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.In 2000, the latestyear for which figures are available as of this writing, more than 16,650Americans were killed in crashes involving alcohol.That is an increaseover the preceding three years and represents about 40 percent of thetotal number of people killed in all 2000 traffic accidents.Says Millie I.Webb, MADD s national president, in one of the organization s pressreleases, Each of these deaths the deaths of our precious loved oneswas 100 percent preventable. In the hope of preventing at least some of them, the group continuesto lobby state legislatures to pass antidrunk driving laws, and its successhere has been impressive.At the end of 2001, twenty-nine states andthe District of Columbia had made changes in their legal definitions ofdrunkenness, lowering blood alcohol limits from 0.10 to 0.08. Strange Bedfellows 293MADD also lobbies the media, and according to sociologist BarryGlassner, it has had an impact here, too.In The Culture of Fear, Glass-ner writes that MADD was partly responsible for forcing journaliststo report on the issue of drunk driving in a sound and sustained waythroughout the 1980s and early 1990s.Thanks in part to that coverage,the number of alcohol-related deaths plunged by 31 percent between1982 and 1995.Fatality rates fall twice as rapidly, studies find, in yearsof high media attention compared to those of relatively little attention. Hence, perhaps, the high rates in 2000, when this author s study findsthe media were inattentive.Among the most recent of MADD aims is the elimination of drink-ing by minors, whether they get into a car afterward or not.There isno evidence that the group is as yet succeeding with this particular mis-sion; nonetheless, more than any other assembly of alcohol reformers,going all the way back to Elizabeth Jane Trimble Thompson and thefirst Women s Crusade, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers has realizedits goals, primarily because those goals have been so wisely conceived,directed toward abuse rather than use.One of the old associations, and only one, continues to exist.The Woman s Christian Union was not heard from much duringProhibition; it neither received much credit for the Eighteenth Amend-ment, nor much blame for the aftermath.In 1923, its members poured$5,000 worth of fine whiskies and cordials into a Cleveland, Ohio,street.After the Pennsylvania state legislature refused to fund an en-forcement law, the state WCTU donated $250,000 to Governor Gif-ford Pinchot to use as he saw fit for enforcement purposes. New YorkWCTU members dominated lobbying for state prohibition and en-forcement laws. Other than that, the ladies dwelled in the backgroundof the 1920s; by the time their objective of a nominally dry nation hadbeen achieved, the WCTU had become an anachronism, a reminder ofthe days when the temperance movement dwelled more on the periph-ery of events than in the center.But the group has refused to die or disband or give up; its memberscarried on through Prohibition and they carry on today.At present, theWCTU claims a total membership of about 5,000 persons in thirty-three state associations and 450 local branches across the country.Itsnineteenth century members prided themselves on being up-to-date be-cause they used the new dictaphones and type-writing machines; with 294 Epiloguethe twenty-first century now underway, there is a Woman s ChristianTemperance Union website and an increasing volume of correspon-dence by e-mail.All these years after its heyday, the WCTU is a di-nosaur that refuses to consider extinction for the obvious reason that itfeels too frisky.But there is more on its mind in the new millennium than temper-ance, much more, and one suspects the reason, at least in part, is thatthe ladies no longer believe they can have a significant impact on Amer-ican drinking habits.They would never admit such a thing, of course;unfailingly good-natured, they keep on believing in the perfectibilityof others and keep on defining perfection by their own lights
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