Ohio History Journal

MARIAN J. MORTON

 

Temperance, Benevolence, and the

City: The Cleveland Non-Partisan

Woman's Christian Temperance

Union, 1874-1900

 

 

Here they come now, fifty redoubtable and respectable women,

prayer books in one hand and umbrellas in the others, for it looks

like rain on this March morning of 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio. They

are striding vigorously down Euclid Avenue, headed for the several

saloons on Public Square, which they intend to close down with

their hymns and fervent prayers. They are the Woman's Temper-

ance League of Cleveland.¹ By 1885 this pious praying band will

have become the Non-Partisan Woman's Christian Temperance Un-

ion. They will designate themselves "Non-Partisan" to disassociate

themselves from the national Woman's Christian Temperance Un-

ion's endorsement of the Prohibition Party,² but they will become

increasingly active in Cleveland politics. These women will main-

tain three temperance "friendly inns" with inexpensive lodgings

and reading rooms for men, "mothers' meetings" for women, sewing

classes for little girls, hygiene talks for boys, and gospel meetings

for all; they will conduct missionary services and an employment

bureau at a refuge for homeless women and unwed mothers; they

will visit jails and the city infirmary and furnish food, clothing, and

sometimes funds for the needy. The Cleveland Non-Partisan Union

 

 

 

Marian J. Morton is Professor of History at John Carroll University.

 

1. This description is compiled from first-hand accounts in Works Progress Admin-

istration of Ohio, Annals of Cleveland, 1818-1935, Vol. LVII (1874) (Cleveland, 1937),

750-56, and from Mary Ingham, Women of Cleveland and Their Work: Philanthropic,

Educational, Literary, Medical, and Artistic (Cleveland, 1893), 168-69.

2. Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-

1900 (Philadelphia, 1981), 129, describes these Non-Partisan WCTU's as insignifi-

cant in number and influence and Republican in their political sympathies. The

Cleveland group was probably Republican in sympathies but was by no means insig-

nificant on the local level.

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Temperance, Benevolence, and the City                    59

will become, in short, an example of the combination of benevolence and evangelism with which organized religion tried to meet the physical and spiritual needs of urban Americans in the nineteenth century. Later historians, products themselves of a more secular age, have written the story of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union as political history. They have, for example, discussed it as part of the

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60                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

Prohibition movement, and using the conservative-liberal criteria

with which political reformism is judged, have declared the WCTU

conservative because it advocated little substantial change in the

economic or politcal status quo, suggested moral and individual

solutions to public problems, and attempted to impose its own mid-

dle class and ethnic-derived values on the immigrant working

class.3

More recently, historians of women have evaluated the WCTU by

a different standard, as either conservative or "feminist." Here too

most have described the group as conservative because it simply

applied traditional domestic values and techniques to the public

sphere; Mary Ryan, for example, calls this kind of activity "social

housekeeping."⁴ Two revisionists, however, have argued that the

WCTU was a "feminist" group because it significantly expanded

women's autonomy and equality by allowing them to escape the

domestic confines of kitchen and nursery and by raising their ex-

pectations about public roles, as in the support of suffrage.⁵

 

 

3. Andrew Sinclair, Prohibition: The Age of Excess (Boston, 1960) and Joseph R.

Gusfeld, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the Temperance Movement (Urbana,

Ill., 1963) are examples of this approach. Both historians are much influenced by

Richard Hofstadter's thesis that Progressive reformers, such as temperance advo-

cates, were motivated by status loss, and that, therefore, instead of proposing solu-

tions to the "real" economic problems of the day, operated in a kind of fantasy world

in which they played out their personal and psychological needs. Joseph Timberlake,

Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963) and

Norman Clark, Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition

(New York, 1976) describe intemperance as a geniune social problem; they are more

sympathetic to the temperance movement but describe it as an attempt to rescue or

restore middle class values. Jed Dannenbaum, "Drink and Disorder: Temperance

Reform in Cincinnati, 1841-1874" (Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA, 1978) summarizes

these views: "The prevalent view of nineteenth century temperance reform has been

that it was conservative, elitist, nativist, anti-democratic, and predominately rural,"

(6). Dannenbaum disagrees, but his evaluation remains within the political

framework of the earlier historians.

4. Sheila Rothman, Woman's Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and

Practice, 1870 to the Present (New York, 1978), 67ff; Mary Ryan, Womanhood in

America From Colonial Times to the Present, 2nd ed. (New York, 1979), 135-50.

5. Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism and

Temperance in Nineteenth Century America (Middletown, Conn., 1981) describes the

WCTU as "proto-feminist" and "feminist" because it stressed women's interests and

advocated woman suffrage as a means of achieving them (1, 6, passim) although the

WCTU did not seriously challenge a male-dominated society (132-33). Bordin,

Woman and Temperance, also describes the WCTU as "feminist" because members

experienced "power and liberty" as women in pursuit of their temperance goals.

Bordin notes that the use of the term "feminist" is ahistorical since it had not yet

been coined but applies it anyway to indicate that the WCTU advocated "legal and

social changes [to] establish political, economic, and social equality of the sexes"

(179). Both Epstein and Bordin base their cases for "feminism" primarily on Frances

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Temperance, Benevolence, and the City                             61

 

To judge this group in political terms-conservative, liberal, or

feminist-however, is beside the point because it measures

nineteenth century women by twentieth century standards; natur-

ally, the women of the WCTU appear retrogressive and narrow. The

members of the Non-Partisan WCTU of Cleveland were neither so-

cial critics nor innovators. They found little in their society to com-

plain about, except the widespread use of alcohol. Their middle class

and ethnic bias is occasionally revealed, as in an early reference to

"the ignorant and vicious classes in our great cities."⁶ And although

they did advocate public and political solutions to intemperance,

they relied also on individual conversions and private philanthropy.

Non-Partisan Union women did get out of the house, but seeing how

the "other half'-particularly the female half-lived in the Cleve-

land slums probably reaffirmed their belief in the correctness of

their own conventional female roles and lifestyles. They did not

even support woman suffrage, except for school and temperance

elections. The Non-Partisan Union's report in 1901 on the first

twenty five years of their Central Friendly Inn indicates this gener-

al acceptance of nineteenth century values and attitudes: The Inn

 

has given the gospel of God's love to the throngs who in fair weather gather

on Sunday evenings at our doors; ... It has given material relief in cases of

extreme need; it has given patient prayerful helpfulness to the slaves of

appetite trying to break the chains; to women ... it has presented higher

ideals of womanhood and motherhood ... To boys and girls exposed to

fearful temptations it has given lessons of purity, of self-control, of unself-

ishness and truthfulness.⁷

 

Willard's ideas and activities at the national level, as these are described by Willard

herself in Glimpses of Fifty Years, 1839-1889: The Autobiography of an American

Woman (Chicago, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Oakland, 1889) and by Mary Earhart

Dillon, Frances Willard: From Prayer to Politics (Chicago, 1944), for whom Willard

was "the general of the whole woman's movement, seeking the emancipation of her

sisters from all legal, traditional, and economic bonds" (11). Bordin does note that

there was sometimes an ideological gap between Willard and the WCTU rank and

file (106, 108).

6. The group was organized as the Woman's Temperance League in 1874, became

the Woman's Christian Temperance League in 1880, and then in 1885 the Non-

Partisan Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Cleveland. I have used the last

name in the body of the paper since it was retained until 1928 even though sometimes

I am referring to the group before 1885. However, since the group's published annual

reports and unpublished records (MS 3247) are catalogued by the Western Reserve

Historical Society, under "Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Cleveland," my

footnotes will use that designation, as in this citation: Woman's Christian Temper-

ance Union, Cleveland, Ohio, Annual Report 1878, 9, at the Western Reserve Histor-

ical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. Hereinafter the references will be to the WCTU, Cleve-

land.

7. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1901, 37.

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62                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

It is more accurate-and fairer-to try to see these women as they

saw themselves and as their contemporaries saw them: pious

churchwomen going about their Father's business, as they broadly

defined it, who created institutions which looked not to the past but

to present problems.⁸ The purpose here will be to discuss the Cleve-

land Non-Partisan WCTU as a religious phenomenon, which

flourished at a time-the last quarter of the nineteeth century-in

which much of established Protestantism concerned itself in active

and vital ways with both the religious and the secular, the spiritual

and the material aspects of human life. This dual thrust had its

roots in the antebellum period, in which, according to Timothy

Smith, evangelicalism encompassed the desire to save both souls

and the society, particularly in the cities.⁹ Churches, especially

through their missions, responded to urban unemployment, poverty,

slums, and immigrants, first with attempts to convert the unfortun-

ates and then with attempts to aid them with social service institu-

tions such as reading rooms, industrial training schools, employ-

ment bureaus, outdoor relief, children's homes and refuges; these

would lay the groundwork for later groups such as the WCTU. Car-

roll Smith-Rosenberg has concluded that, in the absence of an active

welfare state, by the mid-nineteenth century the churches "had be-

come the principal instrument for dealing with the problems of the

city."¹⁰

Early Cleveland churches illustrated this social concern. Cleve-

land is located in the Western Reserve, which was not heavily set-

tled until the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Into it came

men and women of stern Protestant conscience, freshly scorched by

the fires of the Second Great Awakening. Among the earliest in-

stitutions which these settlers established were church-related

organizations with a benevolent purpose. Examples abound, such as

the Martha Washington and Dorcas Society, the Female Charitable

Society of Trinity Church, and the Female Moral Reform Society,

whose activities on behalf of Cleveland's poor went beyond their

spiritual salvation.11

8. Agnes Dubbs Hayes, Heritage of Dedication: One Hundred Years of the National

Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1874-1974 (Evanston, Ill., 1973) describes

institutions for women still maintained by the national WCTU, 101-06. In Cleveland,

Friendly Inn Settlement and Rainey Institute, now a part of the Cleveland Music

School Settlement, survive as examples of the Cleveland women's work.

9. Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on

the Eve of the Civil War (New York, 1965), especially 8, 168-73.

10. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Religion and the Rise of the American City; The New

York City Mission Movement, 1812-1870 (Ithaca and London, 1971), 2.

11. Ingham, Women of Cleveland, passim.

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Temperance, Benevolence, and the City                         63

 

In the post-Civil War period Protestant churches expanded and

diversified these services and interests. As thousands of zealous

missionaries spread the gospel around the globe, confidently anti-

cipating "the evangelization of the world in this generation,"¹² the

home mission movement intensified its work among the hundreds of

thousands of Catholic, Jewish, and unchurched European immi-

grants and native-born Americans in American cities. These people

became the targets of a wide variety of Protestant evangelical and

benevolent activity, such as the YMCA, the Woman's Christian

Association, the Salvation Army, the city missions, the "institution-

al" churches-and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.13

Cleveland also illustrates this expansion and diversification. By

1870 the once-sleepy village was on its way to becoming a smoky,

industrial metropolis, with all the economic and social dislocation

which accompanied rapid urban growth.¹⁴ Its population of almost

93,000 had doubled since 1860; more and more of this population

was of foreign birth, the Germans and Irish predominating.¹⁵ Im-

migrants from both Europe and the American countryside were

attracted to Cleveland by its flourishing industries, particularly oil,

iron, and steel. Great corporations grew up (most notably Standard

Oil of Ohio), and great fortunes were made (most notably by John D.

Rockefeller, later a substantial benefactor of the Cleveland Non-

Partisan Union). At the same time, however, there developed a

sizable poor, transient population, unused to city ways and often

unable to care for themselves. Cleveland philanthropy adapted

accordingly. For example, the Bethel Union, originally simply a

Protestant mission and lodge for destitute sailors, in1869 expanded

its services to provide shelter for girls and women, an employment

office, and outdoor relief, as well as gospel services; in 1884 the

Bethel Union was merged with the Cleveland Charity Organization

Society to become Associated Charities.16

 

 

12. Sydney W. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, vol. 2 (New

York, 1975), 342-47, on Protestant world missions; on women as missionaries, see R.

Pierce Beaver, American Protestant Women in World Missions: A History of the First

Feminist Movement in North America, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, 1980).

13. See Ahlstrom, A Religious History, 191-201; Charles H. Hopkins, A History of

the YMCA in North America (New York, 1951); Robert D. Cross, ed., The Church and

the City, 1865-1910 (Indianapolis, 1967), xiv, xxxix.

14. Edmund H. Chapman, Cleveland: Village to Metropolis: A Case Study of Prob-

lems of Urban Development in Nineteenth Century America (Cleveland, 1964), 97-150.

15. William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (Cleveland and New

York, 1950), 361.

16. Ibid., 122, 1347; Lucia Johnson Bing, Social Work in Greater Cleveland: How

Public and Private Agencies Are Serving Human Needs (Cleveland, 1938), 33.

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64                                                    OHIO HISTORY

The mother of the Non-Partisan WCTU of Cleveland, the

Woman's Christian Association, established in 1869, was itself a

response to the new needs of women in an urban, industrial setting.

At its first annual meeting, the WCA declared its object to be "the

spiritual, moral, mental, social, and physical welfare of women in

our midst."¹⁷ To achieve this, the WCA, which became the YWCA in

1893, moved beyond proselytizing and eventually established four

residences for women, which provided institutional models for the

Non-Partisan Union. Equally important in shaping the Non-

Partisan Union was the WCA motto: "Everything we do is

religious."¹⁸

In March 1874, "believing that God called his hand-maidens into

a new and difficult field," and inspired by reports of the "praying

bands" of women elsewhere in the Midwest, Sarah Fitch, WCA pres-

ident, called a meeting of 600 Cleveland women, who thereupon

organized their own bands and descended upon the local saloons, as

we have seen.¹⁹ Despite some hostility among the local citizenry and

indifference on the part of public officials, the women claimed great

progress by May: 4315 citizens had taken the pledge; 76 dealers, 200

property owners, and 450 saloons had been visited.²⁰ Their optimism

was premature, however, for it would be many decades before all the

saloons would be closed and all Americans would take the pledge.

In the meantime, however, the national Woman's Christian

Temperance Union would be organized in Cleveland in 1874, and

the Cleveland group would affiliate briefly with it. More important-

ly, for the purposes of this paper, for more than half a century this

Non-Partisan Union would energetically engage itself with the spir-

itual and material welfare of Clevelanders less fortunate than

themselves.

 

17. Mildred Esgar, "Women Involved in the Real World: A History of the Young

Women's Christian Association of Cleveland, Ohio, 1868-1968," (unpublished type-

script at the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio), 41. The WCA's

patterned themselves after the YMCA, as described in Hopkins, A History of the

YMCA.

18. Esgar, "Women Involved in the Real World," 56. Smith-Rosenberg, Religion

and the Rise of the American City also stresses the pietist intentions of these urban

reformers; see especially 272-73.

19. Esgar, "Women Involved in the Real World," 55; WCTU, Cleveland, "Records,"

June 27, 1874.

20. ("Mother") Eliza Stewart, Memories of the Crusade: A Thrilling Account of the

Great Uprising of the Women of Ohio in 1873, Against the Liquor Crime (Columbus,

1888) describes her trip to Cleveland as a "sore trial" (8); the lack of police protection

for the "crusaders" led her to conclude that "Cleveland is built on beer" (368). The

figures are from Works Progress Administration of Ohio, Annals of Cleveland, Vol.

XVII, 767.

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Temperance, Benevolence, and the City                    65

The "theology" of the Non-Partisan Union provided the intellec- tual underpinnings for these activities and connected the group with developments in late nineteenth century Protestant thought. The immediate goal was temperance, defined as total abstinence from alcohol. The ultimate goal was conversion to Christ. The means to both ends was the gospel; hence this was called "gospel temperance." Since the women believed that the use of alcohol was an impediment to finding Christ and salvation-"one of the great hindrances to the promise of true religion"-21 conversion to the temperance was logically construed as the first step to conversion to Protestant Christianity. (The tendency for temperance opponents to be Roman Catholic reinforced this thinking.) This emphasis on indi- vidual conversion links the WCTU with evangelism in general and with the theological "conservatism" of Dwight Moody and other re- vivalists of the period.22     21. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1878, 9. 22. On this aspect of nineteenth century Protestantism, see the following: Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York, 1970), especially 184-85; William G. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism: Charles

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66                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

But intemperance was viewed also as a social ill with practical

implications for life in this world, especially for women and chil-

dren. Intemperance, therefore, could be cured and prevented by

secular means such as social service institutions and legislation.

This strain in WCTU thought links it with the more "liberal" Social

Gospel. According to Sydney E. Ahlstrom, the WCTU was "the most

significant route by which social Christianity penetrated the con-

servative evangelical consciousness."23

The Cleveland Non-Partisan Union directed its attentions first at

men, saloon-keepers and then saloon-goers. In 1874 the group estab-

lished Central Friendly Inn in the "Haymarket" district, a neigh-

borhood of Italians, Slavs, Syrians and other immigrants, adjoining

"Whiskey Hill," so-called because it had the most saloons as well as

the highest birth and death rates in the city.²⁴ The Inn, patterned

after YMCA facilities and other temperance inns, provided for men

a reading room of temperance material, a cheap restaurant, and

lodgings. A contemporary temperance reformer, the Reverend W. H.

Daniels spoke approvingly of the "Woman's Church" organized

there, with its pastor, F. Janet Duty, and her helpers, who had

created a parish of nearly 200 persons by home visits and gospel

preaching "in true apostolic fashion."²⁵ This "Church" reflected the

Protestant ecumenicism and the more relaxed standards of the

evangelism of the 1870s.²⁶ Church members were required only to

"give good evidence of conversion, sign the temperance pledge, and

subscribe to articles of belief so scriptural and undenominational

that they can be assented to by every one of the Christian women

engaged in this work, notwithstanding [they] represent ... five

different denominations.^"27

And yet these missionary efforts would be for nothing if the poor

were left without food, shelter, clothing, and employment, for they

would surely "lapse again into wrong-doing," pointed out the Inn's

 

 

Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New York, 1959), 160 ff; William G. McLoughlin,

Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in

America, 1607-1977 (Chicago, 1978), 141-45; Bernard W. Weisberger, They Gathered

at the River: The Story of the Great Revialists and Their Impact Upon Religion in

America (Chicago, 1958), 167 ff.

23. Charles H. Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism,

1865-1915 (New Haven, 1940); Ahlstrom, A Religious History, 343.

24. Rose, Cleveland, 362.

25. W. H. Daniels, The Temperance Reform and Its Great Reformers (Cincinnati,

Chicago, and St. Louis, 1878), 349-51.

26. Weisberger, They Gathered, 170-71; McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 169.

27. Daniels, The Temperance Reform, 352.

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Temperance, Benevolence, and the City                      67

 

founders.²⁸ Hence, the women made efforts to find jobs for their

converts. During these early years, the Non-Partisan Union also

distributed food, clothing, and sometimes money in good philanthro-

pic style, a custom which they continued through the years, espe-

cially at Thanksgiving and Christmas and during hard times such

as the depression of 1893.

Underlying these activities was the belief that men were more

intemperate and therefore in greater need of conversion than

women. Reports of the spiritual rescue of males were particularly

self-congratulatory, as in the story of the man who "reformed from

drink, converted to Christ, and returned home to his wretched wife

and mother" in 1874; or, some twenty years later, of a young blade

who was on his way to the theater but instead attended a gospel

service at Central Friendly Inn "and before he left . . . had accepted

Christ"; not only that but he returned later with his brother, who

did the same.²⁹ If their interest in men dwindled, it was not because

the women came to believe man's nature any better, but because

other agencies such as the YMCA and the Salvation Army dupli-

cated the Non-Partisan Union's efforts.

The chief concern of the Non-Partisan Union was other women,

who, with children, were correctly perceived as victims of male

intemperance³⁰ In 1896 the Non-Partisan Union president forceful-

ly articulated this perception:

 

Twenty two years ago this Union began an organized warfare on behalf of

the women of Cleveland and its homes against the saloon. This conflict has

been carried on with earnest persistence because there is seen on every

hand the devastation of homes and the wreck of woman's hopes ... and it

will be continued so long as mothers' hearts are broken, children's lives

blighted, wives tortured and even killed outright by the fiends which the

saloon produces.³¹

 

The Non-Partisan Union began its work for women with the

establishment of Mothers' Meetings in 1875, at which lessons in

temperance, the gospel, and the domestic arts were provided for

women in the neighborhood of the Inns. These women, often the

 

 

 

28. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1877, 17.

29. WCTU, Cleveland, "Records," August 1, 1874; WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Re-

port, 1893, 53.

30. Clark, Deliver Us, especially 13-34.

31. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1896, 40.

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68                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

"wives of inebriates" or drunkards themselves, received "sisterly

sympathy" and advice on how to "order their homes and help their

husbands on the way back to respectability and competence."³² The

1879 Annual Report noted proudly (and parochially) that five atten-

dants at these meetings "were formerly Catholics, but now trust in

Christ for salvation."³³

Like other Victorian women, Non-Partisan Union members be-

lieved that women were victims also of male lust so that much of

their effort was directed toward social purity work, particularly the

establishment of homes and residences for female sexual victims, or

potential victims.³⁴ In 1878 the Non-Partisan Union founded "The

Open Door" for friendless and homeless women, many of them un-

wed mothers. The annual reports kept careful track of these unfor-

tunates, as in 1880 when were listed "²¹³ inmates; children, 27;

respectable working women, 89; inebriate, vagrant, and disreput-

able women, 90."³⁵ The organization acted as an employment agency

for inmates, who stayed at The Open Door only until work-pri-

marily domestic service-could be secured for them. When work

could not be found, perhaps because respectable Cleveland house-

wives were reluctant to employ "fallen women," inmates were sent

to the Cleveland Infirmary or the City Hospital. Some, alas, "re-

turned to the evil life."³⁶ Urban life presented very real dangers to

young, innocent women from the countryside or Europe, and pathet-

ic tales of misfortune filled The Open Door's annual reports. As, for

example, of a German woman whose family turned her out because

she had an illegitimate child, and for whom The Open Door provided

a job and shelter for herself and her child, and a funeral for the child

when it died.³⁷

In 1890 The Open Door was closed, possibly because it could offer

so few services that its track record for reclamation of souls and

bodies was pretty dismal. To remedy this, the Non-Partisan Union

very soon opened a Training Home For Friendless Girls, which was

to offer not just shelter but a Christian home atmosphere and train-

ing for "honest" jobs to prevent women from falling into prostitu-

 

32. Ibid., 1878, 13.

33. Ibid., 1879, 28.

34. David J. Pivar, The Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868-

1900 (Westport, Conn., 1973), 166. On the institutional response of middle class

women to prostitution, see also Mark Thomas Connelly, The Response to Prostitution

in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill, 1981), especially 36 ff.

35. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1880, 63.

36. Ibid., 1883, 29.

37. Ibid., 1888, 50-51.

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Temperance, Benevolence, and the City                         69

 

tion. The "girls" were to be either "respectable but homeless" or

"unrespectable" referrals from police courts, prisons, and city hos-

pitals. The training again was primarily in domestic service, but by

1899 so many of the girls wished to work in offices and stores that it

became difficult to teach them "household duties."38

The Training Home grew out of the Non-Partisan Union's experi-

ence with The Open Door and with prison visitation, an activity

which engaged members from the early 1880s until the turn of the

century.39 The Non-Partisan Union women prayed with their erring

sisters that they might see the light and lead better lives but also

visited former prisoners in their homes and tried to help them in

practical ways, most notably the Training Home itself.

The other area of chief concern was children, for whom a wide

variety of classes and activities was developed. The first classes for

little girls were organized in 1882; these were sewing classes and

"kitchen gardens." The sewing classes were justified as temperance

work because many of the girls came from "homes ruined by drink,

perhaps where both father and mother are habitual drunkards."40

Presumably the child would be taught temperance principles along

with the use of a needle, go home, and convert her parents. The

conversion aim is also seen in a special sewing class for "Hebrew"

girls, in which there were open attempts to proselytize.41 Sewing, of

course, was considered a practical skill, useful for a woman's private

and work lives. The Kitchen Gardens had the same practical goal: to

teach girls over six "womanly ways" of making their own homes

attractive and also marketable skills such as cooking and

laundering.⁴² The girls sang hymns as they worked and also tunes

such as this one: "As quick as you're able/ Set neatly the table./ And

first lay the table cloth square/ And then on the table, bright and

clean table cloth/ Napkins arrange with due care."⁴³ These are cer-

tainly "conservative" domestic activities, but they were also realis-

tic, given the job opportunities for working class girls.

For boys, the activities were more varied. There was early estab-

 

 

38. WCTU, Cleveland, "Records," December, 1899. Women prison reformers estab-

lished similar regimens in separate women's prisons; see Estelle Freedman, Their

Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981),

54-55.

39. See Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers, on prison visitation as a stimulus for

prison reform also, 22 ff.

40. WCTU, Cleveland, "Records," March 1882, 26.

41. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1889, 43.

42. Ibid., 1882, 44-47.

43. Ibid., 1892, 47.

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70                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

lished at Central Friendly Inn a reading room for boys, as an

alternative to the saloon and the street, by the Young Ladies

League for Temperance Education, an auxiliary to the Non-

Partisan Union. Originally the room contained only temperance

literature; eventually it also had popular juvenile reading material

such as St. Nicholas magazine and Harper's Young People⁴⁴ The

Woodland Avenue Temperance Reading Room had nightly meetings

with singing and prayer for boys, talks on temperance and hygiene,

entertainments such as sleigh rides, and classes in arithmetic and

geography.⁴⁵ By 1900 Non-Partisan Union institutions provided a

full range of services for boys, much like a settlement; but unlike a

settlement, the goal remained the preparation of "our boys not only

to become sober, intelligent, and worthy citizens, but also the lov-

ing, loyal disciples of Him who was once the Boy of Nazareth."⁴⁶

The religious/secular thrust of these activities was often given

justification by the Non-Partisan Union's public statements about

its purposes, statements which did not change dramatically over the

quarter of a century discussed in this paper. The second Annual

Report proudly announced: "Hundreds of families have been visited;

drinking husbands plead with; suffering wives encouraged; the sick

have been cared for; the dying led to Christ; the hungry fed, the

ragged clothed; .. . Relief has been afforded to the destitute."⁴⁷ Every

March, for most of these years, at the Non-Partisan Union's annual

meeting, the number of gospel meetings and conversions were tal-

lied up next to the number of sewing classes and gymnasiums, the

number saved side by side with the number salvaged and served.⁴⁸

The women of the Non-Partisan Union made no practical distinc-

tions between the spritual and secular in their day-to-day activities.

As for the Woman's Christian Association, "everything was reli-

gious."

This dual thrust is reflected also in the tactics used by the Non-

Partisan Union, individual reclamation through moral suasion and

social and public change effected by legislation. Mary Earhart Dil-

lon has described a shift "from prayer to politics" by Frances Willard

 

 

44. Annual Report of the Young Ladies League for Temperance Education, 1888-

1889, in Linda Thayer Guilford Papers, MS 484, in the Western Reserve Historical

Society, Cleveland, Ohio.

45. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1888, 39-40.

46. Ibid., 1900, 58.

47. Works Progress Administration of Ohio, Annals of Cleveland, vol. XVIII

(1875), 8.

48. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1877; Annual Report, 1888, 89-90.

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Temperance, Benevolence, and the City                     71

and the national WCTU,49 and although there is a shift in emphasis in the direction of politics in Cleveland, the Non-Partisan Union applied both tactics throughout this period. As early as the summer of 1874 these women canvassed the city to urge men to vote for a temperance issue.50 In 1883 the group supported passage of two state temperance laws to end "the liquor traffic . . . which is the direct cause of nearly all the crimes committed."51 After 1893 the local Anti-Saloon League, an overtly political pressure group, shared the Non-Partisan Union's offices (and often did not pay their share of the rent). In 1895 the Non-Partisan Union cooperated with the Cleveland Civic Federation and the Good Citizenship League "for the promotion of better city government."52 In 1896 the President's address explained that the group supported a state prohibition amendment and Sunday closing laws because moral suasion alone had not been effective.53 The Non-Partisan Union also supported the temperance ballot   49. Dillon, From Prayer to Politics; Bordin, Woman and Temperance, 13 ff. 50. WCTU, Cleveland, "Records," August 1, 1874. 51. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1883, 11. 52. Ibid., 1895, 44. 53. Ibid., 1896, 41.

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72                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

and the school ballot for women, but, as noted, did not support the

general suffrage. This was apparently because the membership was

divided, and the group preferred to avoid the issue rather than split

over it.⁵⁴ This stance may have meant that the Cleveland group

could not be as overtly political as it may have wanted, or as other

WCTU's could be, or it may have meant that the Cleveland women

simply did not find politics the only effective route to their goals.

There was never any open disagreement, however, on the import-

ance of the gospel approach. The Non-Partisan Union had its begin-

nings in "praying bands." Every meeting, large or small, began and

ended with "devotions," a hymn, some words from the Gospels. Pub-

lic meetings were always held in churches, which, sometimes only

through their Sunday Schools or ladies' auxilaries, made small

financial contributions to the Non-Partisan Union. The women

thought of their temperance work as divinely inspired and sus-

tained: ". . . we are called, in the providence of God, to labor," they

proclaimed in their constitution.⁵⁵

As the nineteenth century ended, however, there were hints that

the religious goals were becoming submerged by or confused with

the welfare or philanthropic orientation of the Non-Partisan Un-

ion's work. The opening devotions of the 1889 annual meeting stres-

sed that this work must have "as the foundation, in it all, Jesus

Christ, not simply as the perfect Example, but as the atonement and

only sufficient sacrifice . . . our human work resting on his divine,

finished, sacrificial work."⁵⁶ In the same vein, in 1901, members

were enjoined to follow the example of Christ, who employed "not

material but spiritual forces" in His work of rescue, and to use "all

moral and spiritual forces at [their] command, assured that He ...

will come when His rule is established in individual hearts."⁵⁷

But the handwriting was on the wall, and the religious impulse

would wane in the next quarter of a century, a casualty of the

growing secularization of society and the professionalization of phi-

lanthropy in the twentieth century. In 1906 the Non-Partisan Un-

ion still tallied up 208 Gospel meetings; it maintained two centers of

gospel and temperance work, Central Friendly Inn and Wilson Ave-

nue Industrial Institute, and the Training Home. But a new institu-

tion, the Eleanor B. Rainey Institute, a center for clubs and classes

 

 

 

54. Ibid., 45.

55. Ibid., 1878, 4.

56. WCTU, Cleveland, "Records," March 28, 1889.

57. WCTU, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1901, 29-30.

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Temperance, Benevolence, and the City                    73

 

for young people, had little explicitly religious activity.⁵⁸ By 1911

Central Friendly Inn, long the most evangelical of Non-Partisan

Union institutions, housed a Babies' Dispensary, a kindergarten, a

branch of the Tuberculosis Dispensary, and public baths; the only

religious services were Sunday vespers.⁵⁹

In 1913 the Non-Partisan Union became a member of the Cleve-

land Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, and by 1918 only the

scientific temperance instruction and the Sunday School commit-

tees testified to the earlier religiousity. In 1924 Central Friendly

Inn, with its gymnasium, kindergarten, lodgings, and playground,

moved into a larger building in a neighborhood of blacks, Italians,

and other Eastern Europeans. "Our aim," stated the Annual Report,

is "to help these people forget class and racial prejudice and to work

and live together for their common good."⁶⁰ The Inn had become, in

effect, a settlement, as it is today.

In 1928 the Non-Partisan Woman's Christian Union became the

Woman's Philanthropic Union, a small group which simply admin-

istered the trust funds and investments which partially sustained

the Inn, Rainey Institute, the Training Home, and the Mary Ing-

ersoll Club, which housed working women. Having lost the religious

impulse which gave it birth and which made it unique, the Non-

Partisan Union died, and the secular orientation took over.

Except for suffrage, this Cleveland group, despite its disaffiliation

after 1885, supported the same kinds of activities and values that

the national WCTU did. Yet one cannot arrive at generalizations

about the national or about the great mass of temperance advocates

on the strength of this one local chapter. By the same token, this

group is a reminder that conclusions should not be drawn about the

politics and ideology of all WCTU members on the basis of national

records and the national leadership. One Frances Willard does not a

temperance movement make.

The founders of the Woman's Temperance League of Cleveland in

1874 saw themselves first as Protestant crusaders, as the doers of

God's will, working as best they could in His world to save both

bodies and souls. They are evidence of the importance of religion in

the lives of nineteenth century women and the importance of women

to nineteeth century religion. If the prayer books of 1874 became the

checkbooks of 1928, this was an unintended irony.

 

 

58. Ibid., 1906, 37-42; 45.

59. Ibid., 1911, 23.

60. Ibid., 1926, unpaged.

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