Woman's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." It plays an influential role in the temperance movement. Originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement, the organization supported the 18th Amendment and was also influential in social reform issues that came to prominence in the progressive era.
This 1902 illustration from the Hawaiian Gazette newspaper humorously illustrates the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union's campaign against the producers and sellers of beers in Hawaii.
Women of the WCTU at a meeting, 1924
WCTU display booth at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, 1945
Exterior of the National WCTU headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, a building on the national register of historic places.
The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or complete abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emphasize alcohol's negative effects on people's health, personalities and family lives. Typically the movement promotes alcohol education and it also demands the passage of new laws against the sale of alcohol, either regulations on the availability of alcohol, or the complete prohibition of it.
The Drunkard's Progress (1846) by Nathaniel Currier warns that moderate drinking leads to total disaster step-by-step.
Songbook used at the Women's Temperance Organization from Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania.
Sons of Temperance procession, Hill End, New South Wales, 1872
A temperance fountain in Tompkins Square Park, New York City
