Addresses Idaho Convention               135
woman who obeys the new Commandment, given to us by our Elder Brother, "That ye love one another."
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I confess that I was not able for a long time to1 see these facts as comprehensively as I see them now. After the straitest teachings of my religion, I had been raised a Pharisee. My first nine years of married and maternal life were spent (as elsewhere related) as a servant without wages and all-around drudge on an unimproved, but rapidly improving Oregon farm. My good husband, a farmer and stock man of the olden school, was not addicted to any of the vices of which a comparatively few men anywhere are reported to be guilty. He had a theory of his own as to the cause and cure of inebriety, under which we raised a large family of sober children, a theory which I have never seen excelled and have never known to fail. He said, "We'll give our boys and girls, at regular hours, all the milk, cream, butter, eggs, sugar, syrup, fruits, bread, cake and vegetables they can eat, and all the sleep they want. Then they'll never care for stimulants." I also had a theory of my own, which I began to put in practice after my public work began. But I soon saw that few mothers were able to put their boys upon honor before the public, as I did, because few of them, in fact none, except myself, were at that time making a demand before the public for equal rights for mothers, a demand which almost everybody was meeting with ridicule or scorn.
I did not then, nor do I at this writing, expect that agitation for the state-wide prohibition of the liquor traffic will become a settled issue for many years to come. Too many men and women are making money, notoriety, travel and fame, as its proponents, to expect it to be abandoned without a prolonged and excited struggle. Too many cases of the abuse of the traffic, by men and women who have made the sale of intoxicants their busi-