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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · March 23, 1893

IN Our Day, for March, Mr. Crafts makes this confession:— We observe with shame that scarcely any petitions are now going to Congress in regard to the exclusion of liquors [from the World's Fair], although this was asked by the great evangelical national bodies, representing forty millions of our population, and the Catholic Total Abstinence Society besides, and could be carried to victory like the Sabbath closing if the action of national bodies should be followed up by a snow-storm of letters to senators and congressmen.

Mr. Crafts’ shame is not without reason, and yet it is probably not nearly as deep as it should be. For years the “great evangelical national bodies,” as Mr. Crafts styles them, have been professing great concern for the temperance cause, but they have never showed their faith by their works. The liquor traffic is confessedly the greatest evil that threatens our country, but the energy of the churches has never been directed to fighting it. When, however, an unintentional slight was about to be put upon the Church by opening the World’s Fair on Sunday, a day dedicated to religion not by divine authority but by the Church, Congress was overwhelmed by petitions and letters demanding action for the protection of their darling institution. But the most impassioned appeals fail to rouse the churches against the drink evil!