Temperance is one of the
cardinal virtues listed in Aristotle's tractate the
Nicomachean Ethics.
Origins (pre-1820) During the 18th century, Native American cultures and societies were severely affected by alcohol, which was often given in trade for furs, leading to poverty and social disintegration. As early as 1737,
Native American temperance activists began to campaign against alcohol and for legislation to restrict the sale and distribution of alcoholic drinks in indigenous communities. During the colonial era, leaders such as
Peter Chartier,
King Hagler and
Little Turtle resisted the use of rum and brandy as
trade items, in an effort to protect Native Americans from cultural changes they viewed as destructive. In 1743,
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Churches, proclaimed "that buying, selling, and drinking of liquor, unless absolutely necessary, were evils to be avoided". In the early 19th-century United States, alcohol was still regarded as a necessary part of the American diet for both practical and social reasons. Water supplies were often polluted, milk was not always available, and coffee and tea were expensive. Social constructs of the time also made it impolite for people (particularly men) to refuse alcohol. The organization only accepted men of high social standing and encouraged moderation in alcohol consumption. Its peak of influence was in 1818, and it ended in 1820, having made no significant mark on the future of the temperance movement.
Promoting moderation (1820s–1830s) The
temperance movement in the United States began at a national level in the 1820s, having been popularized by evangelical temperance reformers and among the middle classes. An earlier temperance movement had begun during the
American Revolution in Connecticut, Virginia and New York state, with farmers forming associations to ban whiskey distilling. The movement spread to eight states, advocating temperance rather than abstinence and taking positions on religious issues such as observance of the Sabbath. After the American Revolution there was a new emphasis on good citizenship for the new republic. The Awakening brought with it an optimism about moral reform, achieved through volunteer organizations. Although the temperance movement was nonsectarian in principle, the movement consisted mostly of church-goers. Connecticut-born minister
Lyman Beecher published a book in 1826 called
Six Sermons on...Intemperance. Beecher described inebriation as a "national sin" and suggested legislation to prohibit the sales of alcohol. Presbyterian preacher
Charles Grandison Finney taught abstinence from
ardent spirits. In the Rochester, New York revival of 1831, individuals were required to sign a
temperance pledge in order to receive salvation. Finney believed and taught that the body represented the "temple of God" and anything that harmed the "temple", including alcohol, must be avoided. who poured his stock of whiskey out of his window in 1829. He mainly concentrated on the elimination of spirits rather than wine and beer. On August 14, 1829, he wrote a letter in the
Belfast Telegraph publicizing his views on
temperance. He also formed the
Ulster Temperance Movement with other Presbyterian clergy, initially enduring ridicule from members of his community. The 1830s saw a tremendous growth in temperance groups, not just in England and the United States, but also in British colonies, especially
New Zealand and
Australia. The
Pequot writer and minister
William Apess (1798–1839) established the first formal Native American temperance society among the
Maspee Indians on 11 October 1833. Out of the religious revival and reform appeared
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and
Seventh-day Adventism, new Christian denominations that established criteria for healthy living as a part of their religious teachings, namely temperance. When the Word of Wisdom was written, the Latter Day Saints were residing in Kirtland, Ohio and the Kirtland Temperance Society was organized on October 6, 1830, with 239 members. According to some scholars, the Word of Wisdom was influenced by the temperance movement. In June 1830, the
Millennial Harbinger quoted from a book "The Simplicity of Health", which strongly condemned the use of alcohol and tobacco, and the untempered consumption of meat, similar to the provisions in the Word of Wisdom revealed three years later. This gave publicity to the movement and Temperance Societies began to form. On February 1, 1833, a few weeks before the Word of Wisdom was published, all distilleries in the Kirtland area were shut down. Although he advocated temperance,
Joseph Smith did not preach complete abstinence from alcohol. According to Paul H. Peterson and Ronald W. Walker, Smith did not enforce abstinence from alcohol because he believed that it threatened individual choice and agency and that a requirement for the Latter Day Saints to comply would cause division in the church. In Harry M. Beardsley's book
Joseph Smith and his Mormon Empire, Beardsley argues that some Mormon historians attempted to portray Smith as a teetotaler, but according to the testimonies of his contemporaries, he often drank alcohol in his own home or the homes of his friends in Kirtland. In Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith was far less discreet with his drinking habits. However, at the end of the 19th century, second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Brigham Young said that the Saints could no longer justify disobeying the Word of Wisdom because of the way that it originally was presented. In 1921,
Heber J. Grant, then president of the LDS church, officially called on the Latter-day Saints to strictly adhere to the Word of Wisdom, including complete abstinence from alcohol. The term
teetotaler came from the capital "T"s that were written next to the names of people who pledged complete abstinence from alcohol. In the US, the
American Temperance Union advocated total abstinence from distilled and fermented liquors. By 1835, they had gained 1.5million members. This created conflict between the teetotalists and the more moderate members of the ATS. The
Catholic temperance movement started in 1838 when the
Irish priest
Theobald Mathew established the
Teetotal Abstinence Society in 1838. In 1838, the mass working class movement for
universal suffrage for men,
Chartism, included a current called "temperance chartism". Faced with the refusal of the Parliament of the time to give the right to vote to working people, the temperance chartists saw the campaign against alcohol as a way of proving to the elites that working-class people were responsible enough to be granted the vote. In short, the 1830s was mostly characterized by moral persuasion of workers. created their own temperance society that could appeal to hard-drinking men like themselves. Calling themselves the
Washingtonians, they pledged complete abstinence, attempting to persuade others through their own experience with alcohol rather than relying on preaching and religious lectures. They argued that sympathy was an overlooked method for helping people with alcohol addictions, citing coercion as an ineffective method. For that reason, they did not support prohibitive legislation of alcohol. By 1845, the Washingtonian movement was no longer as prominent for three reasons. First, the evangelist reformers attacked them for refusing to admit alcoholism was a sin. Secondly, the movement was criticized as unsuccessful due to the number of men who returned to drinking. Finally, the movement was internally divided by differing views on prohibition legislation. the membership of the temperance movement overlapped with that of the
abolitionist movement and
women's suffrage movement. During the Victorian period, the temperance movement became more political, advocating the legal prohibition of all alcohol, rather than only calling for moderation. Proponents of temperance, teetotalism and prohibition came to be known as the "drys". In this period there was local success at restricting or banning the sale of alcohol in many parts of the United States. In 1838, Massachusetts banned certain sales of spirits. The law was repealed two years later, but it set a precedent. In 1851, a law was passed in Maine that was a full-fledged prohibition, and this was followed by bans in several other states in the next two decades. Organized opposition caused five of these states to eliminate or weaken the laws. In the United States, the
National Prohibition Party which was led by
John Russell gradually became more popular, gaining more votes, as they felt that the existing Democrat and Republican parties did not do enough for the temperance cause. Methodists believed that despite the supposed economic benefits of liquor traffic such as job creation and taxes, the harm that it caused society through its contribution to murder, gambling, prostitution, crime, and political corruption outweighed its economic benefits. In Great Britain, both
Wesleyan Methodists and
Primitive Methodists championed the cause of temperance; the
Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals was later established in the United States to advance the movement. In 1864, the
Salvation Army, another denomination in the
Wesleyan-Arminian tradition, was founded in London with a heavy emphasis on abstinence from alcohol and ministering to the working class, which led publicans to fund a
Skeleton Army in order to disrupt their meetings. The Salvation Army quickly spread internationally, maintaining an emphasis on abstinence. Many of the most important prohibitionist groups, such as the avowedly prohibitionist
United Kingdom Alliance (1853) and the US-based (but international)
Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU; 1873), began in the latter half of the 19th century, the latter of which was one of the largest women's societies in the world at that time. But the largest and most radical international temperance organization was the Good Templars. In 1898, the
Pioneer Total Abstinence Association was formed by
James Cullen, an Irish Catholic, which spread to other English-speaking Catholic communities. In 1870, a group of physicians founded the American Association of the Cure of Inebrity (AACI) in order to treat alcohol addiction. The two goals of this organization were to convince skeptical members of the medical community of the existence and seriousness of the disease of alcoholism and prove the efficacy of asylum treatments for alcoholics. The
Anti-Saloon League was an organization that began in Ohio in 1893. Reacting to urban growth, it was driven by
evangelical Protestantism. The League simultaneously campaigned for
suffrage and temperance, with its leader
Susan B. Anthony stating that "The only hope of the Anti-Saloon League's success lies in putting the ballot into the hands of women", i.e. it was expected that the first act that women were to take upon themselves after having obtained the right to vote, was to vote for an alcohol ban. Political action included lobbying local legislators and creating petition campaigns. Scholars have estimated that by 1900, one in ten Americans had signed a pledge to abstain from drinking, as the temperance movement became the most well-organized lobby group of the time. International conferences were held, in which temperance advocacy methods and policies were discussed.
Legislative successes and failures (1910s) A favorite goal of the British Temperance movement was sharply to reduce heavy drinking by closing as many pubs as possible. Advocates were Protestant nonconformists who played a major role in the
Liberal Party. The Liberal Party adopted temperance platforms focused on local option. In 1908, Prime Minister
H.H. Asquith—although a heavy drinker himself—took the lead by proposing to close about a third of the 100,000 pubs in England and Wales, with the owners compensated through a new tax on surviving pubs. The brewers controlled the pubs and organized a stiff resistance, supported by the Conservatives, who repeatedly defeated the proposal in the House of Lords. However, the People's Tax of 1910 included a stiff tax on pubs. The movement gained traction during the First World War, with
President Wilson issuing sharp restrictions on the sale of alcohol in many combatant countries. This was done to preserve grain for food production. According to alcohol researcher Johan Edman, the first country to issue an alcohol prohibition was Russia, as part of war mobilization policies. and in 1916 a
State Management Scheme meant that breweries and pubs in certain areas of Britain were nationalized, especially in places where armaments were made. In 1913, the ASL began its efforts for national prohibition. National prohibition was proposed several times in
New Zealand as well, and nearly successful. On a similar note, Australian states and New Zealand introduced
restrictive early closing times for bars during and immediately after the First World War. In
Canada, in 1916 the
Ontario Temperance Act was passed, prohibiting the sales of alcoholic beverages with more than 2.5% alcohol. In the 1920s imports of alcohol were cut off by provincial referendums. Norway introduced partial prohibition in 1917, which became full prohibition through a
referendum in 1919, but this legislation was
overturned in 1926. Similarly, Finland introduced prohibition in 1919, but repealed it in 1932 after an upsurge in violent crime associated with criminal opportunism and the illegal liquor trade. Iceland introduced prohibition in 1915, but liberalized consumption of spirits in 1933, but beer was still illegal until 1989. In the 1910s, half of the countries in the world had introduced some form of alcohol control in their laws or policies. As such, the temperance movement in India became closely tied with the
Indian independence movement as
Mahatma Gandhi viewed alcohol as being a foreign importation. He viewed foreign rule as the reason that national prohibition was not yet established at his time. The addition of
warning labels on alcoholic beverages is supported by
organizations of the temperance movement, such as the WCTU. Prominent temperance organizations active today include the
World Woman's Christian Temperance Union,
Mothers Against Drunk Driving,
Alcohol Justice,
International Blue Cross,
Independent Order of Rechabites, and
International Organisation of Good Templars. The
Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection, a Methodist denomination in the
conservative holiness movement, as well as the
Salvation Army, for example, are Christian Churches that continue to require that their members refrain from drinking alcohol as well as smoking, taking illegal drugs, and gambling. In youth culture in the 1990s, temperance was an important part of the
straight edge scene, which stresses
abstinence from other drugs.
Mr Fitzpatrick's in Lancashire, England is thought to be the oldest
temperance bars and other such establishments have become popular in recent times. In various parts of the world, voters continue to advocate for alcohol prohibition. For example, in 2016, many women in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu blamed alcohol for societal ills, such as
domestic violence, and thus took to the polls to elect a pro-prohibition leader. Their effort succeeded and when
Jayaram Jayalalithaa was voted in, she shut down five hundred liquor shops on her first day in office. they campaigned for the election of
Nitish Kumar, who upon the request of women, pledged that he would prohibit alcohol. Since signing prohibition legislation, "Murders and gang robberies are down almost 20 percent from a year earlier, and riots by 13 percent. Fatal traffic accidents fell by 10 percent." == Beliefs, principles and culture ==