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What happens when a private drinking habit becomes a question of conscience, family peace, and the common good?
Select Temperance Tracts brings together the American Tract Society's moral appeals against strong drink. These short essays explore harm to the body, home, and purse. Their writers argue that alcohol weakens health, unsettles households, and takes money needed for food and rent. Plain argument meets urgent warning in their call for sobriety.
The collection also explores moderate drinking, conscience and faith, and the power of personal example. Within the Society's Protestant outlook, self-command is presented as a duty to God and neighbors. These tracts reveal how nineteenth-century temperance writers connect individual conduct with community life—and place their hope for a better society in choices made by ordinary people.
What you’ll discover
- Body, home, and purse Explore the writers' linked concerns about health, household peace, and money for daily needs.
- The disputed first step Consider the reformers' claim that danger begins with moderate use, not only excess.
- Conscience as a guide See how these Protestant appeals frame sobriety through faith, duty, and care for neighbors.
- The reach of example Trace the belief that one person's conduct can shape the choices of others.
- Reform in plain words Encounter short moral essays that bring warning and appeal into the same urgent argument.
Is it for you?
This is for readers curious about nineteenth century American reform, religious publishing and the roots of the temperance movement. If you want a modern medical account of alcohol, or a single connected argument, you may find it less suited.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Drink harms the body, home and purse
- Moderate drinking is called the first step
- Conscience and faith give strength to resist
- Example and community build a sober society
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Select Temperance Tracts
Religious and moral tracts argue against the harms of alcohol.
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Language: English
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 4
Drink harms the body, home and purse
Temperance writers of the period argued that strong drink brought ruin on three fronts at once. It weakened the health of the drinker, it broke up the peace of the household, and it drained the money a family needed for food and rent.
Tracts often made the point through short cases. A skilled workman begins with a glass after work, then spends his wages, then loses his place. His wife and children bear the cost. The pattern is meant to feel familiar to the reader, so that the warning lands close to home.
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The author
American Tract Society
American religious publisher
The American Tract Society is a Christian publishing organization, not a person. It was founded in New York City in 1825. It published and distributed religious tracts and books, including material on temperance. Its work included producing inexpensive publications for readers in the United States and supporting their distribution abroad.
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What is Select Temperance Tracts about?
It gathers short pamphlets from the American Tract Society that urge readers to avoid alcohol. They warn of its harm to health, family and money, and they appeal to conscience, faith and community action.
Who was the American Tract Society?
It was a Protestant publishing organization founded in New York in 1825. It produced inexpensive tracts and books on religion and moral life and distributed them widely across the United States.
What is the temperance movement?
It was a social and religious reform movement of the nineteenth century that sought to reduce or end the use of alcohol. It began with calls for moderation and grew into demands for total abstinence and legal bans.
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