Illinois might have taken Grant or Stephen A. Douglas or John A. Logan, or even Lincoln, had he not been set apart for unique honors, as the subject of one of the two statues representing the State in Statuary Hall at Washington, it chose Frances E. Willard, the only woman so chosen by any state. But the marble figure represents more than a person it represents a far-reaching influence. This was exerted through manifold channels: publications, educational work in schools, effort affecting legislation, public meetings, individual endeavor in directions innumerable, all under the guidance of the national and world organizations of which Miss Willard was the head. The effect of all these influences on the public mind of America - outside the circles in which any dictation with regard to social and personal usages is regarded as impertinent has been beyond calculation.

The religious women could hardly have accomplished their self-appointed task alone. In 1895 the Anti-Saloon League began its increasingly aggressive warfare against what has already been described as the most vulnerable point of attack by temperance reformers the saloon. Other influences came into play. In the South it was felt that the large, excitable Negro element of the population would be better without any legalized traffic in

liquor, and many Southern States adopted prohibition. In the industrial world there was a spreading conviction that the efficiency of labor - with benefit both to itself and to capital would increase under prohibitory laws. In the cities the growing army of social workers, observing at close range the worst effects of liquor on women and children, favored in general the cause of prohibition. Then came the war, with its exaltations and its revelations. "Jawn Barleycorn," wrote Mr. Dooley, "might have gone on f'r years if it had n't been that th' wurruld begun to suspect that he was no good in a fight. . . . People said about him, 'He's a scamp and a false friend, but he 's a divvle in a scrap.' An' now they know he ain't anny good at ayether. His bluff has been called." A war prohibition measure was adopted ten days after the signing of the Armistice, and came into effect June 30, 1919. Meanwhile the Eighteenth Amendment received the ratification of thirty-six states by January 16, 1919, and was officially proclaimed on January 30. On October 28, 1919, the Volstead Act was passed, over President Wilson's veto.

These laws and their operation are not the subjects of this chapter, which set out to deal, historically and biographically, with the temperance movement in general and one of its chief exponents

in particular. But there the laws are — the charter of a vast experiment which the nation, by duly appointed constitutional processes, after much preliminary trial and discussion, decided to make. Whatever may befall the Volstead Act or even the Eighteenth Amendment, one thing seems clear. For the individual who subscribes to the democratic principle of government by majorities the logical and straightforward course is to refrain, even at some personal and social inconvenience, from all participation in the illegal traffic in liquor, to expect of the naturally law-abiding classes that they will leave the breaking of law to the naturally law-breaking classes, and, if and when the national experiment, after fair trial, proves a hopeless failure, to seek a new experiment at the hands of those who have kept the democratic faith. Those who cannot see the matter in this light as many sincere men and women in this particular instance cannot will do well to remember the force and extent of prohibition sentiment throughout the country before the existing national laws were enacted, and especially to reckon with the legacy of feeling which had its first and most startling expression in the "praying bands" of Ohio and the most eminent champion in that happy warrior, Miss Willard.