Temperance Advocates

Valuable service has been rendered from time to time by the visits of temperance advocates. In those earlier years these were pledge-signing campaigns—a feature that, unfortunately, has become less conspicuous since the emergence of the demand to get rid of the liquor traffic by voting it out of existence. The permanence of any gain secured by legislation would be made all the more certain by the extent to which people were won to the practice of total abstinence. Much good work had been done on these lines by such organizations as Good Templars, Rechabites, and the Band of Hope movement, but there was both scope for, and need of, a popular appeal on a wide scale. Hence the advent in 1885 of a temperance advocate who had gained considerable popularity in Australia—Mr. Matthew Burnett—was hailed with great expectations. If those expectations were not all realized it was not because Mr. Burnett was lacking either in zeal, sincerity or ability. He was a Yorkshireman, charged with emotion, and having to his credit the rescue and rehabilitation of not a few sad wrecks of humanity. The story of some of these rescues, page 48 relieved by touches of pathos and humour, made up the ground-work of impassioned appeals for total abstinence that led to pledge-signing on a large scale at all his meetings. Mr. Burnett's unselfishness and geniality commended him to all associated with him in the various missions he held.

A still more widely advertised temperance advocate visited New Zealand, also in 1885, in the person of Mr. Richard T. Booth, the American founder of the Blue Ribbon Army. His name and fame drew crowds to hear him wherever he was announced to speak, and there was no lack of plainness and persuasiveness in his setting forth of the perils of the drink habit and the need of every form of practical protest against it. The form of protest that gave distinction to his world-wide mission was that every one who signed the total abstinence pledge should wear on a conspicuous place on an outer garment a bit of blue ribbon. That appeal to the quietly spectacular caught on immensely, and Mr. Booth's course through the colony could be traced by the wearing of the bit of blue in the home, in the street, in the market, in the place of business, in church, in the pulpit, and in one case at least, on the judicial bench. It was the badge of what looked like an exceeding great army, out to demolish the liquor trade. The badge has disappeared but the record at the triennial licensing polls shows that the army has not ceased to exist.

There was another visitor in 1885, Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt, also an American, who left a far deeper and more lasting impression than any who preceeded her. In inaugurating the New Zealand branch of the World's Women's Temperance Union, she made one of the biggest contributions

Rev. W. J. Williams,
Fearless writer and speaker, ex-editor of the ‘Vanguard,’ and influential advocate of the prohibition cause

A. R. Atkinson, B.A.,
Ex-President New Zealand Alliance, and outstanding prohibition writer

Rev. R. S. Gray,
Three times President N.Z. Alliance; Dominion Organiser Efficiency Campaign, 1919

Rev. W. J. Comrie,
President N.Z. Alliance: many years Chairman of Executive

page 49 that have yet been made to rid New Zealand of the blight of the liquor traffic. This whole organization will very worthily have a special record of its own in this history. It is sufficient to note here that the year 1885 marked the beginning of the women's march to victory under the banner of the W.C.T.U., the leadership honoured so far by the names of such presidents as Mrs. Schnackenberg, Mrs. Cole, Mrs. A. R. Atkinson, Mrs. Don and Mrs. T. E. Taylor.