The National Woman's Christian Temperance Union was organized in Cleveland, Ohio, Nov. 18-20, 1874, to carry the precepts of the following pledge into the practice of everyday life: "I hereby solemnly promise, God helping me, to abstain from all distilled, fermented and malt liquors, including wine, beer and cider, and to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the same."
Its object was further stated as follows: "To confirm and enforce the rationale of this pledge, we declare our purpose to educate the young; to form a better public sentiment; to reform, so far as possible, by religious, ethical and scientific means, the drinking classes; to seek the transforming power of divine grace for ourselves and all for whom we work, that they and we may wilfully transcend no law of pure and wholesome living; and finally we pledge ourselves to labor and to pray that all these principles, founded upon the Gospel of Christ, may be worked out into the Customs of Society and the Laws of the Land."
The W. C. T. U. is held to be the most perfectly organized body of women in existence. It originated the idea of Scientific Temperance Instruction in the public schools and has secured mandatory laws in every State and a federal law governing the District of Columbia, the Territories and all Indian and military schools supported by the Government; 16,000,000 children in the public schools receive instruction under these laws as to the nature and effect of alcohol and other narcotics on the human system. Through its efforts the quarterly temperance lesson was included in the International Sunday School Lesson Series in 1884, and a World's Universal Temperance Sunday was secured; 250,000 children are taught scientific reasons for temperance in the Loyal Temperance Legions, and all these children are pledged to total abstinence and trained as temperance workers. W. C. T. U. Schools of Methods are held in all Chautauqua gatherings.
This organization has largely influenced the change in public sentiment in regard to social drinking, equal suffrage, equal purity for both sexes, equal remuneration for work equally well done, equal educational, professional and industrial opportunities for women. It has been a chief factor in State campaigns for statutory prohibition, constitutional amendment, reform laws in general and those for the protection of women and children in particular, and in securing anti-gambling and anti-cigarette laws. It has been instrumental in raising the "age of protection" for girls in many States and in obtaining curfew laws in 400 towns and cities. It aided in securing the Anti-Canteen Amendment to the Army Bill (1900) which prohibits the sale of intoxicating liquors at all army posts. It helped to inaugurate police matrons who are now required in nearly all the large cities of the United States. It organized Mothers' Meetings in thirty-seven States before any other society took up the work. Illinois alone has held 2,000 Mothers' Meetings in a single year.
It keeps a superintendent of legislation in Washington during the entire session of Congress to look after reform bills. It aided in preventing the repeal of the prohibitory law in Indian Territory, the resubmission of the prohibitory constitution of Maine, and in preserving the prohibitory law of Vermont. It has secured 20,000,000 signatures and attestations, including 7,000,000 on the Polyglot Petition to the governments of the world. Thousands of girls have been rescued from lives of shame and tens of thousands of men have signed the total abstinence pledge and been redeemed from inebriety through its efforts.
The association protests against the legalizing of all crimes, especially those of prostitution and liquor selling. It protests against the sale of liquor in Soldiers' Homes, where now an aggregate of $253,027 is spent annually for intoxicating liquors, and only about one-fifth of the soldiers' pension money is sent home to their families. It protests against the United States Government receiving a revenue for liquors sold within prohibitory territory, either local or State, and against all complicity of the Federal Government with the liquor traffic. It protests against lynching and lends its aid in favor of the enforcement of law. It works for the highest well-being of our soldiers and sailors and especially for suitable temperance canteens and a generous mess. It works for the protection of the home, especially against its chief enemy, the liquor traffic, and for the redemption of our Government from this curse, by the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes.
The organizing of this great society in the various States and Territories, and the systematizing of the work under forty different departments, is due to the efforts of Miss Frances E. Willard more than to any other one person, and its success is indebted largely to her ability and personal popularity. As its president until her death in 1898, she not only perfected the organization in this country, but originated the idea of the Polyglot Petition and of the World's W. C. T. U., which was organized under the auspices of that of the United States. It now includes fifty-eight different countries and has 500,000 members.
The official organ, The Union Signal, a weekly of sixteen pages, is issued by the Woman's Temperance Publishing Association of Chicago, which publishes also The Young Crusader and many books and leaflets. The National W. C. T. U. gives away 5,000,000 pages of literature per year, exclusive of that circulated by the States and different departments. It has received and expended since its organization in round numbers $400,000. This does not include the large expenditures of the various State and local unions.
Every State and Territory in the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, has a W. C. T. U., and one is beginning in the Philippines. These are auxiliary to the National. It is organized locally in over 10,000 cities and towns. The Young Woman's Christian Temperance Union is called a branch, also the Loyal Temperance Legions among children. There are thirty-eight other departments, and it is usual to include the two branches and speak of forty departments. The membership paying dues is 300,000. There was a gain of 15,000 members this year above all losses.
The Frances E. Willard National Temperance Hospital and Training School for Nurses, in Chicago, is owned and controlled by an incorporated board of thirty trustees. Its basic principle is the cure of disease without the use of alcohol as an active medicinal agent. Eminent physicians are on the staff and every effort is made to have it rank with the very best of hospitals.