Changes

Perhaps the clearest examples of how views regarding alcohol shifted after the Civil War were physically present on the landscape and visible in American politics. The introduction of water drinking fountains in urban areas and the influence of organizations like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union represent the rise of ideas that would continue into the 20th century as part of the Progressive Movement. For much of human history, access to clean drinking water presented a significant engineering challenge. The Romans brought water to the heart of major urban areas through aqueducts, and the same public health problems that inspired these engineering marvels continued to plague cities. As a result, drinking the water in many cities was unsafe throughout the 19th century. Particularly before the advent of germ theory and the bacteriology advances ushered in by the work of scientists like Louis Pasteur, the average resident of a city was likely to continue drinking the contaminated water out of necessity. Many people drank alcoholic beverages as an alternative to drinking unhealthy water, but this also created a continually “buzzed” populace that included children and pregnant mothers, and temperance fountains attempted to solve the problem of alcoholism by providing safe alternatives. Thousands of these fountains appeared in major cities throughout the United States and Europe, including one near the US Capitol that continues to be a source of controversy. These fountains occasionally sparked ridicule and criticism, but ultimately they are the forebears of the modern drinking fountains found in most public buildings.

Particularly before the advent of germ theory and the bacteriology advances ushered in by the work of scientists like Louis Pasteur, the average resident of a city was likely to continue drinking the contaminated water out of necessity. Many people drank alcoholic beverages as an alternative to drinking unhealthy water, but this also created a continually “buzzed” populace that included children and pregnant mothers, and temperance fountains attempted to solve the problem of alcoholism by providing safe alternatives. Thousands of these fountains appeared in major cities throughout the United States and Europe, including one near the US Capitol that continues to be a source of controversy. These fountains occasionally sparked ridicule and criticism, but ultimately they are the forebears of the modern drinking fountains found in most public buildings. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was an organization that clearly linked sobriety with morality. Where the temperance fountains reasoned that people drank alcohol out of necessity or convenience and would gladly drink water if it offered a safe alternative, the WCTU approached the problem as one of morality and civil rights. As indicated by the name of the organization, the union also identified with Christianity and encouraged a wide range of behaviors other than abstinence from alcohol. The scope of the WCTU extended to tobacco and other drugs (in the 1800s, drugs like opium were widely available) in an effort to reform the behaviors of husbands and fathers beyond mere drunkenness.  In this way, the WCTU can be seen as part of a larger effort to have women recognized as equal political actors in a country where they were not granted the right to vote or control many aspects of their lives, including controlling their own property or the legal fates of their children. Concurrent with the WCTU, many women also joined women’s suffrage organizations, which often clearly identified with the same arguments about bringing morality to society, particularly the rough and tumble world of politics.