A University Built on Cold Water—and a Fight Over the Collection Plate

A number of the Prohibitionists in this city are promoting the establishment of a temperance university at Olympia, but opposition has already appeared within the city. A company has been incorporated to own and manage it, and the officers were elected at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce Friday. The following were given to a Post-Intelligencer reporter as the names of those present: Prof. B. W. Brintnall, of Olympia; Milo A. Root, Roger S. Green, E. B. Sutton, Mrs. Winnie Thomas, Rev. Daniel Bagley, Mrs. E. J. Fifield, Mrs. E. K. Sinerun, Hon. J. W. Range, Swan Hovik, Arnold S. Allen, Mrs. H. S. Parkhurst.

Officers of the association were elected as follows: president, Roger S. Green; secretary, B. W. Brintnall; treasurer, Milo A. Root.

It was decided that no person shall be eligible to the office of trustee who is not a member in good standing in one or more of the following organizations: Washington State Prohibition Alliance, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Good Templars, Sons of Temperance. This is done so as to secure and maintain for the university a character consistent with the views of the orders named. It is the desire of the promoters to make the university, both in its practical work and by its declarations, representative of the most advanced temperance ideas: total abstinence from all intoxicating beverages for the individual and absolute prohibition of the alcoholic drink traffic for the state and nation. It is further desired to create a university which shall, without creeds or theological dogmas, represent the highest ideas of Christian manhood and womanhood.

Although his name appears among those present at the meeting, Arnold S. Allen does not seem to be in sympathy with the movement, for in this month’s issue of the Good Templar, the official organ of the order in this state, of which he is editor, appears the following article:

There are indications that a new stock subscription scheme and appeal for temperance dollars is about to be imposed upon the public in general and Washington temperance workers in particular. An “institution of learning” or “temperance university” is the guise under which the next campaign against the temperance pocketbook is to be conducted. This is severe language, but the Templar prefers to speak out plainly at the start, rather than give silent consent to the inception of such a project, and subsequently be compelled to denounce it.

If we are correctly informed, the proprietor of a local sectarian college in this state, desiring to enlarge the scope, offers to turn his college and several hundred acres of land, at a valuation of $25,000, into the hands of a new university corporation, to be organized with $100,000 capital stock. The new concern is to be a distinctively temperance or prohibition university corporation, of which the old proprietor would hold one-fourth of the stock in consideration of this transfer of the college and property. Financial agents will then appeal to the temperance public to equip and sustain the institution by purchasing, doubtless on an easy installment plan, the remaining $75,000 of the capital stock.

It is not our purpose to discuss the business phase of such a scheme or the past records of its promoters; on these points intending investors are amply able to examine and protect themselves. We do, however, enter a vigorous protest against such a perversion of the hard-earned but cheerfully contributed money of hundreds of self-sacrificing temperance workers. In these times, when every local Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Good Templar’s lodge or other organized temperance society is having a hard battle for financial existence, an attempt to collect and divert into such a luxury as a temperance university is, to say the least, inconsiderate.

Temperance education is not the issue. The public educational institutions of the state of Washington will stand the test. With normal schools and free universities, a distinctively “temperance university” would be an absurdity. There is but scant argument for distinctively sectarian training schools, and we see no excuse for a further invasion of the field. The public schools of Washington will stand the expense.

Thanks to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, we have scientific temperance law, only recently confirmed by new legislation and penalties fixed for teachers. There is an ample sufficiency of stock sermonizing and temperance speech. What is wanted is not sermonizing at long range or perfunctory giving of alms or service by proxy.