Scott Martin is indeed accurate in noting that temperance material
focuses on violence against women.  In fact, the temperance movement
called attention to the problem, described it in great detail, and moved
many women into the women's rights movement.  Two articles of mine (part
of a much larger work) describe some of these points:
 
"Wife Torture: A Known Phenomenon in Nineteenth-Century America," JOURNAL
OF AMERICAN CULTURE, 10: 1987, and
 
"Alcohol and Wife Abuse in Male Temperance Literature," CANADIAN REVIEW
OF AMERICAN STUDIES, June 1995 (this is out, but I have yet to see a copy).
 
Jerome Nadelhaft
Professor of History
University of Maine