From this beginning the new temperance movement increased and spread with a marvelous rapidity.  The incidents attendant on the progress of the “Crusade” were often of a novel and exciting character.  Such an interference with their business was not to be tolerated by the liquor men; and they soon began to organize for defense and retaliation.  They not only had the law on their side, but in many cases, the administrators of the law.  Yet it often happened, in consequence of their reckless violations of statutes made to limit and regulate the traffic, that dealers found themselves without standing in the courts, or entangled in the meshes of the very laws they had invoked for protection.

In the smaller towns the movement was, for a time, almost irresistible; and in many of them the drink traffic ceased altogether.  But when it struck the larger cities, it met with impediments, against which it beat violently for awhile, but without the force to bear them down.  Our space will not permit us to more than glance at some of the incidents attendant on this singular crusade.  The excitement that followed its inauguration in the large city of Cleveland was intense.  It is thus described by Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton in her history of the Woman’s Crusade, to which we have already referred: 

HOW THE CRUSADERS WERE TREATED.

“The question was constantly asked:  ’Will the women of a conservative city of one hundred and fifty thousand go upon the street as a praying-band?’ The liquor-dealers said:  ’Send committees of two or three and we will talk with them; but coming in a body to pray with us brands our business as disreputable.’  The time came when the Master seemed to call for a mightier power to bear upon the liquor traffic, and a company of heroic women, many of them the wives of prominent clergymen, led by Mrs. W.A.  Ingham, said:  ‘Here am I; the Lord’s will be done.’

“On the third day of the street work, the whisky and beer interest seemed to have awakened to a full consciousness of the situation.  Drinkers, dealers and roughs gathered in large numbers on the street to wait for the praying women.  A mob, headed by an organization of brewers, rushed upon them, kicking them, striking them with their fists and hitting them with brickbats.  The women were locked in a store away from the infuriated mob, who, on the arrival of a stronger body of police, were dispersed, cursing and yelling as they went.  The next day, taking their lives in their hands, a larger company of women went out, and somewhat similar scenes were enacted.  Meantime, public meetings, called in the churches, were so crowded that standing room could not be found.  The clergy, as one man, came to the front.  Business men left their stores and shops, ministers their studies, and a thousand manly men went out to defend the praying women.  The military companies were ordered to be in readiness, resting on their arms; the police