thousand dollars would have lifted it
out of its embarrassments and started it with a buoyant heart on towards
the accomplishment of its mission."

And he adds: "Notwithstanding all these constant and ever-pressing
financial embarrassments, the society has never faltered for one moment,
but has gone steadily on doing its appointed work, exploring new fields,
and developing both old and new truths and documents and principles, and
it stands to-day the strongest and most solid and substantial bulwark
against intemperance in the land."

A MOST IMPORTANT AGENCY.

As the most important of all the agencies now used for the suppression
of the liquor traffic, and as the efficient ally of all let us rally to
the support of our great publication house and see that it has ampler
means for the work in which it is engaged. There are hundreds of
thousands of men and women in our land who are happy and prosperous
to-day because of what this society has done in the last twelve years to
create a sentiment adverse to the traffic and to the drinking usages of
society. Its work is so silent and unobtrusive in comparison, with that
of many other efficient, but more limited instrumentalities, that we are
apt to lose sight of its claims, and to fail in giving an adequate
support to the very power, which is, in a large measure, the source of
power to all the rest.

If we would war successfully with our strong and defiant enemy, we must
look to it that the literature of temperance does not languish. We are
not making it half as efficient as it might be. Here we have a
thoroughly organized publication house, with capable and active agents,
which, if the means were placed at its disposal, could flood the country
with books, pamphlets and tracts by millions every year; and we leave it
to struggle with embarrassments, and to halting and crippled work. This
is not well. Our literature is our right arm in this great conflict, and
only in the degree that we strengthen this arm will we be successful in
our pursuit of victory.

[Illustration: FINANCIAL VIEW OF THE LICENSE SYSTEM.

"Whatever revenue license pays the State is fully counterbalanced by the
increased cost of jails, poorhouses and police, for which the patient
public pays immense taxation. The moral burdens from the infamous
traffic are all additional to the financial."]

CHAPTER XVII.

LICENSE A FAILURE AND A DISGRACE.

For over two hundred years in this country, and for