CHAPTER XVI.

TEMPERANCE LITERATURE.


The greatest and most effective agency in any work of enlightenment and
reform is the press. By it the advanced thinker and Christian
philanthropist is able to speak to the whole people, and to instruct,
persuade and influence them. He can address the reason and conscience of
thousands, and even of hundreds of thousands of people to whom he could
never find access in any other way, and so turn their minds to the right
consideration of questions of social interest in regard to which they
had been, from old prejudices or habits of thinking, in doubt or
grievous error.

No cause has been more largely indebted to the press than that of
temperance reform. From the very beginning of agitation on the subject
of this reform, the press has been used with great efficiency; and
to-day, the literature of temperance is a force of such magnitude and
power, that it is moving whole nations, and compelling Parliaments,
Chambers of Deputies and Houses of Congress to consider the claims of a
question which, if presented fifty years ago, would have been treated,
in these grave assemblages, with levity or contempt.

For many years after the reform movement began in this country, the
press was used with marked effect. But as most of the books, pamphlets
and tracts which were issued came through individual enterprise, the
editions were often small and the prices high; and as the sale of such