The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

OIIAPTER XXXIV.

THE WOMEN'S TEMPERANCE CRUSADE- UNCOMPROMISING
HOSTILITY TO THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC -EMINENT MN
AND WOMEN OF MY ACQUAINTANCE.
The Women's Crusade - It spreads like Prairie Fire - Women invade
Saloons - Transforming Saloons into Prayer Meetings - W here the
Women crusaded - ""God is leading us, and we shall wait for Him
to show the way " - Dawn of a new Day to Women - The Woman
Suffrage Question the largest now before the Public - Reasons why
the Reform should win - Anticipation of Ostracism and Derision
not realized - Eminent Men and Women of my Acquaintance - A
Company of Glorious Women and Noble Men -My Husband's
never-failing Good will and efficient Assistance - More indebted to
him than to all others - My Lover, Friend, and Helpmate.
S OME three years before our first European trip, a new
work came to my hands and my heart, which I felt
compelled to accept.
During the winter of 1873-74, the movement known as
the Women's Temperance Crusade appeared in Southern
Ohio. It was phenomenal and emotional, and sprang up
suddenly, like a fire from spontaneous combustion. Ko-.
body planned it, nor engineered it, and it spent itself in
a very few months. It was the anguished protest of hopeless and life-sick women against the drunkenness of the
time, which threatened to fill the land with beggary and
crime, and forced women and children to hide in terror
from the brutality of the men, who had sworn to be their
protectors. The liquor dealers were intrenched in the law,
sheltered by the courts, and protected by the strong arm of
the government. There was no redress for the wronged
and outraged woman.
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