A Call to the Instructor Temperance League by C. S. Longacre

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 10, 1916

A Call to the Instructor Temperance League

By C. S. Longacre

The Instructor Temperance League is composed of all those who will join in a campaign for nation-wide prohibition by aiding in an effort to put the Temperance Instructor into every home. A State will not vote for prohibition of the liquor traffic without a preponderance of public sentiment favoring it. The Temperance Instructor in the past has been a strong factor in molding public sentiment, especially in connection with State prohibition and local option elections. The temperance forces in Vermont are weak in comparison to the liquor traffic, and our people are few and limited in means. The situation there this year is similar to that in Maine in 1912, when Brother Haskell, with the Temperance Instructor and the liberal support of our people, saved Maine to the cause of temperance and marked the beginning of better days for our special work in good old Maine.

Nineteen States have already decided the great issue. Seven States will vote on this question this year; but the people of Vermont will be called to settle it the seventh day of next March, while the others will not vote on it until the general election next November.

Why not rally our forces around the old State of Vermont, and score a glorious victory? I am planning to assist our brethren in Vermont in a State-wide campaign the latter part of February and the first week in March. I should especially like to have our people in the States where the fight is not on, or where the victory is already won, to come to our rescue by supplying us with forty or fifty thousand copies of the Temperance Instructor to use in our temperance campaign throughout the State of Vermont, the same as it was used so effectively four years ago in the Maine campaign. We are anxious to place a copy, if possible, in every home needing it.

You can help us. If you volunteer to join our league the tract society secretary will, upon your request, send you an official solicitor's card, duly authorizing you to solicit funds from the public and from business firms that are interested in our fight for nation-wide prohibition. Many would gladly assist where a special fight is on, by contributing funds for the free circulation of the Temperance Instructor in the homes of those who need it and would be favorably influenced by reading it, but who would not purchase it before they became interested. The Anti-Saloon League of America solicits hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from business men in this way; why should not we? A Temperance Instructor will also be supplied to you, that you may show those whom you solicit the nature of the paper to be bought with this donation.

If our churches would rally to this issue, we could flood the State of Vermont with our literature, and score a great victory for the cause of temperance as well as for the truth we hold so dear. Why not do it? What we do must be

done quickly. Will not each of our churches make itself responsible for a certain number of papers, say, 100, 500, or 1,000 copies? Write the Vermont Tract Society, Concord, N. H., what you will do, so that the society can send its orders in to the Review and Herald for 5,000 copies at a time, and thus procure the Temperance Instructors at 3 cents a copy. The people in Vermont are going to do their share, but they need help.

The public will assist us in this campaign if only we have the courage to ask them. Now is the time to strike a decisive blow; let us improve the opportunity.

C. S. LONGACRE.