Woman's Christian Temperance Union Founded Creating Alliance and Opposition to Suffrage

On November 18, 1874, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in response to the “Woman’s Crusade,” a series of temperance demonstrations that had swept through New York and much of the Midwest in 1873-74. The WCTU initially focused exclusively on promoting abstinence from alcohol, but under the leadership of Frances Willard, who became president in 1879 after replacing Annie Wittenmyer, the organization expanded its agenda to include women’s suffrage under the banner of “home protection.” Willard successfully argued that women needed the vote to protect their homes and families from the social devastation caused by alcohol abuse. By 1894, the WCTU officially endorsed women’s suffrage, and by 1896, 25 of its 39 departments addressed non-temperance issues. This transformation made the WCTU one of the largest and most influential women’s groups of the 19th century, bringing more women to support suffrage than ever before.

The WCTU’s embrace of suffrage created a powerful alliance that advanced both causes while also generating intense corporate opposition that would plague the suffrage movement for decades. As temperance workers gained political knowledge and experience through their activism, they increasingly recognized suffrage as essential to achieving their broader reform goals. The connection between temperance and suffrage meant that liquor industry leaders became fierce opponents of women’s voting rights, understanding that enfranchised women would likely support prohibition measures. This corporate opposition mobilized substantial financial resources against suffrage campaigns, particularly in state referendums where the liquor lobby proved a formidable adversary. Some suffrage leaders, including Carrie Chapman Catt and Abigail Scott Duniway, eventually saw the WCTU alliance as injurious to suffrage precisely because it provoked such powerful corporate resistance.

The WCTU-suffrage alliance demonstrated both the potential and pitfalls of coalition-building in movements for democratic expansion. On one hand, the temperance movement brought organizational capacity, grassroots networks, and new supporters to suffrage advocacy, particularly among women for whom moral reform provided a more accessible entry point than abstract political rights. The WCTU’s local chapters spread across the country created infrastructure that suffrage organizers could leverage. On the other hand, the alliance gave corporate interests—particularly the liquor industry—concrete economic incentives to oppose women’s suffrage beyond mere ideological commitment to patriarchy. This opposition proved prescient when both the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) and 19th Amendment (women’s suffrage) were ratified in 1920, validating the liquor industry’s fears. The alliance also revealed how corporate opposition to democratic expansion often stemmed from specific economic interests rather than general principles, as liquor manufacturers, like textile companies fearing child labor restrictions and railroad companies fearing regulation, mobilized against suffrage to protect their profits from potential voter-supported reforms.