Women's Christian Crusade Research Paper

THE WOMAN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1874. In the winter of 1873-74 the “Woman’s Crusade”, a series of non-violent protests held by women who believed that alcohol was poisoning the minds of the public, spurred the creation of the WCTU. Since their creation, the WCTU’s goals have fluctuated. First and foremost, the union supported prohibition, but over time abstinence from drugs and tobacco, the reform of labor laws and prison conditions, and woman’s suffrage garnered their attention. In the years since, the union’s central focus has once again become promoting and educating people on the benefits of abstaining from alcohol. The group’s first president,

Willard, an educator, prohibitionist, and reformer, led the union in a different direction than Wittenmyer had. Willard wanted to grow the union and expand their outreach by adopting women’s suffrage as one of their main concerns. She thought that if women were granted the right to vote, they would be able to work with prohibitionist men to outlaw alcohol. Willard believed in temperance whole-heartedly, she once said “Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.” To Willard, temperance was the only way to fight against the abhorrences of

When speaking about the “Do Everything” policy, Willard said “Everything is not in the Temperance Reform, but the Temperance Reform should be in everything.” Through this policy Willard was able to encourage the members of the WCTU to incorporate the intentions of the union into their everyday lives, speak publicly of the benefits of temperance, and to include the temperance objectives in their own businesses. Because of Willard’s determination to get temperance publicised and made known everywhere, the WCTU became the largest non-secular organization of women in the 19th century. Frances Willard traveled between the US and England often and over time became aware of the need for a national temperance organization. Willard then founded the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU) as a way to reach a larger audience and spread the objectives of the WCTU to people across the globe. When the WWCTU was at its peak in 1927, they had 766,000 members. By 1929, the WWCTU had spread to 51 countries and colonies. Since then, the WWCTU and the WCTU have become one, the extra “W” was dropped, and now there are chapters of the WCTU in multiple countries across the