CURIOUS NOTES ON TEMPERANCE AGITATION IN CALIFORNIA.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1684, 12 July 1875, Page 3

CURIOUS NOTES ON TEMPERANCE AGITATION IN CALIFORNIA.

Mr W. E. Turner gave a capital lecture on the temperance movement in America at Hamilton. His speech ia fully reported in the Waikato Times. We make the following extract from its excellent report:—"Temperance had now made such strides m California that a drinking man was regarded as a dureputable man. A street-tramway Company in San Francisco, of which he was a director, employed from 600 to 800 men regularly, and every one was a temperance man. To be a drunkard in California was to be out of employment, but to be a temperance man was the stepping stone to trust and responsibility. Ladies of the highest rank and social position were not ashamed to take a prominent part in the movement. He had-seen 6,000 women in procession in Oakland, following a temperance banner and singing temperance songs daring an election ; and > when the election campaign throughout California closed, tpmperance men had won 63 contests out of 81 against the "whisky men, a result which astonished both sides. At Oakland the "whisky men hired a hundred ruffians to endeavour to drive away the women. There was a little red beaded girl about three feet nothing high, named Sally Hart. She knew what drunkenness meant. Her father was a drunkard,

* tod- drove Sally but into the street*.'" She was adopted by some benevolent people and well educated, and she became one of the leaders in the temperance reform movement Wherever a crowd of drunkards could be found in Oakland, there was Sally Hart in the midst of them. One day a burly Dutchman, who had been persuaded that Sally was trying to stop his whisky, came up to her and said "You go away Sally. You want to sthop mine vhisky." He was about to put out his hand to drag her away, when she put her hand into her pocket and drew out a little revolver, which she pointed at him, saying, "If you touch me, 1 wiil shoot you dead." The big Dutchman staggered back and said, "Go away, Sally, go away, I don't want anything to do with you." The hundred hired ruffians got a stuffed effigy of Sally which they buried three feet under the giound, and they stuck an empty barrel over the grave. Then some of the temperance men dared them to defend that barrel, and they accepted the challenge. But three ladies went up, and in defiance of the men rolled away the barrel. The ruffians knocked down some tents, and injured several old women, and then marched through the streets, carrying banners. But the temperance men punished them, and many of the hundred were seen sprawling about the gutters. (Mr ; Turner was frequently interrupted by an inebriated and disorderly person in the audience.) He said that was evidence that the devil was getting mad. When he got into that state he was easily beaten. Is was only the whisky working. Once at a meeting in America he was similarly interrupted by hissing. He asked if there was a blacksmith present. A man got up and said he was one. He (the lecturer) asked that blacksmith If he knew why red hot iron hissed when suddenly plunged into cold water. The blacksmith said it Was because of the sudden change of temperature. Then he (Mr. Turner) said that was exactly the same case. The person who interrupted him had reddened his nose and heated himself with whisk}', and when he came to the temperance meeting it was just like a piece of red-hot iron suddenly plunged into cold water. (Great laughter."