[4] At the peak of its growth, around 1916, the national organization had chapters in forty-five states, and the District of Columbia, and a membership of approximately 2.5 million people.
In general the organization drew its initial support from intellectual elites, with no discernible presence of groups such as farmers, craftsmen, or factory workers.
The Anti-Saloon League and other dry organizations recognized the unique opportunity presented to them by the anti-German sentiment, and mobilized to attack the vulnerable position of native German brewers in American society.
[16] During the first decade of the twentieth century the Cincinnati German-American community began a campaign to counter the rapid rise in prohibition sentiment.
In the view of local Germans, the issue was a simple matter of freedom, one of particular importance to immigrants who had left behind an oppressive homeland.
An October 1910 publication of the Deutsche Schutzen-Gesellschaft of Covington noted that the government received approximately $80,000,000 in taxes from beer sales the year before.
[19] A later organization known as the German American Citizens League of the United States (Deutschamerikanischer Bürgerbund der Vereinigten Staaten) considered itself a successor to the NGAA, and shared many of the same goals.
Like the NGAA, the League promoted the German language, literature, traditions, music and character, and sought to "provide for the adequate representation of the German-American element in the public life of the United States."