England, says: "As the foundation they laid deep in the earth was the
solid basis of social and political peace, so the domestic life of
millions of our people is the foundation of the whole order of our
commonwealth. I charge upon this great traffic nine-tenths of the
misery and the destroyed and wrecked homes of our joyless people."
What is true in England is also true in our young country. The "Boys'
Homes" and "Girls' Homes" in our large cities furnish evidence of our
destroyed homes. It is safe to say that nine-tenths of the inmates of
these institutions are there provided with a home at the expense of
the public, because strong drink has robbed them of the love and care
of father and mother, or both, and taken from their innocent
childhood all the delights and happiness of home life. As women, age
after age, beheld their loved ones thus taken from them, and saw
their homes in the hands of this destroyer, it was not strange that
at last there arose from their hearts a cry almost of despair. It was
a cry that entered into the ear of God and brought a dim sense of
coming help, a consciousness that God knew and cared and had
something better in reserve. The plough of pain had torn up the
fallow soil of woman's heart; the harrow of suffering had mellowed,
and tears of agony, wept for ages, had moistened it; now the seed of
thoughtful and determined purpose was ready to be sown, out of which
was to spring the plentiful harvest of action.

Behind were the long dreary wastes of agony, marked with the myriad
grave mounds of lost loved ones, over which woman's face had bowed
low, while the heart within was breaking; before stretched the wide
unknown, full of possibilities. Should it unfold the same sad story
of patient, passive' suffering, or grow bright with the burnished
armor and glad with the hopeful songs of women gathering to the
battle, filed against the fell destroyer of their hopes? As the