Post World War I America focused on business as usual. President Harding’s campaign slogan was “A return to normalcy”. Though it has been an idea since the 1830s, prohibition was thought as an evil that required instant correction. The normal American above fifteen years old used nearly seven cans of unpolluted alcohol annually; this is three times as more as they drink today. As a result, cigarette and alcohol misuse was inflicting disorder on the livelihoods of many, predominantly in an era when women had little lawful privileges and were completely dependent on their husbands for provisions and maintenance. With this new prosperity of the 1920s, many groups took this as an opportunity to stamp out spirits for the good of humanity, but prohibition was repealed overwhelmingly 13 years later.
This study proves that even though the movement League would be the driving force behind the 18th amendment, it still would be enough to keep it going and fight the vice of smoking. Though the primary objective of the movement was to overcome the issue of alcohol, their initial step would be to wage a battle against cigarettes. According to the WTCU, they operated out of the certainty that smoking results to drinking and that drinking leads to the devil. The league would work together with other anti-cigarette movements to fight the wars against cigarettes and alcohol. The movement would grow strong and come up with amendments and propositions to help fight the social vices of smoking and alcoholism.
The idea that smoking resulted to drinking of alcohol was a refinement of an argument established a century in advance by Benjamin Rush. Benjamin was a surgeon general of the American continental army and the main prominent physician of his era. He was an advocate of the temperance movement and supported the fight against smoking. In one of his article published he argued that smoking dried out the mouth and produced abnormal dryness that could be fulfilled only by alcohol. His thoughts influenced discussions concerning smoking for many generations.
The initial wedge in the organized movements against cigarettes was the allege that they manipulated the young. Smoking would manipulate the minds and the belief of the young and lead them to alcoholism. Majority persons who approved other sorts of tobacco disapproved of cigarettes barely since they appeared easy to obtain and very seductive to the youthful. Cigarettes were easily accessible and they were not expensive thus they were within the monetary reach of the many youth and persons. Manufacturers would give free samples to the youth and other people to make their brand known. Other affected individuals would be women who fancied smoking. According to the WTCU, women smoking groups were in operation in some cities in the year 1985.
The spread of the vices of smoking and drinking led to the resurgence temperance movement to fight the vices. This resulted to the Anti-Saloon League whose primary objective would be to fight alcohol. However, to fight alcoholism meant the fight of smoking first. Thus the league teemed with other movements that were against the idea of smoking. The League was the largely influential lobbying group that gave this law the push it needed to get over and the rationale behind why they wanted this amendment passed. One of the leaders of the saloon league was also the main author who wrote the prohibition administration. The heads of this group had such a huge Christian background that they would get backing from other big Christian groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The root of this movement was to fight the vice of smoking that was largely leading to alcoholism.
In 1925, an American tobacco journalist, Carl Werner, would argue that it was difficult to overcome the vice of smoking. He argued that the more strongly the temperance movements worked to fight the vice, the more popular it grew. The net result of approximately half a century of crusading was that no fewer than ninety percent of American men above twenty-one were smoking tobacco as often as they clean their teeth. Werner immensely overestimated the statistics of the male tobacco smokers and perhaps underrated the statistics of the ladies who smouldered. He ended up dismissing the anti-cigarette campaigns as prehistoric relic. Since more ladies were smouldering in greater numbers, and more men were switching from smoking, Werner took it as a confirmation that moral reformers had triumphed over alcohol and they would now fight the issue of tobacco.
Certain declarations by prohibition heads strengthened the perception that the prohibition was won. Rev. William who is a famous evangelist of that era declared that “prohibition was won” after the endorsement of the eighteenth adjustment in 1919. In one of the WTCU conferences he argued that the fight against smoking would be a difficult one that the one against alcoholism. On the other end, Clarence True Wilson who was a leader of the Anti-Saloon movement at the same time as a Methodist Church officer argued that cigarette smoking was a stench in God’s nostrils and resentfully criticized aid associations for providing them to soldiers. In one speech at a gathering of the evangelist claimed that it was disgusting to that young soldiers trained at great cost could not go to war before stuffing cigarettes in their mouths. He requested reformers to take advantage of the impetus generated by the prohibition movement and strike when ‘the iron was still hot’ against tobacco smoking.
However, he was not the only person having an experience that would drive him in this direction.
For some, the experience would be more personal, like in the case of Wayne Wheeler, another principal of the movement. When Wheeler was working on a farm as a young boy he had an incident with a drunken farm worker while he was working. The drunken worker stabbed Wheeler in the leg with a pitchfork. So from an early age Wheeler was driven to stop prohibition. He was the driving force behind getting prohibition passed. He also helped draft the bill for the 18th amendment and later drafted the Volstead Act which is the enforcement part of the 18th amendment.
The other head of the movement would be Ernest Cherrington. After attending Ohio Wesleyan College and being a teacher in Ross County Ohio, he would later become a journalist and follower of the temperance movement. Unlike Wheeler, who wanted to pass legislation to force prohibition upon the masses, Cherrington believed the key to prohibition laid within the education of sobriety. In his pamphlet “Education Will Keep Prohibition in the Constitution” Cherrington shows his strong belief that the alcohol problem would be solved though education.
Cherrington would use his skills as a journalist to eventually become editor of “The American Issue” newspaper, and the next year, the manager of the American Issue Publishing Company. He would use these two platforms to help drive prohibition home to the masses. He would also a six volume set of encyclopaedias called “The Benchmark Encyclopaedia of the Alcohol Difficulty” that was printed to help schools educate their students on effects and evils of alcohol. His final goal was that through the education of temperance law enforcement problems, like bootlegging and liquor related organized crime, would go away.
These three men with three different approaches to prohibition would become a powerful force in the temperance movement. Howard Hyde Russell would use his time as a preacher to speak and help people find their way via god, Ernest Cherrington while would use his publication company and his experience as an editor to help further push the education of temperance to the masses. Finally William Wheeler would use his time as a lawyer to draft bills and legislation to gather all kinds of lobbying groups to make the movement one of the strongest political groups of its time. They would grow to be so powerful that they would have almost one-half of the United States under prohibition in one form or another before the amendment would even be passed.
The League was arguably one of the most powerful lobbying groups during it’s time. They masterfully used propaganda and other methods to win over the people of the nation. First they were focused on only one social reform, and that was to do away with saloon’s all together and targeted members of both sexes and youth culture as well. They proclaimed publicly to be strictly non-partisan so both Republicans and Democrats could join to do what was needed to stop the sale of alcohol. The League movement would drive ad campaigns and produce literature to spread during speeches and public fairs in as many states as possible. They mixed politics with church by saying that all their members had gone dry, but mostly they focused on making sure that they all voted dry, even if individuals drank on their own time. With their own major publication, American Issue, they would flood the people with statistics of the number of people, who had died by alcoholism, or deaths caused by an influence of alcoholism.
Their major point of focus was to get involved in politics by getting petitions signed and help people vote for the “right” thing. They used what they called agitation to “change the public’s attitude toward the saloon as well as its behaviour, presumably through increased involvement in the political process”. Agitation was primarily focused on the formation and allotment of propaganda and the education of the public. The League would further simplify by dividing it into different subsections, the legislative, the financial, agitation, and enforcement. By dividing responsibilities to these new divisions, the League was better suited to fight for prohibition and educate the masses.
The League movement gathered statistical data from the best sources at the time to educate people on how bad the effects of alcohol were. The problem with statistics of that time was that people did not understand how statistics worked, but how they came to that statistic in the first place. The movement of the League was also known to falsify numbers to numbers in their favour, even though both Wet’s and Dry’s were guilty of this. A pamphlet distributed in Connecticut claimed that prohibition saved the state close to $100,000,000 a year, gave exact numbers of lives that were saved by prohibition and how much money was saved by the individual person over a year. Under further scrutiny however, evidence revealed that prohibition was in fact taking credit for money saved from a long list of other reasons including a skew of money saved between wet and dry years. Another large discrepancy came from the fact that people concluded the cause rather than direct correlation, when there was an increase or decrease between something and alcohol. These figures would still drive people in the directions the League would want them to go.
The movement of the League’s Power did not just rest in the production of statistical propaganda. The League would influence propaganda through various political means. The League would become one of the nation’s first special interests parties. K. Austin Kerr wrote that the ASL believed that it could only win the vote one way, and that was through influencing people to vote with them, and so they ran the League like a business. Both brewers and sellers of alcohol would do what they needed to make their profits. Railroads further accelerated the consumptions of alcohol as it spread out further than just the place where it was made, which dropped the prices. With the drop of prices, the saloons had to pick up business by trying prostitution and gambling. They made sure to prey on the Europeans migrating from nations that were used to having alcohol; this would make saloons even more popular. To combat this, the League movement would have to combat this not only with Democrats, but also with Republicans who felt the same way as them. The League takes on members of both parties.
They organized themselves into a business model specifically for politics that would later focus on getting prohibition passed and enforced. They would get their delegation and supporters to pay their dues, which they would then use to purchase stock in the League. They had people in committees which were divided into districts, and having Superintendents to watch over each district. Every district relied heavily on the church to lead on the moral ground that coerced people to join the League movement, so that the League itself could focus on other pursuits. Slowly, members of the board would gain positions within their local governments, which they took the opportunity to get more League laws passed. Even though The League movement would be dissolved later on they made an example for future lobbying and special needs groups to follow.
Even though the bureaucratic hierarchy of the League worked and made them the alphas of the anti alcohol movement, there were other organizations that out-lasted the League; one even still stands today. Holland Webb believed that since the League exclusively focused on politics and changing laws and not changing the hearts and minds of the people, it resulted in the amendment eventually being overturned and the League falling into nothingness. The Women’s Christian Restraint Amalgamation was probably the most famous of the temperance movements, it is also still around today. The WCTU focus was to not only fight alcohol, but also fight for women’s suffrage and child labour laws.
Many aspects lead to both the success and failure of the League. Apart from using the church, the media, financial status, and both local and national government to meet its goals, it still owes its success to its leaders Howard Hyde Russell, William Wheeler and Ernest Cherrington.
Howard Hyde Russell
The Anti-Saloon League would become a powerful lobbying group able to push legislation through federal government in 1919 with the 18th amendment, but prior to that they would get their start in Oberlin Ohio, at Oberlin College where they would strengthen their political base with speeches, media and government. The three leaders Russell, Cherrington and Wheeler would prove that together they were a powerful triumvirate within the League and nothing could stop them as long as they worked together.
Howard Hyde Russell would begin his crusade in 1893 with the Ohio Anti-Saloon League. Later, he would see the League as an opportunity to unite churches across the United States of America in their pursuit of prohibition. The League’s biggest support would primarily come from the southern states and rural northern areas, pulling in support from Protestant ministers and their followers, including Methodists, Baptists, Disciples and Congregationalists. He would later get fifteen delegates in 1895 to meet with him in Washington D.C. to form the American Anti-Saloon League.
In his Direction of the League in Ohio Russell wrote for a prohibition pamphlet called Our Day. In the pamphlet he would try to remind Oberlin of its roots of always aspiring to be the pinnacle of all that is good, and that it had taken the lead in the case of prohibition.
Russell would make war synonymous with prohibition and he would use this pamphlet to call the people of Oberlin Ohio to arms.
The church would be the perfect platform to gain momentum in moving not only the state of Ohio into prohibition, but it would be the foundation that helps get it nationally passed. Odegard would write that the league would prefer to torn to multiple small donations to fund its policies. A sample pledge form from New York state would give people of the church the chance to donate anywhere from thirty-three cents to five hundred dollars, paid every three months, for five years. Once all the cards were collected the nationwide offices of the saloon league would collect the amount donated every quarter.
In 1903 Howard Hyde Russell would fund the Lincoln Legion. It was a program which people would promise them to the abstinence of alcohol.
Figure -Lincoln-Lee Legion Pledge card
This pledge would be signed by over five million people. The card itself reads
“”while, the employ of invigorating liquors as a drink is industrious of pauperism, poverty and offence; and considering it our responsibility to dishearten that which manufactures more wickedness than good quality, we consequently vow ourselves to refrain from the employ of stimulating liquors as a drink.“
With this pledge, Howard Hyde Russell would build a base that would help with the Leagues movement. As successful as this movement was, Russell was not the first person to start a pledge movement preaching abstinence. Sixty-five years before a young lawyer would travel to South Forks School House in Sangamon County, Illinois to deliver a passionate speech on abstinence. That lawyer was Abraham Lincoln. This again shows that not only was prohibition an idea that has been around for some time, it also shows that the church historically has been a big platform for the push of temperance and anti-smoking movement.
Wayne Biden Wheeler
The death of Wheeler in 1927 was premature. Veritably, he died at the tender age of 57. However, his achievements in the ASL are irrefutable even in his death. Wayne Wheeler was born in 1869 in the State of Ohio. He had the privilege to attend the Oberlin College in Ohio where Reverend Howard Hyde Russell was a lecturer. Wheeler benefited greatly from the lectures because they acted as an eye opener for ventures of the League. Prior to his interactions with Reverend Russell, the ASL had several problems with its management. It is indispensable to note that it had leaders, who seemed to lose focus of their work.
Despite that the principal thrust of the league was to prevent the spread of alcoholism in America, these leaders focused too much on the political aspect of the idea instead of multitudes. Notably, they forgot that if their concentration on the masses would increase their chances of survival as a league and cause ruptures in the U.S. legal system. They did not involve the church entirely in their charting of objectives and their propagation towards completion. As a consequence, masses lost faith in the plan and the group disbanded. That happened at the commencement of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, the inception of the movement in the late nineteenth century brought a gulp of air of to the league. Consequently, its leaders began to focus on the role of the church as a moral agent in the community. As a consequence, they were set to realise the fulfilment of their objectives. In fact, the principal objective was to propagate the prohibition of the illegal consumption of alcohol in the United States.
Wheeler assumed a dynamic part in the League in Ohio after attending several lectures by Hyde Russell. In the same way as other Americans in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth hundreds of years, he dreaded the ethical decay of society. He knew that such a deterioration of morals would degrade the United States’ society and cause unwanted ripples of ridicule from the global scene. He accepted that Americans had put some distance between their religious convictions and were squandering their lives away by engaging in sin that included the excessive consumption of liquor. According to most religions of that time, alcohol brought devastating effects to its users indiscriminately. Built up in 1893 in Oberlin, the League of Ohio looked to deny the dealing and utilization of liquor. As stated, that was the principal objective that defined the role of the ASL in the American Society.
Therefore, Wheeler served as the secretary of the League for its office in Columbus, Ohio.
At an opportune time in his vocation in the ASL, Wheeler built up an unmistakable feeling of force that was known by a large number of his supporters and adherents as Wheelerism. He best depicted the weight of legislative issues, political activities that depended vigorously on the utilization of broad communications and mass correspondences to convince lawmakers that people in general needs or requests a specific activity. Nonetheless, in general, it incorporated intimidation, dangers, and other secretive procedures as well. These weight governmental issues in Wheeler’s work soon started to immerse both his own and professional life. Prior to his marriage in at the turn of the twentieth century, Wayne Wheeler would frequently compose sincere adoration letters to his life partner. These letters incorporated the slipping in of solid convictions on what was to be finished with the denial of development.
Wheeler turned into the administrator of League workplaces in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1902. Immediately after accomplishing his law permit, he was designated the ASL’s principal lawyer. That was prior to his election as the leader of the League. Wheeler headed the whole association by 1901 because of his knack for detail and positivity. Imperatively, he rose rapidly to prominence in the national ASL. It was his primary objective to achieve the goals of the league in due time. For instance, he indicted more than two thousand individuals for abusing restriction and alcohol trafficking laws in Ohio. What is more, he wrote various notes for alcohol bills. One of the most interesting bits of his life was his encounter with the Ohio governor, Myron T. Herrick. Although it happened long before he became the leader of the ASL and before the ASL went national, it had significance in the future of both Wheeler and the League.
Wheeler had the conviction that prohibitionists had to authorize laws in a strict and unsympathetic way as opposed to through training of the subject. However, the governor appeared too lenient to deal with the issue positively and efficiently because he was a part of the problem. Wayne Wheeler and the ASL had the capacity crush the opposition to the governor, but they had to do it in a positive and efficient way that would not raise suspicion. Notably, they exposed the intentions of the governor to propagate heinous acts in the state. Interestingly, Wheeler gained access to the letter that the Association of Brewers sent to ASL asking for secret support of the governor. Thus, he made it public in churches on a Sunday. As expected, there was a massive turnout of voters that removed the governor from office with their votes. Although he had never lost before, the loss was massive because it resulted in the end of the governor’s political career. That was the first huge triumph of the Anti-Saloon League in American legislative issues. Wheeler turned into the lawyer and general insight for the National Anti-Saloon League, an individual from the official panel and its head lobbyist. He also turned out to be known, in general, as the “dry manager” because of his power and massive impact.
Bibliography
Baumohl, Jim. Review of Profits, Power, and Prohibition: Alcohol Reform and the Industrializing of America, 1800-1930., by John J. Rumbarger. In Contemporary Sociology, 215-16. Vol. 20. N.p.: American Sociological Association, 1991. Accessed March 26, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2072917.
Burnham, J. C. “New Perspectives on the Prohibition ‘Experiment’ of the 1920’s.” Journal of Social History 2, no. 1 (1967): 51-68. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786620.
Burns, Ken. “Roots Of Prohibition.” WWW.PBS.Org. Last modified 2011. Accessed February 12, 2015. http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/roots-of-prohibition/.
Cherrington, Ernest. Education Will Keep Prohibition in the Constitution. Westerville, OH: American Issue Press, 1910?
Jackson, J. C. “The Work of the Anti-Saloon League.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 32 (November 1908): 12-26. Accessed March 19, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1010548.
Kyvig, David E. “Women Against Prohibition.” In American Quarterly, 465-82. Vol. 28. N.p.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Accessed February 17, 2015. http:////www.jstor.org/stable/2712541.
Lewis, Dio. Letter, “Letter of Dio Lewis to the President of the Prohibitory Convention, Mt. Vernon, OH, by Dio Lewis,” 1874. Fifty Years History of the Temperance Cause. Accessed February 24, 2015. Bibliography
Baumohl, Jim. Review of Profits, Power, and Prohibition: Alcohol Reform and the Industrializing of America, 1800-1930., by John J. Rumbarger. In Contemporary Sociology, 215-16. Vol. 20. N.p.: American Sociological Association, 1991. Accessed March 26, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2072917.
Burnham, J. C. “New Perspectives on the Prohibition ‘Experiment’ of the 1920’s.” Journal of Social History 2, no. 1 (1967): 51-68. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786620.
Burns, Ken. “Roots Of Prohibition.” WWW.PBS.Org. Last modified 2011. Accessed February 12, 2015. http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/roots-of-prohibition/.
Cherrington, Ernest. Education Will Keep Prohibition in the Constitution. Westerville, OH: American Issue Press, 1910?
Jackson, J. C. “The Work of the Anti-Saloon League.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 32 (November 1908): 12-26. Accessed March 19, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1010548.
Kyvig, David E. “Women Against Prohibition.” In American Quarterly, 465-82. Vol. 28. N.p.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Accessed February 17, 2015. http:////www.jstor.org/stable/2712541.
Lewis, Dio. Letter, “Letter of Dio Lewis to the President of the Prohibitory Convention, Mt. Vernon, OH, by Dio Lewis,” 1874. Fifty Years History of the Temperance Cause. Accessed February 24, 2015. http://asp6new.alexanderstreet.com/wam2/wam2.object.details.aspx?dorpid=1000671149.
Lincoln, Abraham. “Address.” Speech presented at Washingtonian Temperance Society, Springfield, IL, February 22, 1842. http://www.westervillelibrary.org/File/Get/14693. Accessed April 13, 2015. http://www.westervillelibrary.org/File/Get/14693.
Odegard, Peter H. Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League. N.p.: Colombia University Press, 1928.
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Russell, Howard Hyde. “Christian Endevor Versus the Saloon.” Speech, international Convention of Christian Endeavour, San Francisco, CA, July 8, 1897.
———. Financial Appeal. Westerville, OH: The American Issue, 1919.
———. “Lincoln-Lee Pledge Card.” Westerville Public Library- Anti-Saloon League Museum. Accessed April 13, 2015. http://www.westervillelibrary.org/File/Get/14692.
———. “The Oberlin Campaign.” https://prohibition.osu.edu/. Accessed March 26, 2015. https://prohibition.osu.edu/anti-saloon-league/anti-saloon-conflict.
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Kerr, K. Austin. “Organizing for Reform: The Anti-Saloon League and Innovation in Politics.” American Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1980): 37-53.
Opdyckle Lamme, Margot. “The Public Sentiment Building Society: The Anti-Saloon League of America, 1895-1910.” Journalism History 29, no. 3 (2003): 123-132.
Rice, Stuart A. “Prohibition and Statistics.” Journal of Social Forces 2, no. 5 (1924): 654-657.
Webb, Holland. “Temperance Movements and Prohibition.” International Social Science Review 73, no. 1, 2 (2003): 61-69.
http://asp6new.alexanderstreet.com/wam2/wam2.object.details.aspx?dorpid=1000671149.
Lincoln, Abraham. “Address.” Speech presented at Wasingtonian Temperance Society, Springfield, IL, February 22, 1842. http://www.westervillelibrary.org/File/Get/14693. Accessed April 13, 2015. http://www.westervillelibrary.org/File/Get/14693.
Odegard, Peter H. Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League. N.p.: Colombia University Press, 1928.
Pegram, Thomas R. “Review Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City by Michael A. Lerner.” The American Historical Review 113, no. 1 (February 2008): 203-04. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4000737.
Russell, Howard Hyde. “Christian Endeavour Versus the Saloon.” Speech, international Convention of Christian Endeavour, San Francisco, CA, July 8, 1897.
———. Financial Appeal. Westerville, OH: The American Issue, 1919.
———. “Lincoln-Lee Pledge Card.” Westerville Public Library- Anti-Saloon League Museum. Accessed April 13, 2015. http://www.westervillelibrary.org/File/Get/14692.
———. “The Oberlin Campaign.” https://prohibition.osu.edu/. Accessed March 26, 2015. https://prohibition.osu.edu/anti-saloon-league/anti-saloon-conflict.
U.S. Const. amend. XVIII, § 1, cl. 1 (amended 1919).
Wheeler, Wayne B. “The Meaning of the Supreme Court Decision on National Prohibition.” http://www.gilderlehrman.org/. Accessed March 2, 2015. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/SupremeCourtProhibition.pdf.
Kerr, K. Austin. “Organizing for Reform: The Anti-Saloon League and Innovation in Politics.” American Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1980): 37-53.
Opdyckle Lamme, Margot. “The Public Sentiment Building Society: The Anti-Saloon League of America, 1895-1910.” Journalism History 29, no. 3 (2003): 123-132.
Rice, Stuart A. “Prohibition and Statistics.” Journal of Social Forces 2, no. 5 (1924): 654-657.
Webb, Holland. “Temperance Movements and Prohibition.” International Social Science Review 73, no. 1, 2 (2003): 61-69.
