6A • COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • FEBRUARY 6, 2019
Offb eat Oregon: Portland’s ‘Temperance War of 1874’
By Finn. J.D. John
for The Sentinel
T
he temperance move-
ment, when it came to
Portland in the early
1870s, really shouldn’t have
taken anybody by surprise.
What
was
surprising,
though, was the form it took
when it got there. Portland’s
temperance drama reached a
climax in April 1874 with a
genuine knock-down-drag-
out riot on the streets of
downtown Portland, as angry
citizens exchanged punch-
es and clobbered each oth-
er with chairs — while, the
whole time, serene as if they
were singing in a forest glade,
a cluster of upper-class ladies
in their Sunday best sang
hymns and prayed for their
souls.
And then, almost as soon as
it appeared, the temperance
movement was gone again
from the public eye, apparent-
ly destroyed from within aft er
some of the preachers who
fancied themselves its leaders
overplayed their hand.
It’s going to take several ar-
ticles to tell this entire story.
And it’s a bit of a slow starter:
we don’t get to the really in-
teresting part until next week.
But here’s how it came about:
E
arly in the spring of ’74,
word started reaching
Portland of the great temper-
ance movements in Ohio.
Th ere were, of course, plen-
ty of other temperance move-
ments across the country, and
there had been for some time.
But what was new about the
Ohio movement was its spir-
it of assertiveness and evan-
gelism. Participants — most
of them women, who were
largely excluded from “saloon
culture” but not from its ef-
fects on their husbands and
sons — were no longer con-
tenting themselves with pray-
ing in churches and “setting a
good personal example in the
home.”
Th ey had started going out
into the community to spread
the word, and actually went
to saloons to urge temperance
upon their owners and cus-
tomers. And they’d had some
success at this — most notably
in persuading saloonkeepers
to leave the business.
In Portland, the mainstream
newspapers — there were
three of them at the time: the
Morning Oregonian, the Port-
land Bulletin and the Evening
Telegram — mentioned these
events only briefl y and occa-
sionally. Likely they thought
nothing of them; in 1874,
three decades before Carrie
Nation picked up her hatchet,
the concept of aggressive tem-
perance workers was new.
But Abigail Scott Duniway,
editor and publisher of Th e
New Northwest, was paying
close attention. Readers of her
weekly paper, mostly women,
were kept very much up to
date on the temperance move-
ment.
Duniway was a legend even
in her own time, and her pro-
fi le has grown since. Th e great
passion of her life was a quest
for legal equality of the sexes
and voting rights for women.
She saw temperance as an issue
that would have been quickly
resolved if 50 percent of the
population were not forbidden
to vote — in other words, as
a symptom of the great social
evil that she had devoted her
life to overturning.
She was the sister of leg-
going out two by two, as Je-
sus sent forth his disciples, to
hold their temperance-church
services in the saloons them-
selves.
A few of the more conser-
vative ladies thought that was
too much, and when the deci-
sion was made to do this, they
dropped out. But there re-
mained a total of 13 game sis-
“Can you imagine what it
would be to go into a saloon
to pray? Then you can imagine
how we felt..."
— Laura Francis Kelly
April 1874
endary longtime Morning
Oregonian editor Harvey
Scott — who, due to some
political machinations going
on at that time involving rail-
road-and-stagecoach baron
Ben Holladay, was then work-
ing as editor of the Bulletin.
Th e New Northwest devot-
ed considerable coverage to
the temperance movement’s
successes back east. And that’s
probably the primary rea-
son the whole thing came to
Portland in the fi rst place. It’s
certainly why the fervor of the
movement was so startling and
unexpected to Portland men.
Th ey were nearly all caught
off guard, because they were
reading the wrong newspa-
pers.
Nonetheless, those among
them who happened to be
preachers in temperance
churches rose to the occa-
sion with alacrity. Soon their
churches were crammed to
bursting with women yearn-
ing to do something about this
terrible social evil.
Th ey assembled in church-
es. Stirring sermons were
preached. Invitations went
out to men all over Portland
to come and be inspired, and
a pledge of abstinence from
alcohol was circulated at each
service. Hundreds of people
signed.
Yet mere hundreds wouldn’t
change the course of histo-
ry. Plus, those hundreds were
most oft en already teetotalers.
Th en as now, the pub-crawl-
ing set wasn’t seen much in
church, or at least not in the
kind of churches that would
preach temperance and absti-
nence.
Inspired once again by Th e
New Northwest’s dispatches
of events in Ohio, the ladies
of several Portland church-
es decided they needed to be
more assertive. Th ey and their
pastors organized themselves
into an interdenominational
coalition — the Women’s Tem-
perance Prayer League — and
made their headquarters at the
Methodist Church on Taylor
Street.
Th ere they decided, as the
Portland Daily Bulletin’s re-
porter put it, to “go forth and
beard the lion in his den” — by
ters who were ready to go out
there and change the world.
And so it was that on March
23, 1874, a team of fi red-up
ladies streamed out of the
church and, in groups of two
and three, fanned out across
Portland.
T
he ladies’ battle plan was
simple. Th ey would pres-
ent themselves at each saloon
and ask the proprietor if they
might enter and lead a prayer
service. Most of the time, the
answer was yes — although
that would change later. Th en
they’d pray, sing a hymn or
two, circulate a pledge for the
drunks to sign promising to
abstain from alcohol, sing and
pray some more, and leave.
For a Victorian-era lady, this
was nowhere near as easy as
it sounds to the modern ear.
Laura Francis Kelly, one of the
temperance crusaders, wrote a
hand-written account of how
it went:
“Can you imagine what it
would be to go into a saloon
to pray? Th en you can imagine
how we felt. I cannot tell you.
“Th e saloon keeper received
us cordially, ushering us into
the card-room. As the song
rose from trembling hearts:
‘Holy Spirit, faithful guide,
Ever near the Christian’s side,’
etc., the bar-room quick-
ly fi lled with young men to
whom the barkeeper freely
dispensed his liquors.
“As we knelt in prayer, the
clink of glasses well nigh
drowned the petitions that
rose from trembling lips.
When the short service was
over, the bar keeper invited us
very pleasantly to ‘come again.’
Oh! how we hastened back to
church and kindred spirits!
But the pastor, George W. Izer,
met us with, ‘Back so soon?
Did you visit only one saloon?’
Th en we saw what was before
us.”
At the end of the day, they
were exhausted and demoral-
ized.
True, the ladies were treat-
ed courteously everywhere
(with, the Bulletin sniff ed,
the notable exception of “the
proprietress of a low doggery
on Second Street” — and one
other place, which we’ll talk
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about next week). But as Kelly
mentioned, saloons were noisy
places. A pair of frightened
ladies standing close togeth-
er in a corner singing hymns
was easily ignored. In the pubs
where they were not ignored,
they were treated as objects of
curiosity, as if a circus act was
visiting the saloon.
Back in the church, the la-
dies prayed for strength
and then went home for the
night.
T
he next day, things were
a little diff erent. Th at’s
because rather than fanning
out across the city two by
two, the ladies decided to go
in a group. All 13 of them
would pay a call on a single
saloon.
Th e ladies fortifi ed them-
selves with a lengthy prayer
service, then poured once
again out of the church.
Today they descended
upon the Mount Hood Sa-
loon, owned by a chap named
Th omas Shartle; he graciously
let them in and gave them the
run of the place. Shartle did
not, however, turn off the taps,
and was probably glad he did
not. If two Victorian ladies in a
saloon was a little like a circus
act, thirteen of them was more
like the whole circus. People
poured into the Mount Hood.
On the surface, it looked like
a repeat of the previous day’s
disaster, only on a bigger scale.
Mr. Shartle did a brisk trade.
Th e ladies got the same faux-
hearty “best of luck to you,
God bless you, here’s to ya” re-
sponse from the same saloon
bums, and fi elded the same
fake signatures on the temper-
ance pledge.
But this time, the “clink
of glasses” was powerless to
drown out their voices as they
sang. Th ere were, aft er all, a
baker’s dozen of them. Th ey
were too large a presence to
ignore.
Th e ladies moved on, going
downmarket a bit and visiting
a rum house called the Eve-
ning Call. Again, they brought
the proprietor plenty of busi-
ness and left with very few le-
gitimate pledges.
Back at the church, the la-
dies learned that word had
gotten around the saloons that
their presence represented a
large business boom. One sa-
loon owner actually sent them
an invitation to come to his
place, which — to his delight
— they did the next day.
But the sense of demoraliza-
tion was now utterly gone. Th e
ladies knew they were onto
something. If some people
were laughing at them, at least
they were now being heard;
their seed might have been
falling on stony ground, but at
least it was being sown. Th ey
started going out every day,
each day to a diff erent saloon.
And slowly, things started to
change.
We’ll talk about that change
— and about the one saloon
owner whose bellicose resis-
tance to the ladies’ missionary
eff orts caused riots on the city
streets — in next week’s col-
umn.
(Sources: Th e Women’s War
with Whisky; or, Crusading in
Port-land, a book by Frances
Fuller Victor, published in 1874
by Himes; “Th e War on the
Webfoot Saloon,” an article by
Malcolm Clark Jr. published in
the March 1957 issue of Oregon
Historical Quarterly; Edward
Chambreau: His Autobiogra-
phy, a Ph.D. dissertation by
Timothy Wehrkamp, published
in 1976 by the University of Or-
egon; OHS archives (MSS 1535
and 550); archives of Th e New
Northwest and Portland Daily
Bulletin, March–July 1874.)
Finn J.D. John teaches at
Oregon State University and
writes about odd tidbits of
Oregon history. For details,
see http://fi nnjohn.com. To
contact him or suggest a topic:
fi nn2@offb eatoregon.com or
541-357-2222.
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A D M I N I S T R A T I O N
Native Oaks Ridge land acquisition to
protect Oregon fi sh and wildlife habitat
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) intends to fund the purchase of a conservation
easement on approximately 326 acres of oak dominated habitats located close to Cottage Grove
in Lane County, Oregon. When the purchase is complete, the McKenzie River Trust will manage
the property for wildlife conservation purposes. The United States will hold third party rights of
enforcement to ensure that the habitat values on the property are always protected.
The funding will be provided as part of BPA’s ongoing eff orts to protect, restore and enhance
prairie and oak woodland habitat in the Willamette Valley. Funding this conservation easement
partially fulfi lls commitments made by BPA in the 2010 “Willamette River Basin Memorandum of
Agreement Regarding Wildlife Habitat Protection and Enhancement between the State of Oregon
and Bonneville Power Administration” as part of ongoing eff orts to mitigate for the impacts to fi sh
and wildlife from the construction and operation of federal fl ood control and hydroelectric facilities.
The protection of this property will provide long-lasting fi sh and wildlife benefi t s and will become
part of a growing network of conservation lands in Lane County.
The McKenzie River Trust has developed a management plan to guide the protection and
enhancement of habitat on the property. BPA reviewed the plan for consistency with the
conservation purposes of the acquisition. A letter describing the proposed purchase, a map and
information describing environmental review requirements under the National Environmental
Policy Act are available at https://www.bpa.gov/efw/Analysis/CategoricalExclusions/Pages/2019.
aspx.
For more information, contact BPA project manager Sandra Fife at 503-230-3678 or safi fe@bpa.
gov. You can also call 800-622-4519 toll free. Please refer to the Native Oaks Ridge conservation
easement.
