WCTU office in Seattle, Washington, photograph

Photograph showing Temperance workers in the State Women's Christian Temperance Union Headquarters in Seattle, Washington, 1914. The eight women are posed with signs, posters and pennants in favor of the Temperance and Prohibition movements. The Temperance movement was an organized effort during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to limit or outlaw the consumption and production of alcoholic beverages in the United States. In 1874, a group of Cleveland women established the Women's Christian Temperance Union. This organization pressured the Ohio and federal governments to implement Prohibition, which would outlaw the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol. From the mid 1870s to the early 1890s, the WCTU was the major organization within the United States seeking Prohibition. Its members utilized rather extreme tactics to convince Americans to abstain from alcohol. Members picketed bars and saloons, prayed for the souls of the bar patrons, and also tried to block the entryways of establishments that sold liquor. By the 1890s, groups such as the American Anti-Saloon League had joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union in its push for Prohibition