The Temperance Movement on Vashon Island
A report on the Grand Lodge of the I.O.G.T. session, highlighting the rising influence of local temperance activism.
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.
Vashon Island was the scene last week of lively, aggressive temperance work. The Grand Lodge I.O.G.T. met at Chautauqua and had a glorious session. Among its members, white ribboners were conspicuous both for numbers and for active work. Mrs. Reese, our organizer, lives at Chautauqua, and her commodious residence was filled with delegates, while the continuous hum and buzz of many voices and the flitting to and fro of busy workers served to heighten the comparison to a beehive. Aberdeen has the honor of claiming the Grand Worthy Chief Templar in the person of Rev. W. H. Shearman, who may justly feel proud of having the title conferred upon him by such a body. While the work of the C.L.S.C. is wholly educational, it is deeply imbued with temperance sentiment, and its most prominent teachers and officers are earnest members of the different branches of temperance reform. By securing to the masses a liberal education and opening up to them new and broad avenues for thought, they are most surely laying a foundation for future legislation which shall relegate the open saloon to the regions where mortals can no longer be hurt thereby.
“God speed the day when the white ribbon shall encircle the earth from pole to pole, and purity and truth shall be reigning principles.”
The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the International Order of Good Templars were powerful political forces in Washington Territory, eventually winning the state to Prohibition decades before the 18th Amendment. Today, this kind of moral regulation of public space is echoed in the intense local debates over zoning, nightlife, and community safety that still define Aberdeen's civic character.
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