Delegates from seventeen states, including Wisconsin, organized the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Cleveland, Ohio, on November 17-19, 1874. According to its founders, the WCTU “is an organization of Christian women banded together for the protection of the home, the abolition of the liquor traffic, and the triumph of Christ's Golden Rule in custom and in law.” Frances E. Willard (1839-1898) of Evanston, Illinois, became president of the WCTU in 1879 and headed it until her death. The most prominent temperance worker of her generation, Willard impelled the WCTU into a national body with 10,000 local chapters. Ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment on January 16, 1919 marked the zenith of the WCTU; its lowest point came on December 5, 1933 with the repeal of Prohibition. Over the last forty years, the WCTU has concentrated on temperance education among young people by means of essay and poster contests and through Sunday schools. Its anti-liquor polemics have subsided, superseded by the more rational approaches to alcoholism adopted by various drug-addiction research organizations.
The Madison Central Union was founded on January 18, 1880. From the beginning it associated the crusade against alcohol with agitation for woman suffrage. Other activities included supervision of a children's reading room, pursuit of a Constitutional amendment on prohibition, and implementation of a number of temperance education projects. Its efforts produced a ban on beer sales at the county fairgrounds and the closing of the bar in the West Madison depot. In the 1880's the Central Union sponsored a day nursery and an employment agency for women. The local chapter vigorously promoted clean living and social service.
The initial enthusiasm eventually waned, and in 1911 the Central Union rejected a motion to disband by a vote of 5 to 2. The revival of the temperance movement during World War I rejuvenated the Central Union. In 1928 the Dane County WCTU announced a fifteen-point agenda for the forthcoming year. Having routed the liquor forces, the women turned their attention to tobacco addiction, urging, among other things, that “school boards not...hire teachers who are slaves to the habit.” Gambling was another WCTU target. In 1932, the chapter was deemed the most efficient among the local unions of the Madison area. The others were Willard (Madison), Monona, Stoughton, Mazomanie, and Black Earth.
