Temperance Facts

Following the end of Prohibition, as its history was fading away from public conception into the fog of mythos, a man set forth to counteract this and set the record straight. In 1940, W. G. (Willis Greenleaf) Calderwood wrote the concise informational book Temperance Facts. This seasoned temperance activist and Prohibition Party politician, who had been one of the architects of national prohibition, compiled a set of factual information to make his case that the national prohibition of alcohol had been a successful policy that had been undermined by elite interests, that repeal was a mistake, and that it would be better to reestablish Prohibition.

In doing so, he produced a work which offers a variety of insights and considerations . It offers historical and factual information, as well as pro-prohibition interpretation of them. It illuminates aspects of the Wet efforts to undermine prohibition, and to create a mythos against it, which to this day heavily influences common conceptions about the period of national prohibition. It touches on matters of history, inviting the need for a critical consideration of common beliefs, and the importance of checking the public view against historical and factual evidence. The implications of it can offer insights into modern day debates on how to address alcohol and other intoxicants, as well for longstanding themes of reformist efforts, and the matters of the use of the state to combat social ills.