RURAL AMERICA 



E. Temperance 



The greatest moral movement of the past generation is that 

 of temperance. Twenty years ago the temperance map of 

 the United States was almost as black as Stygian night. 

 Today there are nineteen white states, with the prospect of 

 many others in the course of the next decade. Nine or ten 

 states expect to vote in 1916. Besides the nineteen states in 

 which the sale of liquor is prohibited, all the other states have 

 prohibition territory. More than half the nation's popula- 

 tion live in temperance areas, and when all the laws that 

 have been passed become effective there will be no saloons in 

 nine-tenths of the country. Of course this means that Rural 

 America is almost all temperance territory, since the ten per 

 cent of the land where the saloons are permitted under the 

 law consists, for the most part, of the metropolitan centers 

 and contiguous territory, with the exception of the two great 

 Western States, Montana and Nevada, which have large wet 

 areas. As soon as the agricultural population of these two 

 states has increased sufficiently, they will likely join many of 

 the other western states and make the West almost solidly 

 dry. The one thought that needs emphasis here is the 

 thought that it is Rural America that is leading the way in 

 making America a saloonless nation. 



Public sentiment is an irresistible force. Today public 

 sentiment against the open saloon is crystallizing with marvel- 

 ous rapidity, and, when it has once crystallized throughout 

 the nation, the saloon will be doomed. For the sake of the 

 welfare of 100,000,000 people an infinite multitude is praying 

 to God that the day may be hastened. 



The transformation wrought in a county which has abolished 

 the manufacture and sale of liquor is set forth in the follow- 

 ing paragraph from a speech made by Congressman Webb, 

 of North Carolina: 



" About ten years ago, I stood on historic King Mountain, 

 and saw the smoke of thirty-eight government distilleries 

 rising toward heaven. I saw no macadamized roads ; scarcely 

 a schoolhouse where our boys and girls might obtain the 



