Talk:Scientific Temperance Federation

Source

The materials in bold in this Wikipedia entry are from “Temperance Movement Groups and Leaders in the U.S.,” which served as its source.David Justin 15:57, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The Scientific Temperance Federation was founded in 1906 upon the death of Mary Hunt, head of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction.

Mrs. Hunt had avoided accusations that she profited from her volunteer work by signing over to the Scientific Temperance Association the royalties from the temperance textbooks she wrote and edited for the WCTU. That association, which consisted of Mary Hunt, her pastor, and a few of her friends, used its income to maintain the national headquarters of the Department of Scientific Instruction. That building was also the very large home of Mrs. Hunt.

Upon her death, this arrangement clouded ownership of her estate, which led to the creation of the Scientific Temperance Foundation. Mrs. Hunt’s personal secretary, Cora Stoddard, headed the new organization. Because of the substantial fortune she had amassed in promoting compulsory temperance education, and the tens of millions of textbooks this required, the Scientific Temperance Federation was able to engage in a wide variety of activities to promote the temperance movement and prohibition. A major nation-wide project was an innovative “Education on Wheels” project that took temperance education directly to people at their homes and farms.

With the repeal of prohibition and the decline of the temperance movement, the Federation joined the Temperance Education Foundation in 1933.

Let's add a Criticism section!

Here's some text for consideration to include in the article:

The ideological and political notion of limiting access to alcohol products has been noted by many researchers as outdated, unscientific and overly-manipulative of human populaces. (Add many easy to find, empirically researched references here.) Furthermore, contemporary studies highly correlate moderate alcohol beverage consumption with many health benefits, including (but not limited to) decreased risk of atherosclerosis,

The Scientific Temperance Federation based their ideology on unscientific opinions. The organization was an example of ideology based upon junk science and subjective mindsets. References

The above is a criticism of temperance in general and might go in that article. Even there though, a criticism citing one scientific paper only would not survive for 30 seconds. Take a look at the articles in the Alcohol and Health box to see hundreds of papers about alcohol's effects, often bad but sometimes good. Nunquam Dormio (talk) 08:52, 15 September 2009 (UTC)