ANTI-SALOON LEAGUE, an American temperance or ganization founded on May 24, 1893, at Oberlin, O. The fore runner of the Anti-Saloon League was the Oberlin Temperance Alliance founded at Oberlin on March 20, 1874. The Metcalf law of 1882, granting local option to all Ohio college towns, and the Beatty Township Local-option law of 1888, gave impetus to the meeting held in the Spear library, Oberlin, on May 24, 1893, which resulted in the formation of the Ohio Anti-Saloon League. The next important step in the temperance movement was the founding of the Anti-Saloon League of the District of Columbia, on June 22, 1893, followed on December 18, 1895, by the National Anti-Saloon League—later called the Anti-Saloon League of America—in the Sunday school section of Calvary Baptist Church, Washington. Its basic organization was the same as that of the Ohio Anti-Saloon League. Subsequently all the states were organized into leagues, on the same plan as, but subordinate to, the National League.
The Anti-Saloon League of America is non-partisan and inter denominational in character. The League is pledged to maintain an attitude of strict neutrality on all questions of public policy not directly and immediately concerned with the traffic in strong drink. "The object of this League is the extermination of the beverage liquor traffic, for the accomplishing of which the alliance of all who are in harmony with this object is invited." The program of the Anti-Saloon League has always been "agitation (including education), legislation and law enforcement." The departments of the League are executive or administrative, legal legislative, publicity, together with a new department of educa tion, publicity and research established January 1, 1928. These departments are located at Westerville, 0., and Washington, D.C. In legislation its policy has been to secure progressive legislation against the liquor traffic backed by a sound public sentiment. Shortly after its organization a vigorous campaign was launched for municipal local option, and this was paralleled by a continuous drive for complete national prohibition. The latter goal was nominally attained by the adoption of the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution. During the Prohibition Era the society sought to make the restrictive laws more effective, and through its legal department defended them against attack in all tribunals including the Federal Supreme Court. But the repeal of the Amendment in 1933 threw the League, as it were, on the de fensive, obliging it to put all its strength into an endeavour to check the extension of legalized liquor traffic where it was still forbidden, and to secure the inclusion of the local option clause at least in laws which might be passed for regulating the sale of intoxicants.