In 1881 she left her school and began working full time for the WCTU to promote temperance and suffrage, serving as the National WCTU's first Superintendent of the Franchise Department in 1882. Her daughter Edith sang at the opening of the Fourteenth convention of the
New England Woman Suffrage Association in 1882, and Leavitt gave a rousing speech on women's rights, temperance and how men's attitudes about women can change. Her father died after a long illness in June 1883, and Willard tasked her with field work in the Mississippi Valley and the West Coast. In July 1883 Leavitt traveled to
California,
Oregon and
Washington to organize WCTU chapters there. From 1883 to 1891, Leavitt was a secretary in the WCTU.
World missionary Leavitt's journey did not begin auspiciously; she left America with no financial backing from the national organization and only $35 in her pocket – from her own funds. "She has no capital save her faith", WCTU founder Frances Willard noted in the group's publication,
The Union Signal. Willard told her followers: "Let me affectionately urge you to pray definitely for Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt and her embassy, the most distant echo of the great Ohio crusade, the farthest outreaching of the gospel temperance wave." 45,000 women in
Victoria – almost a quarter of Australia's adult females – signed a petition to the government demanding that it introduce local legislation to protect the female sex from the "ill usage" said to sometimes accompany alcohol abuse.
Polyglot Petition Frances Willard sent to her the
Polyglot Petition in August 1885 Willard started the petition process that ended up with nearly 7.5 million signatures. The text of the Polyglot Petition follows: :
To the Governments of the World (Collectively and Severally) : We, your petitioners, although physically weak, are strong of heart to love our homes, our Native Land, and the World's Family of Nations. : We know that when the brain of man is clear, his home is happy, his country prosperous, and the world grows friendly. : But we know that Alcoholic Stimulants and Opium, which craze and cloud the brain, make misery for man and all the world, and most of all for us and all our children. : We know these stimulants and opiates are sold under legal guarantees, which make the Governs partners in the traffic, by accepting as revenue a portion of its profits, and that they are forced by treaties upon populations either ignorant or unwilling. : We have no power to prevent this great iniquity under which the whole world groans and staggers, but you have the power to clense the flags of every clime from the stain of your complicity with this unmingled curse. : We therefore, come to you with the united voices of representative women from every civilized nation under the sun, beseeching you to strip away the safeguards and sanctions of the law from the Drink Traffic and the Opium Trade, and to protect our Home by the Total Prohibition of this two-fold curse of civilization throughout all the territory over which your Government extends. The Polyglot Petition and signatures from people on six continents was pasted onto nearly 100 rolls of canvas. It is currently archived at the Frances Willard Historical House and Museum in
Evanston, Illinois, US.
Hawaii On November 15, 1884, Leavitt sailed from San Francisco to Honolulu (
Hawaiian Islands, then called the "Sandwich Islands") with $35 (approximately $1,100 value in 2024) in her purse. She had also brought with her a letter of introduction and recommendation from her own
Congregational minister, Dr. Henry M. Dexter. She was sent on with additional funds (around $400) from the Honolulu WCTU members.
New Zealand and Australia Leavitt boarded the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.'s steamship
S.S. Zealandia to travel from Honolulu to Australia with a stop at Auckland, New Zealand. She arrived on the
Zealandia with 29 passengers in steerage January 14 without much fanfare – the
New Zealand Herald does not include her in its list of arrivals. She begins lecturing in Auckland, the commercial and financial center for New Zealand, on January 27 sharing the stage with an already recognized and popular temperance missionary, Rev. R.T. Booth. By February 4, 1885, Leavitt presided over the founding of the Auckland branch of the WCTU. Over the next seven months, she visited large and small cities on both islands: in the Auckland area, she visited Remuera, Parnell, Ponsonby, Newton, and Onehunga. She moved south to Thames, Cambridge, Wairoa, and Tauranga, TeAroha. She spent time in Wellington, the nation's capital, and The Hutt nearby. In Wellington, she met
Anne Ward (suffragist) who took over and created the national organization, the
Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand, after Leavitt left New Zealand. Leavitt also visited the South Island: Dunedin (the largest city at the time), Port Chalmers, Ravensborne, Oamaru, Invercargill, Christchurch, Sydnenham, Papanui, Richmond. She returned to the North Island to visit Rangiora, Napier, Waipukeran, Waipawa. There, Leavitt traveled from Sydney to MacDonaldstown, Newton, Lithgow, Bathurst, Rockhampton, Townsville, Charter's Towers, Mayborough, Ipswich, Toowoonsba, Melbourne, Queenscliff, and Adelaide. From February to March she also visited
Tasmania, the island state of Australia, lecturing in Lancaster, Cressy, Beaconsfield, Hobart, Richmond, and Campbelltown before returning to Sydney. She founded a number of branches in the
Colony of Victoria which were brought together in 1887 when
Marie Elizabeth Kirk founded the umbrella organisation, the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Victoria.
East Asia: Japan, Korea, China Leavitt had no more funds to continue her world tour and wrote to Willard that she must return home unless the WCTU would support her work. Suffragist
Mary Livermore contributed a leaflet in tribute to Leavitt and which local WCTU chapters purchased to read in their meetings. Willard was able to promise $3,700 to Leavitt. Leavitt sailed from Sydney to Japan in April 1886 with a plan to use those funds to go through Asia and then on to Africa. Leavitt arrived at
Yokohama on June 1, 1886, with no one to greet her - the mission community members had mistakenly thought she was on her way to China first. She left the ship and went right out into the city to introduce herself at Bible Society rooms there. She met that day Clara and
James Curtis Hepburn, Presbyterian missionaries, who arranged her lectures there. While in Japan for five months (June 1 through October 12, 1886), she lectured at Yokohama, Tokio, Nikko, Hieizan, Kioto, Osaka, Wakayamo, Sakai, Kobe, Okayama, and Nagasaki. She also wrote articles on the scientific arguments for temperance that were translated into Japanese. Much of her connections in these cities came from Christian Japanese men who came from former samurai families. Several local chapters were formed that focused on temperance. The exception was the Tokyo WCTU chapter which organized on December 6, 1886—after Leavitt had already left Japan. They took on the name of "Tokyo Woman's Association for Reforming Customs" and focused more on issues of prostitution and concubinage rather than the liquor traffic. There was not much support for the Polyglot Petition in Japan. Leavitt visited Chelmulpo, Korea on October 16, 1886; and went on from there to China. From October 21, 1886, to February 1, 1887, she gave lectures in Chefoo, Tientsin, Tungeho, Pekin, Shanghai, Foo-chow, Amoy, Swatow, Hongking, and Canton. After having toured the country for nearly a year, Leavitt left Mrs. M.D. MacDonald (a Scottish Presbyterian missionary) as the provisional national president of the WCTU there. Leavitt continued to correspond with the sisters Margaret and Mary Leitch who, by 1888, had gathered 33,000 signatures for the Polyglot Petition. The World
Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU) When
Pandita Ramabai opened her school for young Hindu widows in Mumbai in the spring of 1889, the WWCTU supported her work and commissioned her as a WCTU National Lecturer. Not until August 1893 did the WCTU of India officially organize. It was based in Lucknow with Jeannette Hauser appointed in a paid position as president.
Africa: Mauritius, Madagascar, South Africa Leavitt then left India and arrived in
Mauritius at Port Lewis on September 10, 1888. She spent two weeks there before traveling on south to
Madagascar. She lectured in Tumatave, Antananarivo, Amboinaga, Ambatovory, and Andovoranto until December 12, 1888. She was greatly admired by the Queen who contributed funds for her travel costs. Leavitt wrote back to her media contacts in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand of her horrors of the impact of rum trafficking on the people of Madagascar. From there she traveled east through central Africa to the Congo basin; but then turned south where she began a series of lectures in the British
colony of Natal. She arrived in the port city of
Durban on December 14, 1888, and for the next several weeks traveled to speak in Uruzumbi, Inanda, Amamzimrole, Verulam, Umvoti, Maritzburg, Ladysmith, and Harrismith. In the winter of 1895, she traveled to
Mexico, and the subsequent two winters, she visited
Bahamas (Winter 1896) then
Jamaica (Winter 1897). By the end of her decade of travels, Leavitt had organized over 86 worldwide WCTU international chapters, and some 21 men's temperance societies in over 40 countries. But the message of Leavitt and other WCTU reformers were not always received so warmly abroad, where their mingling of temperance and suffrage and emerging women's rights issues were sometimes complicated by cultural differences or long-held taboos. In
Japan, for instance, where Leavitt embarked on a campaign which, she wrote, would "work on education, on scientific and Biblical lines, tobacco and chastity at least", her campaign was regarded suspiciously. Shortly after her arrival, the American-born reformer was told by a Japanese government official that "your mission here is doing for Japanese women what
Commodore Perry did for the country." In other places, Leavitt's message against tobacco, opium, alcohol and sex outside marriage did not necessarily sit well, not to mention her calls for women's right to vote. In some locales different customs presented the WCTU crusader with unlikely predicaments: in
Bangkok, for instance, she met with Thailand's
King Chulalongkorn at the palace where he kept his harem. (But Leavitt's attitude towards the polygamist potentate was somewhat muted, thanks to the monarch's large donation towards a home for impoverished elderly women). Midway through Leavitt's travels, the WCTU reckoned that their emissary had "traveled over 100,000 miles in 43 different countries; crossed the Equator eight times; held over 1,600 meetings; had the services of 290 different interpreters in 47 languages and formed 130 temperance societies, 86 of them WCTUs, and 23 branches of the White Cross." Left out of the tally were the so-called "Bands of Hope" Leavitt founded for the protection of children.
World WCTU conventions Leavitt brought copies of the Polyglot Petition to display at the first World WCTU Convention at
Faneuil Hall in
Boston, Massachusetts, November 10–11, 1891. She presented a plan of work for the nations where she had visited, and the plan was accepted unchanged. Leavitt was elected WWCTU secretary but refused to accept any committee work due to her poor health. By that point, Leavitt was living with her brother, L.H. Clement in
San Francisco, California, and sent a letter of regret that she could not attend (
Minutes 1893, page 30). She was again named Honorary President that year, and her birthday was designated WWCTU Day. By the fifth Convention in 1900, Leavitt was not listed among any of the officers. ==Recognition==