the national convention in Detroit, Mich., in October, 1883, to celebrate the completion of its first decade with rejoicing over complete organizations of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in each one of the forty-eight subdivisions of the United States, Alaska not then included. In 1884, after the failure of endeavors to have each of the three political parties, Democrats, Greenbackers and Republicans, endorse the prohibition movement, the prohibition party held its nominating convention in Pittsburgh. Pa. There Miss Willard seconded the nomination of John P. St. John for president, in a brilliant speech. The general officers of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union publicly endorsed the party, and in the annual State meetings nearly every convention did the same. While the position of the national society is not necessarily that of States and individuals, so great has been Miss Willard's influence and so earnest the convictions of her co-laborers, that the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union is practically a unit in political influence. In 1885 the national headquarters were removed from New York to Chicago, and the white-cross movement was adopted as a feature of the work of the national union. Because no other woman could be found to stand at the helm of this new movement, Miss Willard did so. No other department of the work ever developed so rapidly as this. A great petition for the better legal protection of women and girls was presented to Congress, with thousands of signatures. Mr. Powdeny, chief of the Knights of Labor, through her influence, sent out ninetv-two-thousand petitions to local assemblies of the Knights to be signed, circulated and returned to her. Through the efforts of the temperance workers the same petition was circulated and presented for legislative action in nearly every State and Territory. In 1883, while traveling on the Pacific coast, she was deeply impressed by the misery consequent on the opium habit among the Chinese, and in her annual address in the national convention she proposed a commission to report plans for a World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which had been suggested by her in 1876. Mrs. Mary A. Leavitt was soon sent out as a missionary of the national union to the Sandwich Islands, whence she proceeded to Australia, Japan, China, India, Africa and Europe, returning to her native land after an absence of eight years, leaving Woman's Christian Temperance Unions organized in every country, while hosts of friends and intrepid workers had been won to the ranks. The British Woman's Temperance Union had been previously organized, and the most notable feature of the national convention in Minneapolis, Minn., in 1886, was the presence of Mrs. Margaret Lucas, the sister of John Bright and first president of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, accompanied by Mrs. Hannah Whithall Smith. Her reception was magnificent, the convention rising in separate groups, first the crusaders in a body, then the women of New England, then of the Middle States, after these the western and the Pacific coast, and last the southern representatives, while the English and American flags waved from the platform, and all joined in singing "God Save the Queen." The Dominion Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Canada lias had also a powerful influence as an ally of the national union. Mrs. Letitia Youmans, the earliest white-ribbon pioneer in Canada, went to the convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1875. to learn its methods, and became, ten years later, the first president of the Dominion union. Thirty-five nations are now auxiliary to the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and the wearers of its emblematic white ribbon number three-hundred-thousand. About half of these women are residents of the United Slates. Miss Willard has been reelected president of the national union, with practical unanimity, every year since 1879. She was elected president of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, to succeed Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, in 1887. and has been since reelected for each biennial term. Besides sending out several round-the-world missionaries to nurture and enlarge the work initiated by Mrs. Leavitt, the world's union has circulated the monster polyglot petition against legalizing the alcohol and opium traffic, translated into hundreds of dialects, actively circulated in Great Britain, Switzerland. Scandinavia, India, China, Japan, Ceylon, Australia, Sandwich Islands, Chili, Canada and the United States, and signed by more than a million women. The president of the British Woman's Temperance Association, Lady Henry Somerset, is vice-president of the world's union, and Miss Willard finds in her a close friend and coadjutor. The sacrifices which Miss Willard has so freely made for this work have been repaid to her in abundant measure. She has been called by Joseph Cook "the most widely known and the best beloved woman in America" With a sisterly devotion to all of every creed who would "help a fallen brother rise." she has been ever loyal to the simple gospel faith in which she was reared. She is, first of all, a Christian philanthropist. Her church membership is with the Methodist Episcopal Church, which has honored itself in its recognition of her. though not to the extent of admitting her to its highest ecclesiastical court, the general quadrennial conference, to which she has twice been elected by the local conference. She has been one of the greatest travelers of this traveling age. From 1868 to 1871, in company with Miss Jackson, she spent two-and-one-half years abroad, traveling in Great Britain and Ireland, Denmark, Germany. Belgium, Holland, France, Austria, Turkey in Europe and Asia, Greece. Palestine and Egypt, studying art, history and languages indefatigably, and returning to her native land rich in the benefits reaped only by the scholarly and industrious traveler. She has traversed her own land from ocean to ocean and from the lakes to the gulf, and made second and third trips to England in the autumn of 1892. She has contributed hundreds of articles to many prominent periodicals, is assistant editor of "Our Day." of Boston, and other magazines, and is editor-in-chief of the "Union Signal." Her published volumes are: "Nineteen Beautiful Years," "Hints and Helps- in Temperance Work," "How to Win." "Woman in the Pulpit." "Woman and Temperance." "Glimpses of Fifty Years," "A Classic Town," and "A Young Journalist," the last in conjunction with Lady Henry Somerset. Her annual addresses to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union would form volumes unmatched in their way in the libraries of the world. In August, 1892, her devoted mother, the companion and inspirer of her life, without whose encouragement she believes her life-work never could have been done, one of the noblest women of this or any age, was transplanted to the life beyond, and Miss Willard, still in the prime of life, is now the last of her family. She is a member of societies in her own and other lands whose name is legion. She was president of the Woman's National Council, a federation of nearly all the woman's societies in America, in 1890, and is now vice-president of the same. She is at the head of the woman 's committee of temperance meetings in the World's Fair, and of many other World's Fair committees, and is actively engaged in promoting plans to aid in
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