it has gathered
strength through the nineteenth century. In colonial days the use of
liquors was universal and excited little comment, but groups of
persons here and there, especially the church people, opposed the
common practice of tippling and began to organize in order to check
it. It was not a total-abstinence movement at first, but was designed
particularly to check the use of spirituous liquors. Temperance
revivals swept over whole States, but were too emotional to be
permanent. When the second half of the century began organization
became more thorough and the Good Templars and Woman's Christian
Temperance Union assumed the leadership of the cause. These
organizations stood for total abstinence and State prohibition, and by
temperance evangelism and temperance education the women especially
pushed their campaign nationally and abroad. Among all temperance
agencies the Anti-Saloon League organized in Ohio in 1893, and
extending through the United States, has been most effective. It has
federated existing agencies and enlisted organized religion. It has
pushed no-license campaigns in States that had an optional law, has
secured the extension of prohibition to scores of counties in the
South and West, and has extended the area of State-wide prohibition,
an experiment begun in Maine in 1851, until eighteen States are now
under a prohibitory law (1915).

256. =Remedies for Intemperance.=--There is a general agreement among
people who reflect upon social ills that intemperance is a curse upon
large numbers of individuals and families through both its direct and
indirect effects. It seems well established that even moderate
drinking produces physical and mental weakness and even as a temporary
stimulant is of small value. It is not so clear how to check the evil
without injuring personal interests and violating the liberty which
every citizen claims for himself as a right. Three methods have been
proposed and tried as remedies for intemperance. The first of these is
public appeal and education. Public addresses in which arguments are
presented and an appeal made to the emotions have led to the signing
of pledges, and sometimes to the control of elections, but they have
to be repeated frequently to keep the individual who is moved by his
impulses up to the standard. Slower is education through the press and
through the school, where the evil effects of alcohol are demonstrated
scientifically, but it has been tried pati