Too Wet for the Dry Crusade: Tacoma Boycotts Francis Murphy
The celebrated temperance lecturer came back to Tacoma to find the Tabernacle locked against him—because he preached gospel temperance instead of prohibition.
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.
TACOMA, July 21.—[Special.]—Temperance Lecturer Francis Murphy has been boycotted by leading ministers since returning from San Francisco. Before his successful series of lectures here last winter the Ministerial Alliance attempted to shut him out, but subsequently withdrew the boycott and took some interest in his work. The opposition to him grows out of his gospel temperance views and failure to advocate prohibition. Tacoma ministers criticised his methods in the San Francisco Occident, a religious publication, after he left Tacoma and refused to rent him the Tabernacle when he returned. He goes to Pittsburg now.
“The opposition to him grows out of his gospel temperance views and failure to advocate prohibition.”
Reform movements have always split over tactics, and Murphy's gospel temperance was too moderate for Prohibition-minded clergy. The episode shows how a movement's purity tests can sideline its most effective speakers.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.