The anti-saloon league was initially referred to as the National Anti-Saloon League which was founded on December 18, 1895, in Washington, D.C as a result of the union between American temperance organization which was founded on May 24, 1893, by the temperance advocates in Ohio and a similar organization which was founded later in the same year. In 1909, the League moved its national headquarters from Washington, DC to Westerville, Ohio.
The American temperance organization aimed to enforce the existing temperance laws, unite public anti-alcohol sentiment, as well as enacting new anti-alcohol legislation. The core founders of this organization felt that the moral standards of the Americas were on the decline as many people become urbanized (Author, 2003) thus losing touch with the religious values, where the majority went ahead to violate God’s desires by consumption of alcohol.
Anti-Saloon League and Its Operations
In the early 20th century the anti-saloon league was believed to have been the leading organization lobbying for prohibition in the United States. It was also a major component of the Progressive Movement. Pietistic Protestant ministers and their congregations, especially Methodists, Baptists, Disciples, and Congregationalists were the major supporters of this organization. Various individuals were also involved in the leadership and general operations of the League, the majority of them were clergymen who made up three-fifth of the league leaders. The organization also had some paid workers.
Howard Hyde Russell was the founder of this organization, he was a congregational minister and he was elected its first national superintendent in 1903. He was later replaced by Purley Baker who was well known for his superior leadership qualities, however, after his death in 1924 Edwin C. Dinwiddle took over and under his leadership, the league opened a Legislative office in Washington DC. Other leaders were Wayne Wheeler who was attributed to have lobbied for the league during 1916 elections where enough ‘dry’ congressmen were elected in the House of Representatives to make the two-thirds majority required for the eighteenth Amendment. Ernest Cherriton was the leader of its American Issue Publishing Company and was later elected as the head of the World league against Alcoholism in 1919.
Within the first fifteen years of its establishment the Anti-Saloon League and its subsidiaries engaged in implementing anti-alcohol laws in local communities. Thereafter the league began a national campaign to implement Prohibition with the support of American Key figures such as John D. Rockefeller. Purley Baker presented an amendment to the United States Congress and the House of Representatives at the end of the parade which was sponsored by the league in 1913 at Washington, DC. Later this amendment formed the basis for the Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The league employed bureaucratic methods acquired from business to build a strong organization. Anti-Saloon League opened its own publishing house, the American Issue Publishing Company, based in Westerville, Ohio, under the management of Cherrington. This firm was used as a medium to relay the League’s messages and information to the Americans. During the League’s heyday, the firm issued more than forty tons of anti-liquor publications every month. (Author, 2003)
The league employed various approaches to secure a dry nation.
These approaches were the scientific temperance federation, its American Issue, national legislation, and finally congressional hearings. (Prohibition 2003)
The league embarked on enforcement of legislation as well as punishing the lawbreakers both at state and national levels. Other methods included political tact’s i.e. hiring of detectives and rewarding those officials who favored prohibition law enforcement. During World War 1, the league initiated attacks against German Americans in an attempt to curb illegal traffic and breweries.
The Prohibition movements were widely spread across America in the 1800s. They were headed by religious groups who referred to alcohol and drunkenness as a ‘national curse’. For instance, in 1873 the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) advocated abolishing the trafficking of alcohol. In1900 the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) joined the WCTU in its crusade to solve the liquor problem. In 1916 almost half of the state had adopted anti-saloon legislation and most of them went as far as prohibiting the manufacturing of alcoholic beverages.
Bakers guided the league to check the increasing power of the liquor traffic and close down the saloon through legal mechanisms.He made the league a powerful lobby force that drove the anti-saloon and prohibition the movement which resulted in the passage of the 18th amendment for national Prohibition and the Volstead Act. (Clifford 37).
“The passage of Eighteenth amendment weakened the league financially since the donors considered the problem solved thus they stopped funding the organization” (Clifford 27). In the mid-1920s the American politics experienced series of problems that contributed to the decline of the Anti-saloon League.
References
Anderea Percy. Temperance and Prohibition, Chigaco: Felix mendelsohn, 1915.
Anti-Saloon League 1893-1933. Web.
Clifford Ruth. The Progressive Era’s Health Reform Movement: A Historical Dictionary, Prohibition. Web.