Temperance on St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick's Day means not much more than green beer and drunken reveling for many people today, but in late-19th century America it was --- believe it or not --- a day to honor moderation and total abstinence from alcohol. In the Philadelphia St. Patrick's Day parade of 1875, some 10,000 people marched and "the majority parading walked with the thirty-nine marching units of the [Catholic] Total Abstinence Brotherhood, an organization with strong religious backing and a missionary zeal for temperance crusading.," according to Dennis Clark. It was after the Civil War that parades of all kinds became a sort of national craze. Veterans of the conflict turned out and, in Philadelphia, General St. Clair Mulholland and other heroes of the war stepped smartly along on St. Patrick's Day each year. Temperance organizations became a big component of the March 17th Parades from 1870 through the turn of the century. Father Matthew of County Tyrone (above) was the popular founder in Ireland of organized temperance earlier in the century and it spread to this country with the creation of state groups and then the national Brotherhood in 1871. On July 4, 1876, the Catholic Total Abstinence Centennial Fountain was dedicated in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, featuring a marble statue of of Father Matthew. From the May 1887 edition of Catholic World: The saloon has fastened itself upon society as an ulcer living upon the life-blood of the people. The saloon, building…



