March Toward Prohibition Paved the Way for #MeToo
Current folklore about Prohibition ignores the absolute ugliness of saloons in the 19th century. The public house had become a male-only social and political establishment, energetic in its traditions and enthusiasms but often described as dreary, dank, dirty and dangerous places leading to male neglect and violence. The litany of sexual abuses connected with the saloon were extensive, including prostitution, venereal disease and rape.
Saloons were “places far more primitive and debauched,” historian Bryce Bauer noted in his book “Gentlemen Bootleggers.”
Both passionate and cautious, Temperance women began to exclaim that “I Too” have been hurt by male violence exacerbated by drink. And if intoxicating liquors could be abolished, this violence might be tempered, as well — or so Temperance logic predicted.
In the process of challenging saloons, women realized they needed the vote in order to change the liquor trade. Therefore, temperance necessitated suffrage.
At the first national convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Cleveland, in 1874 in Ohio, the new members elected Iowa’s Annie Wittenmeyer as the Union’s first president. Initially the WCTU did not emphasize militant or even political action, and during Wittenmeyer’s five-year presidency, the union became the largest women’s organization in the country.
And WCTU numbers kept growing. There were nearly 160,000 in 1901, compared to almost 9,000 in the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association. By 1919 the WCTU ranks numbered almost 350,000. With these dramatic numerical contrasts, some historians believe the WCTU, not the NAWSA, deserves most of the credit for women’s suffrage and the 19th Amendment, which was ratified in 1920.
Ida B. Wise of Hamburg, Iowa, was a catchy name for Iowa’s WCTU president (1913–1933), and she often recalled childhood impressions of local saloons with “the well-worn stone steps and its evil odor.” Temperance women like Wise refused to be passive victims of inebriate men and appealed to women across all socio-economic, racial, religious, regional, and national identities in a fashion that was accessible and motivational. WCTU persisted.
Temperance rhetoric also emphasized a woman’s right to her own body, equal pay for equal work, and the imperative for women to focus on their own personal needs. In Iowa at the end of the 19th century, activist Marion Dunham argued for married women’s right to control their own bodies, noting that rape could occur within a marriage, a horrific crime she believed alcohol exacerbated.
Essential for its unity, the Temperance movement deliberately developed a particular linguistic tactic by utilizing the singular “woman”: Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Woman’s National Committee for Law Enforcement, and the National American Woman Suffrage Association. During this first wave of feminism, “the woman movement” appealed to “womankind,” all women.
Now in the 21st century, many Americans display a twisted pink ribbon to raise awareness about breast cancer, but few remember for its historical precedent: the WCTU’s twisted white ribbon. The current #MeToo movement could, and should, look back a century and credit some of its passion and success to Temperance advocates whose rallying cry for gender rights still echo today:
I Too have been injured and wounded by alcohol.
I Too have watched my father drink away our family’s money.
I Too have bruises from drunken anger.
I Too have tried to stop my husband’s attacks on my body.
I Too have witnessed prostitutes trapped in saloons.
I Too have seen young girls victimized by the evils of alcohol.
I Too have a right to my own body.
I Too have a right to an equal wage and my own money.
I Too have been hurt and deserve recognition.
Iowa’s Temperance women refused to be ignored. They reinvigorated a battle against alcohol, from the 1880s until the Great Depression, that still influences the lives of American women and men today.
— Dr. Lisa Payne Ossian teaches history at William Penn University in Oskaloosa. This article draws from her essay in a forthcoming book, “The Making of the Midwest: Essays on the Formation of Midwestern Identity, 1787–1900,” which was edited by Jon Lauck and will be available in May.
This article is part of a series of guest essays about the 1920s that we’re publishing in honor of Iowa History Month 2020.
