty courts are still crowded with prosecutions for breaches of the peace and other misdemeanors due to the drink habit ; the judges and juries of the higher courts are still kept busy with trials for murder and other terrible crimes originating from the same cause ; prisons are still filled with the victims of alcohol, and among the inmates of insane asylums are not a few of alcohol's other victims ; the expense thus entailed upon society amounts, directly and indirectly, to millions on millions of dollars annually ; the drinking habits of society and of the poorer classes still continue apparently unchecked ; some are tempted to state that the drinking of alcohol, in one form or another, is becoming on the whole more general, and is even extended to localities which have been free from it in the past.

This picture, though no doubt exaggerated, is dark enough when viewed only in its truthful aspects. It is a dark enough picture to warrant at times a feeling of hoplessness. But there is, as all appreciate who have studied the subject historically, a brighter side. To appreciate this brighter side we must look back and see how far the world, our modern world, has traveled since the first quarter of the cen-

4 THE BLUE RIBBOtf.

tury, when a systematic agitation of the duty of total abstinence was inaugurated.

Let us then turn back for a moment and see what was the condition of English society when Queen Victoria ascended the throne, when, as Mr. Besant says, " the Blue Ribbon was unheard of." In this same history of " Fifty Years Ago," Mr. Besant, including himself among the early subjects of the Queen, writes : " My friend, there is one thing in which we of the Thirties do greatly excel you of the Eighties. We can eat like plowboys, and we can drink like draymen. As for your nonsense about Apollinaris water, we do not know what it means ; and as for your not being able to take a simple glass of port, we do not in the least understand it. Not take a pint of port? Man alive! we can take two bottles, and never turn a hair." What a measure of change is that one allusion to Apollinaris water ! When one stops to think of the universality of its table use or that of other mineral waters, and when one takes into consideration the amount of alcoholics thus displaced as a table beverage, one feels that this small fact bears eloquent testimony to the change in the drinking habits of society.

Mr. Besant goes into particulars in an interesting manner. " As regards drink," he says, " — a question almost as delicate as that of religion — when it is reported that in London alone ^"3,000,000 were spent every year in gin, it seems a good deal of money to throw away with nothing to show for it. As for rum, brandy, and Hollands, the various forms of malt liquor, fancy drinks, and compounds, I shall speak of them more at length in discussing taverns. Suffice it here to call attention to the fact that there was no Blue Ribbon worn. Teetotalers there were, it is true, but in very small numbers ; they were not yet a power in the land ; there was none of the everlasting dinning about the plague spot, the national vice, and the curse of the age, to which we are now accustomed. Honest men indulged in a bout without subsequent remorse."

In discussing taverns, Mr. Besant says: " It is the fashion to lament the quantity of money still consumed in drink. But our drink bill is nothing in proportion, compared with that of fifty years ago. Thus, the number of visitors to fourteen great gin shops in London was found to average 3000 each per diem ; in Edinburgh there was a gin shop for every fifteen families ; in one Irish town of 800 people there were 88 gin shops; in Sheffield, thirteen persons were killed in ten days by drunkenness ; in London there was one public house to every fifty-six houses ; in Glasgow, one to every ten. Yet it was noted at the time that a great improvement could be observed in the drinking habits of the people. In the year 1742, for instance, there were 19,000,000 gallons of spirits consumed by a population of 6,000,000 — that is to say, more than three gallons a head every year ; or, if we take only the adult men, something like twelve gallons for every man in the year, which may be calculated to mean one bottle in five days. But a hundred years later the population had increased to 16,000,000, and the consumption of spirits had fallen to 8,250,000 gallons, which represents a little more than half a gallon, or four pints a head in a year. Or taking the adult men only, the average was two gallons and one-sixteenth a head, so that each man's pint bottle would have lasted him for three weeks. In Scotland, however, the general average was twentyseven pints a head, and, taking adults alone, thirteen gallons and a half a head ; and in Ireland six and a half gallons a head. It was noted, also, in the year 1837, tnat tne multiplication of coffee houses, of which there were 1600 in London alone, proved the growth of more healthy habits among the people.

" But," continues Mr. Besant, " though there was certainly more moderation in drink than in the earlier years of the century, the drink bill for the year 1837 was prodigious. A case of total abstinence was a phenomenon ; the thirst for beer was insatiable ; with many people, especially farmers, beer was taken with breakfast. Even in my own time — that is to say, when the Queen has been reigning for oneand-twenty years or so — there were still many undergraduates at Cambridge who drank beer habitually for breakfast, and at every breakfast party the tankard was passed around as a finish. Every farmhouse, every large country house, and many townhouse keepers brewed their own beer, just as they made their own wines, their own jam, and their own lavender water. Beer was universally taken with dinner ; even at great dinner parties some of the guests would call for beer, and strong ale was always served with the cheese. After dinner, only port and sherry, in middle class houses, were put upon the table. Sometimes Madeira or Lisbon appeared, but, as a rule, wine meant port or sherry, unless, as it sometimes happened, it meant cowslip, ginger, or gooseberry. Except among the upper class, claret was absolutely unknown, as were Burgundy, Rhine wines, Sauterne, and all other French wines. Champagne was regarded as the drink of the prodigal son. In the family circle it never appeared at all, except at weddings, and perhaps on Christmas Day. In fact, when people spoke of wine in those days, they generally meant port. They bought port by the hogshead, had it bottled and laid down."

Coming to the stronger beverages and their use in the year 1837, Mr. Besant writes : " As for the drinking of spirits, it was certainly much more common than it is now. Among the lower classes gin was the favorite — the drink of the women as much as of the men. Do you know why they call it ' blue ruin ' ? Some time ago I saw, going into a public house, somewhere near the West India Docks, a tall lean man, apparently five-and-forty, or thereabouts. He was in rags ; his knees bent as he walked, his hands trembled, his eyes were eager. And, wonderful to relate, the face was perfectly blue — not indigo blue, or azure blue, but of a ghostly, ghastly, corpse-like kind of blue, which made one shudder. Said my companion to me, ' That is gin.' We opened the door of the public house and looked in. He stood at the bar with a full glass in his hand. Then his eyes brightened, he gasped, straightened himself and tossed it down his throat. Then he came out, and he sighed as one who has just had a glimpse of some earthly paradise. He walked away with swift and resolute step, as if he purposed to achieve something mighty. Only a few yards farther along the road, but across the way, there stood another public house. The man walked straight to the door, entered, and took another glass, again with the quick gasp of anticipation, again with that sigh, as of a hurried peep through the gates barred with the sword of fire This man was a curious object of study. He went into twelve more public houses, each time with greater determination on his lips, and greater eagerness in his eyes.

" The last glass, I suppose, opened these gates for him and suffered him to enter, for his lips suddenly lost their resolution, his eyes lost there luster, he became limp, his arms fell heavily — he was drunk, and his face was bluer than ever. This was the kind of sight which Hogarth could see every day when he painted ' Gin Lane.' It was in the time when drinking shops had placards stuck outside to the effect that one might get drunk for a penny, and blind drunk for twopence. Next to gin, rum was the most popular. Its effects in the good old days were wonderful and awe-inspiring. It was the author and creator of those flowers now almost extinct, called grog-blossoms. You may see them depicted by the caricaturists of the Rowlandson time, but they survived until well past the middle of the century. The decay of the rum habit is marked in many other ways. Formerly, the toper half filled a thick, short rummer with spirit and poured upon it an equal quantity of water. The modern toper goes to a bar, gets half a wineglass of Scotch whisky, and pours upon it a pint of Apollinaris water. The ancient drank his grog hot, and with lemon and sugar, and sometimes spice. This made a serious business of the nightly grog. The modern takes his cold, even with ice, and without any addition of lemon.

io THE BLUE RIBBON.

Indeed, he squashes his lemon separately, and drinks the juice in Appollonaris, without any spirit at all, a thing abhorrent to his ancestor."

This, then, is the picture of England as it was when Victoria ascended the throne. The contrast between that England and the England of to-day, great as is to-day the curse of the drink habit, speaks for itself of the change wrought in public opinion by the agitation of the temperance question. And it is not a picture drawn by one who is himself a total abstinence advocate. Mr. Besant, at least so far as his personal habits go, is a man who believes in the moderate use of intoxicants ; and, so far as his publicly expressed opinion goes, there is nothing to warrant us in placing him among the advocates of total abstinence for others. For this reason the picture which he has drawn of the prevalence of the drink habit in an earlier England is all the more significant and impressive.

What was true of England early in the century, was equally true of America. The Rev. Dr. A. A. Miner, in a recent magazine article, thus describes the situation as it was on this side of the water : " Seventy-five years ago everybody drank. In towns of a thousand inhabitants a barrel of New England rum would be ' on tap ' at early morn and be sold out entire before breakfast. A score or two of drunkards would be the daily decoration of the

THE GREAT SOCIAL CHANGE. II

village taverns. The clergy and the deacons, with the rank and file of the church members, deemed it no disgrace to be more or less disguised with liquor even on public occasions. Ministers would tottle forth, weak in the knees, at dedications, installations, christenings, and funerals, deporting themselves as grateful visitors to the well-laden sideboards."

In proof of this Dr. Miner quotes the testimony given by the Rev. Dr. John Todd of Pittsfield in 1867, before a special committee of the Massachusetts legislature, that at the first funeral he attended as a minister they had rum or brandy sling, " and handed it around, first to the minister and then to the mourners to comfort them, and the bearers had a room by themselves. . . On one occasion, in a town he could mention, after the funeral service and before the coffin was carried out, they had the tumblers and decanters on the table and on the coffin, and were sweetening and mixing the liquor."

Corroborative evidence in abundance is easily accessible to show that such a statement of the drinking habits of society early in the century is not in the least exaggerated.

It may be interesting to review hastily some of the earlier movements by which the tone of society was improved and the initiative given toward the adoption of a higher social standard. What is believed to be the first temperance society of modern times is mentioned in the Federal Herald, a newspaper of Lansingburgh, N. Y., in its issue of July 13, 1789, in these words : " Upwards of two hundred of the most respectable farmers of the county of Litchfield, Conn., have formed an association to discourage the use of spirituous liquors, and have determined not to use any kind of distilled liquors in doing their farming work the ensuing season." During the next ten years or more various sermons were preached and tracts issued urging the necessity of temperance reform. In 1805 a number of paper manufacturers in Philadelphia, noticing the misery caused among their employees by the use of intoxicants, agreed to put forth every possible effort, to quote Watson, the historian of Philadelphia, " to restrain and prohibit the use of ardent spirits in their respective mills." The formation of the second modern temperance society followed shortly after the agreement of these Philadelphia manufacturers. It was instituted at Moreau, Saratoga County, N. Y., April 13, 1808. It was a social union, formed for the purpose of suppressing the tyranny of social custom. Its influence was largely local, but it indicated the direction in which good men's minds were turning all over the country. Coming down to 181 1 we find that steps were taken almost simultaneously at Philadelphia and Litchfield to mitigate the more terrible manifestations of the evil. In Philadelphia Dr. Rush, a physician who had been issuing pamphlets on the subject, appeared before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and urged the necessity of arousing the public mind to the imminent danger. As a result the Assembly appointed a committee composed of well-known clergymen and laymen, who were instructed '• to devise measures which, when sanctioned by the General Assembly, may have an influence in preventing some of the more numerous and threatening mischiefs which are experienced throughout our country." The report presented by this committee, and adopted by the Assembly, consisted principally of an appeal to all ministers to preach strong sermons upon the duty of temperance — but not by temperance meaning total abstinence.

In that same year at Litchfield the General Association of Connecticut (Congregational) appointed a committee for a similar purpose. The following year that committee reported that they found the evil tremendous and steadily increasing, but had no remedy to suggest. This impotent report aroused that lionhearted preacher and theologian, the Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher. He thus tells the story in his own words : " Blood started from my heart when I heard this, and I arose instantly and moved that another committee of three be appointed to report at this meeting on ways and means of arresting the tide of intemperance. This was immediately done. I was chairman, and on the following day brought in the report, and it was the most important paper that I ever wrote."

This report is noteworthy for its mildness from our modern point of view. It recommended: First, preaching on the subject ; second, abstaining from the use of ardent spirits at ecclesiastical meetings ; third, for church members, abstaining from unlawful traffic in ardent spirits, and from the fashion of furnishing them to guests on occasion of social visits ; fourth, for parents, abstaining from the ordinary use of ardent spirits in the family ; fifth, for employers, abstaining from giving liquor to employees, other and better drinks and additional money being substituted. Dr. Beecher excuses the mildness of this report when he says : " I was not headstrong then, but I was heart strong. We did not say a word about wine, because we thought that it was best in this sudden onset to tackle that which was most prevalent and deadly, and that it was as much as would be safe to take hold of one such dragon by the horn without tackling another. However, we resolved upon abstaining from wine, and generally did so in our families." Dr. Beecher records that as a result of this movement there was a notable diminution in the general use of intoxicants. The way was thus prepared for the true temperance movement, the total abstinence movement.

This beginning at Litchfield led, in 1813, to the formation of the Massachusetts Society for the Supression of Intemperance. This society included in its membership men of the highest character and social influence. Its avowed object, however, was simply to discountenance the " too free use of ardent spirits." It made but little headway because of the mildness of its policy. At this time, too (18 12), the Consociation of Fairfield County, Connecticut (Congregational), began the work of reform within its own body, excluded spirituous liquors from its meetings, and published an appeal against the drinking usages of society. This appeal is supposed to have been written by the Rev. Heman Humphrey, afterward president of Amherst College. It is noteworthy not only for its authorship, but because it contains one of the earliest of recorded utterances distinctly favoring total abstinence. It says : " The remedy we would suggest, particularly to those whose appetite for drink is strong and increasing, is a total abstinence from the use of all intoxicating liquors. This may be deemed a harsh remedy, but the nature of the disease absolutely requires it."

During the years 181 7 and 18 18 considerable progress was made in the matter of temperance all along the seaboard of New England, but the year 1826 marked an epoch in the advance of the reform. It was in this year that the Rev. Justin Edwards started an agitation which led to the organization of the American Temperance Society, which, it will be noted, was something more than a mere local or State organization. The pledge of this Society was total abstinence from ardent spirits, but not from all spirituous liquors. In this year, too, the Rev. Dr. Calvin Chapin of Rocky Hill, who was prominently identified with temperance work in Connecticut, took more advanced ground than had hitherto been occupied by temperance leaders. In a series of papers in the Connecticut Observer (now the Hartford Conrani) he advocated abstinence even from wine, beer, ale, and cider. This seemed extreme radicalism to many of his fellow-workers, but it set temperance people to thinking along progressive lines.

It was in 1826 also that Dr. Lyman Beecher preached in Litchfield his famous " Six Sermons " on temperance, which stirred the popular pulse as it had never been stirred before on this question. They had not been premediated. The wife of a favorite family in his congregation had appealed to him for help in saving a member of it who was fast going to perdition. Dr. Beecher supposed her to refer to her father. He was inexpressibly shocked to find that her husband, too, was addicted to the habit, and was in great danger.

Aroused by this discovery, he put into immediate action a plan, which had long lain dormant in his mind, for a series of temperance sermons, and sent forth his message from a heart and brain fused to white heat. He says of these sermons : " I wrote under such a power of feeling as never before or since. I never could have written them under other circumstances. They took hold of the whole congregation. Sabbath after Sabbath the interest grew, and became the most absorbing thing ever heard of before."

The impassioned rhetoric of these sermons has perhaps never been surpassed in the history of temperance appeal. Room must be made for this one short typical extract : " What if the cold blood oozed out and stood in drops upon the walls, and by preternatural art all the ghastly skulls and bones of the victims destroyed by intemperance were dimly seen haunting the distilleries and stores where they received their bane, following the track of the ship engaged in the commerce, walking the waves, flitting athwart the deck, sitting upon the rigging, and sending up from the hold within and tl.e waves without, groans and loud laments and wailings ! Who would attend such stores? Who would labor in such distilleries ? Who would navigate such ships ? Oh ! were the sky over our heads one great whispering gallery, bringing down about us all the lamentations and woe which intemperance creates, and the firm earth one sonorous medium of sound, bringing up around us from beneath the wailings of the damned whom the commerce in ardent spirits had sent thither, these tremendous realities, assailing our senses, would invigorate our conscience and give decision to our purpose of reformation. But these evils are as real as if the stones cried out of the wall, and the beams answered it ; as real as if day and night wailings were heard in every part of the dwelling, and blood and skeletons were seen upon every wall ; as real as if the ghostly forms of departed victims flitted about the ship as she passed over the billows ; and showed themselves nightly about stores and distilleries, and with unearthly voices screamed in our ears their loud laments. They are as real as if the sky overhead collected and brought about us all the notes of sorrow in the land, and the firm earth should open a passage for the wailings of despair to come up from beneath." It is no marvel that such weird intensity as this should have left an impress on the beginning of the temperance agitation which time can never obliterate.

Although the first American temperance society had been formed in 1826, the first national temperance convention was not held until 1833. The place was the City of Philadelphia, and the date was May 24.

There were 440 delegates present, representing nineteen States and one Territory. These delegates included the foremost workers and thinkers in the new reform. The resolutions adopted showed that the influences we have noted were doing their work, and declared that it was expedient to adopt the total abstinence pledge as soon as possible. But it was not until three years later at the second national temperance convention, which was held in Saratoga, that this declaration of expediency was given actual effect in the only consistent temperance position. By that convention a resolution, championed by Dr. Beecher and others, was unanimously adopted, declaring that henceforth the pledge of temperance should be total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors. The temperance reform in the United States was now finally organized on a permanent basis, and for effective, lasting work. In New York State there were at this time, or soon after, some 1200 total abstinence societies, with a membership approximating 130,000. In New England more than half the population of many towns and villages was included in the membership of similar societies. In short, from this time on the temperance movement developed naturally and steadily.

It only remains to say, so far as the United States is concerned, a passing word on the Washingtonian movement, which, in time, pressed so closely upon the movement we have been considering as to be almost a part of it. This movement had its origin in Baltimore in April, 1840. A club of six inebriates, which had regular meetings in a tavern, appointed a committee one night to go and hear a noted temperance lecturer who was speaking in the city. The committee brought back a report in favor of temperance, and, in the discussion which followed, the landlord of the tavern took a lively part, denouncing all temperance lecturers as hypocrites. This provoked opposition and argument, the result being that those six inebriates formed themselves into a total abstinence society on the spot, and adopted the name of " The Washington Society." Naturally so extraordinary an event was reported everywhere the country over, and, wherever it was reported, it set other drinking men to thinking, and led to the formation of similar clubs. The time was ripe for the success of the Washingtonian movement. Previous movements had made a deep impression. Statistics show that in 1840 not one-half the quantity of distilled spirits was consumed by each person in the United States that had been consumed nine years earlier.

There was a novelty in the new movement which proved " catching," and added greatly to its effectiveness. The Washingtonians made much use of personal experience. This was a unique departure from the conventional method of sermon and studied appeal. The reclaimed drunkard arose and told the story of his new moral life, and that story in its homely statement of actual fact went straight to the hearts of his listeners with a newly discovered power. The mistake of the Washingtonians was in repudiating an alliance with other temperance reformers, and especially with clergymen and the religious element. Christian men in turn were thus driven to withdraw their co-operation. The permanent influence of the movement thus, unfortunately, proved much shorter lived than it should have been. But the statistics of what it accomplished, when in the full sweep of its influence, are truly remarkable.

In New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, 34,000 signatures to the Washingtonian pledge were obtained, many being those of confirmed inebriates. In Boston the Washingtonians numbered 6000 ; in New Orleans, 6000 ; in Mobile, 2000 ; in Ohio, 60,000 ; in Kentucky, 30,000 ; and in Pennsylvania, 29,000. These figures give some idea of what this unique movement accomplished while it lasted.

Leaving America and turning our attention to the other side of the water we find, what will appear at first sight very strange, that

Ireland was the first European country in which the temperance doctrine took root. In 1818, one Jeffery Sedwards, a nailer of Skibbereen, County Cork, who had probably in some way heard of the American movement, became an abstainer. He induced others of his companions to join him, and they formed a society which was governed by written rules, and had monthly meetings. In 1824 they built what was probably the first temperance hall in the world. It was 50 feet long by 20 wide, and 16 feet high. This modest structure was for the sole use of this abstinence society. From it the members made missionary excursions into the surrounding towns, and sometimes as many as 500 walked in their processions.