In joining the temperance movement, women did not so much challenge existing gender roles as they sought to protect the home. The social consequences of drunkenness and alcoholism bore heavily on women, even though relatively few of them drank. Drunken husbands did beat their wives, abuse their children, and neglect their homes. They not only spent their wages on drink, but they could spend those of their wives, since under law a wife had no claim on her husband’s earnings while he controlled hers.
