COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • MARCH 6, 2019 •
9A
Offbeat Oregon: When Portland’s ‘Temperance Crusade’ collapsed
By Finn J.D. John
for The Sentinel
(Note: This column is the fourth
and final part of a four-part series
on the Portland temperance riots
of 1874.)
A
s detailed in last week’s
article, Portland’s legal
authorities
responded
to the riot and street fight at the
Webfoot Saloon on April 16,
1874, by arresting not the rioting
brawlers, but the singing, praying
church ladies they’d been fighting
over. The idea was, although the
ladies hadn’t been personally dis-
orderly, they had shown up and
prayed on a sidewalk knowing
full well that doing so might in-
spire others to engage in disor-
derly conduct by, for example,
rioting and trashing the Webfoot
Saloon.
It took a couple of days for the
trial to finish up and for the jury
to come to a decision. But one of
the jury members was a saloon
owner, and the other five were
business owners of other types;
their natural sympathy lay with
the guy trying to sell beer, not the
citizens outside interfering with
commerce and trade by singing
and praying in public. To no one’s
surprise, the verdict was “guilty.”
The ladies were sentenced to
spend a night in jail or pay $5.
Offers to pay their fines poured
in immediately, but like Socrates
refusing to go into exile, they in-
sisted on doing the time instead.
And so, the six crusaders were
carted off to the hoosegow, ac-
companied by a huge crowd of
well-wishers.
All throughout that after-
noon and into the evening, the
Portland city joint was jumping.
Hordes of visitors trooped in and
out of the jail, to visit and to par-
ticipate in impromptu prayer ser-
vices; and the joint rang with the
sound of six determined voices
belting out hymn after hymn. Fi-
nally, visiting hours ended, and
the ladies settled down for the
night.
It couldn’t have been more
than half an hour later that Chief
Lappeus stormed into the jail and
ordered them to get the hell out.
The ladies, assuming this was
another attempt to cut them a
break, hurried to reassure him
that they were quite ready to stay
the night like the judge had said.
The chief didn’t even let them
finish.
“I’m the BOSS here,” he roared.
“You leave!”
Some of the ladies had already
dressed for bed. Lappeus roared
at them until they scurried out
of the jailhouse, half put together
and feeling scandalously immod-
est. For a Victorian-age man, it
was a remarkably ungentlemanly
thing to do; people in the 1870s
were challenged to duels for
lesser “offenses against Woman-
hood” than this.
“From first to last it was a farce,
although a very serious one,”
wrote Fuller Victor. “The wom-
en had violated no laws or ordi-
nances. They were arrested on a
charge which only really applied
to the man who had them arrest-
ed, and only to him.
“In this first trial,” she contin-
ued, “as in those that followed
[against Moffett], the Crusaders,
whether defenders or complain-
ants, were treated as if they had
been in every other sense what
they are legally — infants or id-
iots.”
After this episode, the tem-
perance workers virtually owned
Portland. Moffett was bedeviled
on almost a daily basis, and his
behavior continued to be odd
and erratic. For the most part,
knowing he was fighting a los-
ing battle, he contented himself
with “following his tormentors
around, muttering imprecations
and offering unsolicited advice,”
according to historian Malcolm
Clark Jr.
However, on occasion he
would do something actually ag-
gressive. On May 1, he made his-
tory in what surely was the first
use of tear gas in state history.
On that day, he emerged from his
saloon with a wet handkerchief
around his nose and some sort
of vile-smelling smoke pouring
from the pockets of the old over-
coat he was wearing. In them, he
apparently had a mixture of to-
bacco and pepper, and the smell
was almost suffocating; Moffett,
free to move about, could leave
the cloud of stinging smoke be-
hind him, whereas the singing
and praying ladies more or less
had to stay in one spot and en-
dure it as best they could. Moffett
was hauled into court for this bit
of chemical warfare, but on May
21 he was acquitted — “the jury
were all liquor men,” an anony-
mous crusader wrote.
On May 27, the same crusad-
er reported, “Mr. Moffett of the
‘Webb-Foot’ still a tool for Satan,
executing the designs of the dev-
Worship
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Two Services:
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First Baptist Church
301 S. 6th st • 541-942-8242
Pastor: David Chhangte
Sunday School 9:30am
Worship Service 11:00am
Youth Wednesday 6:30pm
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541-942-4479
Rev.: Karen Hill
Worship: 10:00am
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820 South 10th Street
541-942-5213
Pastor: Kevin Miller
Bible Study: Saturday, 9:15 am
Worship Service: Saturday, 10:40
Mid-week Service: Wednesday, 1:00
Hope Fellowship
United Pentecostal Church
100 S. Gateway Blvd.
541-942-2061
Pastor: Dave Bragg
Worship: 11:00am Sunday
Bible Study: 7:00pm Wednesday
www.hopefellowshipupc.com
“FINDING HOPE IN YOUR LIFE”
Trinity Lutheran Church
6th & Quincy • 541-942-2373
Pastor: James L. Markus
Sunday School & Adult Education
9:15am
Sunday Worship 10:30 am
Comm. Kitchen Free Meal Tue & Thur
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467 S. 10th St. • 541-942-2612
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Worship: 10:30am
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1041 Pennoyer Ave
541-942-8928
Preacher: Tony Martin
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103 S. 5th St. • 541-942-4999
Pastor: Jim Edwards
Sunday Service: 10:00am
Join in Traditional Christian Worship
Our Lady of Perpetual Help
and St. Philip Benizi
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541-942-3420
Father John J. Boyle
Holy Mass:
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CRESWELL:
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Worship
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Rev. Lawrence Crumb
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il with astonishing intrepidity.”
And as late as June, Moffett was
still occasionally throwing fire-
crackers. But his tactics seemed
to have shifted from pitched bat-
tle to isolated harassment.
Sadly, the chronicles are silent
on the question of what impact
his behavior had on his business.
Did the drinkers of Portland ral-
ly around him, supporting him
in his little war? Or did they start
avoiding the Webfoot, uncom-
fortable with the ungentlemanly
behavior for which it was fast be-
coming famous? We don’t know.
A
s Election Day approached,
a new newspaper, the Tem-
perance Star, was launched —
Abigail Scott Duniway’s The New
Northwest having been deemed
not ideologically pure enough.
And this was essentially true.
Success had gone to the heads of
the temperance-church preach-
ers and other male leaders of the
crusade, and they were starting
to display a species of merciless,
self-righteous swagger that Dun-
iway immediately saw was pub-
lic-relations poison. Foreseeing
the brutal comeuppance that was
about to come their way, she was
at some pains to distance herself
and her favored cause — women’s
suffrage — from their movement.
They noticed, and, with the Man-
ichean reflexes that all fanatics
share, switched her designation
from “friend” to “enemy.”
A full slate of Temperance can-
didates was drafted and put for-
ward for the upcoming election.
Most Portlanders looked upon
them with some favor, thanks to
the copious goodwill generated
by the crusading ladies.
Then, on the day of the election
in early July, a little publication
was distributed all over Portland,
titled “The Voters’ Book of Re-
membrance” — although it was
not actually a book, but rather a
half-sheet flyer. This innocuously
titled circular was unsigned, but
everyone assumed the League
had published it, and it almost
certainly had. But if the saloon-
keepers had put it out as a dirty
campaign trick, they would have
been very pleased with the result.
The “Voters’ Book of Remem-
brance” put the entire city into
a cold fury. Its language doesn’t
sound too bad to the modern ear,
but in 1874 it was outrageously
unsubtle — and, what was worse,
insulting.
“Voters of Portland, the Book
of Remembrance is this day
opened, and you are called upon
to choose ‘whom ye will serve,’”
it starts out. “On one hand are
found prostitutes, gamblers,
rumsellers, whiskey topers, beer
guzzlers, wine bibbers, rum
suckers, hoodlums, loafers and
ungodly men. On the other hand
are found Christian wives, moth-
ers, sisters and daughters of the
good people of Portland. You
cannot serve two masters. You
must be numbered with one or
the other. Whom will ye choose?”
In other words, as historian
Clark puts it, “any citizen low
enough to vote against the Tem-
perance candidates was a sup-
porter of Sin, an un-American
scoundrel, and an arch-foe of
Home and Mother.”
Remember, this was a pre-Suf-
frage election, so it was to be
decided by men. Most men, in
1874, had at one time or anoth-
er participated in saloon cul-
ture — some of them on a daily
basis, others very occasionally.
And although it was a particular-
ly hard-drinking age, not every
Portland man was a souse. Re-
sponsible drinkers have always
been with us, and in 1874, as in
most times, they represented a
great majority of the male pop-
ulation. Now here came these
Temperance scolds to tell Joe
Sixpack-A-Week that he must ei-
ther dry out completely and join
the “crusade” or be numbered
with hookers, swindlers, loafers,
thugs, day-drinkers, and “ungod-
ly men.”
No sale, Reverend.
The temperance candidates,
who 24 hours before the election
had looked like shoo-ins, were
trounced. The Women’s Tem-
perance Prayer League vanished,
its constituents slinking away
from the public-relations fiasco
that someone had signed their
name to. It was replaced by the
Women’s Christian Temperance
Union, which lasted for years
but never had the same kind of
influence.
Ironically, probably the biggest
loser in the whole fiasco was the
woman whose newspaper had
catalyzed the whole movement.
Abigail Scott Duniway now got
to watch her worst fears become
reality: The women’s suffrage
movement became irrevocably
tied to the temperance move-
ment in most Portlanders’ minds,
and the temperance movement
was now painted in the pop-
ular imagination as preachy,
self-righteous, meddlesome and
generally insufferable. It would
take decades for this association
to dissipate.
Speaking of dissipation, let’s
turn back to Walter Moffett for
a moment. He started wasting
away just a few months after the
election. Then he sold his sa-
loons and sailed off to the South
Seas — a relatively unremarkable
thing to do today, but a fairly odd
action for a middle-aged married
man of property to take in 1875;
in that era of small, vulnerable
sailing ships, sketchy navigation
and nonexistent weather fore-
casting, people didn’t go to sea
unless they had to.
In any case, Moffett died en
route. His cause of death was
officially something else, but it’s
at least possible that he was suf-
fering through the final stages of
syphilis, which in that era caused
many a middle-aged man to be-
come mentally unhinged and
then die early. Certainly, that
would explain why a man who
had clearly once had enough
good judgment to build several
successful businesses suddenly
thought it would be OK to throw
firecrackers at praying ladies on
the street and call them “damned
whores.”
But, of course, we can’t ever re-
ally know.
Finn J.D. John teaches at Ore-
gon State University and writes
about odd tidbits of Oregon
history. For details, see www.
finnjohn.com.
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