Spotlight: Benefactor stipulates school provide anti-alcohol message

Seventy-five years ago, in 1943, a former English teacher in the Stroudsburg School District died, but an odd provision in his will assures that his strong anti-alcohol message will live on.

Samuel M. Schoonover, a temperance leader, set up a $25,000 trust honoring his mother, guaranteeing an annual grant to the school district and community he loved.

Curiously, the school district didn’t learn of the bequest until 1952, nearly 10 years after Schoonover died. Although the district was to receive the profits of the trust — about $1,200 to $1,500 a year — there was a catch in Schoonover’s will: “It is my desire, and the school board is hereby directed to buy 10 copies of ‘Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There.’ This is to be the first purchase from the Susan Rouse Schoonover Fund. Ten copies are to be permanently kept in good condition for the use of all Stroudsburg pupils to read.”

The fictional novel, which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public, was hardly on the “Top 10” list of 1952. The board found that the book had been out of print since 1908. The school library had one copy. Where would school officials find the rest?

The district’s unusual plight caught the attention of The Associated Press and United Press International news services. Time and Life magazines did feature articles.

School officials received more than 1,000 responses to their search. Some people misinterpreted the Life story and thought that the district would be willing to pay $2,500 for each copy. The district received 70 copies of the book from interested and community-minded people free of charge.

Stroudsburg Superintendent of Schools Dr. Cosmas C. Curry says there are 10 “pristine” copies in the library. There is not much demand for the book today, Curry said. In fact, no one has asked to see it in recent years. The last known request was in 2009.

The Schoonover will stipulated that the income from the $25,000 trust be used for “books of reference, science apparatus and any other such educational purpose as are not usually ordinarily provided for by the regular funds in school districts the size of Stroudsburg.”

According to Curry, the fund has grown to about $40,000. The last purchases of about $3,000 were made two years ago. Among the scientific items purchased were sound scopes. One stipulation of the will, Curry said, is that purchases cannot involve renewable items.

Curry, who took over as superintendent in the fall of 2015, was not aware of the existence of the fund until I called. He said he had never heard of the book but hopes to read it at some point.

Author Timothy Shay Arthur (1809-1885) was a strong temperance advocate. “Ten Nights” was published in 1855, sold thousands of paperbound copies, making it a successful “dime novel.” In fact, next to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” it was the biggest-selling novel of that era.

Later, “Ten Nights” became a melodrama performed by acting troupes of the day. The book set a whole nation singing, “Father, dear father, come home with me now.” The line comes from the lips of a fragile child coming to take her alcoholic father home from the Sickle and Sheaf saloon.

The book contains cover-to-cover moralizing about the evils of alcohol. It recounts the story of a good, hardworking man, Simon Slade, who opens a saloon. The story is told through the eyes of an anonymous traveling businessman who returns several times during a period of 10 years to Slade’s saloon.

He sees the moral decay and how it reaches out to pull down Slade, Slade’s teenage son and some of the saloon’s regulars. The climax comes when the 10-year-old daughter appears at the barroom door for her drunken father. Slade, who becomes furious when the father, torn between his love for his daughter and his love for booze, chooses the “demon rum.” In a rage, Slade flings a glass at the drunkard, but the glass misses its mark and, instead, strikes and kills the young girl.

The disconsolate father mends his immoral ways, Slade closes the saloon, and the incident is a catalyst which leads the enraged citizenry of the fictional town of Cedarville to destroy the alcohol and the saloon and enact prohibition.

“Ten Nights” is credited with being one of the books which proponents used to help enact the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Prohibition) in 1919. The amendment was repealed in 1933 when Prohibition was branded as unworkable and unenforceable.

Although not all critics were kind to him, including short story genius Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur said that stories should give life lessons through plainly written and realistically depicted scenes. When he was at his best, as he was in “Ten Nights in a Barroom,” his writing was brisk and poignant.

Of course, while viewed today as simplistic, many readers of his day found him relevant, reassuring and compelling.