vernor of the state and the legislature gave
special audiences in the halls of state legislation to the temperance
workers. They set out to capture the northerners to their way of seeing
things, and without troubling to hear the Negro side of the question,
these temperance people accepted the white man's story of the problem
with which he had to deal. State organizers were appointed that year,
who had gone through the southern states since then, but in obedience to
southern prejudices have confined their work to white persons only. It
is only after Negroes are in prison for crimes that efforts of these
temperance women are exerted without regard to "race, color, or previous
condition." No "ounce of prevention" is used in their case; they are
black, and if these women went among the Negroes for this work, the
whites would not receive them. Except here and there, are found no
temperance workers of the Negro race; "the great dark-faced mobs" are
left the easy prey of the saloonkeepers.

There was pending in the National Congress at this time a Federal
Election Bill, the object being to give the National Government control
of the national elections in the several states. Had this bill become a
law, the Negro, whose vote has been systematically suppressed since 1875
in the southern states, would have had the protection of the National
Government, and his vote counted. The South would have been no longer
"solid"; the Southerners saw that the balance of power which they
unlawfully held in the House of Representatives and the Electoral
College, based on the Negro population, would be wrested from them. So
they nick-named the pending elections law the "Force Bill"--probably
because it would force them to disgorge their ill-gotten political
gains--and defeated it. While it was being discussed, the question was
submitted to Miss Willard: "What do you think of the race problem and
the Force Bill?"

Said Miss Willard: "Now, as to the 'race problem' in its minified,
current meaning, I am a true lover of the southern people--have spoken
and worked in, perhaps, 200 of their towns and cities; have been taken
into their love and confidence at scores of hospitable firesides; have
heard them pour out their hearts in the splendid frankness of their
impetuous natures. And I have said to them at such times: 'When I go
North there will be wafted to you no word from pen or vo