The temperance movement petered out, and is now remembered as a Pollyannaish bust.īut the motivations and makeup of the temperance movement are more complicated than their simplified legacy would suggest. The leaders of the movement were mocked as nagging housewives, out to ruin the fun. In the end, Prohibition itself was an obscene failure: alcohol continued to be sold and consumed, and the government’s vain attempts to enforce the ban on booze bred their own kinds of violence. It is easy to see the woman-led, often explicitly religious movement as a group of reactionaries, attempting to impose moral obsequiousness on a public that did not share their values. Like the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements, temperance eventually achieved its political goal: for the 13 years of Prohibition, 1920 to 1933, the sale and consumption of alcohol was banned in the US.īut unlike its sister struggles, the temperance movement now has a bit of a bad reputation.
Linked to the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements – with which it shared prominent intellectuals and overlapping leadership, including the likes of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony – the temperance movement was part of a mass mobilization of American women fighting for social change. T he temperance movement seized American public life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, galvanizing women in a mass social crusade.
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