Currently I am working on the decade starting with 1910. I like to skip around so this could change next week. We all think of 1920s as being the time of prohibition. The “Roaring Twenties” are well depicted in movies and documentaries. However the movement started well before that. Today I will share an article from January of 1910 about the division in Skagit County on the “temperance movement” and the choice for each community to be “dry” or “wet”.
Bellingham Herald and Seattle Daily Times
Bellingham Herald- Jan 1 – Skagit County, Outside of Incorporated Towns, Goes dry by a 500 majority. La Conner banishes saloons while three cities vote to retain the bars. Two precincts in the County give big majorities for booze: Edison and McMurray Vote Wet – Other small towns go dry.
Seattle Daily times: There are three great elements that have produced the “dry” movement- the organized temperance forces, the doctors, and the employers of labor. The temperance people have been the moral force, the doctors the scientific, and the employers the economic. The result is a dry belt which is a thing absolutely now in history. Perhaps some people can remember smiling sadly at the spectacle of the little round faced boys of the Loyal Legion bravely marching at some WCTU entertainment under a big banner inscribed “Tremble. King Alcohol. We shall grow up”. Well, North Carolina gave sixty thousand majority against prohibition in 1881. In 1908 she gave a 44 thousand majority for it. The boys have grown up.
The movement against intoxicants has changed its name three times. First it was “temperance” then “prohibition” and now comes the new word “Antisaloon”. It exactly represents the present phases of the movement. It is no longer dealing with individuals, whether children of drunkards. It is voting to exterminate the saloon and in this movement great numbers of moderate drinkers must have joined. It is not possible to believe that some of the majorities in the dry territory were composed entirely of total abstainers. This is a curious and significant fact. No moderate drinker joins a temperance society or the prohibition party. Only total abstainers entered these. But there must be thousands, perhaps millions, of moderate drinkers in the Antisaloon movement. They are not tee-totalers, but they are antisaloonists.
Belindabotzong2019©