The Temperance Campaign in California
By Jas. Cochran
AUGUST 30 a committee of three from the Mountain View church called at the headquarters of the Dry Federation, located at San Jose, and offered the services of the church in the great temperance campaign now being waged in California. The executive committee of the federation and one of the lecturers were present, and received our committee most heartily. We found the federation had arranged a lecture tour extending over two weeks, and providing for a meeting in practically all the larger places in the Santa Clara valley and the peninsula lying south of San Francisco. Our committee suggested that these lectures could be strengthened by sending workers into the different places the day of the lecture, placing literature in the homes, and extending a personal invitation to the people to attend the lecture in the evening. The practicability of this plan was apparent to all, but the possibility of getting a corps of workers to do this was very remote in the minds of our federation friends. We proposed to put one or more automobile loads in each of these places the same day as the lecture, put out literature, and invite the people to attend the meetings. We also offered about seventy-five dollars’ worth of literature to use in the campaign. Our offer was very gratefully received, and every place of meeting, with one exception, has been visited by our workers. Dr. Glass, who delivered the lectures, says our work has helped him greatly. At different places he has told of the excellent work Seventh-day Adventists are doing in the temperance campaign. At one of the towns, forty-five miles from Mountain View, we found fifteen saloons and one or more wineries. The Dry Federation had no organization at this place. We sent three cars, with fourteen workers, into this town. The church people had heard that we were coming, and on arriving we found the Methodist minister and the lecturer for the evening waiting for us. Free entertainment had been arranged for us by the Protestant churches of the place. Our workers visited practically every house in the town of five thousand. There was a large audience at the meeting that evening. Sabbath afternoon, September 19, twelve automobiles, carrying sixty persons, left Mountain View to work the towns between Palo Alto and South San Francisco. Our systematic efforts in this temperance campaign have been quite a revelation to the temperance forces. They say if the cause of temperance wins in California, it will be by the efforts of the Adventist people. Our literature is regarded as the very best. Mrs. Watson, president of the Dry Federation in this district, says of the Temperance Signs: “Thanks for that very fine copy of the Signs of the Times in favor of California ‘dry.’ It is the finest thing I ever saw on the subject, and others have said the same. If you can spare more, bring them when you are down this way.”
The temperance clause to be voted on in the State of California next November is free from all entanglements that would prevent our people from uniting with other churches and organizations in waging a campaign. An opportunity for work of this kind certainly should be improved and carried on most vigorously by our people. JAS. COCHRAN.