Page 52 - All About History - Issue 186-19

The use of white as a propaganda
tool was popular among WCTU
campaigners, some of whom wore
it to present a petition in favour of
prohibition in Washington in 1909

e

in white and taken to the polling stations where
they would chant poems underlining the evils of
drink, with the aim of encouraging male voters to
support candidates who shunned alcohol.
Children and young people became a vital target
in the female push to deliver prohibition. From the
earliest years of the WCTU, there were concerted
efforts to influence education policies to ensure
that a new generation grew up with an ingrained
hatred of alcohol. In 1879, the organisation
began lobbying for all schools to include lessons
on the benefits of temperance and the evils
of drink. Under the guidance of Mary Hannah
Hunt, it established a Department Of Scientific
Temperance Instruction that continually pressured
Campaigns for temperance
became organised public lawmakers to put prohibition at the heart of the
demonstrations for education agenda. By 1902, they had succeeded
prohibition as the 20th
century began in every state apart from Arizona.
Campaigners also targeted firms producing
schoolbooks. In 1887, the WCTU wrote to over
200 publishers asking them to ensure that texts
on hygiene contained detailed descriptions of the
dangers of alcohol, as well as chapters on direct
links between drinking and anti-social behaviour
and crime. There was also a reminder that books
following these guidelines would win the approval
of an influential board run by the WCTU that was
instrumental in directing schools on which books
they should buy. By the early 20th century, over
40 such texts were in circulation. The lessons were
often delivered by female teachers as education
was one profession open to women. By the start of
the 1900s, a new generation of voters was coming
of age and their education had been increasingly
dominated by the prohibition message.
3x © Getty Images generation. As the idea of national prohibition
But learning wasn’t confined to the younger

began to gain ground, female campaigners showed
a talent for spreading their message through the
printed word. In 1879, the Women’s Temperance
a
e nat ona ban on booze Publishing Association was set up – it was the idea
e
i
was desi nedd to stamp out of Matilda Carse, who’d become a passionate anti-
the demon driink forever alcohol campaigner following the death of her son
o

ALCOHOL WAS ALCOHOL COULD BE
I
PROHIBITION DEFINED AS ANY KIND PLENTIFUL SUPPLIES DRUNK IN A PERSON’S
B
H
OF INTOXICATING
OF ALCOHOL WERE
AIMED TO OUTLAW LIQUOR THAT WAS T TO BE PROTECTED HOME OR AT A
O
O
ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 0.5% PROOF OR IN THE NATIONAL HOUSE W ERE THEY
D
H
T
N
AND REGULATE MORE BY VOLUME, INTEREST FOR USE WERE A LEGITIMATE
A
S
E
E
Y
THEWAY THEY FAR STRICTER THAN IN RESEARCH AND IN GUEST, ALTHOUGH
H
C
WERE MADE, USED MANY PROHIBITION THE PRODUCTION OF THEY COULDN’T TAKE
E
N
O
AND SOLD ADVOCATES HAD DYE AND FUEL DRINK TO HOTELS OR
DEMANDED RESTAURANTS
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