The Women’s Christian Temperance Union — WCTU — was founded in Ohio to create a “sober and pure world” by abstinence, purity and evangelical Christianity. The WCTU was interested in a number of social reform issues, including labor, the campaigns for a living wage and an eight-hour day, prostitution, public health, sanitation, and international peace. As the movement grew in numbers and strength, members of the WCTU also focused on women’s suffrage. It saw alcohol as both a cause and a result of poverty, and drew an early connection between alcohol abuse and domestic violence. Radical at its peak, it had more than 766,000 members paying dues at its peak in 1927 but has evolved into a more conservative organization that opposes illegal drugs, same-sex marriage and abortion.
