Alcoholism was a particularly serious problem for working class families, which were usually in a tight financial situation a drunk or alcoholic father spelled disaster for the rest of the family. Temperance leagues began to spring up at the end of the nineteenth century to fight this scourge. Unfortunately, however, these societies had moralistic objectives rather than reformist ones. Instead of dealing with the causes of alcoholism, unemployment, low wages and social inequality these groups tried to change individual behaviour, believing that it was the immoral conduct of the alcoholic which caused him to be poor, not the reverse. This illustration is an example of the propaganda used by temperance leagues.
