Prohibition and the Suffrage Movement | The Vote | American Experience | PBS

NARRATOR: It was a charge that had dogged the suffrage movement for decades ––not least because it rang true. ELEANOR SMEAL: I don’t think many people realize that Susan B. Anthony was a leader in the temperance movement. The temperance movement was all about men’s behavior, by the way. It was not just alcohol; it was the abuse of alcohol and the beating of women by drunken men. They would also spend an inordinate amount of money on it, and on payday, they’d go to the bars, and what would be left for the wife and the kids? So there was a whole movement to restrict alcohol. NARRATOR: Perhaps nowhere was the link between temperance and woman suffrage more established than in Ohio, the birthplace of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The largest women's organization in the country, the W.C.T.U. had led the crusade to ban alcohol since the late 19th century ––and endorsed votes for women as a "weapon for home protection." MARY WALTON: This activated the liquor lobby. These are the distilleries, the breweries, the farmers who grow crops for alcohol, alcoholic products, cask makers. It’s huge. So whenever a vote came up in a state for suffrage, the liquor lobby poured money in to defeat it. ELAINE WEISS: They would do things like a bar would have a sign up on election day and say, "Vote against the women’s suffrage amendment and you get a free beer." They don't want national prohibition and if women have some political power, that might happen. NARRATOR: Aware that the association with temperance had become a liability, Harriet Taylor Upton had done her best to create some distance. "Let me explain that the suffrage association is not a temperance organization," she'd insisted in an official statement that summer. But in a state where brewing was a major industry, such reassurances struck many voters as too little, too late. On September 3rd, 1912, Ohio Amendment number 23 lost, with nearly fifty-eight percent of the electorate voting against it. Two days later, the woman suffrage referendum in Wisconsin failed in precisely the same manner ––as did the one in Michigan, in November. ALEXANDER KEYSSAR: As women link suffrage rights to social reform, whether it means for women who are working in the garment industry or the temperance movement to ban alcohol, major economic interests who are tied to industries that are profiting from this begin to oppose women’s suffrage. SUSAN WARE: There's money involved, there's power involved, and women are threatening them. And a lot of people really didn’t want things to change.

Channel: American Experience | PBS

Views: 31,192

Keywords: suffrage, suffragist, suffragette, the vote, women's right to vote, right to vote, enfranchisement, 19th amendment, protest, political movements, civil rights, feminism, constitiution, us constitution, women vote, vote, voter, prohibition, temperance, temperance movement, 18th amendment, 21st amendment

Id: WPczGnA7k9A

Length: 3min 35sec (215 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021