Speaking to Parents

Addressing the parents, Mrs. White declared that they “should make it their first business to understand the laws of life and health, that nothing shall be done by them in the preparation of food, or through any other habits, which will develop wrong tendencies in their children.”—Ibid., 568.SHM 227.2

Parents, she declared, hold the key position as potential temperance reformers, and the dining table is a more important arena for effective temperance teaching than is the lecture hall. Though “the demon of intemperance” be of “giant strength,” yet she assured parents of success if they would “begin a crusade against intemperance” in their own families, teaching their children from “their very infancy” the principles that they should follow through life. Ibid., 567.SHM 227.3

In confirmation of Mrs. White’s assertion that the temperance cause as carried forward was far from efficient is the following statement by Mr. Fehlandt:SHM 227.4

“The ranks of the drunkard were being recruited, not alone from the moderate drinkers, but from those who had taken the pledge as well. They meant to keep the pledge, but fell before the power of a returning appetite. How many went down again no one knows. Perhaps not far from one half. When the pledge covered only spirituous liquors, the trouble was readily enough seen, and the pledge was extended. But yet it did not avail. With the safeguard and support of a pledge of total abstinence from all intoxicants, men still lapsed into their former habits. Of the half million that were helped to their feet temporarily by the Washingtonian crusade, it was estimated that two thirds again fell.”—A Century of Drink Reform in the United States, 104, 105.SHM 227.5