The   Anti-Saloon   League 
The   Ohio   Anti-Saloon League was created in 1893, according to K.  Austin Kerr,  followed by the American Anti-Saloon League in 1895. A nonpartisan approach to achieving prohibition, the Anti-Saloon League was the brainchild of Reverend Howard Hyde Russell, a former attorney who decided to become a minister.

Russell believed that by supporting all candidates who were “dry,”  despite their political party,  the organization could attain political power.  At this time in history,  the temperance movement was in disarray, and the Prohibition political party had little chance of gaining political power.  Prohibitionists in the North and South continued to argue about civil rights for freed slaves in the South, and they could not unite on a single party platform.

Russell decided to attack the places that sold alcohol-the saloons-in a concerted attack to achieve his ultimate goal of the prohibition of alcohol.

Saloon owners greatly underestimated the power of the Anti-Saloon League (ASL), and they failed to unite against it.  In addition,  powerful organizations such as the United Brewers’  Association thought they had nothing to worry about because they made only beer,  apparently not realizing that the Anti-Saloon League and other temperance groups wanted to ban all alcoholic beverages.  When they finally realized that they had a serious political problem,  saloon owners tried to be more vigilant about what occurred on their premises,  no longer allowing gambling or prostitution and generally cleaning up their moral acts.  But it was too late.  The prohibition movement was steamrollering ahead by that point.

Said authors Lender and Martin,  “The league proved that it could marshal votes for anyone-Republican or Democrat-who was willing to vote dry.  Both the major parties rapidly awoke to the electoral power of the league, and it soon became apparent that the political fortunes of the antiliquor crusade would not have to depend on any single party-and certainly not on the small and ineffectual Prohibition party.”

Wayne Wheeler led this effort for the AntiSaloon League,  and “Wheelerism”  became synonymous at that time with heavy and effective politicking.  Wheeler actually drafted the implementing legislation which was known as the National Prohibition Act,  but it was named after Andrew Volstead, a congressman from Minnesota.

The Volstead Act banned not only the use of distilled spirits, but also the use of wine and beer, and it also provided federal regulations overseeing the use of sacramental wine in the churches.

The Anti-Saloon League,  the primary temperance organization in 1910, was more powerful and effective than the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. It obtained its funding from churches, and according to Iain Gately, author of Drink, the ASL received financial support from 60,000 congregations, which provided 2 million dollars per year, a significant amount of money at that time.

Gately said,  “The donations it gathered from its supporters were spent on propaganda,  and its publishing arm spewed out over 250 million pages of temperance writing each month.  This blizzard of print was directed at white Protestant men and women in the old western and northeastern states.