This convention was attended by women from eleven States and the District of Columbia and its outcome was the organization of the Non-Partisan National Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Although this movement has led the parent society and many of its auxilliaries to repudiate partisanship by official utterances and otherwise, the facts remain the same and the necessity for a new rallying center for the non-partisan temperance women of the Nation has been further emphasized in the experiences of the year.
Neither denominal creeds nor party preferences are a test of membership nor of loyalty in the new organization; total abstinence from all intoxicating beverages, fealty to gospel temperance work, and the payment of dues is the simple basis on which we unite for the extinction of the deadly enemy against which we are arrayed.Other State unions formed in at least 14 States and there was a district union in the District of Columbia.
The work of this organization was almost wholly educational, its efforts being to reach every class of the population, child, youth, and adult, with proven facts regarding the drink habit and traffic.
[4] At the Eighth Annual Convention of the Non-Partisan National Women's Christian Temperance Union, held in Columbus, Ohio, January 1898, the officers elected were: President, Annie Turner Wittenmyer; vice-president, Mrs. T. B. Walker; corresponding secretary, Ellen J. Phinney; recording secretary, Etta B. Hurford; treasurer, Mrs. H. M.