Anti-Saloon League
an organization whose activities were undoubtedly been doing this. The Anti-Saloon League was formed to fight the enemy with its own weapons. To bring the issue squarely before the people-not so much as a moral and religious issue as an economic and political one was the work it set itself to do. In Ohio it went at once to the churches and asked the privilege through its speakers and printed matter, and general propaganda, of taking up the temperance work. It became in this way a kind of clearing-house for all the religious bodies who were interested. In return for their financial support it undertook to do the work for one and all of them, as a kind of collective executive of the most militant type. It began by a general canvass of all sections to tabulate carefully the entire vote of Ohio for or against prohibition. When a district with a preponderance of prohibition sentiment was found, it then went to work to find the best possible candidate for as many offices as possibl from the Senate down who was committed to its side. By active propaganda such men were elected, until a final majority in both houses triumphantly carried through the Eighteenth Amendment.
A brother organization was formed at Washington governmental headquarters in the same year. Thus the very citadel of politics was attacked from the start. Two years later the work was so well founded that the Washington League issued a call for a general Anti-Saloon League movement throughout the nation.
ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE Five States responded at once and the American Anti-Saloon League was organized at Washington the following December 18, the Ohio and Washington Leagues being the other constituents.
Dr. Howard H. Russell was chosen national superintendent, and a weekly organ, the "American Issue,” was established.
With this as a starting point, the cause spread rapidly and State after State came in. The work began always with effort for local option, the motto of the League being "let's go a step at a time." It worked often in co-operation with other organizations-but always in the lead. It was frankly taken by the great Protestant religious bodies, and even by high dignitaries of the Roman Church, like Archbishop Ireland and Bishop Spaulding, as meaning business from the start. It was thus recognized at once as THE factor of the prohibition movement in politics a result-getterand its strength increased daily. It began with local option fights, gradually winning its local battles, till it was enabled to launch a state-wide campaign. To the original "dry" column-Maine 1851, Kansas 1880, North Dakota 1889, it added Oklahoma 1907, Georgia 1908, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Tennessee 1909, and fifteen other States up to the introduction of the Volstead act in 1918. It is not too much to say that the liberally financed, ably managed, and tireless campaign of the League contributed almost wholly to the final promulgation of that resolution.
From the beginning the Church stood squarely behind it. Dr. Francis Clark, the head of the Christian Endeavor movement, welcomed it at its formation in these words: "The League has a platform wide enough and strong enough for us all to get together on without its breaking down." And so it has proven.
The three great divisions of the work have been agitation, or field-work, legislation, and law enforcement. The chief feature of the field-work was an organized corps of highly developed speakers for every State, kept constantly traveling, speaking in the churches and public auditoriums, whose activities were redoubled as elections approached. One of the taunts of its opponents is that "the League never sleeps." It was early enabled to establish a printing plant at Westville, O., costing $300,000, which for several years past has been turning out five tons of printed matter daily. The "American Issue," its weekly organ, with National and State editions, is printed there. Millions of leaflets and bulletins are also sent out annually. In the legis- ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE lative work its lawyers have written most of the laws which have finally been. passed on the liquor question. In very few instances indeed-so carefully have these been framed-has any judicial opinion been adverse to them. Its triumphant work before the war prepared the country for war-time prohibition; was indeed the great step toward that end. Adjustment would have been far more difficult, the situation indeed would in some instances have taken on a dangerous character, but that the whole country had hearkened to the voice, if they had not as an entire nation enlisted under the banners of the League. The League had helped the cause of prohibition signally, and prohibition, so far as it has advanced, was a signal help to the nation in the war.
Taking advantage of its tremendous opportunity, the League so greatly accelerated its efforts that by the time this country actually entered the war a favorable Congress was in session at Washington. National prohibition was a foregone conclusion, and the result came quickly.
As to its general policy, the League has never claimed that local option by itself was conclusive. A local option victory was always looked on as simply educational-a sample of the full order to be delivered later. The League has proclaimed itself from the first a fighting organization, which, starting with the smallest beginnings, has won its great battles through a succession of small victories. Thorough organization and strenuous action have been its leading characteristics since its formation. Its own statement of its aims declares: "The League is not another temperance society.
It is not a rival of any organization, but, as its name implies, a league of organizations. It is a clearing house for churches and temperance societies. Its primary function is not the creation of anti-saloon sentiment, but the direction of existing sentiment to receive immediate results. Its platform is succinctly stated as follows: "The League holds that the saloon question is something that can and must be solved, and that the only solution is no saloon. It has found that prohibition prohibits better than regulation regulates. It stands for the largest present repression and the speediest ultimate suppression of the beverage liquor traffic.
It wastes no time trying to 'reform' the traffic, for an institution which outrages the divine law of love will never obey the police regulations of men. It has no permissive feature in its creed. It is opposed to the license system as vicious in ANTISCORBUTICS principle, utterly inconsistent with the purpose of enlightened government, and in practice a protection to a traffic which is inherently criminal in its nature."