its auxiliaries beyond that of suggestion and
sympathy; therefore, no society voting to become auxiliary shall
thereby render itself liable to be interfered with in respect to its
complete organic unity, independence or methods of work, or be
committed to any principle or method of any other society or to any
utterance or act of the Council itself, beyond compliance with the
terms of this constitution."

The scope of the Council's work is indicated by the heads of its
departments: Home Life, Educational Interests, Church and Missionary
Work, Temperance, Art, Moral Reform, Political Conditions,
Philanthropy, Social Economics, Foreign Relations, Press,
Organization; and by its standing committees: Citizenship, Domestic
Science, Equal Pay for Equal Work, Dress Reform, Social Purity,
Domestic Relations under the Law, Press, Care of Dependent and
Delinquent Children, Peace and Universal Arbitration.

Each of these departments and committees works along its special lines
and at the annual executive meetings and the triennial Councils the
reports of their work are discussed, their recommendations considered
and every possible assistance rendered. The general public is invited
to the evening sessions and valuable addresses are made by specialists
on the above and other important subjects.

The Council is composed of sixteen national organizations, one State
Council, six local councils--representing a membership of about
1,125,000 women.

THE NATIONAL WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION was organized in
Cleveland, Ohio, Nov. 18-20, 1874, to carry the precepts of the
following pledge into the practice of everyday life: "I hereby
solemnly promise, God helping me, to abstain from all distilled,
fermented and malt liquors, including wine, beer and cider, and to
employ all proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the
same."

Its object was further stated as follows: "To confirm and enforce the
rationale of this pledge, we declare our purpose to educate the young;
to form a better public sentiment; to reform, so far as possible, by
religious, ethical and scientific means, the drinking classes; to seek
the transforming power of divine grace for ourselves and all for whom
we work, that they and we may wilfully transcend no law of pure and
wholesome living; and finally we pledge ourselves to labor and to pray
that all these principles, founded upon the Gospel of Christ, may be
worked out into the Customs of Society an