Anti-Saloon League

The Anti-Saloon League was the leading organization lobbying for prohibition
in the United States in the early 20th century.

It was a key component of the Progressive Era, and was strongest in the South
and rural North, drawing heavy support from pietistic Protestant ministers and
their congregations, especially Methodists, Baptists, Disciples and
Congregationalists.[1] It concentrated on legislation, and cared about how
legislators voted, not whether they drank or not. Founded as a state society in
Oberlin, Ohio, in 1893, its influence spread rapidly. In 1895, it became a national
organization and quickly rose to become the most powerful prohibition lobby in
America, overshadowing the older Woman's Christian Temperance Union and
This 1902 illustration from the
the Prohibition Party. Its triumph was nationwide prohibition locked into the
Hawaiian Gazette newspaper
Constitution with passage of the 18th Amendment in 1920. It was decisively humorously illustrates the Anti-
defeated when Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Saloon League and the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union's
However, the organization continued, and is today known as the American campaign against the producers and
Council on Alcohol Problems. sellers of beers in Hawaii

Contents
Organizational structure and operation
Pressure politics
National constitutional amendment
Local work
State operations
Failure
Headquarters
See also
Notes
References
External links

Organizational structure and operation

The League was the first modern pressure group in the United States organized around one issue. Unlike earlier popular
movements, it utilized bureaucratic methods learned from business to build a strong organization.[2] The League's founder and
first leader, Howard Hyde Russell (1855–1946), believed that the best leadership was selected, not elected. Russell built from the
bottom up, shaping local leagues and raising the most promising young men to leadership at the local and state levels. This
organizational strategy reinvigorated the temperance movement.[3] Publicity for the League was handled by Edward Young
Clarke and Mary Elizabeth Tyler of the Southern Publicity Association.[4]
Pressure politics
The League's most prominent leader was Wayne Wheeler, although both Ernest Cherrington and William E. Johnson
("Pussyfoot" Johnson), were also highly influential and powerful. The League used pressure politics in legislative politics, which
it is credited with developing.[5]

Howard Ball has written that the Ku Klux Klan and the Anti-Saloon league were both immensely powerful pressure groups in
Birmingham, Alabama during the Post-World War I period. A local newspaper editor at the time wrote that "In Alabama, it is
hard to tell where the Anti-Saloon League ends and the Klan begins".[6] During the May 1928 primary in Alabama, the League
joined with Klansmen and members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). When an Alabama state senator
proposed an anti-masking statute "to emasculate the order's ability to terrorize people", lobbying led by J. Bib Mills, the
superintendent of the Alabama Anti-Saloon League, ensured that the bill failed.[7]

When it came to fighting “wet” candidates, especially candidates such as Al Smith in the presidential election of 1928, the
League was less effective because its audience was already Republican.

National constitutional amendment

The League used a multitiered approach in its attempts to secure a dry (prohibition) nation through national legislation and
congressional hearings, the Scientific Temperance Federation, and its American Issue Publishing Company. The League also
used emotion based on patriotism, efficiency and anti-German sentiment in World War I. The activists saw themselves as
preachers fulfilling their religious duty of eliminating liquor in America.[8] Lamme (2003) explores the public relations approach
used by the League as it tried to mobilize public opinion in favor of a dry, saloonless nation. It invented many of the modern
techniques of public relations.[9]

Local work
The League lobbied at all levels of government for legislation to prohibit the manufacture or import of spirits, beer and wine.
Ministers had launched several efforts to close Arizona saloons after the 1906 creation of League chapters in Yuma, Tucson, and
Phoenix. A League organizer from New York arrived in 1909, but the Phoenix chapter was stymied by local-option elections,
whereby local areas could decide whether to allow saloons. League members pressured local police to take licenses from
establishments that violated closing hours or served women and minors, and they provided witnesses to testify about these
violations. One witness was Frank Shindelbower, a juvenile from a poor family, who testified several saloons had sold him liquor;
as a result those saloons lost their licenses. However owners discovered that Shindelbower had perjured himself, and he was
imprisoned. After the Arizona Gazette and other newspapers pictured Shindelbower as the innocent tool of the Anti-Saloon
League, he was pardoned.[10]

State operations
At the state level, the League had mixed results, usually doing best in rural and southern states. It made little headway in larger
cities, or among liturgical church members such as Catholics, Jews, Episcopalians and German Lutherans. Pegram (1990)
explains its success in Illinois under William Hamilton Anderson. From 1900 and 1905 the League worked to obtain a local
option referendum law and became an official church federation. Local Option was passed in 1907 and by 1910 40 of Illinois' 102
counties and 1,059 of the state's townships and precincts had become dry, including some Protestant areas around Chicago.
Despite these successes, after the Prohibition amendment was ratified in 1919, social problems such as organized crime ignored
by the League undermined the public influence of the single-issue pressure group, and it faded in importance.[11] Pegram (1997)
uses its failure in Maryland to explore the relationship between Southern Progressivism and national progressivism. The
Maryland leader 1907-14 was William H. Anderson, but he was unable to adapt to local conditions, such as the large German
element. The League failed to ally with local political bosses and attacked the Democratic Party. In Maryland, as in the rest of the
South, Pegram concludes, traditional religious, political, and racial concerns constrained reform movements even as they
converted Southerners to the new national politics of federal intervention and interest-group competition.[12]

Failure
Unable to cope with the failures of prohibition after 1928, especially bootlegging and organized crime as well as reduced
government revenue, the League failed to counter the repeal forces. Also their failure to disassociate from the Ku Klux Klan
brought on negative connotations with the League.[13] Led by prominent Democrats, Franklin D. Roosevelt won in 1932 on a wet
platform. A new Constitutional amendment passed easily in 1933 to repeal the 18th amendment, and the League lost its power.

Headquarters
In 1909, the League moved its national headquarters from Washington to Westerville, Ohio, which had a reputation for supporting
temperance. The American Issue Publishing House, the publishing arm of the League, was also in Westerville. Ernest
Cherrington headed the company. It printed so many leaflets—over 40 tons of mail per month—that Westerville was the smallest
town to have a first class post office.

From 1948 until 1950 it was named the Temperance League, from 1950 to 1964 the National Temperance League, from 1964 the
American Council on Alcohol Problems.[14] Today the organization continues its original goal. A museum about the League is at
the Westerville Public Library.

See also
Board of Temperance Strategy
List of public house topics
Purley Baker
List of Temperance organizations
Westerville Public Library
National German-American Alliance
Red Knights
Fellowship Forum

Notes
1. John Rumbarger, Profits, power, and prohibition: alcohol reform and the industrializing of America, 1800-1930
(1989)
2. Peter H. Odegard, Pressure Politics: Story of the Anti-Saloon League (1928)
3. K. Austin Kerr, Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League (1985)
4. Martinez, J. Michael (2016). A Long Dark Night: Race in America from Jim Crow to World War II. Rowman &
Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-5996-6.
5. K. Austin Kerr, "Organizing for Reform: The Anti-Saloon League and Innovation in Politics." American Quarterly
1980 32(1): 37-53 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/pss/2712495)
6. Ball, Howard (1996-09-12). Hugo L. Black: Cold Steel Warrior. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-536018-
9.
7. Feldman, Glenn (1999-09-24). Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949. University of Alabama
Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-0984-8.
8. Margot Opdycke Lamme, "Tapping into War: Leveraging World War I in the Drive for a Dry Nation," American
Journalism 2004 21(4): 63-91. ISSN 0882-1127 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0882-1127)
 9. Lamme (2003)
10. H. David Ware, "The Anti-Saloon League Wages War in Phoenix, 1910: the Unlikely Case of Frank
Shindelbower." Journal of Arizona History 1998 39(2): 141-154. ISSN 0021-9053 (https://www.worldcat.org/searc
h?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0021-9053)
11. Thomas R. Pegram, "The Dry Machine: the Formation of the Anti-Saloon League of Illinois," Illinois Historical
Journal 1990 83(3): 173-186. ISSN 0748-8149 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0748-8149)
12. Thomas R. Pegram, "Temperance Politics and Regional Political Culture: the Anti-saloon League in Maryland
and the South, 1907-1915," Journal of Southern History 1997 63(1): 57-90. in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/pss/2
211943)
13. Thomas R. Pegram, “Hoodwinked: The Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Prohibition
Enforcement,” in Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era Vol. 7, Issue 1.
14. Kerr, Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League

References
"1908-1931: The Anti-Saloon League Yearbook" (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009992165). HathiTrust
Digital Library. Ohio: The Anti-Saloon League of America.
Cherrington, Ernest (1913). History of the Anti-Saloon League (https://books.google.com/books?id=l9sXAAAAYA
AJ). American Issue Pub. Co.
Clark, Norman H. Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (Norton, 1976), a favorable
history online edition (https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102117203)
Donovan, Brian L. "Framing and Strategy: Explaining Differential Longevity in the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League." Sociological Inquiry 1995 65(2): 143-155. ISSN 0038-0245 (htt
ps://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0038-0245) Fulltext: in Swetswise
Ewin, James Lithgow. The Birth of the Anti-Saloon League. Washington, D.C., 1913
Hamm, Richard F. Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment: Temperance Reform, Legal Culture, and the Polity,
1880-1920 (1995)
Kerr, K. Austin. "Organizing for Reform: The Anti-Saloon League and Innovation in Politics." American Quarterly
1980 32(1): 37-53. ISSN 0003-0678 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0003-0678) Fulltext: in
Jstor
Kerr, K. Austin. Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League. Yale University Press, 1985,
the standard history
Lamme, Margot Opdycke. "The 'Public Sentiment Building Society': the Anti-saloon League of America, 1895-
1910." Journalism History 2003 29(3): 123-132. ISSN 0094-7679 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=
n2:0094-7679) Fulltext: in Ebsco
Lamme, Margot Opdycke. "Tapping into War: Leveraging World War I in the Drive for a Dry Nation." American
Journalism 2004 21(4): 63-91. ISSN 0882-1127 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0882-1127)
Lerner, Michael A. Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (Harvard University Press; 2007) 352pp.
Odegard, Peter (1928). Pressure politics: the story of the Anti-saloon league (https://books.google.com/books?id
=DHnaAAAAMAAJ). Columbia University Press.
Pegram, Thomas R. "Temperance Politics and Regional Political Culture: the Anti-Saloon League in Maryland
and the South, 1907-1915." Journal of Southern History 1997 63(1): 57-90. in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/pss/2
211943)
Pegram, Thomas R. "The Dry Machine: the Formation of the Anti-Saloon League of Illinois." Illinois Historical
Journal 1990 83(3): 173-186. ISSN 0748-8149 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0748-8149)
Rumbarger, John (1989). Profits, power, and prohibition: alcohol reform and the industrializing of America, 1800-
1930 (https://books.google.com/books?id=vI5GYDT7bZ8C). SUNY Press. ISBN 0-88706-782-4.
Sponholtz, Lloyd. "The Politics of Temperance in Ohio, 1880-1912." Ohio History 1976 85(1): 4-27. ISSN 0030-
0934 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0030-0934) online edition (http://publications.ohiohistory.
org/ohstemplate.cfm?action=detail&Page=00854.html&StartPage=4&EndPage=27&volume=85&notes=&newtitle
=Volume%2085%20Page%204)
Szymanski, Ann-Marie E. Pathways to Prohibition: Radicals, Moderates, and Social Movement Outcomes. 2003.
Ware, H. David. :The Anti-Saloon League Wages War in Phoenix, 1910: the Unlikely Case of Frank
Shindelbower." Journal of Arizona History 1998 39(2): 141-154. ISSN 0021-9053 (https://www.worldcat.org/searc
h?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0021-9053)
External links
American Council on Alcohol Problems official website (http://sapacap.com/)
Ohio History Central (Westerville) (http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=820)
American Council on Alcohol Problems Records (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-85650?view=text)
Anti-Saloon League & Prohibition History (http://www.flasks.com/resources-prohibition-history)
Anti-Saloon League Origins (https://prohibition.osu.edu/anti-saloon-league)
Anti-Saloon League Museum (http://www.wpl.lib.oh.us/AntiSaloon/)
Anti-Saloon League Leaders (http://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/anti-saloon-league-promoted-prohibiti
on/)
Anti-Saloon League of Nebraska records (http://www.nebraskahistory.org/lib-arch/research/manuscripts/organize/
anti-saloon.htm) at Nebraska State Historical Society
Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Anti-Saloon League (https://web.archive.org/web/20100718105
402/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/A/AN013.html)

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