the evil influence of
liquor on husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers, that they gathered in
front of saloons to sing and pray, hoping to persuade drunkards to
reform and saloon keepers to close their doors. Out of this uprising,
the Women's Christian Temperance Union developed, and within the next
few years was organized into a powerful reform movement by a young
schoolteacher from Illinois, Frances E. Willard.

A lifelong advocate of temperance, Susan had long before reached the
conclusion that this reform could not be achieved by a strictly
temperance or religious movement, but only through the votes of women.
Nevertheless, she lent a helping hand to the Rochester women who
organized a branch of the W.C.T.U., but she told them just how she
felt: "The best thing this organization will do for you will be to
show you how utterly powerless you are to put down the liquor traffic.
You can never talk down or sing down or pray down an institution which
is voted into existence. You will never be able to lessen this evil
until you have votes."[315]

As she traveled through the West for the Lyceum Bureau, she did what
she could to stimulate interest in a federal woman suffrage amendment,
speaking out of a full heart and with sure knowledge on "Bread and the
Ballot" and "The Power of the Ballot," earning on the average $100 a
week, which she applied to the _Revolution_ debt.

Lyceum lecturers were now at the height of their
popularity,--particularly in the West, where in the little towns
scattered across the prairies there were few libraries and theaters,
and the distribution of books, magazines, and newspapers in no way met
the people's thirst for information or entertainment. Men, women, and
children rode miles on horseback or drove over rough roads in wagons
to see and hear a prominent lecturer. Susan was always a drawing card,
for a woman on the lecture platform still was a novelty and almost
everyone was curious about Susan B. Anthony. Many, to their surprise,
discovered she was not the caricature they had been led to believe.
She looked very ladylike and proper as she stood before them in her
dark silk platform dress, a little too stern and serious perhaps, but
frequently her face lighted up with a friendly smile. She spoke to
them as equals and they could follow her reasoning. Her simple
conversational manner was refreshing after the sonorous pretentious
oratory of other lecturers.

Continuous travel in all kinds of