The Temperance Movement in Wooster

by Jacob Kowall, revised by Jordan Wilson

The Temperance Movement first gained momentum due to the efforts of late nineteenth century social reformers in Ohio, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League. Seeing these nearby developments as an opportunity to enact social change, women in Wooster fought to end the sale of alcoholic beverages in the city altogether.  The efforts of these supporters had a major effect on the liquor and beer industry of Wooster, though they ultimately failed in their goal of eradicating alcohol use from the city. 

“The Infernal Traffic”

A back view of Wooster Brewing Company, which was a large farmhouse with an attached garage and a dirt back yard with a fence.
This late nineteenth century photograph shows the Wooster Brewing Company.  During the time of the temperance movement it was the main producer of beer in Wayne County.

In the late 1800s, many men and women belonging to the Protestant churches of Wooster began to resent the presence of taverns and the problem of drunkenness in the city. They were disturbed by the effect that the city’s 16 local saloons were having on the behavior of men both in public and in the home.1 Throughout this time, crime in Wooster and the surrounding area was often associated with alcohol.  An 1884 article from the Wayne County Herald covering a manslaughter in nearby Shreve explained how the case was “clearly an outgrowth of the infernal drink traffic … as long as we tolerate this high pirate on society, this barbarous saloon system, we may expect such things to occur in every community.”2    

Several men on a bridge that represent the different stages of drunkeness with a woman and a child cry underneath it with the title "The Drunkards Progress". The steps are: a glass with a friend, a glass to keep the cold out, a glass too much, drunk and riotous, the summit attained: jolly companions, a confirmed drunkard, poverty and disease, forsaken by friends, desperation and crime, and death by suicide.
Political cartoons were a popular means during the United States temperance movement to spread warning of the danger of consuming alcohol.  This 1840s lithograph by Nathaniel Currier shows an extreme view of the slippery slope of alcohol consumption.  It begins with a man drinking one glass and ends with him committing suicide.

Seeing it as their moral responsibility to battle the perceived evils of alcohol, a group of Wooster women banded together in the spring of 1874 and formed the Women’s Temperance Union. These reform-minded women endeavored to follow their Christian principles by actively fighting Wooster’s vice and ridding the city of the saloon system for good.3

The Women’s Crusade

A portrait of Frances Willard.

Throughout the nation, members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were employing tactics to fight for their goal of ending the sale and consumption of alcohol. Basing their actions on those of this national group, the members of Wooster’s Women’s Temperance Union held regular prayer meetings and urged citizens and saloon keepers to sign pledges agreeing not to consume or sell alcoholic beverages. When many of the tavern keepers continued to sell alcohol, the women paraded through the city, singing hymns and praying outside of the saloons. The city was clearly gaining attention in the national temperance movement since in May of 1874, the future president of the WCTU, Francis Willard, visited Wooster to give a talk to the women of the city.  A dozen saloons stopped serving alcohol due to the efforts of the Temperance Union in 1874.  One man immediately put his tavern up for auction after attending a prayer meeting hosted by the organization.  However, despite the efforts of the Women’s Temperance Union, city regulations made to restrict the sale of alcohol were never enforced, and business at Wooster’s saloons carried on as usual after the initial temperance endeavors of 1874. 

Pictured left: Ella A. Boole was President of the WCTU from 1925 to 1933. She attended the College of Wooster (Class of 1878) during the height of the nineteenth century wave of the temperance movement and was surely inspired by the efforts of Wooster’s Women’s Temperance Union.

An illustration that shows a man being driven away from a bar as a little girl tries to pull him away.

Undeterred, the women of the city continued to promote temperance by hosting prayer meetings and convincing citizens to sign pledges promising abstinence from alcohol.  In 1877, the Wooster Dramatic Club even aided in the movement and hosted productions of the temperance drama, “Ten Nights in a Bar Room,” in the Quinby Opera House.  However, the Women’s Temperance Union ultimately failed its goal of eradicating the sale of liquor in the city during the late nineteenth century.4

Pictured right: The novel Ten Night’s in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, written in 1854 by T.S. Arthur, was a popular tool used by promoters of temperance throughout the nineteenth century to reveal the effect of alcoholism on family life.

Temperance in the Twentieth Century

An excerpt from the Wooster Daily News that says, "Saloon Keepers Quit Business, Eleven Liqour Dealing Establishments Close Their Doors in Wayne County, Wayne County is Dry"
This article from the Wooster Daily News describes how the vote to make Wayne a dry county resulted in the closure of eleven saloons in the cities surrounding Wooster.

In the years leading up to prohibition, the temperance crusade once again gained support throughout the nation.  In 1908, Wayne County, along with 34 other Ohio counties, enacted a local option law under Ohio’s Rose Law, allowing the county to vote itself dry for a period of three years.  The sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited, and Wayne County’s eleven saloons were forced to close.  Wayne’s two alcohol manufacturers, the Wooster Brewing Company and the Cedar Valley Distilling Company remained open by selling their wares to buyers outside of the county.  The Wooster Brewing Company also increased its production of artificial ice to make up for the lost profits.   

A sign that says "Christmas Run Park, City of Woster" between two bushes
Wooster’s Christmas Run Park has links to Prohibition.  The city originally paid for the land on which the park is built with fines collected from violators of the prohibition laws.

However, increased pressure before the establishment of Prohibition forced the Wooster Brewing Company to cease its production of beer in 1916 and sell its plant to the Mougey Beverage Company, which bottled colas.5 Temperance had finally doomed the manufacture of alcoholic beverages in the county. When Prohibition took effect, several smugglers were arrested while trying to bring alcohol into Wooster. Using money collected from fining these violators of the prohibition laws, the city was able to purchase land on which it later built Christmas Run Park.6 Although the temperance and prohibition movement died out in Wooster as it did across the nation, it still was instrumental in shaping the social atmosphere of the city as it transitioned into the twentieth century.

The front of a large brick building which is JFAB Wooster Brewery
The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 marked the end of the temperance movement’s influence in the nation and in Wooster.  Today, beer is once again brewed at the JAFB Wooster Brewery, opened in 2012.  

Citations

1 Lucy Lillian Notestein, Wooster of the Middle West, Volume I (Kent: Kent State Univ. Press, 1971), 128. 
2 “The Shreve Tragedy,” Wayne County Herald, March 29, 1884. 
3 Paul Locher, When Wooster Was a Whippersnapper (Sugarcreek, OH: Carlisle Printing, 2008), 151-154. 
4 Wooster in 1876, ed. Arnold Lewis (Wooster: Wooster Art Center Museum, 1976), 107-108. 
5 Robert A. Musson, M.D., Brewing Beer In The Buckeye State, Volume 1: A History of the Brewing Industry in Eastern Ohio from 1808 to 2004 (Medina, OH: Zepp Publications, 2005). 
6 “Five Days for Liquor Dealers,” Wooster Daily News, October 31, 1908; “Saloon-Keepers Quit Business,” Wooster Daily News, November 9, 1908; Harry S. McClarran, “Harry’s Mystery Question,” Summer Quarterly Newsletter, (Wooster: Wayne County Historical Society, 2013), 5.

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