I always have been puzzled about the change in attitude toward alcoholic drink that took place in the nineteenth century, why the different response to ageold problems. Generally historians explain the change by reference to industrial- ization or modernization and, confusingly, explain temperance in religious terms too. A complication is that the nineteenth century was a time of growing secularization which meant that religiosity itself had an altered meaning. New denominations such as Universalism were strongly committed to temperance. All this leads to a question: how much was the nineteenth-century temperance movement a condemnation of alcoholic drink because it undermined human reason? David Fahey (Miami Univ., Ohio) [log in to unmask]