The Women's Crusade Comes to Seattle
A decade after the movement began, Seattle women gathered to reclaim their power and advocate for the prohibition of the 'rum traffic.'
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Last Sunday at 4 p.m., Yesler's Hall was filled to its capacity to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Woman's Crusade, conducted by the W.C.T.U. The hall was adorned with a white satin banner reading 'For God and Home and Native Land.' Mrs. E. O. Johnson delivered a history of the movement, which began in Hillsboro, Ohio, in 1873, when women marched into saloons to pray for the souls of those trapped by intemperance. Miss Mattie L. Hansee, the president of the local union, then addressed the crowd, arguing that the crusade had empowered women to move beyond the home and into public life, granting them a voice in the world's affairs. Sixty signatures were obtained for the temperance pledge by the end of the meeting.
“It is a curious conundrum... that here's one woman locked up for getting drunk, and another, in an adjoining cell, locked up for trying to prevent drunkenness and lift the fallen. Curious country this, anyway.”
The W.C.T.U. was a major force in early Seattle civic life, framing temperance as a matter of public safety and women's rights long before the 1916 statewide prohibition. Their assertion that women had a legal and moral right to 'meddle' in public affairs was a foundational argument for women's suffrage in the territory.
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