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Beside suffrage one of the biggest goals of the women's [Women protesting]

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movement was getting rid of alcohol this was called the temperance movement what

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beef did some women have with hooch well certainly people might have thought it [Woman throws beef at hooch]

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was because the ladies were anti fun but a big factor was that alcohol was a

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major contributor to domestic abuse women and children were being regularly

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victimized beaten or even killed by drunken husbands and fathers and a lot [Man attempts to hit woman]

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of times and then totally got away with this is use without any consequences

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some ask where men really get into that drunk all the time well the short answer [Man pouring alcohol into mouth]

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is yes oh here's the long version Oh most men

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who worked in factories received their pay each week not at work not from the

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boss but at their local bar from the bartender yes the factory owners sent

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the money there on purpose so that the men would spend most of their weeks pay [Boss hands money to bartender]

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on beer and hard liquor this prevented them from saving enough money to move up

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from factory work yeah talk about job security well here's another fun fact

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bars also doubled as polling stations during election then would vote at the

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bar and then get lasted for a while you know the other way around well this was [Man drinking at the bar]

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one reason some men gave from not allowing women to vote the bars were

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full of dangerous drunk and angry men so how could women possibly go inside and [Man screams and chases woman]

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vote yeah there may be some flaws in that rationale bars were also set up

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outside the gate to the factories so men stop there before they went home each

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night while this meant that guys spent a lot of time drinking and often came home [Man drinking at the bar]

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drunk and violent at the time if a man beat his wife or children or even killed

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them when he was drunk he was not charged with any crime if four people [Man stood beside police officer]

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were not making this up this is real the police would say well the man was drunk

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he didn't know what he was doing you can't put him in jail for that right and

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which makes us wonder if maybe the police force was drunk when they came up [Police man drinking alcohol in court]

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with that rule well not only did many women fear for their health safety and

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lives because of drunken then some families experienced extreme

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poverty in part because men spent their cash on boots oh by the 1870s women that [Woman opens cabinet to I.O.U]

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had enough they still weren't allowed to vote which was the only way to change

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the laws that allowed drunken men to kill them without any consequences so

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ladies went with the only really open to them to ban alcohol completely women did [Women marching to Ban Alcohol street]

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this very cleverly by calling on the very idea of separate spheres that men

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use to keep them powerless the innocently asked how can we fulfill our

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god-given role as mothers and caretakers of the home if we and our children are

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being gene and killed how can we care for our families if we have no money [Mother and son crying and father appears with bottles of beer]

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because our husbands spend it all on alcohol she gets questioned yet if men

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abandoned their god-given role as protectors of women and children then

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women must act to protect society by banning alcohol well God demands that we

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the women of America act to save our country and our own delicate female [Woman slaps a bottle of beer]

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honor right well the women's Christian Temperance Union was founded in 1873 in

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Ohio and chapters spread across America women did incredibly brave freedom of

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temperance they prayed in front of bars where men assaulted them they destroyed [Women praying at a bar and man hits them with foam hammer]

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barrels of alcohol and went to jail for it they gave public speeches they

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marched they came forward and talked about their experiences of being beaten

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by their drunken husband and they talked about the mothers children sisters and

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friends they'd lost as well they weren't taken so seriously by working men but

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the WCTU appealed to upper-class Protestant men who saw drunkenness as a

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dirty low-class foreign Catholic kind of problem ruining manliness in America

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while eventually the 18th amendment brought in the era of prohibition in [18th amendment appears]

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which all alcohol was banned in the u.s. the temperance movement had ridden its

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wave of girl power to success unfortunately for the temperate ladies [Woman surfing]

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prohibition didn't stick and led to a heap of other problems like an explosion

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in organized crime but hey at least we got a whole lot of [Man firing a gun]

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great gangster movies out of it right so that's a plus [Woman watching a gangster movie]

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