Making Prohibition Votes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 29, 1916

Making Prohibition Votes

WHEREVER the people have a mind to work, in every municipal, county, or State prohibition campaign, victory is assured. The people form a strong arm in all reforms.

Two years ago California had an opportunity to vote upon prohibition, but the public mind was not sufficiently educated upon the curse of the liquor traffic and the advantages of prohibition; so the State remained wet. This year a chance has been given the temperance people of California to redeem the past through bringing the State into the dry fold, and the people have not only gone to work themselves, but have enlisted their children in the circulation of the Temperance Instructor Annual. In the accompanying pictures we show the Pasadena church school children at work. The children not only enjoy the work, but they get the Instructor into many homes, and it convinces the people that the liquor traffic is an evil, and that it is their duty to vote to prohibit it.

The Temperance Instructor Annual is needed everywhere, especially in States holding prohibition elections, for many do not know that no one need be ignorant of his duty in this important issue.

During the past ten years many have said that before they read the Temperance Annual, they had intended to vote against prohibition, but after reading it they voted for prohibition. Thousands and thousands of prohibition votes are cast as the result of the presence of the Temperance Annual in the homes of voters. The Temperance Instructor Annual is an experienced temperance educator, and is needed to help men in discharging their duty and in meeting the obligations cited by Mrs. E. G. White in the following statement:—

“Our laws sustain an evil which is sapping their very foundations. Many who deplore the wrongs which they know exist, but consider themselves free from all responsibility in the matter. This cannot be. Every individual exerts an influence in society. In our favored land every voter has some voice in determining what laws shall control the nation. The advocates of temperance fail to do their whole duty unless they exert their influence, by precept and example, by voice and pen and vote, in behalf of prohibition and total abstinence. We need not expect God will work a miracle to bring about this reform, and thus remove the necessity for our exertion. We ourselves must grapple this giant foe, with the motto, ‘No compromise, and no cessation of our efforts till victory is gained.’”

But the Temperance Instructor can fulfil these worthy purposes only as it is given a wide circulation. Should we not place hundreds and thousands of these temperance issues, which strongly denounce the evils of intemperance, and present prohibition and total abstinence as the only true remedies, in every town, county, and State of the Union?