Existing comment:
"The ballot . . . is a most potent element in all moral and social reforms"
Frustrated by their limited ability to secure government regulation of alcohol, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union -- the largest women's organization in the country at the time -- endorsed woman suffrage in 1881. Pointing to links between drunkenness and domestic violence, temperance reformers argued that women needed the ballot as a means of home protection. |