Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/784

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
WILLARD.
WILLARD.
779

impossible for Miss Willard to carry out her plans therefor, and she resigned her deanship and professorship in June, 1874. Her soul had been stirred by the reports of the temperance crusade in Ohio during the preceding winter, and she heard the divine call to her life-work. Of all her friends no one stood by her in her wish to join the crusade, except Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, who sent her a letter full of enthusiasm for the new line of work and predicted her success therein. In the summer of 1874, while in New York City, a letter reached her from Mrs. Louise S. Rounds, of Chicago, who was identified there with a young temperance association. "It has come to me," wrote Mrs. Rounds," as I believe, from the Lord, that you ought to be our president. We are a little band without money or experience, but with strong faith. If you will come, there will be no doubt of your election." Turning from the most attractive offers to reenter the profession she had left. Miss Willard entered the open door of philanthrophy, left for the West, paused in Pittsburgh for a brief personal participation in crusade work, and, within a week, had been made president of the Chicago Woman's Christian Temperance Union. For months she prosecuted her work without regard to pecuniary compensation, many a time going without her noonday lunch down town, because she had no money, and walking miles because she had not five cents to pay for a street-car ride. She found that period the most blessed of her life thus far, and her work, baptized in suffering, grew first deep and vital, and then began to widen. With the aid of a few women, she established a daily gospel meeting in lower Farwell Hall for the help of the intemperate. Scores and hundreds of men were savingly reformed, and her "Gospel Talks" were in demand far and wide. She had made her first addresses in public three or four years before with marked success, but then, turning from the attractions of cultivated society and scholarly themes, even from church work and offered editorial positions, those little gospel-meetings, where wicked men wept and prayed, thrilled her through and through. Thrown upon a sick bed the following year by overwork, she consented to accept a sum sufficient to provide for the necessities of her widowed mother and herself, but has ever steadfastly refused to receive an amount which would enable her to lay up anything for the future. Every dollar earned by writing or lecturing, not needed for current expenses, has been devoted to the relief of the needy or to the enlargement of her chosen work. The Chicago Woman's Christian Temperance Union, from that "day of small things" in the eyes of the world, has gone on and prospered, until now it is represented by a wide range of established philanthropies. The Woman's Temperance Temple, costing more than a million dollars, the headquarters of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union and of the Woman's Temperance Publication Association, which scatters broadcast and around the world annually many million pages of temperance literature, are a few of its fruits. Soon after Miss Willard's election to the presidency of the Chicago union, she became secretary of the first Illinois State convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and a few weeks later, in November, 1874, after having declined the nomination for president in the first national convention, was elected its corresponding secretary in Cleveland, Ohio. In that office, besides wielding a busy pen, she spoke in Chautauqua and addressed summer camps in New England and the Middle States. In 1876, while engaged in Bible study and prayer, she was led to the conviction that she ought to speak for woman's ballot as a protection to the home from the tyranny of drink, and in the ensuing autumn, in the national convention in Newark, N. J., disregarding the earnest pleadings of conservative friends, she declared her conviction in her first suffrage speech. She originated the motto. "For God and Home and Native Land," which was, first, that of the Chicago union, was then adopted by the Illinois State union, in 1876 became that of the national union, and was adapted to the use of the world's union in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass., in 1891, then becoming " For God and Home and Every Land." Miss Willard was one of the founders of the National Woman's Temperance Union paper, "Our Union," in New York, and of the "Signal," the organ of the Illinois union, which, in 1882, were merged in the " Union Signal," and which is now one of the most widely circulated papers in the world. In January, 1877, she was invited by D. L. Moody to assist him by conducting the woman's meetings in connection with his evangelistic work in Boston. The Christian womanhood of Boston rallied around her, and her work among the women was marked by success so great that soon she was put forward by Mr. Moody to address his great audience of seven-thousand on Sunday afternoon in the Tabernacle. She had not lessened her temperance work, but accepted such invitations as her time and strength permitted to lecture on gospel-temperance lines. In the following autumn she sundered her engagement with Mr. Moody, in the best of mutual feeling, but with the decided conviction that she could not refuse to work with any earnest, devout, reputable helper because of a difference in religious belief, and because she preferred to work with both men and women rather than confine herself to work among women. For a short time after the sudden death of her only brother, O. A. Willard, in the spring of 1878. Miss Willard, with her brother's widow, Mrs. Mary B. Willard, assumed the vacant editorship of his paper, the Chicago "Post and Mail," rather for the sake of others than through her own preference. In the autumn of 1877 she declined the nomination for the presidency of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, but she accepted it in 1879, when she was elected in Indianapolis, Ind., as the exponent of a liberal policy, including "State rights" for the State societies, representation on a basis of paid membership and the advocacy of the ballot for women. At the time no southern State, except Maryland, was represented in the national society, and the total yearly income was only about $1,200 During the following year the work of the national union was organized under five heads: Preventive, Educational, Evangelistic, Social and Legal, and a system of individual superintendence of each department established. In 1881 Miss Willard made a tour of the Southern States, which reconstructed her views of the situation and conquered conservative prejudice and sectional opposition. Thus was given the initial impetus to the formation of the home protection party, which it was desired should unite all good men and women in its ranks. In August, 1882, she became one of the central committee of the newly organized prohibition home protection party, with which she has since been connected. During the following year, accompanied by her private secretary', Miss Anna Gordon, she completed her plan of visiting and organizing every State and Territory in the United States, and of presenting her cause in every town and city that had reached a population of ten-thou- sand. She visited the Pacific coast, and California, Oregon, and even British Columbia, were thoroughly organized, and more than twenty-five-thou sand miles of toilsome travel enabled her to meet