was a moderate quantity; but a great many of them required two
quarts a day. The result of this was, that the entire wages of the
men were consumed in drink, except a meagre share that went to the
miserable wives and children at home.

Everywhere throughout the State the results of this way of life was
to be seen--in the general poverty of the people, and in the
shabbiness of all their surroundings. But some persons conceived
the idea that all this evil was not necessary and inevitable; that
it came from the liquor traffic, which might be prohibited and
suppressed, as lottery-tickets, gambling-houses and impure books
and pictures had already been. And they devoted themselves
constantly and industriously to the work of correcting the public
opinion of the people as to the liquor traffic by demonstrating to
them that this trade was in deadly hostility to every interest of
the State, while no good came from it, nor could come from it, to
State or people.

This educational work was carried on persistently for years;
meetings were held by these persons in every little country-church
and town-house, and in every little wayside school-house, where the
farmers and their wives and children assembled at the call of these
missionaries, to listen to their burning denunciation of the liquor
traffic, which lived only by spreading poverty, pauperism,
suffering, insanity, crime and premature death broadcast over the
State. The result of this teaching was, that the public opinion of
the State became thoroughly changed as to the character of the
liquor traffic and its relation to the public prosperity and
welfare.