Temperance movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Because of the correlation between drinking and what we now recognize as domestic violence -- many of the women who were beaten by their husbands observed that their husbands were likely to do so when drunk -- the temperance movement existed alongside various women's rights and other movements, including the Progressive movement, and often the same activists were involved in all of the above. Many notable voices of the time, ranging from Lucy Webb Hayes to Susan B. Anthony, were active in the movement. In Canada, Nellie McClung was a longstanding advocate of temperance. As with most social movements, there was a gamut of activists running from violent (Carrie Nation) to mild (Neal S. Dow).

Many former abolitionists joined the temperance movement and it was also strongly supported by the second Ku Klux Klan. Often called the KKK of the 1920s, it had been established (or revived) in Georgia in 1915 largely to defend that state's prohibition laws. Promoting and even enforcing temperance became a cornerstone of the Klan's agenda as it spread throughout the country.

For decades prohibition had been touted as the almost magical solution to the nation's poverty, crime, violence, and other ills. On the eve of prohibition the invitation to a church celebration in New York said 'Let the church bells ring and let there be great rejoicing, for an enemy has been overthrown and victory crowns the forces of righteousness.' Jubilant with victory, some in the WCTU announced that, having brought Prohibition to the United States, it would now go forth to bring the blessing of enforced abstinence to the rest of the world.

The famous evangelist Billy Sunday staged a mock funeral for John Barleycorn and then preached on the benefits of prohibition. 'The reign of tears is over,' he asserted. 'The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs.' Since alcohol was to be banned and since it was seen as the cause of most, if not all, crime, some communities sold their jails. One sold its jail to a farmer who converted it into a combination pig and chicken house while another converted its jail into a tool house."