Temperance Towns | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 24, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 28.

Temperance Towns.

GREELEY, Colorado, was founded on strict temperance principles. It has been a success from the hour of its planting. Not a drop of liquor can be obtained in the town unless sold by druggists upon a physician’s certificate. Should any land-holder violate the provisions of the clause contained in the deed, it works a forfeiture of his ownership. The town has two thousand five hundred population, no paupers, no city jail, no police magistrate, no poor-house. As a further evidence, they have three newspapers, six churches, and a fine school-house, which cost over $30,000.

The town of Pullman, near Chicago, contains most of the characteristics of a great city—and yet it lacks certain things, which, hitherto, have everywhere been accompaniments to city life. Pullman has no saloons, no jails, no poverty, no suffering from hunger, cold, nakedness, homelessness, nor idleness. And a lady residing there relates a personal experience, which probably accounts for this condition of affairs.

She says: “Until a year ago my life was one of constant anxiety and foreboding. My husband, a skillful machinist, earned good wages, but the saloons took a greater part, and left little for food and clothing for the family. We lived here and there in miserable tenements, surrounded by disease and vice, and the children never knew the true meaning of the word home. A year ago my husband secured employment at Pullman, with the understanding that he must stop drinking. With the terrible temptation of the open saloons gone, he did stop; and now we have a beautiful home, with the comforts and luxuries we never dreamed of enjoying. After his day’s work, my husband comes home, takes a bath, puts on his good clothes, enjoys his dinner with the children and me, and then sits down at home, or strolls out with us along the pretty streets, sometimes to the library or elsewhere, and comes home a sober man. We have money in the savings bank; our children are getting a good education; everything is peaceful and hopeful about us, and we are very happy.”—Sel.