The Women's Christian Temperance Union
Beginning in the 1870s, temperance experienced a major resurgence supported predominately by women. In 1873, temperance activists created the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), led after 1879 by Frances Willard. The WCTU had become the single largest women's organization in American history up to 1911, their members reaching up to 245,000. Their organization's cause was strengthened by an alliance with women battling also for suffrage, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The group strived to advertise the harms of alcohol and its connection to family violence, unemployment, poverty, and disease. The WCTU achieved lobbying for local laws restricting alcohol and created an anti-alcohol educational campaign that was in almost every classroom in the country; however, it was not until the emergence of the Anti-Saloon League that their dream of a prohibition amendment to the constitution seemed possible.