Women’s Temperance
While the suffrage movement was the most well-known women’s issue of the Progressive Era, the Women’s Temperance Movement was also very popular. Temperance is a synonym for “self-control.” The Temperance Movement was a push to control the purchase and consumption of alcohol. By the turn of the century, the Temperance Movement was almost 100 years old.
The Drunkard's Progress
Followers of the Temperance Movement valued personal restraint and opposed the consumption of alcohol because people were more likely to lose control under its influence. They felt that social order among the working class would be restored if alcohol was eliminated from their lifestyle. To promote their agenda, they used the arguments that men squandered their wages on alcohol in saloons and were more prone to domestic violence under the influence of alcohol.
Groups, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union led by Francis Willard and the Anti-Saloon League, supported prohibition legislation. By 1916, nineteen states had passed prohibition laws. In 1917, legislation to outlaw alcohol began to make its way through Congress. In 1919, the Volstead Act was passed to support the Eighteenth Amendment that made the manufacture and distribution of alcohol illegal.
Francis Willard