CHAPTER XVI.

TEMPERANCE LITERATURE.

The greatest and most effective agency in any work of enlightenment and reform is the press.  By it the advanced thinker and Christian philanthropist is able to speak to the whole people, and to instruct, persuade and influence them.  He can address the reason and conscience of thousands, and even of hundreds of thousands of people to whom he could never find access in any other way, and so turn their minds to the right consideration of questions of social interest in regard to which they had been, from old prejudices or habits of thinking, in doubt or grievous error.

No cause has been more largely indebted to the press than that of temperance reform.  From the very beginning of agitation on the subject of this reform, the press has been used with great efficiency; and to-day, the literature of temperance is a force of such magnitude and power, that it is moving whole nations, and compelling Parliaments, Chambers of Deputies and Houses of Congress to consider the claims of a question which, if presented fifty years ago, would have been treated, in these grave assemblages, with levity or contempt.

For many years after the reform movement began in this country, the press was used with marked effect.  But as most of the books, pamphlets and tracts which were issued came through individual enterprise, the editions were often small and the prices high; and as the sale of such publications was limited, and the profit, if any, light, the efforts to create a broad and comprehensive temperance literature met with but feeble encouragement.  But in 1865, a convention was called to meet at Saratoga to consider the subject of a national organization so comprehensive and practical that all the friends of temperance in religious denominations and temperance organizations could unite therein for common work.  Out of this convention grew the

NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY AND PUBLICATION HOUSE,

which began, at once, the creation of a temperance literature worthy of the great cause it represented.  The president of this society is Hon. William E. Dodge, of New York.  The vice-presidents are ninety-two in number, and include some of the most distinguished men in the country; clergymen, jurists, statesmen, and private citizens eminent for their public spirit and philanthropy.  It has now been in existence some twelve years.  Let us see what it has done in that time for temperance literature and the direction and growth of a public sentiment adverse to the liquor traffic.  We let the efficient corresponding secretary and publishing agent, J.N.  Stearns, speak for the association he so ably represents.  Its rooms are at No. 58 Reade Street, New York.  Referring to the initial work of the society, “It was resolved,” says Mr. Stearns, “that the publishing agent should keep ’all the temperance