<P> The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an active temperance organization that was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far - reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity ." It was influential in the temperance movement, and supported the 18th Amendment . </P> <P> The WCTU was originally organized on December 23, 1873, in Hillsboro, Ohio, and officially declared at a national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1874 . It operated at an international level and in the context of religion and reform, including missionary work and woman's suffrage . Two years after its founding, the American WCTU sponsored an international conference at which the International Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed . The World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union was founded in 1883 and became the international arm of the organization . </P>

The leader of the women's christian temperance union argued that