d the Laws of the Land."

The W. C. T. U. is held to be the most perfectly organized body of
women in existence. It originated the idea of Scientific Temperance
Instruction in the public schools and has secured mandatory laws in
every State and a federal law governing the District of Columbia, the
Territories and all Indian and military schools supported by the
Government; 16,000,000 children in the public schools receive
instruction under these laws as to the nature and effect of alcohol
and other narcotics on the human system. Through its efforts the
quarterly temperance lesson was included in the International Sunday
School Lesson Series in 1884, and a World's Universal Temperance
Sunday was secured; 250,000 children are taught scientific reasons for
temperance in the Loyal Temperance Legions, and all these children are
pledged to total abstinence and trained as temperance workers. W. C.
T. U. Schools of Methods are held in all Chautauqua gatherings.

This organization has largely influenced the change in public
sentiment in regard to social drinking, equal suffrage, equal purity
for both sexes, equal remuneration for work equally well done, equal
educational, professional and industrial opportunities for women. It
has been a chief factor in State campaigns for statutory prohibition,
constitutional amendment, reform laws in general and those for the
protection of women and children in particular, and in securing
anti-gambling and anti-cigarette laws. It has been instrumental in
raising the "age of protection" for girls in many States and in
obtaining curfew laws in 400 towns and cities. It aided in securing
the Anti-Canteen Amendment to the Army Bill (1900) which prohibits the
sale of intoxicating liquors at all army posts. It helped to
inaugurate police matrons who are now required in nearly all the large
cities of the United States. It organized Mothers' Meetings in
thirty-seven States before any other society took up the work.
Illinois alone has held 2,000 Mothers' Meetings in a single year.

It keeps a superintendent of legislation in Washington during the
entire session of Congress to look after reform bills. It aided in
preventing the repeal of the prohibitory law in Indian Territory, the
resubmission of the prohibitory constitution of Maine, and in
preserving the prohibitory law of Vermont. It has secured 20,000,000
signatures and attestations, including 7,000,000 on the Polyglot
Petition to the governments