A Temperance Town

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 29, 1883

A Temperance Town.

The St. Louis Republican in a recent reference to the Hon. J. B. Grinnell, of Iowa, states that that gentleman was the young man to whom Horace Greeley gave the oft-quoted advice, “Go West, young man, go West.” The Republican gives a very interesting sketch of Mr. Grinnell's career, from the time when he purchased a tract of land in Iowa and founded the city of Grinnell. He has been a preacher, a farmer, a lawyer, a railroad receiver, a college president, a State Senator, a college trustee and a member of Congress.

He said of himself: “When I took Horace Greeley's advice—by the way I am having his famous letter photographed—I had purchased a large tract of land, but not from mercenary motives. My first business was to lay out a town; and I determined that no intoxicating liquors should be sold there, and up to this time I may say that not one drop of ardent spirits has ever been sold upon that tract of land. I began three miles away from any house, and three years ago, when we had our quarter-centennial celebration, no fire had desolated a human habitation, no man had found his way to the poor-house, not one had gone to the jail, and not one to the State Prison. And happening to be Mayor of the city for the past two years, I will say there was only one person brought before me and fined for drunkenness.”