Temperance Education. It is a remedy-peaceable, philosophical, radical, far-reaching. It trenches on no man's rights, proscribes no man's business, confiscates no man's property, dictates no man's habits, restricts no man's liberty. It appeals only to the power of truth. It is the echo of God's primordial decree," Let there be light." -HON. BYRON M. CUTCHEON, Speech before Congress of the United States. HISTORY OF THE FIRST DECADE. EN years ago the National Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction in Public Schools and Colleges was created. What is Scientific Temperance?" we were then asked. The reasons for total abstinence, as found in the nature of alcoholic drinks and other narcotics and their effects upon the human system in connection with relative physiology and hygiene, was our reply; and this Department is organized to secure the faithful study of this science by every pupil in every school in the land, for we believe that prevention through the education of the children before appetite is formed, is the antidote for the vice of intemperance. The Story Asked For. Many requests for some account of the inception of the Department and for the history of its work are being received from parties newly interested and otherwise, in various parts of our own and other lands. There has been almost nothing to send in response to these. During the past ten years the imperative demands of the rapidly developing work of the Department have rushed upon each other with such bewildering rapidity that to take the time to write its history seemed like pausing in the midst of the decisive hour of a great battle to write the story of its preliminary struggles. But as the time has come when such a history will aid further progress the leading facts of the past decade, culled from the annual reports, are arranged in consecutive order in the following pages. For lack of time and space the incidents and detail that made the events as they transpired more thrilling than romance, must be omitted. At the outset I wish for myself and co-workers to bear witness to the fact that the inception and success of this movement have been and is from the God of nations who turned from the hardness of the adult human heart and said, "Suffer little children to come unto me." Forerunners. When the hour strikes for a discovery that is necessary to the world's development, or for a remedy needed for an imperiling evil, the thought of such discovery or remedy often comes almost simultaneously to different minds in divers parts of the world. While many may thus be prepared for the coming event, it has ordinarily fallen to the lot of some one individual, elected by Providence, to be impelled by its unseen power, to what is often a vicarious service, to bring the waiting blessing to a needy world. 66 In view of the need of the success that has crowned the efforts for compulsory Scientific Temperance Instruction in public schools, it is not strange that many should say, that before the movement became a fact they had thought of its possibility." It shows that the time was ripe and the world ready for this effort to preëmpt the childhood of a nation for an intelligent sobriety. It is not the purpose of these pages to trace the history of every such forerunner, but to tell how the Department came to exist and what it has accomplished, regretting that this can not be done without personal allusion. How It Happened. Previous experience as a professor or teacher of chemistry and other sciences in one of our eastern colleges, led to practical oversight of the education of my only child, who was a student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1872 to 1876. While thus engaged, the question concerning alcohol as a chemical reagent led to inquiry as to its origin, nature and effects upon the human system as found in the popular alcoholic beverages. This study became an absorbing research that filled me with alarm for the future of a nation whose people were consuming such vast quantities of alcohol. A Coincidence. Simultaneously with this awakened interest, the future purport of which I then in no wise foresaw, Dr. B. W. Richardson, in his laboratory and dissecting rooms on the other side of the Atlantic was making in 1874 and 1875, the original investigations that gave to the world his famous "Cantor Lectures on Alcohol in Relation to its Action on Man." These lectures, then the latest utterance of scientific investigation, were the exact data I had been groping for. They proved the dangerous difference between the demonstrated fact that it is the nature of a little alcohol to create an uncontrollable appetite for more and the popular idea of the harmlessness of using alcohol in small quantities. As the result of this study the conviction grew that intemperance could never be prevented until the people were taught the real nature and effects of alcoholic drinks, and that this must be done through the schools. The National Temperance Publication Society. In searching for literature on this topic in 1876, I heard of the National Temperance Publication Society in New York, and of their interest in this phase of the temperance question. I found that they had already at some of their public gatherings passed valuable resolutions in favor of teaching children the facts concerning the nature and effects of alcoholic beverages. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union Organized. Another organization destined to be a mighty factor in this movement came into existence at this juncture. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was organized in 1874, with a plan that contemplated state, county and local auxiliary societies throughout the entire land, to carry out in each, various phases of temperance work. No Text-Books. From the first a difficulty existed that was destined subsequently to menace the whole movement and to levy the heaviest drafts on the energy, endurance and ability of the one who had the chief burden of it to bear. There were no well-graded, suitable school text-books on scientific temperance, and the warning facts against alcohol could not be taught in schools unless they were first put into such form and shape in school manuals as pupils and teachers could use. Dr. Richardson's Temperance Lesson-Book. While I was vainly searching for books here, Dr. B. W. Richardson, in London, in 1878, at the request of the National Temperance League, England, prepared a digest of the Cantor Lectures on Alcohol for a school manual. This book was called "The Temperance Lesson Book." Immediately on its publication, I presented it to the school board of my own town for adoption and school use, which request was |