<P> The Temperance movement in the United States is a movement to curb the consumption of alcohol . It had a large influence on American politics and society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries . Today, there are organizations that continue to promote the cause of temperance . </P> <P> In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, various factors contributed to an epidemic of alcoholism that went hand - in - hand with spousal abuse, family neglect, and chronic unemployment . Americans used to drinking lightly alcoholic beverages like cider "from the crack of dawn to the crack of dawn" began ingesting far more alcohol as they drank more of strong, cheap beverages like rum (in the colonial period) and whiskey (in the post-Revolutionary period). Popular pressure for cheap and plentiful alcohol led to relaxed ordinances on alcohol sales . </P>

Who was a leading reformer in the temperance movement