purity.
There was also the department of education, which was nearest to the heart of the leader. This department persuaded each state and territorial legislature to stipulate that some form of temperance instruction would be part of the curriculum in every public school.
There was a department of health and hygiene, presided over by Mrs. J. H. Kellogg of the Battle Creek, Michigan, Kelloggs.
There was a department of labor, and a department of Sabbath observance.
There was a department of mothers’ problems, which probably led to the development of the Parent-Teacher Association.
There were forty departments, all working full time.
Miss Willard was a genius—there is no other word for it—at organization. And she kept things organized, kept them going.
“Do everything!”
There were some who were frightened by the rapid expansion of the WCTU and who tried, feebly, to have it checked, but Frances Willard easily rode over such attempts. There were many, too, who realized that no other woman could possibly hold such a vast organization together and who asked themselves what they would do when Frances Willard died. It was the problem a dictatorship always creates.
She did die, eventually, on February 18, 1898, in New York City. Toward the end she had dabbled in phrenology, spiritualism, and what she called “astro biology,” which was simply astrology, but in the convention hall and the committee room she showed no sign of weakness. She retained her grip on her beloved Woman’s Christian Temperance Union to the last moment.
Immediately, she became a saint. In private conversation as well as from the platform she was called, frequently and without a trace of sarcasm, “Saint Frances.” For many years at the annual WCTU convention an empty chair was placed on the platform, and nobody brushed against it.
The WCTU sold relics. For twenty-five cents one could buy the Willard bookmark, with her last words—“How beautiful to be with God”—written in gold. The Willard pin came in various metals, ranging in price from twenty-five to seventy-five cents.
There was also a Frances Willard souvenir spoon.
Kansas, Alabama, New Mexico, and Tennessee declared her birthday, September 28, a school holiday.
More than three hundred schools, churches, community centers, hospitals, and parks were named or renamed for her.
Besides writing about twenty thousand letters a year, Miss Willard had managed to write many books, too, most of them during trips. These were reissued in fancy and expensive editions, for the WCTU, in addition to running a hospital and a lecture bureau, also ran a publishing house.
Books about Frances Willard were even more numerous. The most popular was a pamphlet, What Frances Willard Said. Her adoring secretary and her successor as well, Miss Anna Gordon, wrote The Beautiful Life of Frances Willard, which sold very well.
Frances Willard was the fifth woman to be admitted to the Hall of Fame, after Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Lyon, Maria Mitchell, and Emma Willard (no relation). She was the first woman to be admitted to the Statuary Hall in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., where, in the form of a heroic statue made of Carrara marble with a Vermont marble base, she represents the state of Illinois.
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