secured and locked up in the granaries of State and especially of national law. The seven years of famine will surely come, when we shall starve, unless we save the corn raised in these years of enthusiastic production.

During the third decade the order nearly disappeared from the Southern States, but as soon as the war was over it began to revive, and in 1872 it numbered nearly 94,000 members. Various other organizations have arisen which have divided with the "Sons " their peculiar work, and, although they do not exhibit the growth of former years, and, in fact, declined greatly in numbers for a while, there is no decrease in their real vitality nor in the cause to which they are devoted. The membership in 1882 was 73,000, a gain in the three preceding years of 33,200 members; and at the forty-third annual session of the National Division, held in Boston, July, 1887, the membership was reported to be 84,379.

The Most Worthy Patriarch, Eugene H. Clapp of Boston, in his report to the Division, took a position which has been advocated in this book- and which I believe to be indispensable to the success of the temperance reform that of the responsibility of the individual for inebriety, as well as for any other offense which injures society. When the individual ceases to be responsible for his conduct he should be confined. Mr. Clapp says:

"For some time past there has been growing in my mind a conviction that, in one phase at least of this temperance reformation, we have been making a grave mistake during the past. In my experience as a manufacturer, employing large numbers of men, I have noted personally (and my attention has been called to it by other large employers) the increasing tendency to drunkenness among a certain class of our population. The remedy has been sought in different directions, and to-day this remedy is being applied much more strictly than ever before, and the feeling is very strongly marked to discharge from one's employment the man who allows himself to become a drunkard. Now, I know that the whole tendency has been in the past to devote a large amount of sympathy to the man who drinks, and a still larger amount of reprobation for the man who furnishes the drink. While I would not abate one jot or tittle of the denunciation of the drunkard-maker, yet I believe that the time has come that we

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ought, for our own protection at least, to equally denounce the dram-drinker. I believe much of the sympathy which has been devoted in this way in the past has been wrongly placed, and much of the consequences of evil habits of the drinking portion of our community, for the sympathy has thus been expressed for the man who drinks. We have been accustomed to say that the drinker is a poor unfortunate and needs all our sympathies, and who is to be aided and upheld, and we are taught to regard him as a victim rather than a sinner. The time has come, in my judgment, when we should teach that the sin of drunkenness is just as vile and degrading as any other vice to which mankind is addicted; and as we hold the violator of law responsible in every other direction, so we should hold equally the man who drinks for the responsibility of his acts. While we teach him, as we have in many cases, that he is not responsible for the acts he does or crimes he commits, we are simply leading him into ways of false security and rendering it so much easier for him to drink and so much harder for him to stop. Let us, then, hold the drinker up in the full measure of his responsibility in the acts he commits, and let us no longer waste any false sympathy upon him unless he is in a position to deserve it. Raise to-day a new standard of reform, and say that the drunkard deserves nothing at our hands, unless he recognizes the evils of the past and is willing to do something himself to aid in the bettering of his life. Without this we can hope for nothing permanent in his future in this direction. And I desire to call your attention to-day to the thought that, if we are to make men sober, it is not by wasting our energies by telling them they can not help themselves, but by telling them unless they do help themselves it is impossible for us to aid them. I have found, as a result of inquiry and personal attention to this matter, that when men are taught that as a result of their drinking habits they will be punished, either by loss of situation or by legal methods, it becomes a strong element of control over them, holding them more nearly in the line of duty. I know, undoubtedly, I shall be classed as one having no sympathy for the man who drinks; but I believe that the position I have given you is the proper one, and the sooner we recognize the responsibility of the drinker, to himself and society, the sooner we shall begin to do something to stay this mighty flood of intemperance which has swept over the land for so many years. I would, then, hold the inebriate to a strict account for his acts, and I believe that, in view of such an accounting, we shall find a better sentiment, a stronger desire to do better, and a general lessening of the evils which afflict the community."