McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
23
Singing Dry: Music and
Temperance in the United States
and Canada, 1871-1900”
Lytton N. McDonnell
Abstract. Music was an integral component of the Dry movement, particularly during the last decades of the nineteenth century when the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union and other like-minded organizations came
to rely on song as a primary mode of progressive proselytism. This study
focuses on four qualities that made music a powerful and exceptional feature of the anti-alcohol movement in Canada and the United States during this period. First, Dry advocates believed music to possess a spiritual
agency that paralleled and in some cases surpassed that of prayer. Second,
as an aural form of communication that could be easily adapted to print
media, Dry music possessed qualities that were vital to the dissemination,
standardization, and hierarchization of the movement. Third, music’s emotional and psychological effects on performers and listeners enhanced the
impact of the Dry musical message. Lastly, Dry music’s formalistic elements provided it with a distinct associative power that succeeded in framing the cause as a commonsensical, synergistic extension of Protestant
evangelical ideology, Victorian morality, militarism, patriotism, as well as
other middle-class Anglo values and institutions.
The Bells are ringing through the land, They sound both loud and
clear;
They tell to all the world around, That freedom’s day draws near.
They’re ringing out the reign of wrong, They’re ringing in the right;
Old midnight errors flee away, behold the dawning light.
They’re ringing out the rum-king’s doom, He totters on his throne;
The right shall win, for God is right, and God shall have His own.
They’re bringing cheer to woman’s heart, God bless them one and
all;
Before her faith, and prayers and zeal, This giant wrong shall fall.
­–“Prohibition Bells” by the Silver Lake Quartette1
Over each mountain over each valley
Will echo the Temperance song.
‘Till [sic] round us for duty shall rally, shall rally
The hopeful, the brave, the strong.
–“Grandly the People Are Rising” by C.W. Ray and W.J. Kirkpatrick2
Lytton N. McDonnell is a doctoral student in the Department of History at Rutgers
University.
SHAD (Winter 2012): 23-45
24
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
Music and the Anti-Alcohol Movement: An Introduction
To date, a great deal of historical research has been carried out on the topics
of temperance and prohibition in North America during the nineteenth and
early-twentieth centuries. We know that the anti-alcohol movement first developed during the early 1800s in reaction to very high drinking rates throughout the western world. As an outgrowth of the “Second Great Awakening”
the early movement was steeped in evangelical morality, but it initially took
on a vaguely Protestant approach. Early temperance associations typically
began as localized grassroots organizations led by male activists who used
moral suasion and compassionate means to control the sale and consumption
of liquor. Over time, the movement organized at the national level and sought
widespread appeal by encouraging voluntary teetotalism or moderate drinking as a way of improving the physical and moral health of the individual.
By mid-century the movement became more firmly dominated by Protestant
evangelical ideals, and its strategy gradually shifted towards an emphasis on
complete alcoholic abstinence, political action, and widespread social reform.
In the 1870s, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was established and helped align temperance with woman suffrage, progressive reform,
and the Social Gospel movement. Soon after, Canada’s Dominion Alliance
for the Total Suppression of Liquor Traffic and the United States’ Anti-Saloon
League also gained prominence. Generally supported by the WCTU, these
two political lobby groups came out in favour of prohibition laws that would
ban the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of spirituous
beverages. After successful plebiscites and the enactment of anti-alcohol laws
in some localities, provinces, and states, widespread prohibition was finally
ratified during the First World War, amidst patriotic fears that alcohol production was diverting grain from the war effort. Prohibition laws were enacted on
a provincial basis in Canada and nationally in the United States, and although
they would be mostly repealed within a generation, anti-alcohol laws represented a tangible, if temporary, success for Dry supporters.3
Only a handful of historical studies on temperance and prohibition have
explored the important role that music played in the Dry movement.4 There
are several likely reasons for this inattention towards music, each of them
arising not from any particular deficiency of temperance/prohibition historians, but rather from much broader practical and disciplinary limitations. Until
recently, access to musical primary resources has been relatively restricted.
Before the advent of digital reproduction technologies, online catalogues, and
vast interlibrary loan systems it was difficult for most temperance/prohibition
scholars to access the numerous music-related sources scattered throughout
archives and libraries across North America. Furthermore, for much of the
twentieth century general historians – those who typically train or study in
history departments – have traditionally been reluctant to study music. They
have considered music, particularly vernacular music, to be either a cultural
epiphenomenon with little historical value or an art form too abstract to be
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
25
studied without proper musical training. Consequently, general historians’
treatment of music has amounted to little more than “the fodder of footnotes.”5
Additionally, disciplines that traditionally studied music have until recently
tended to lack a critical awareness of the complexities of historical context
and historical change, which has been commonplace among general historians. Scholars who originally took on the role of writing “music history”
– typically historical musicologists trained in music departments – focused
exclusively on the Western Classical tradition and treated music as relatively
autonomous from its socio-cultural context. They traced the historical development of classical musical styles, canon formation, and aesthetics, focusing
narrowly on those formalistic components that general historians found so
daunting.6 Folklorists, national historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and
ethnomusicologists eventually countered this formalist emphasis by studying
music’s socio-cultural context, but many of these scholars focused on nonWestern cultures, valorized the past, viewed all historical change as teleological, and/or neglected historical issues altogether.7
It is only in the last few decades that theoretical, methodological, and empirical exchange between disciplines has been fostered. Scholars in all the
aforementioned disciplines, as well as those in new hybrid fields such as cultural studies, media studies, and popular music studies, have begun promoting
a more nuanced understanding of music, one that recognizes all musical texts
and musical practices as intrinsic, even vital, to their cultural-historical setting, and wholly adept at receiving, reinforcing, and articulating social meanings.8 What might be a called a “new” music history has recently developed
in this vein, and its proponents have produced a number of laudable works on
vernacular music in the Western world, including some books on reform music during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.9 Nevertheless, older
biases and concerns still persist among some scholars and the legacy of convention has steered away many who would otherwise be open to new music
history. There are still many topics that have not been thoroughly covered;
drinking and alcohol regulation in North America is certainly one of these.
Despite its lack of scholarly attention, Dry music – music that was produced by teetotalers, temperance activists, or prohibitionists, or performed in
settings dedicated to their causes – was a powerful and integral component of
the temperance/prohibition movement. Anti-alcohol activists throughout the
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries admitted as much. For instance, John
Newton Stearns, a well-known Dry editor and publisher during the 1880s and
1890s, proclaimed that “one of the most potent agencies in helping along the
cause is ringing music in all departments of our work” and “the power of
song in the Temperance movement cannot be overestimated.”10 American
senator and temperance historian Henry W. Blair declared “the Crusade was
half song.”11 John Clements, a Baptist hymn-writer and religious educator,
believed music to be a universal remedy, declaring singing as “the greatest
single stride… toward the birth of the new day that sees whisky banished
26
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
forever from our land.”12 Music mattered to temperance and prohibition advocates from the 1840s until the 1920s, but it became particularly important
during the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the WCTU and other
like-minded organizations became increasingly reliant on music as one of
their primary modes of progressive proselytism.
During this period, Dry activists of every stripe sang songs frequently
and vociferously whenever and wherever possible, regardless of their musical aptitude or training. Dry tunes were “practiced and sung at division, at
home… at public meetings, at plebicite [sic] rallies… Everywhere.”13 Others were “adapted to various tastes and capacities… [which may have been]
exceedingly useful in enlivening public meetings and social gatherings… anniversaries and soirees.”14 Still more were intended to be performed at glee
clubs, “the home circle,” medal contests (for temperance pledges), patriotic
services, prohibition camps and rallies, Sunday schools, Juvenile temples, religious meetings, entertainments, evenings of song, reform clubs, “all meetings in the interest of reform,” and so on.15 Musical theatre was yet another
outlet for pro-temperance musical performance. Numerous productions were
performed by Dry associations both large and small, including Ten Nights in
a Barroom, which was staged for at least half a century following its 1864
debut.16 Members of the WCTU were perhaps the most avid supporters of Dry
music and performed it most frequently and extensively at (local, regional,
and national) WCTU meetings. Bands of Hope, WCTU choirs, temperance
schools and other juvenile societies all took up music as an essential (if not
primary) method of Dry activism.17
Although Dry music was principally intended to be performed, it was also
disseminated in printed form. Between the mid-1800s and the late 1910s, activists from various organizations printed and distributed an enormous amount
of temperance and prohibition music throughout North America, including
dozens of songbook compilations and at least 150 sheet music publications.18
Dry music was also regularly published in journals and periodicals, manuals
and handbooks, biographies, works of fiction, and even brochures for antidrinking tonics. The more popular songs were included in different publications simultaneously and most of these were republished in subsequent editions.
The Spiritual Agency of Dry Music
Perhaps more than anything else, nineteenth-century Dry advocates understood their music to be a potent, even extraordinary, vehicle of spiritual uplift.
In 1888, Henry Blair proclaimed, “music is the vehicle of moral transitions…
Could you make the American people a singing people, you would soon see
a change in their morals.”19 Most Dry activists recognized the spiritually and
morally fortifying power of music, but WCTU members were particularly
enthusiastic. For Frances Willard, second president of the American WCTU,
music had the power to “bear the soul upward in its reaching forth toward
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
27
[God].”20 In her memoirs, she observed a profound link between music and
the vitality of the spirit, for instance by referring to a hymn as the “inmost
song of my soul” or the singing at a Bible exposition as “bread to the soul.”21
Letitia Youmans, first president of the Canadian WCTU, also lauded music as
an exceptional instrument of spiritual uplift that, through numinous methods,
could usher one’s soul into a supernatural state:
There is a power in music that is well nigh irresistible. I believe it brings us
nearer the heavenly world than any exercise in which we engage, and sometimes
it seems to me that invisible intelligence hover around us, catch up the strains and
echo them through the heavenly mansions.22
Part and parcel of Dry music’s spiritual agency was its superlative capacity for
supernal communication. Willard, for instance, averred:
When I hear music, it means something to me. It talks with me and tells me that
which I did not know before, and makes me by that much, wiser than I was. It
conveys ideas to me. If I were somewhat more spiritual, I know I might translate… [what I hear] into words; – and they would be beautiful ones, and the
world would listen to them… T]he time is coming… when I may be able to talk
the music of a few pieces I have heard.23
Willard understood music’s spiritual message to be internalized very differently than words alone. Music easily and immediately conveyed “beautiful”
ideas to her that would be difficult, if not impossible, to express through
speaking.
Belief in Dry music’s distinct potential for spiritual uplift and communication provided it with a power that was nearly synonymous with prayer. In fact,
this close relationship was regularly acknowledged at Dry meetings, when
songs were often performed together with, or in place of, prayer.24 Yet, despite
the similar functions of prayer and song, some Dry advocates believed that a
difference existed between the two. Henry Blair, equating music with praise,
declared the following:
Both praise and prayer appeal to primary elements and emotions of the soul--and
the most of us are more accessible through praise than prayer. Even sinners feel
that they have a right to help along the singing; but as for prayer, that is a different
thing – only for the saints – very few are good enough to pray in public – only
the minister, the deacons, and a few of the very best. However all this is to be
explained, if it can be explained, the fact is a whole congregation and “innumerable multitudes” will yield to song, and sing themselves also, when nothing else
seems to stir them at all.25
In short, Blair understood music as uniquely accessible to congregants, supporters of the Dry movement, and anyone else with an affinity for expressing
their spiritual devotion.
The Roots of Dry Music: Evangelical Music and Sound-making
Not surprisingly, the vital role that music played in the Dry movement grew
out of American evangelicalism’s deeply entrenched emphasis on sound-mak-
28
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
ing and singing. Aural communication had long been entrenched in Christian
denominationalism, but during the nineteenth century sound became an increasingly central component of North American evangelicalism. Stentorian
practices, such as shouting, clapping, groaning, and even crying, were understood as a way of enhancing faith, hearing God’s disembodied voice, and explaining the soul. The clamor of these sounds drew the ire of more than a few
antirevivalists, but pejoratives did little to curb the outbursts of evangelicals.
Indeed, historian Leigh Eric Schmidt avers that, among evangelicals, sound
and aural communication came to displace the emphasis on observation and
visual communication that had prevailed within general society since the Enlightenment.26
Music was also long-established as a superlative form of spiritual uplift,
and as a more euphonious expression of evangelical sound-making it tended
to be less criticized by antirevivalists. Indeed, early revivalists envisioned
music as integral to a happy, harmonious, and spiritual society. For instance,
Jonathan Edwards, America’s first great theologian, stated:
The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a
sweet concord of mind to each other, is by music. When I would form in my mind
an idea of a society in the highest degree happy, I think of them as expressing
their love, their joy, and the inward concord and harmony and spiritual beauty of
their souls by sweetly singing to each other.
For Edwards, spiritual singing was meant to anticipate or approximate the
even more beautiful harmonies of angels and saints, “ringing out their praise
of God in heaven.”27
John and Charles Wesley, founders of the Methodist Church, were particularly avid supporters of religious singing and like many of their contemporaries and followers they believed in heavenly music in literal terms. For instance, John Wesley claimed that the divine harmonies that individuals might
hear in moments of ecstasy or prayer were the “effect of angels touching the
auditory nerves.”28 For Lowell Mason, an American Presbyterian music director and the preeminent proponent of church music during the first half of the
nineteenth century, music was central to religious life.29 Indeed, he argued
that it was the medium by which “[divine] truth is presented to the heart in
the most forcible manner.”30 Steeped as they were in the Protestant music
tradition envisioned by Mason, the Wesleys, and other eminent theologians, it
is not surprising that nineteenth-century temperance and prohibition activists
continued to rely on music as a means of spiritual and moral uplift.
The Invasiveness of Dry Music
Musical sound
Although the legacy of evangelicalism was vital to the ascendancy of song
in the Dry movement, it was not the only reason why Dry music became so
prevalent. Beyond communicating with God, transmitting divine inspiration,
and attaining spiritual uplift, music was beneficial to the movement for practi-
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
29
cal reasons, namely as a temporal means of transmitting and promulgating
the Dry message. Schmidt’s description of evangelical piety as “nothing if
not demonstrative and loud”31 could be equally applied to Dry proselytism.
Unlike more visually-based modes of communication, Dry sounds could not
be easily avoided or ignored. And, when it was sung in groups, music would
have probably been even louder and more inescapable than other sound-based
modes of Dry communication. Not only could it easily reach the back walls
of a church, public meeting hall or home, but it could also turn corners, travel
down hallways, penetrate walls and overflow out into the streets and the surrounding neighbourhood.32 Indeed, it is plausible that Dry music and other
sounds may have provided some future converts with their first direct exposure to the cause.
Although they may not have outwardly recognized it, Dry activists were
probably aware of the physical properties of music and sound and the distinctive benefit they could have in promulgating the cause. This helps explain
why activists were encouraged to sing in locations outside of traditional Dry
settings (e.g. the church or meeting hall). Sometimes anti-liquor unions would
even sing for their cause in the streets in an effort to gain new supporters
or warn opponents. Perhaps with the knowledge that louder and closer performances would necessitate more interaction and engagement with the Dry
message, advocates occasionally dared to stand outside saloons, or even enter
them to sing to the patrons. In her memoirs, Letitia Youmans recounted several instances when her Dry contemporaries entered saloons to sing, including
one time in Ohio:
After a season of prayer and consultation together,… [a group of temperance
women] formed themselves into a procession, and proceed to the saloons, singing… [the hymn] “Give to the wind thy fears”… They continued the crusade
from day to day, until many saloons were closed.33
Youmans’ rather unambiguous connection between singing in saloons and the
success of the movement would probably not have been lost on Frances Willard, who described the first time she sang in a saloon as “the most novel
spectacle that I recall.”34
While it is impossible to know just how close the relationship was between
singing and saloon closures, Dry music was known to impede the regular
activities of saloon-goers. In the Northwestern US, for example, on repeated
occasions it was remarked that speakers in saloons experienced difficulty in
making their voices heard over the “din” of Dry bands situated near the doorway.35 These comments suggest how effective music was at muffling opponents of temperance.
Printed music
Although less invasive than performed music, printed songs also profoundly
augmented Dry music’s ubiquity. In an era that preceded widespread audio- or
30
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
visual-recording, print was virtually the only medium that could be mass-reproduced and mass-distributed over long distances. Both Mason and the Wesleys had been keenly aware of this power and their enthusiasm for the printed
lyric and note was quickly adopted by their followers, heralding a surge in
the publication of hymnals and religious songbooks during the early nineteenth century.36 Dry activists also took full advantage of music’s adaptability
to print technology, mass-producing dozens of songbooks and pieces of sheet
music throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The extent to
which these songs were printed and distributed cannot be precisely quantified
because such statistics were rarely recorded or archived by Dry organizations.
J. N. Stearns’ The Band of Hope Songster, which had 13,000 copies in print
in 1859, is one of the only known songbooks to have published the number
of volumes in circulation.37 The fact that this volume was republished in 1860
and 1886 indicates that it was both more popular and more extensively printed
than the above statistics indicate. There is also evidence to suggest that other
songbooks were even more popular and widely distributed. For instance, J. N.
Stearns and H. P Main’s Trumpet Notes for The Temperance Battle-Field was
published in the United States and/or Canada at least once every year from
1888 to 1893.The fact that both aforementioned songbooks were published
by the National Temperance Society and Publication House (NTSPH) suggest
that they enjoyed high circulation levels in comparison to locally-distributed
songbooks. As a nondenominational, nonpartisan publication house supported
by all the major Dry organizations of the nineteenth century (as well as philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, James Kellogg, and
John Rockefeller, Sr.), NTSPH became the largest producer and distributor of
anti-liquor material in North America over its fifty-year existence. Established
in 1865, it maintained a far-reaching network of churches, fraternal lodges,
and local temperance groups, and distributed publications whose monthly circulation regularly numbered in the hundreds of thousands. These large distribution rates were almost certainly related to the relative affordability of
NTSPH publications, which were almost always sold at cost, and, like most
printed Dry music of the day, were priced between five and fifty cents.38
In adapting to the Dry movement’s efficient networks of print communication, music also reinforced the movement’s hierarchy and encouraged the topdown flow of information. Influential campaign leaders, famous songwriters,
religious pundits, and other Dry elites or well-known supporters of the cause
wrote, compiled, or published the majority of Dry music. Senior-level compilers and/or composers of Dry music included: Charles Wesley and Lowell
Mason; Anna A. Gordon and Elisha A. Hoffman, both American WCTU leaders; Francis S. Spence, secretary of Canada’s Dominion Alliance for the Total
Suppression of Liquor Traffic; J. N. Stearns, editor of the NTSPH; Hubert
Platt Main and William Bradbury, both well-known composers and publishers
of sacred music and children’s music (who were strongly inspired by Lowell
Mason’s teachings); John M. Whyte, a popular Canadian hymn-writer and
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
31
active Protestant; as well as Henry C. Work and the Hutchinson Family, both
enormously popular songwriters with open leanings towards social reform.
Controlled mainly by higher-ranking activists and distributed using farreaching technologies, printed music contributed to the standardization of the
movement. Under the system in place, the songs and compilations that were
written or edited by Dry leaders could be quickly reproduced and disseminated to regional and local branches and down through the ranks. This flow
of information from the small influential leadership to the larger membership
and community was facilitated by other standardized publication practices.
For instance, printed Dry songs adhered to the conventional system of Western musical notation and could be read quickly and easily by most people with
musical training.
Psycho-Emotional Effects of Dry Music
Music’s nearly inescapable aural properties, its adaptability to mass-media
technology, and other standardizing processes within the Dry movement made
it a very powerful purveyor of the Dry message, but these attributes only partially explain why Dry music was so well-received by the “most enthusiastic
crowds in [North America’s] largest cities.”39 Above all else, it was music’s
emotional power that engaged activists, potential supporters, and even drinkers, exposing them to the Dry message but also helping them internalize it.
Whether provocative or persuasive, Dry music incited strong reactions. Although outsider impressions of Dry singing are rare, one can easily imagine
how irritated (or shocked) saloon-goers might have been to be challenged
by the strident sounds of Dry singers, or how intrigued, even thrilled, future
converts to the cause might have felt upon hearing Dry songs for the first time.
An avid proponent of music’s affective power was A. D. Fillmore, a popular
American minister and editor of both temperance and sacred songbooks, who
contended that music was a persuasive tool comparable or superior to any
other rhetorical device. He noted that “in many instances, where every other
means have failed, the electrifying influence of song has aroused the individual to a sense of his danger, and sent conviction to his heart.”40
For those who were already part of the movement, many Dry leaders underscored the crucial importance of song in enhancing group cohesion, enthusiasm, focus, and productivity. Perhaps inspired by Lowell Mason’s understanding of music as invoking “habits of order and union,” a calm mind,
an invigorated body, and a happy heart,41 Fillmore understood music to be a
central means of establishing and maintaining a temperance society. He believed that temperance bands should practice regularly and only have meetings after many inspirational songs were prepared.42 This emphasis on group
cohesion was also maintained by other temperance leaders like William Scott
who deemed certain Dry songs to be “exceedingly useful in…promot[ing]
the good of community.”43 Frances Willard also linked music to the resilience
of group cohesion by recounting an anecdote in her memoirs about a group
32
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
of temperance women who protested drink by marching through the streets
singing hymns even when confronted with police dogs, weapons, and arrest.44
The cohesive effects of Dry music were regularly and ritually acknowledged by Dry activists of various backgrounds. Performance instructions for
some songs encouraged “the whole crowd [to] join in the chorus, till [sic]
you make the welkin ring,” and oftentimes activists would hold hands while
singing.45 Many Dry activists, especially members of the WCTU, would ritually pursue music’s emotional, mental, and social effects when they joined together in song to open and close their meetings. Some songs were even given
titles like “Initiatory Ode,” “Opening Hymn,” “Raising Ode,” and “Closing
Ode” to signify their importance as gateways of temperance experience.46
Less frequently but equally emphatically, music was performed at strategic
times throughout Dry gatherings. (Indeed, Fillmore and others acknowledged
that speeches, prayers, and other presentations should always be interspersed
with “appropriate songs” so as to be more impressive, enjoyable, and effective.)47 This use of musical bookends or interludes likely helped normalize
Dry members by placing them all in a similar state of mind with a shared focus
and common goals. In many ways, the unifying effect that resulted from this
ritualized group singing exemplifies the emphasis on standardization within
the Dry movement as discussed in the previous section.
Music’s emotional and mental impact was heightened by the enduring impression it could leave on those who sang or heard it. As a colloquial type
of music intended for amateur performers, Dry songs featured characteristically simple melodies, as well as brief and repetitive song structures. These
attributes made the tunes both easy to perform and easy to remember. Some
Dry activists understood and appreciated this mnemonic capacity of music,
including philanthropist Elizabeth Thompson who appealed for more musical
repetition as way of enhancing the memorability of a song: “Specially successful may the [song] be if some helpful thought is repeated over and over,
as in the refrains of the choruses. This will fasten on many a hearer, and sing
itself in his mind hours and days after it was heard.”48
One particularly effective device for enhancing the memorability of a Dry
song was “musical borrowing.” Broadly defined as the incorporation of musical material from one song into another, “musical borrowing” was a kind of
intentional intertextuality that was abundantly employed by Dry songwriters
during the nineteenth century. Many temperance leaders lauded it from its
outset, including John Clements, who declared:
There are familiar airs and tunes that have become a part of our American heritage. To make them the vehicles for carrying the challenge and confidence of
temperance and prohibition, is to endow them with a new commission and a
larger usefulness.49
Musical borrowing could take different forms, including (but not limited to):
covering, the direct reproduction of an existing song, perhaps with some mini-
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
33
mal changes; parody, the application of new lyrics to an existing tune; and
pastiche, the application of a well-known musical style to an original tune and
lyrics.50 By incorporating aspects of pre-existing songs, Dry songwriters were
able to couch their anti-drink message in sounds and styles that would have
been familiar to people of various backgrounds. In doing so, these adapted
songs became both more accessible and more memorable.
The Associative Power of Dry Music51
Lyrics, melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, texture, and other components of
musical form all provided Dry songs with a diverse range of intertextual opportunities that were in many ways unmatched by other forms of Dry expression. With this immense associative power at their disposal, songwriters, editors, and compilers were able to adapt the Dry message to various ideologies,
values, and institutions that were of particular import to Dry activists. These
included Protestant evangelicalism, Victorian morality, militarism, patriotism,
white Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, the middle-class home, and clearly defined gender roles. This much becomes clear when analyzing Stearns and Main’s aforementioned songbook, Trumpet Notes for The Temperance Battle-Field, which
offers an exemplary opportunity to explore these themes in depth.
Hymns and Religious Songs
Published several times during the late 1880s and early 1890s, the majority of
the 171 songs in Trumpet Notes are clearly borrowed from hymns, gospel tunes,
and other religious songs of the day, mainly those associated with Methodists
and Baptists. Many of these are simply covers of well-known hymns such as
“What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” “Nearer, My God To Thee,” “Yield Not To
Temptation,” “My Soul, Be On Thy Guard,” and “All Hail the Power of Jesus’
Name!” to name a few. The inferred connection between Dryness and divinity here is more explicitly elucidated by parodies of hymns like “Stand up for
Temperance” or “The Temperance Star,” which use the melody, chords, and
even much of the lyrical structure from the hymns “Stand Up, Stand Up for
Jesus” and “Watchmen Tell Us Of the Night,” respectively. In these, as well
as dozens of other parodies and pastiches of hymns, concepts like temperance
and prohibition are equated with Jesus, good, truth, right, and light.
In some instances, the achievement of Dry goals was even conflated with
the “millennium,” an earthly golden age devoid of sin directly preceding the
second coming of Jesus when salvation will be attained for all those who have
led a pious life. For example, “Waiting for the Morning” looks forward to the
“bright and glorious day” when “Truth [will] triumph over vice.”52 Similarly,
“Song of a Thousand Years,” a Dry parody of Henry C. Work’s tune by the
same name, anticipates the time when prohibition will “Legally reign a Thousand Years!”53 Still others allude to the millennium indirectly with religious
lyrics written in the future tense and forward-looking titles such as “Coming
Victory,” “There’s a Better Time a-Coming,” or “The Right Shall Prevail.”54
34
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
By the late-nineteenth century, most Dry activists (and most Social Gospel
advocates more generally) subscribed to the postmillennialist view that the
golden age preceding Jesus’ second coming would occur only once social
evils were eradicated from the world through human efforts, namely through
organized acts of piety, faithful service to the Bible, and political activism. Toward these ends, an earlier focus on personal salvation, which urged individuals to consciously commit themselves to Jesus through spiritual rebirth, was
amplified into an emphasis on unified group action. Many of the borrowed
tunes in Trumpet Notes encourage this approach in different ways. One hymn
cover relates social unity to unity with God, declaring that:
Best is the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian LOVE.
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.55
Another hymn pastiche couples this endorsement of unity with a call to action:
We’ll work united, brave, and strong
Until the whiskey power
Throughout the world, shall surely know
God’s clock has struck the hour.56
War songs
The emphasis on unity and action is most successfully promoted by borrowed
tunes that employ war metaphors. Trumpet Notes includes several covers of
war-themed hymns, including “Sound the Battle Cry!” and “Storm the Fort,”
as well as a few parodies of American civil war songs such as “Battle Hymn
of the Republic” and “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” which still remained popular
decades after the war had ended. Beyond this, there are at least a dozen pastiches of war songs, including “We’ll Make the Foe Retreat, Boys,” “Onward!
Onward! Band Victorious!,” and “The Royal Templar’s Battle Song,” many
of which are written as marches and intended to be performed with percussiveness, loudness, a sprightly “feel,” and other styles and textures associated
with military tunes.57 By framing the Dry movement as an army, Dry activists
as soldiers, Dry work as a battle, and Dry goals as victory, these songs helped
infuse the cause with a militaristic emphasis on recruitment, cohesion, coordination, and efficient goal-oriented action. Declarations like “Come, Join Our
Crusade” and “Come warriors, to the battle!” evoke the recruitment language
associated with war metaphors and speak to the underlying Dry belief that
linked “daily growing numbers/With a zeal that never slumbers.”58 Also in
support of Dry unity, several of these songs’ lyrics refer to fellow advocates as
“comrades,” “brothers,” and other labels used to denote camaraderie.59
More than cohesion, intertextual references to war songs regularly promoted strong and coordinated action, as demonstrated by the chorus of the
following song:
Then move along! March along! Make no delay!
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
35
Work in right good earnest! Stand in line today!
Our hearts are warm, our hands are strong; You may depend
That Prohibition principles will triumph in the end.60
As exemplified by the last line of this refrain, war-themed songs advocated
political action and legal prohibition more than any other type of song in
Trumpet Notes. Indeed, most borrowed military songs in this volume equate
prohibition legislation with Dry “victory.”61 As Paul Sanders has noted, the
fact that these more aggressive political goals could be placed alongside the
“softer” spiritual and moral goals of other songs reaffirms Jack Blocker’s observations that political coercion and moral suasion tactics continued to be
used in tandem, even during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.62
Patriotic Tunes
Many Dry war songs, especially those borrowed from the Civil War, could
also be categorized as patriotic. Trumpet Notes also includes several non-militaristic patriotic songs, including “Freedom’s Day,” a Dry parody of “America,” “Tis Time to Swing Our Axes,” a parody of “Yankee Doodle,” and sundry
other pastiches. All of these songs help identify the Dry cause as an issue
of national pride and national security. They describe alcohol as the “curse
of our land” and invoke listeners and performers alike to “save from drink
our nation.”63 These national references are combined with pejoratives against
drink or praises of sobriety, but they are also linked to piety and morality. For
example, some lyrics proclaim “The nation moves – it stirs at last/ To aid the
cause of right,” or “This blessed land… from curse of drink set free.”64
Although not exactly patriotic in nature, other borrowed songs exhibit a
certain degree of ethnic pride by borrowing tunes of Anglo-Saxon origin,
namely from England and Scotland. For instance, “Never Drink Whiskey and
Brandy” was written as an English air, while “Cold Water Clear and Friendship Dear” and “Closing Ode” are parodies of “Auld Lang Syne.” These tunes,
along with the more traditional patriotic pastiches like “Come and Help Us”
were particularly effective at promoting group cohesion within the movement.
An example of this can be found in “All Unite in Singing”:
Come, friends and brethren, all unite
In songs of hearty cheer
Our cause speed onward in its might!
Away with doubt and fear!
We give the pledge, we join the hand
Resolve on victory65
The fact that this song was set to the already convivial tune of “Auld Lang
Syne” must have only enhanced its coalescing connotations.
Popular Songs
Beyond military and patriotic tunes, the repertoire of Trumpet Notes also borrows heavily from other colloquial and commercial songs that were popular
36
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
during the late-nineteenth century. A few of these are overt pastiches of traditional drinking songs that had been prevalent in North America and Britain
for centuries and were still regularly performed by drinkers and professional entertainers during the late-nineteenth century. Songs like “Drink, Drink
(Glee),” “Little Drops,” “Cold Water Clear and Friendship Dear,” and “Water
from the Spring,” were written and intended to be performed in an identical
manner as traditional drinking songs, but instead of praising alcohol beverages (as drinking songs often did), the lyrics of these Dry drinking songs extolled the virtues of cold water or denigrated intoxicating potations. Even the
more inebriated listeners would have likely picked up on the sarcasm.
A few tunes in Trumpet Notes also borrow from African-American inspired
melodies, another prominent source of popular song throughout the nineteenth century. Most of these songs, including “Keep in De Middle Ob De
Road,” “Be ‘Umble,” and “Good News, de Chariot’s Comin’,” are covers or
pastiches of negro spirituals. They frame African Americans as being pious
and possessing a moral conscience, ostensibly aligning them with the Dry
cause. However, as was customary of popular entertainment during this period, they also employ a blackface minstrel accent and other superficial racial
stereotypes, effectually reinforcing the bourgeois white attitude that African
Americans were able to be saved, perhaps even capable of promulgating pious
behaviour, but would never be completely accepted as true equals. Discriminatory undertones were amplified in a borrowed song about non-Westernized
black cultures. In “Upon the Congo River,” for instance, native Africans are
framed as primitives almost entirely unable to escape the curse of drink:
Deep in the depths of degradation
Down, down they sink.66
Moreover, the fact that this song borrows the melody from Stephen Foster’s
perennially popular plantation song “Suwannee River” (itself performed in
the blackface minstrel style) indicates that the songwriter and the songbook
producers did not distinguish too deeply between Africans and African Americans.
It should be noted that the reason why only a few songs in Trumpet Notes
deal with issues of race is probably related to the provenance of the songbook’s
creators. Nearly all known contributors to the volume resided in the northeastern states and in southern Ontario. The songbook was published in both
New York City and Hamilton, Ontario and although it is difficult to determine
how far the book was distributed, most known copies of Trumpet Notes are
held in collections of Central and Eastern Canada as well as the Northeastern
and Midwestern United States. During the nineteenth century, race was not
as salient an issue in these white-dominated, industrialized, English-speaking
regions as it was in the southern states. Therefore temperance reformers probably felt less desire and less need to publish songs that addressed (or targeted)
African Americans specifically.
If race was not such a prominent issue in Trumpet Notes, class certainly
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
37
was. Songs which borrowed from several different musical styles and traditions address drinking among working classes, although here again the songs
approach the issue obliquely. One pastiche acknowledges workmen, ploughmen, and miners as potential allies in the fight against inebriety but refers to
them by using pronouns such as “they” or “them,” while employing “us” to
refer to true Dry campaigners.67 In other cases, tunes offer vaguely patronizing
encouragements to the “assist poor, fallen man,” or “work for the right and the
poor.”68 The most direct and virulent class-based attacks came from the few
songs that targeted greedy capitalists – distillers and “brewers who live, who
feast and fatten/ On the crushed hearts and tears” of those too weak to resist
the temptation of drink.69
Popular Songs About the Home
In Trumpet Notes there are a wide variety of songs that venerate middle-class
culture, specifically the middle-class home and nuclear family. Inspired by
home-themed sentimental ballads like “Home, Sweet Home” which resonated throughout middle-class parlors for much of the nineteenth century, these
songs were founded on a belief that the home was a sanctified place where
loving mothers and wives fostered good Christian morals.70 Interestingly,
women’s moral authority within the domestic sphere was indirectly linked to
their seemingly angelic inclinations towards listening and sound. Victorian
women were expected to be submissive and emotional, just as angels were understood to obtain their divine wisdom passively, by lending their ear to God,
and feeling a spiritual message rather than understanding it through rational
contemplation (and observation).71 Thus, over the course of the nineteenth
century aural communication became increasingly associated with pious female behaviour in the home and females increasingly took up amateur music
study.72 This helps explain why evangelicalism, women’s rights, and music
became so thoroughly linked in the minds of Dry activists.
Dozens of pastiches of home-themed songs permeate Trumpet Notes and
these promote evangelical female-dominated middle-class family life in numerous ways. Using both borrowed hymnodic melodies or didactic lyrics,
some songs draw strong parallels between family home and the heavenly domain as, for example, with the following verse:
Beautiful home! how near to heav’n
When to thee pure joys are giv’n
Rest and comfort for all who come,
Home ever peaceful, beautiful home!73
Several others frame drinking as a perversion or desecration of “normal” family values by recounting overtly sentimental stories of the ruinous effects that
drinking fathers and husbands had on their wives and children.74 One particularly maudlin song, titled “I’m Hiding, But Please, Sir, Don’t Tell,” relates the
story of a young boy whose drunk father beat him, whose mother was dead as
a result of his father’s neglect, and who himself died suddenly before a kind
38
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
stranger could help.75 Indeed, character tropes such as “the immoral drunken father,” “the virtuous wife and mother,” and “the innocent children” are
prevalent in several borrowed songs.76 Sentimentality in these home-themed
pastiches was also evoked not only through lyrics, but also through musical
styles. For example, several songs are written as waltzes – a Romantic-era instrumental genre that often possessed strong sentimental attributes. Similarly,
many Dry tunes feature mournful, saccharine, or otherwise heart-wrenching
melodies. Still other songs eschew overt sentimentality by borrowing from
Civil War songs and war hymns, sometimes arranging their melodies specifically for women’s or children’s voices.77 These militaristic traits aligned
with the later-nineteenth century progressive view that women had the right
to protect the sanctity of their domestic realm through assertive action outside
the home.
In sum, by borrowing from an array of prominent nineteenth-century musical styles, the songs of Trumpet Notes succeeded in attaching the Dry cause
to Protestant evangelicalism, Victorian morality, militarism, patriotism, Anglo ethnicity, as well as bourgeois institutions and gender roles. But perhaps
more importantly, these songs helped to construct musical links between all
of these ideologies, values, and institutions. The fact that a large number of
songs in Trumpet Notes borrow from two music styles simultaneously (e.g.
by using the melody of a hymn and the sentimental lyrics of a home-themed
song) only strengthened these connections. Whether through veneration or
denigration, what emerges within this repertoire is a highly structured ideology that seamlessly conflates the rudimentary oppositional pair of Dry/Wet
with Christian notions of good/evil, and more temporal dichotomies such as
allies/enemies or patriots/turncoats. Less rigidly, the Dry/Wet dichotomy is
applied to dominant and subjacent social groups (white/black, Anglo/nonAnglo, middle-class/lower-class, etc.), often by accentuating the female-dominated bourgeois home as the quintessence of Dry ideals. In doing so, Trumpet
Notes reinforces what Joseph Gusfield understood as the increasingly fragile
network of relationships that existed between various elements of dominant
bourgeois culture during the nineteenth century.78
The highly integrated world-view abstracted from Trumpet Notes becomes
more explicable when considering the homogeneous backgrounds and social
statuses of the volume’s contributors. The editors of this songbook, J. N. Stearns and H. P. Main, were both accomplished music editors, publishers, and
songwriters, both men of strong faith, passionate devotees to the Dry cause,
and based in the northeastern United States. William Fisk Sherwin, who wrote
and adapted ten songs in the volume, studied music under Lowell Mason,
became the first music director at the Chautauqua Movement, and held important posts throughout the Northeast, both as a music teacher and editor.
Robert Lowry, who contributed to nine songs in Trumpet Notes, was not only
a renowned hymn writer, but also a Baptist minister and professor of literature who worked closely with Sherwin in preparing several popular hymn and
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
39
tunebooks. William J. Kirkpatrick, who contributed to five songs, worked as
a musician and music director with Methodist choirs and Sunday schools in
Philadelphia, participated in many revival Camp meetings, and published over
100 musical books in his lifetime. Beyond their devotion to Protestant spiritualism, the Dry cause, and music, these men, along with other contributors like
William B. Bradbury, Edward Carswell, and Isaac B. Woodbury, all appear to
have come from a middle-class Anglo-Saxon background. Furthermore, most
of them were either acquainted with each other or worked closely together.
Conclusion
This study has focused on four rather exceptional ways that music became a
powerful and integral component of the North American anti-alcohol movement. First, according to Dry advocates, music possessed a spiritual agency
that paralleled, but did not exactly replicate, that of prayer. Second, as an aurally communicated mode of Dry proselytism, music also had an inescapable
quality that made it more invasive than visually-based modes of communication; furthermore, music’s adaptability to print technology augmented both
the pervasiveness of the Dry musical message as well as the standardization
and hierarchization of the movement. Third, music’s emotional and psychological effects on performers and listeners enhanced the impact, memorability,
and overall assimilability of the Dry musical message. Lastly, various formalistic elements provided Dry music with a diverse range of intertextual opportunities and a distinct associative power that succeeded in framing the Dry
cause as a commonsensical, synergistic extension of Protestant evangelical
ideology, Victorian morality, militarism, patriotism, as well as other middleclass Anglo values and institutions such as the home and nuclear family. In
doing so, music helped naturalize and institutionalize the Dry cause within
dominant bourgeois culture. With these spiritual, communicative, affective,
and associative powers in mind, it is difficult to deny that song was vital to the
success of the North American Dry movement as it struggled for cultural and
political hegemony.
This study will be of greatest interest to historians of temperance and prohibition, but it is also intended to make temperance and prohibition relevant
to scholars in larger fields and disciplines. For cultural sociologists and those
who study social movements, Dry music supports Eyerman and Jamison’s
theory of “cognitive praxis,” which holds that social movements and music maintain a synergetic relationship in the creation of new knowledge and
meaning, specifically the reconstitution of cultures and politics.79 For social
scientists who seek to understand the fundamental cultural roles, uses, and
functions of music in society, Dry music acted very much like other forms
of music, especially in its role as an associative communicative device that
enhanced persuasion processes, enforced conformity to social norms, validated social institutions and rituals, propagated group ideologies and identities, created cohesion and coordination, and defined social divisions.80 For
40
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
popular music studies scholars and those who investigate music from within
the humanities, the study of Dry musical borrowing may be useful because
it elucidates how activists imagined the world around them. According to
musicologist Richard Middleton, popular forms of music have “always been
concerned, not so much with reflecting social reality, as with offering ways in
which people could enjoy and valorize identities they yearned for or believed
themselves to possess.”81 Indeed, analyzing Dry music tells us little about the
real-world experiences of Dry advocates, but it does allow us to listen in on
how they perceived the world around them. In the crusade against alcohol, it
is now clear that Dry activists relied not only on strong beliefs and hard work,
but also on the power of song.
Rutgers University
[email protected]
Endnotes
1. Silver Lake Quartette, “Prohibition Bells,” in Trumpet Notes for The Temperance BattleField, ed. J.N. Stearns and H.P. Main (Hamilton, Ont.: Royal Templar Book and Pub. House,
1890), 111. st
2. CW Ray and William. J. Kirkpatrick, “Grandly the People Are Rising,” in Stearns and Main,
Trumpet Notes, 15.
3. For some key works on temperance and prohibition in the United States and Canada, see the
following: Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance
Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963); W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic,
an American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Jack S. Blocker, Jr., American Temperance Movement: Cycles of Reform (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989); Ian R. Tyrrell,
Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800-1860 (Westport,
CT: Greenwood, 1979); Mark E. Lender and James Kirby Martin, Drinking in America: A History
(New York; London: Free Press; Macmillan, 1982); Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The
Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981); Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Sharon A. Cook, “Through Sunshine and
Shadow”: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario,
1874-1930 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995); Cheryl Krasnick
Warsh, ed., Drink in Canada: Historical Essays (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993); Cheryl Krasnick Warsh and Jack S. Blocker, The Changing Face of Drink:
Substance, Imagery, and Behaviour (Ottawa: Histoire Sociale/Social History Publications Inc.,
1997); Craig Heron, Booze: A Distilled History (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2003).
4. The most noteworthy works on music in the Dry movement include: George W. Ewing, The
Well-Tempered Lyre: Songs and Verse of the Temperance Movement (Dallas: Southern Methodist
University Press, 1977); Jane Anne Peterson, “Rum, Ruin and Revival: Protestant Hymns and the
Temperance Movement” (MA Thesis, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 1998); Robert
James Branham and Stephen J. Hartnett, Sweet Freedom’s Song: “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and
Democracy in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Other works address music
to varying degrees. Those pertaining to the Canadian Dry movement include: Gerald Hallowell,
Prohibition in Ontario, 1919-1923 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1972); Glenn J. Lockwood, “Music and Songs Related to Food and Beverages,” in Consuming Passions: Eating and
Drinking Traditions in Ontario, ed. Meribeth Clow et al., 233-237 (Willowdale, ON: The Ontario
Historical Society, 1990); Sharon A. Cook, “Through Sunshine and Shadow,” 174; Reginald G.
Smart and Alan C. Ogborne, Northern Spirits: A Social History of Alcohol in Canada (Toronto:
Addiction Research Foundation, 1996), 29-32; Craig Heron, Booze. For works addressing music
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
41
in the American Dry movement, see: Sigmund Spaeth, Weep Some More, My Lady (New York: Da
Capo Press, 1980); Sigmund Spaeth, A History of Popular Music in America (New York: Random
House, 1948); Sigmund Spaeth, Read ‘Em and Weep: A Treasury of American Songs (New York:
Arco Pub. Co, 1945); Andrew Sinclair, Prohibition: The Era of Excess, First edition (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1962); Bryan Lindsay, “Anacreon on the Wagon: ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in
the Service of the Cold Water Army,” Journal of Popular Culture 4 (1971): 595-603; Jean Stonehouse, “We Have Come from the Mountains,” New England Journal of History 51 (1994): 60-67.
5. See Christopher Ballantine, Music and Its Social Meanings (New York: Gordon and Breach,
1984), xvi; Jeffrey H. Jackson and Stanley C. Pelkey, Music and History: Bridging the Disciplines
(Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), vii. For quotation, see Trevor Herbert,
“Social History and Music History,” in The Cultural Study Of Music: A Critical Introduction,
ed. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton (New York: Routledge, 2003), 146.
6. See Jackson and Pelkey, Music and History, viii-xii.
7. See Stephen Blum, Philip Vlas Bohlman, and Daniel M. Neuman, Ethnomusicology and
Modern Music History (Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Philip Bohlman “Music
and Culture: Historiographies of Disjuncture,” in The Cultural Study Of Music, 51; Ian McKay,
The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994); Harry White and Michael
Murphy, Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the History and Ideology of European
Musical Culture 1800-1945 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2001).
8. For instance, the field of popular music studies has developed a hermeneutic-semiotic reading of music that focuses on the “dialectical relations between the musical structure, its conception, production, transmission, reception and its social meaning, uses and functions.” In a similar
vein, Christopher Small has coined the term “musicking” as a way of treating music not simply
as a product but as a social process that can be engaged in by musicians and non-musicians alike
to derive meaning from musical events and musical works. Likewise, Tia DeNora’s understands
music as a constitutive feature of human agency and a powerful aesthetic dimension of social
order, which human agents can recruit in the construction of “selves, others, interaction and social settings.” See: Philip Tagg, “Musicology and the Semiotics of Popular Music,” Semiotica
66 (1987): 285; Peter Dunbar-Hall, “Semiotics as a Method for the Study of Popular Music,”
International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 22 (December 1991): 127-32.
Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover: University
Press of New England, 1998), 8-9; Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 163.
9. For example, see: Shirli Gilbert, “Music as Historical Source: Social History and the Musical Texts,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Muisc 36 (2005): 117-34;
Jackson and Pelkey, Music and History; McKay, The Quest of the Folk. It is also noteworthy
that the Liverpool Hope University has recently developed an M.A. degree of Music in Cultural
History, ostensibly the only one of its kind. On nineteenth and early-twentieth century reform
music, see: Scott Gac, Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the NineteenthCentury Culture of Reform (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Derek Vaillant, Sounds
of Reform: Progressivism and Music in Chicago, 1873-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2003); Charles Hamm, “If I Were a Voice” in Yesterdays, 141-60.
10. J.N. Stearns, Band of Hope Songster (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1885), ii; Stearns and Main, Trumpet Notes, 2.
11. Ewing, The Well-Tempered Lyre, 245; Branham and Hartnett, Sweet Freedom’s Song, 7475. Even the more politically-oriented organizations that eschewed singing during meetings seem
to have accepted music’s general significance, as evidenced through their publications. See: Dominion Alliance, Songs of Victory, (Toronto: Dominion Alliance, Ontario Branch, 1907-1919);
Camp Fire 1, no. 1 (1894); F.S. Spence, The Campaign Manual (Toronto: Pioneer Office, 1902,
1908, 1912).
12. John R. Clements, Shaw’s Campaign Songs (Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1915), [iii].
13. “Jubilee Campaign Chorus,” Sons of Temperance Record, June 1897, 2.
14. William Scott, The Teetotaler’s Hand-book, (Toronto: Dredge, 1860, iv.
42
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
15. William Dressler, Temperance Echoes (New York: J.L. Peters, 1874); Coleman, The Temperance Songbook; Charles Millard Fillmore, Fillmores’ Prohibition Songs (Cincinnati: Fillmore
& Bros., [1900?]); Anna A. Gordon, The Temperance Songster (Cincinnati, Ohio: Fillmore Music
House, c. 1904); L. Penney, Rallying Songs for Young Teetotalers (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1893); C.H. Mead, G.E. Chambers, and W.A. Williams,
Silver Tones: A New Temperance and Prohibition Song Book (Warnock, Ohio : W.A. Williams,
1892); William Hoyle, Hoyle’s Hymns and Songs: For Temperance Societies and Bands of Hope
(London: S.W. Partridge, [1887?]); Silver Lake Quartet, Prohibition Bells and Songs of the New
Crusade for Temperance Organizations, Reform Clubs, Prohibition Camps, and Political Campaigns (New York : Funk & Wagnalls, 1888).
16. Madelon Powers, Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon, 18701920 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 38.
17. WCTU Bands of Hope enjoyed very high membership rates; for example, in 1890 Ontario WCTU Bands of Hope alone had a membership rate of 15,945. According to Cook, they
were used as the union’s “major vehicle…for inculcating in children temperance values within an
evangelical context.” Cook, Through Sunshine and Shadow, 174. Songbook titles, contemporary
observers’ accounts, and minute-books also corroborate how much the WCTU valued music.
For example, see: Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Moncton Branch. Hymns for Use in
W.C.T.U. Meetings (Moncton: Moncton WCTU, 1888); J.W. Hopkins, The Templar Hymn Book:
With Tunes, for Temperance Meetings, Including All Odes in Use in the Good Templar Order
(Birmingham: Templar Printing Works, 1906); British Columbia Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union, Report of the British Columbia Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Seventeenth Annual Convention (Victoria: The B.C. Printing and Engraving Corporation, 1900), 21-23; Peterson,
“Rum, Ruin, and Revival,” 27.
18. This estimate was derived by combining the long list of Dry songs compiled by Mott
compilation and my own archival research. See: Margaret M. Mott, “A Bibliography of Song
Sheets: Sports and Recreations in American Popular Songs: Part I,” Notes, 2nd Ser., Vol. 6, No. 3
(Jun., 1949): 379-380. Though most Dry music came from the United States, quite a few songs
and compilations originated from Canada. For Canadian sheet music, see: Elisha A. Hoffman,
Prohibition Songs (Toronto: Ontario Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1910); Songs of Victory; Trumpet Notes; John Whyte, ed., Nuggets of Gold for Temperance Campaigns (Toronto:
W Briggs, 1898); Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Moncton Branch, Hymns for Use in
W.C.T.U. Meetings (Moncton: Moncton WCTU, 1888).
19. Ewing, The Well-Tempered Lyre, 245; Branham and Hartnett, Sweet Freedom’s Song, 7475.
20. Frances E. Willard and Carolyn De Swarte Gifford, ed., Writing Out My Heart: Selections
from the Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1885-1896 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995),
303.
21. Frances E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years (New York: Woman’s Temperance Publication
Association, 1889), 344, 349.
22. Letitia Youmans, Campaign Echoes: The Autobiography of Letitia Youmans (Toronto: W.
Briggs, 1893), 87-88; Youmans also uses song quotations to express the innermost status of her
own soul or her hopes for her nation. See: Youmans, Campaign Echoes, 115, 201, 279.
23. Willard and Gifford, Writing Out My Heart, 37.
24. For example, the seventeenth annual convention of the British Columbia WCTU opened
with the reading of a psalm, the performance of the hymn “Give to the Wind Thy Fears,” a prayer,
and a hearty performance of another hymn “Blest Be He That Binds Our Hearts.” British Columbia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Report of the British Columbia Women’s Christian
Temperance Union, Seventeenth Annual Convention, 11.
25. Elizabeth Thompson, quoted in: Henry William Blair, The Temperance Movement: or, The
Conflict Between Man and Alcohol (Boston: W.E. Smythe, 1888), 523.
26. Antirevivalists called evangelical sounds “noise” or likened it to the “roar of Niagara.”
Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 66, 218.
27. Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies #188 and #182, in Ethical Writing, ed. Paul Ramsey (New
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
43
Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 378n, 380n; Schmidt, Hearing Things, 64.
28. John Wesley, Works: Letters II. 1740-1755, (Clarendon Press, 1982) 526, 528. Quoted
from Schmidt, Hearing Things, 65.
29. See Peterson, “Rum, Ruin, and Revival.”
30. As quoted in Branham and Hartnett, Sweet Freedom’s Song, 48.
31. Schmidt, Hearing Things, 66-67.
32. Some reported hearing the sounds of revival from great distances, up to three miles.
Schmidt, Hearing Things, 85-86.
33. Youmans, Campaign Echoes, 229. Also see 102.
34. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years, 340.
35. Powers, Faces Along the Bar, 194.
36. Mason’s immensely popular Carmina Sacra and The New Carmina Sacra songbooks sold
more than 800,000 copies combined, “an astonishing number for a culture yet to dive completely
into the mass production and distribution techniques that arose during then especially after the
Civil War.” Branham and Hartnett Sweet Freedom’s Song, 52, 48; Peterson, “Rum, Ruin, and
Revival,” 17-22.
37. Stearns, The Band of Hope Songster. Most songbook compilations were sold for discounted prices bundled by the hundred or even thousand, suggesting that the majority of Dry music
publications had a circulation of at least several hundred or several thousand.
38. Joshua Paddison, “National Temperance Society and Publication House (NTSPH)” in Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History, eds. Jack S. Blocker, David M. Fahey, and Ian R.
Tyrrell (Santa Barbara, California: ABC- CLIO, 2003): 2, 444-45.
39. Whyte, Nuggets of Gold, i.
40. See Branham, Sweet Freedom’s Song, 74-75, which references Fillmore’s Dry songbook,
The Temperance Musician, published in 1853.
41. The Juvenile Lyre as quoted in: Peterson, “Rum, Ruin, and Revival,” 24. Lowell Mason
believed that musical activities benefited those who sang or played it more than those who simply
listened to it, and therefore sought to expand the presence of participatory singing in the church
and education system (pp. 22-30).
42. Branham, Sweet Freedom’s Song, 74-75.
43. Scott, The Teetotaler’s Hand-book, iv.
44. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years, 470
45. “Jubilee Campaign Chorus,” in Sons of Temperance Record, June 1897, 2; “All Unite In
Singing,” in Trumpet Notes, 74.
46. Minute-books demonstrate the regularity with which music was used to open and close
temperance meetings. Where music, recitations, and prayers were not specifically referenced, the
minutes usually mention “devotional exercises” that opened and closed the meetings. It seems
likely that this term was shorthand for those ritualized activities, including music, recitations, and
prayers, that were such an entrenched feature of meetings that further description was unnecessary. For examples, see: Maritime Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Minutes of the Ninth
Annual Convention of the Maritime WCTU ([Fredericton, NB]: n.p, 1891), 10; British Columbia
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Report of the British Columbia Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 11, 12. For “Initiatory Ode,” “Opening Hymn,” “Raising Ode,” and “Closing
Ode,” etc., see: Stearns and Main, Trumpet Notes, 178-183.
47. Branham, Sweet Freedom’s Song, 74-75; Spence, The Campaign Manual (1912), 37-38. As
a printed-equivalent to this ritualized musical punctuation of temperance meetings, Dry journals
and other publications often included new temperance songs or poems at the beginning and end
of each issue (and periodically throughout each issue). These journals included White Ribbon Tidings, the official organ of the Canadian WCTU, and The Sons of Temperance Record.
48. Elizabeth Thompson, quoted in: Blair, The Temperance Movement, 523.
49. Clements, Shaw’s Campaign Songs, ii.
50. J. Peter Burkholder, “Borrowing,” in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed September 21, 2008); Serge Lacasse, “Intertextuality
and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music,” in Musical Work: Reality or Invention? ed.
Michael Talbot (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 35-58.
44
Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
51. For this section, I am particularly grateful to Paul D. Sanders’ work on Dry musical borrowing and Richard W. Leeman’s work on Christian metaphors in non-musical printed forms of
Dry proselytism. See: Sanders, Lyrics and Borrowed Tunes of the American Temperance Movement; Paul D. Sanders, “Comrades, Fill No Glass for Me: Stephen Foster’s Melodies as Borrowed
by the American Temperance Movement,” Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23 (2008): 24-41; Richard W. Leeman, “Believing and Make-Believing: Christian Metaphors for and Against Prohibition” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 4 (1989): 19-37.
52. B.H. Lawrence and H.P. Danks, “Waiting for the Morning,” in Trumpet Notes, 35. Also
see: Songs of Victory.
53. Henry C. Work, “Song of a Thousand Years,” in Trumpet Notes, 74.
54. Collins and Kirkpatrick, “Coming Victory,” in Trumpet Notes, 26; Rankin and Bischoff,
“There’s a Better Time a-Coming,” in Trumpet Notes, 172; “The Right Shall Prevail,” in Trumpet
Notes, 145.
55. “Raising Ode, No. 2,” in Trumpet Notes, 182.
56. Smith and Lowry, “God’s Clock Has Struck the Hour,” in Trumpet Notes, 4. Also see: W.F.
Sherwin, “Temperance Work,” in Trumpet Notes, 36; Kidder and Spencer, “The Work is Going
On,” in Trumpet Notes, 118.
57. For example, see: Simmonds and Wilhelm, “Awake! Arise!” in Trumpet Notes, 53; Lathrap
and Jewell, “The Drunkard’s March,” in Trumpet Notes, 28; “Friends of Freedom,” in Trumpet
Notes, 41; Hakes and Hakes, “Ring it Out!” in Trumpet Notes, 116; Taylor, “The Prohibition
Army,” in Trumpet Notes, 10.
58. Alfred Taylor, “Come, Join Our Crusade,” in Trumpet Notes, 120; Alfred Taylor, “The Prohibition Army,” in Trumpet Notes, 10; Hubert P. Main, “They Are Coming From the Mountains,”
in Trumpet Notes, 78.
59. J.B. Vinton and W. Warren Bentley, “Storm the Fort,” in Trumpet Notes, 117; William
Hoyle, “The Dawning of the Day,” in Trumpet Notes, 72.
60. Alfred Taylor, “Move Along! March Along!” in Trumpet Notes, 92.
61. See for example Alfred Taylor, “Come, Join Our Crusade,” in Trumpet Notes, 120; Alfred
Taylor, “The Prohibition Army,” in Trumpet Notes, 10; Atchinson and Kirkpatrick, “Prohibition
is Marching On,” in Trumpet Notes, 90.
62. Sanders, Lyrics and Borrowed Tunes, 261. Also see: Blocker, American Temperance Movement, xiv-xv.
63. Thompson and Penney, “Come and Help Us,” in Trumpet Notes, 60; Cooper and Sherwin,
“Rallying Song,” in Trumpet Notes, 124.
64. William Hoyle, “The Dawning of the Day,” in Trumpet Notes, 72; Hood and Main, “How
Beautiful to See,” in Trumpet Notes, 104.
65. “All Unite In Singing,” in Trumpet Notes, 74.
66. Alfred Taylor, “Upon the Congo River,” in Trumpet Notes, 135.
67. Malins, “We’ll Make the Foe Retreat, Boys,” in Trumpet Notes, 16.
68. “Unfurl the Temperance Banner, in Trumpet Notes, 107; Sherwin, “Temperance Work,” in
Trumpet Notes, 36.
69. Work, “Song of a Thousand Years,” in Trumpet Notes, 74.
70. Victorian morality was also responsible for labeling many rituals as family-oriented, such
as baptisms, weddings, funerals, Christmas celebrations. See: John R. Gillis, A World of their
Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
71. Schmidt, Hearing Things, 218.
72. In bourgeois Victorian culture, amateur music was perceived as “part of the female domain” and, at least within the confines of domestic sphere, an acceptable mode of female creative
expression. See: Julia Eklund Koza, “Music and the Feminine Sphere: Images of Women as
Musicians in ‘Godey’s Lady’s Book’ 1830-1877,” The Musical Quarterly 75 (Summer, 1991):
103-129.
73. Hoyle, “Beautiful Home with Temp’rance Blest,” in Trumpet Notes, 155. Also see: Lawrence and Danks, “Waiting for the Morning,” in Trumpet Notes, 35.
74. According to Shirley Samuels, nineteenth-century sentimentality provided rules for how
to “feel right” about issues relating to gender, race, and class. Shirley Samuels, The Culture of
McDonnell: Music, Temperance and Prohibition in North America.
45
Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in 19th Century America (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 4-6.
75. “I’m Hiding, But Please, Sir, Don’t Tell,” in Trumpet Notes, 160. The story described in
this song more or less replicates Henry C. Work’s “Father, Come Home,” probably the most
famous temperance song, and one that was so sentimental that “tears rolled down the cheeks of
even the most callous” listeners. Ewing, The Well-Tempered Lyre, 246.
76. “Breakers Ahead,” in Trumpet Notes, 140; “Friends of Freedom,” in Trumpet Notes, 41;
Lathrap and Jewell, “The Drunkard’s March,” in Trumpet Notes, 28.
77. “Battle Hymn of the Women’s Crusade,” in Trumpet Notes, 63; Lathrap and Jewell, “The
Drunkard’s March,” in Trumpet Notes, 28; Williams and Bostwick, “Key-Note Song,” in Trumpet
Notes, 126; Thompson and Penney, “Come and Help Us,” in Trumpet Notes, 60.
78. Joseph Gusfield compellingly demonstrated that the Dry campaign was a symbolic attempt
to conserve the status of the native-born, Protestant middle-class (and perhaps its women most of
all) whose predominance was being increasingly challenged by working-class immigrant ethnic
minorities, and a series of modernizing and industrializing forces. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade.
79. According to Eyerman and Jamison, the relationship between social movements and music
provides “a broader political and historical context for cultural expression, and offer[s], in turn,
the resources of culture – traditions, music, artistic expression – to the action repertoires of political struggle.” Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing
Tradition in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press), 7.
80. See Steven Brown. “‘How Does Music Work?’ Towards a Pragmatics of Musical Communication,” in Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music, ed.
Steven Brown and Ulrik Volgsten (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006); Tagg, “Musicology and
the Semiotics of Popular Music”; A. P. Merriam, The Anthropology of Music (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964).
81. Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes: Open University Press,
1989), 249.