The elect did not include all Americans. Strong regarded most urban workers—immigrant, Catholic, potentially socialist—not as allies but as obstacles in the fight for reform, which Christian reformers already imagined as a worldwide battle. Willard and the WCTU had spread the temperance crusade abroad, where it merged with Protestant missionary efforts. Suffragists learned to frame the claim for women’s suffrage as springing not from citizenship but from whiteness and civilization. Like Willard, they often questioned the wisdom of having given the vote to black men and Catholic immigrants.
