# Anti-Saloon League *Single-issue temperance lobby founded in Ohio in 1893; since 2016 the American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems.* The Anti-Saloon League is a United States temperance organization that has operated since 2016 under the name American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems (ACAAP).[^1] It began in 1893 at Oberlin, Ohio, as a state society and became national in 1895. Its base was Protestant clergy and their congregations, chiefly Methodists, Baptists, Disciples and Congregationalists, and it was strongest in the South and the rural North.[^1] Its work centred on legislation. Its Wikipedia article says it judged legislators by their recorded votes, not by whether they drank.[^1] The league's documented outputs are enactments and their reversal. Within a few years of going national, it had become the country's leading prohibition lobby by Wikipedia's account, ahead of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party.[^1] National prohibition entered the Constitution with the 18th Amendment in 1919. The 1933 repeal of Prohibition reversed that result.[^1] Its successor describes its members as "state temperance organizations, national Christian denominations and other fraternal organizations that support ACAAP's philosophy of abstinence". The same record shows the superintendent of the league's Alabama affiliate leading the lobbying that defeated an Alabama anti-masking bill.[^1] An at-issue pair in the project's record connects the league to Minnesota through the Volstead Act. The pair says the Act was drafted by the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who represented Minnesota's 7th District, together with the league's counsel.[^2] Beyond that pair, the record does not establish a role for the league in [[Minnesota]]. ## Who Howard Hyde Russell founded the league and was its first leader. He held that leaders should be chosen rather than elected. He built the league upward from local units and promoted promising young men into local and state leadership.[^1] Wayne Wheeler was its best-known leader. Ernest Cherrington and William E. "Pussyfoot" Johnson also held substantial influence, and Cherrington ran the league's publishing house.[^1] Edward Young Clarke and Mary Elizabeth Tyler of the Southern Publicity Association handled the league's publicity.[^1] The state-level record names several officers. William Hamilton Anderson led the league in Illinois and later in Maryland, where he served from 1907 to 1914. William M. Forgrave was Massachusetts superintendent from 1923 to 1928. J. Bib Mills was superintendent of the Alabama Anti-Saloon League.[^1] ## What Wikipedia describes the league as the first modern American pressure group built around a single issue. It credits the league with developing pressure politics as a legislative method, and says the league borrowed bureaucratic methods from business rather than following earlier popular movements.[^1] The organization was renamed several times: - Temperance League, 1948–1950 - National Temperance League, 1950–1964 - American Council on Alcohol Problems, 1964–2015 - American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems, from 2016[^1] Its periodical is *The American Issue*. The organization still lobbies to limit alcohol advertising and promotes temperance. As of 2020, Wikipedia records it pursuing a "neo-prohibitionist agenda" that had been widened to drugs such as opioids.[^1] ## When - **1893:** founded at Oberlin, Ohio.[^1] - **1895:** became a national organization.[^1] - **1900–1905:** worked in Illinois for a local-option referendum law.[^1] - **1906:** chapters formed in Yuma, Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona.[^1] - **1907:** Illinois passed local option.[^1] - **1909:** national headquarters moved to Westerville, Ohio.[^1] - **1919:** the 18th Amendment was ratified.[^1] - **May 1928:** the league joined Klansmen and Woman's Christian Temperance Union members in the Alabama primary.[^1] - **1932:** Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency on a wet platform.[^1] - **1933:** a constitutional amendment repealed the 18th Amendment.[^1] ## Where In 1909 the league moved its national headquarters from Washington to Westerville, Ohio, a town known for favouring temperance. Its publishing arm, the American Issue Publishing House, was also based there.[^1] The Westerville Public Library houses a museum about the league. ACAAP's headquarters are in Birmingham, Alabama.[^1] The league did best in rural and Southern states. It made little progress in large cities or among members of liturgical churches.[^1] ## How The league's campaign for national prohibition worked on several levels: - federal legislation and congressional hearings; - the Scientific Temperance Federation; - its own publishing company.[^1] During World War I it appealed to patriotism, efficiency and anti-German feeling. Wikipedia credits it with originating many modern public-relations techniques.[^1] **Arizona.** League members pressed police to revoke the licences of saloons that broke closing hours or served women and minors, and they supplied witnesses.[^1] One witness, a juvenile named Frank Shindelbower, testified that several saloons had sold him liquor, and those saloons lost their licences. He was later found to have perjured himself and was imprisoned. After the *Arizona Gazette* and other papers portrayed him as the league's innocent tool, he was pardoned.[^1] **Alabama.** Historian Howard Ball has written that the league and the Ku Klux Klan were both powerful pressure groups in Birmingham after World War I. A local editor of the period wrote, "In Alabama, it is hard to tell where the Anti-Saloon League ends and the Klan begins".[^1] An Alabama state senator proposed an anti-masking statute "to emasculate the order's ability to terrorize people". Lobbying led by Mills ensured that the bill failed.[^1] **Party record.** In Maryland, the league failed to ally with local political bosses and attacked the [[Democratic Party (United States)]].[^1] In the 1928 presidential election, Wikipedia says the league did less against wet candidates such as Al Smith because its audience was already Republican. Repeal forces were led by prominent Democrats.[^1] **Decline.** After 1928 the league could not answer the problems of Prohibition, including bootlegging, organized crime and lost government revenue. It did not stop the repeal campaign, and its influence fell sharply after 1933.[^1] ## How much The American Issue Publishing House printed leaflets at a rate of more than 40 tons of mail per month. As a result, Westerville became the smallest town with a first-class post office.[^1] ## How many In Illinois, local option passed in 1907. By 1910, 40 of the state's 102 counties had gone dry, along with 1,059 of its townships and precincts.[^1] In Massachusetts, a statewide referendum on the liquor enforcement code passed by 8,000 votes in Forgrave's first year as superintendent. The same measure had earlier been defeated by 103,000 votes.[^1] ## In the at-issue record At-issue pair AI-Carver-047 (package Carver, rank 47) makes four statements about the Volstead Act:[^2] - the House Judiciary Committee chairman from Minnesota's 7th District drafted it with the Anti-Saloon League's counsel; - it "ran twelve thousand words and thirteen years"; - it closed the saloon culture of a county whose seat township was 78.85% German; - the chairman lost his seat in 1922 and then became legal adviser to the Prohibition Enforcement Bureau. The pair is anchored to a May 2026 White House presidential action, which it treats as "a national instrument authored in Minnesota and applied to a Minnesota population".[^2] The pair does not name the chairman or the county. Its underlying sources are listed only by domain (mnhs.org), and none of them is among this article's citable URLs. The record does not establish any further link between the league and the Minnesota representative.[^2] ## Notes [^1]: Wikipedia, *Anti-Saloon League* (revision 1379563518, retrieved 2026-10-27) — founding, structure, leadership, state and local operations, name changes, and post-1928 decline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Saloon_League [^2]: Minnesota wiki at-issue record, *At-issue pair AI-Carver-047* (source file Motordale_5000_STEELMAN_2026-09-02, Block C, Pairs 41–58) — the pair's statements on the Volstead Act. The linked URL is the pair's anchor, a May 2026 White House presidential action, and does not itself document the Volstead facts. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/05/restoring-integrity-to-americas-financial-system/