The writers of the "History" further say, in regard to the death of their organization: "Henceforward women took no active part in temperance until the Ohio Crusade revived them all over the nation, and gathered the scattered forces into the Woman's National Christian Temperance Union, of which Frances E. Willard is President." This is a mistake, for women were very active in connection with Temperance societies of which men were officers, and in organizations of their own, before and after the W. C. T. U. was founded. The history of that great body furnishes another proof of the injurious effect of the Suffrage movement upon the cause of Temperance. In 1872 a political Temperance party was formed in Columbus, Ohio, which, four years later, at Cleveland, became the Prohibition Party. From the first, this party inserted a plank in its platform favoring universal suffrage, and mentioning especially the extension of suffrage to women. The W. C. T. U. was founded as a non-denominational and non- partisan body, and was divided and sub-divided into committees, each having charge of a distinct branch of philanthropic work, which was by no means confined solely to Temperance measures. This has given the body great working strength, and its efforts are well known. Everything except its Suffrage labor has had rich reward. I was present at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City (in 1886, I think), and witnessed with amazement the high-handed fashion in which an organization whose constitution forbade political coalition was handed over to the Prohibition Party, pledged to give aid and comfort. The division and bitter feeling that resulted were a serious injury to the cause of Temperance. In her contribution to the volume entitled "Woman's Work in America," Miss Willard says: "After ten years' experience, the women of this Crusade became convinced that until the people of this country divide at the ballot-box, on the foregoing [Temperance] issue, America can never be nationally delivered from the dram-shop. They therefore publicly announced their devotion to the Prohibition Party, and promised to lend it their influence, which, with the exception of a very small minority, they have since most sedulously done." Writing in "The Outlook" for June 27, 1896, Lady Henry Somerset says, in closing a sketch of Frances Willard: "The Temperance cause, in spite of the gigantic strides it has made of late years toward success, is still relegated to the shadowy land of unpopular and supposedly impracticable and visionary reform."