1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



678 



in our land. A woman who has, perhaps, 

 a family of bright children, may know what 

 is wanted in managing the affairs of the na- 

 tion as well as her husband does, because 

 she is a mother. 



Now, with this preface I want to give you 

 the contents of a leaflet that the author. Miss 

 Genevieve Blair Sackett, a beautiful, bright, 

 and talented woman, placed in my hands. 

 Miss Sackett was called to deliver an address 

 at our church on the 25th of September. 

 The Ohio W. C. T. U. placed her at the cap- 

 ital of our State, and authorized her to look 

 after the interests of the mothers in the af- 

 fairs of the government.* She has the 

 hearty indorsement of the Ohio Anti-saloon 

 League. Just before her address she hand- 

 ed me a little tract; and after I read it over 

 she confessed (when questioned) that she 

 was the author of it. 



PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN POLITICS. 



Why do we build reformatories, jails, penitenti- 

 aries, poorhouses, and orphanages, and license the 

 liquor-dealers to furnish the inmates for them? 



Why do we maintain a strict national quarantine 

 against idiots, paupers, insane, and criminals from 

 abroad, and license 250,000 liquor-dealers to manu- 

 facture the same brand of human wreakage at 

 home? 



Why do we levy taxes to support orphans and 

 widows, and license the murder of husbands and 

 fathers? There are 865,000 whisky-made orphans In 

 the United States. Why, Mr. Voter, why? 



Why do we maintain 275 life-saving stations at an 

 annual cost of one and a half millions, and at the 

 same time license 250,000 life-destroying stations at 

 a cost of two and a half billions? 



Why do we license the destruction of untold mil- 

 lions? The liquor industry is the only inverted in- 

 dustry we have. Other industries build wealth of 

 the nation by taking a raw product and turning 

 out a finished product worth five or ten times as 

 much. The liquor industry takes the raw product, 

 boys, and turns out the finished product, thieves, 

 murderers, degenerates, insane, and imbeciles. It 

 costs approximately S2400 to clothe and educate a 

 boy, and we license the destruction of one boy out 

 of every five. 



Why do liquor-dealers have more direct influence 

 in politics than educators? Is it. as one of our 

 greatest statesman has recently said: " Because the 

 nation sjjends four times as much for liquor as it 

 does for education?" Is it not rather because one- 

 half of our citizens are disfranchised, the half com- 

 prising citizens whose votes could not be bought nor 

 controlled? Why not let the women vote? 



Why should not the paramount business interests 

 which are diametrically opposed to the liquor bus- 

 ness be given consideration by our voters and law- 

 makers? The money invested in breweries, distil- 

 leries, and saloons in the United States is small 

 compared to the money invested in farming, manu- 

 facturing, merchandising, and transportation. 

 Take away our railroads, and our cities languish; 

 manufacturing and merchandising are soon at a 

 standstill; take away our farms, and the people per- 

 ish from lack of food; but take away our saloons, 

 and the health, happiness, longevity, and prosperi- 

 ty of our nation are increased tenfold. 



Why not let the more than twelve million moth- 

 ers in the United States answer at the ballot-box 

 which we shall conserve — our breweries or our boijsf 

 Before the civil war a heavy penalty was imposed 

 for furnishing liquor to a slave boy (who represent- 

 ed an investment of several hundred dollars) on 

 the ground that it impaired his usefulness and was 

 a willful destruction of property. Are not the boys 

 of to-day as valuable as the slave boys of the past 

 century? 



In a period of government by graft and politics 

 by purchase, why not enfranchise the class repre- 



* She was Legislative Superintendent at Colum- 

 bus all last winter; and is at present president of the 

 Lorain Co. \V. C. T. U. Her address is Elyria. Ohio. 



senting most largely the honesty, morality, and in- 

 telligence of the nation? Ninety-five per cent of our 

 criminals are men, and only five per cent are wo- 

 men. 



Why not let the American women vote? Women 

 vote in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, 

 Russia; and in Bombay, Hindoos. Parsees, Mahom- 

 etans, Eurasians, Roumanians, Japanese, and Jew- 

 ish women voted this year. Even the veiled women 

 of Bosnia, in northwestern Turkey, have been grant- 

 ed the right to vote, and that by Mahometan men, 

 while the American men, the best the sun ever 

 shone on, refuse to take into political partnership, 

 American women. Every vested interest is repre- 

 sented at the ballot-box but the mothers' interest. 



Why not let the twelve million and more mothers 

 in the United States voteP 



Why not let the 300,000 women school-teacters 

 who have educated the nation rote? 



Why not let the 980,000 women in agriculture, who 

 are helping to feed the nation, vote? 



Why not let the 1,315,890 women engaged in man- 

 ufacturing rote? 



Why not let the 6,500,000 wage-earning women 

 vote? 



Why do we build battle-ships at a cost of from six 

 to twelve millions each, which in a few years will 

 be thrown upon the junk-heap, to defend us from 

 enemies that never appear and wars which rarely 

 threaten, and at the same tiine appropriate a pal- 

 try §50,000 to investigate the white-slave traffic 

 which destroys more lives than all our wars and 

 pestilence combined? Why not protect the daugh- 

 ters of our nation from the war upon humanity 

 which exists within our borders? 



WHY NOT LET THE WOMEN VOTE, THAT LONG-DE- 

 LAYED JUSTICE MAY COME AT LAST TO EACH AND 

 ALL? THAT TRUTH, PURITY, HONESTY, AND TEM- 

 PERANCE MAY TRIUMPH? THAT UNIVERSAL WELL- 

 BEING MAY BE THE LAW OF THE LAND IN A NA- 

 TION WHICH RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH, AND 

 WHOSE GOD IS INDEED THE LORD? 



I will only repeat, in closing, what the 

 the good lady says in the above — "■ivhy not 

 let the women vote?" Or if you can not let 

 all the women vote, for heaven's sake let us 

 permit the mothers to do so. With all the 

 burden that God and our nation have plac- 

 ed on her shoulders, are they not entitled to 

 some sort of representation in the affairs of 

 our great public? 



Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so 

 do these also resist the truth; men of corrupt 

 minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they 

 shall proceed no further; for their folly shall be 

 manifest imto all men as theirs also was.— II. Tim. 

 3 : 8. 9. 



Perhaps I should apologize for taking so 

 much space just now with clippings from 

 our local press; and were I not convinced 

 that this same state of affairs is going on 

 more or less all over our land, I would not 

 do it. While it is true many States ami 

 many counties are being rapidly made dry 

 while the adjoining locality is wet, this fear- 

 ful work of breeding criminals and crime 

 goes on. .lust as our Home i)ai)er for the 

 last issue was on the press the following 

 ai)peared in the Cleveland News: 



HELL-HOLES THAT SHOULD BE ABATED; ROCKY 

 RIVER AND ITS EVIL RESORTS A DAILY MEN- 

 ACE TO HUMAN LIFE. 



This latest suburban crime, ending in the igno- 

 minious suicide of a wealthy Detroit business man 

 in the bull-pen of the covinty jail, was not needed as 

 an illustration of the short and sure way that leads 

 from honor and usefulness throngh taxicab rides 

 and roadhouse suppers to disgrace and shameful 

 death. It was a typical instance, to be sure, swift, 

 sensational, and complete. But the moral is so 

 familiar as to go without saying. 



