did not come before
the House at the last session.

"Our paper has constantly increased in its hold upon the local unions,
whose devotion to its interests augurs well for its future success.

"The number of documents scattered among our auxiliaries cannot be
accurately stated, but is not less than twelve or fifteen thousand, and
the correspondence of the officers by letter and postal-card, will not
fall short of the same estimate. To correct misapprehensions, it should,
perhaps, be stated that no officer of the National Union has received a
dollar for services or traveling expenses during the year."

A WORKING ORGANIZATION.

To meet annually in convention and pass resolutions and make promises is
one thing; to do practical and effective work all through the year is
quite another. And it is just here that this new temperance organization
exhibits its power. The women whom it represents are very much in
earnest and mean work. What they resolve to do, if clearly seen to be in
the right direction, will hardly fail for lack of effort. In their plan
of work, one branch particularly embraces the children. If the rising
generation can not only be pledged to abstinence; but so carefully
instructed in regard to the sin and evil of intemperance, and their
duty, when they become men and women, to make war upon the liquor
traffic, and to discountenance all form of social drinking, then an
immense gain will be had for the cause in the next generation, when the
boys and girls of to-day will hold the ballots, make the laws, give
direction to public sentiment and determine the usages of society.

LOOKING AFTER THE CHILDREN.

To what extent, then, are the State and local unions looking after the
children? Writing, as we now are, before the third annual meeting of the
National Union, and, therefore, without a general report of the year's
work before us, we are unable to give a statement in full of the
important temperance work which has been done with and for the rising
generation. But, from official and other reliable sources of
information, we are in possession of facts of a most gratifying
character. In the State of Minnesota, as the result of woman's efforts,
they have had for several years a "Sunday-School Temperance League," and
their last annual report gives seventeen thousand as the number of
children already "pledged to abstain from all intoxicants as a
beverage." Says their report for 1877, "We have carried the work in