Hints and Helps in our Temperance Work.
Willard, Frances E. Hints and Helps in our Temperance Work. By Frances E. Willard, Corresponding Secretary of the Woman’s National Christian Temperance Union. New York: National Temperance Society & Publication House, 1875.
12mo.; printed wrappers, sewn; covers detached.
The 72-page booklet is a guide for women looking to get involved in the temperance movement, “who are willing to labor in the temperance cause, but not informed concerning plans of organization or methods of work.” It instructs women on forming state and local branches of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; detailing rules for electing officers, adopting a Constitution, holding meetings, collecting membership dues, and reporting to the national WCTU committee. The book recommends forming a Juvenile auxiliary league, to enlist “bright, enterprising lads” and “wide-awake” girls in “strengthen[ing] the young in the faith and practice of temperance”; provides advice for visiting saloons (“One should preserve a calm, trustful demeanor”) and includes templates of temperance pledge cards, to give to those who take a public pledge to “abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors.” The “General Hints” section is a window into the methods of effective political activism employed by the movement, with savvy tips for involving community businessmen, landlords, and the press as well as church and youth groups: “we must not forget to make the influence of our organization felt at the sources of power, the centres of influence, where opinion crystallizes into law.” The temperance movement provided many women with their first taste of such influence, and Willard hoped it would be only the beginning of their political involvement. She exhorts:
Let not any woman whose heart is in the work imagine she cannot “talk temperance” to public audiences. The truth is that the nimble tongue so long employed in utterances less noble has a power not easily excelled, when the high themes of human destiny engage it; and this the world is just beginning to find out.
Frances Willard (1839-1898) began her career as a devoted educator and Methodist. In 1864 she published her first book, Nineteen Beautiful Years, a biography of her sister Mary who had fallen victim to tuberculosis. In 1868 she traveled throughout Europe for two years with a wealthy friend, immersing herself in lectures, languages, and the arts in Berlin, Paris, and Rome, and supported these interests by writing weekly articles for local papers at home in Evanston, Illinois. Soon after her return she became president of the Evanston College for Ladies. When the Ladies College was absorbed into Northwestern in 1873, Willard found a new outlet for her desire to forward the cause of female equality, which had been earlier inflamed by John Stuart Mill’s “The Enfranchisement of Women” and the writings and lectures of Margaret Fuller and Anna Dickinson.
Willard helped to found the Association for the Advancement of Women in New York, becoming vice president, and was corresponding secretary of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), but by 1877 had resigned from both posts so that she could devote more time to a wider range of issues, especially suffrage. After a year of lecturing all over the United States on “women and service,” as president of the Illinois WCTU she spearheaded the “Home Protection” petition which ostensibly sought the right for women to vote on temperance issues, but also, by casting the issues in familiar terms, effectively enticed women into taking an active interest in shaping the political climate. Though Home Protection failed, it inspired similar attempts in other states.
In 1876 Willard began a three-year stint as the head of the publications committee of the national WCTU, using their journal, Our Union, as a platform to expand their views, a task she was better equipped for in 1879 when she was elected president of the national union, a position she held until her death twenty years later. Though her later, more direct attempts to bring women into politics were somewhat divisive —especially her organization of the “Home Protection” party and the Prohibition-Home Protection party—as president of the WCTU she lectured continually nationwide, and was able to bring the union to the South in 1881 and to the West in 1883.
Frances Willard thought of the WCTU as a school to interest women in life beyond the family circle, so that they might take a more active and useful part in society. To encourage the timid, she tied the home to her cause and to her organization. The famous slogan “For God and Home and Native Land,” which she had first devised for the Chicago union, was adopted by the national WCTU in 1876. The organization’s badge, chosen the next year, was a bow of white ribbon symbolizing the purity of the home, and “Home Protection” was always to be the Union’s rallying cry.
1883 also saw Willard’s introduction of the WCTU into international circles. In 1885, she wrote that the union was “God’s way out of the wilderness for half the human race. In its glowing crucible, the dross of sectional enmity is being rapidly dissolved; the trifling occupations, the narrow aims, the paralyzing indolence of women are barriers burned away.” And in 1891 she was elected the first president of the World’s WCTU. She lived most of the 1890s in England with her friend Lady Henry Somerset, the president of the British Women’s Temperance Association and, apparently, a competent cyclist, and died in 1898 in New York of “grippe” and anemia. Two thousand mourners attended her funeral; a reported 20,000 waked her at the Woman’s Temple; several biographies mythologized her in the years following her death, and in 1905 the State of Illinois erected a statue of her, designed by Helen Farnsworth Mears, in the national Capitol.
By 1895, Willard had been elected President of the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union which represented a membership of nearly two million. Throughout her leadership of the WCTU she had espoused a “do everything” policy, encouraging women to a more active life. In 1895 she published a handbook, Do Everything, as well as A Wheel Within a Wheel. At the age of 53, as a wild enthusiasm for bicycle-riding swept the country, she herself learned to ride under the tutelage of Lady Henry Somerset, the British Temperance leader who had become a good friend and constant companion. The account is laced with reflections on how women may acquire new skills, a broader outlook, and the ability to propel themselves in any direction they choose.
Willard lived most of the 1890s in England with her lover Lady Henry Somerset, the president of the British Women’s Temperance Association and, apparently, a competent cyclist, and died in 1898 in New York of “grippe” and anemia. Two thousand mourners attended her funeral; a reported 20,000 waked her at the Woman’s Temple; several biographies mythologized her in the years following her death, and in 1905 the State of Illinois erected a statue of her, designed by Helen Farnsworth Mears, in the national Capitol.
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