Background
Ida B.Wise Smith was born on July 3, 1871, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. She raised in Hamburg, Iowa.
Ida B.Wise Smith was born on July 3, 1871, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. She raised in Hamburg, Iowa.
Ida B. Wise graduated from the University of Nebraska.
Ida Smith began teaching Sunday school in the Hamburg Christian Church at the age of 12. She made it a point to devote a part of every class session to the subject of temperance and required all of her tiny students to sign the total abstinence pledge. At the age of 16, she began teaching school. Ida Smith first learned about the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1891 when she was required to take the temperance oath in order to become a Loyal Temperance Legion leader.
In 1916 Ida Smith wrote the Sheppard Bill, which imposed prohibition in the District of Columbia. She also launched an investigation into irregular voting practices that caused the defeat of the woman suffrage bill in the Iowa legislature. She first became prominent on the WCTU national level in 1923, when she became director of the national WCTU Christian Citizenship Department. 1925 she was elected Superintendent of Citizenship for the World Women’s Christian Temperance Union at its convention in Edinburgh. The next year she was elected Vice President at Large of the national WCTU.
In 1923 Ida Smith was ordained as a minister in the Disciples of Christ. She never served as a pastor for a congregation, but she became a spiritual and moral leadership within the denomination, promoting her favorite causes of temperance, child welfare, and women’s rights.
Upon her election in 1933 as president of the national WCTU, she came into her own as the most prominent temperance advocate on the national stage. It was a difficult time to be in the position, with the repeal of Prohibition looming (it would pass in 1934), and she met the challenge head-on. In a speech to the 1935 International Convention of Disciples of Christ, Ida Smith advocated "a program the broad aim of which is nothing less than the physical, mental, social, and spiritual liberation of the world from the strangling grip of exploitation by the beverage alcohol trade." As WCTU president, Ida Smith challenged the organization’s members to a five-year plan of increasing membership and raising $1 million to launch an extensive education program on the dangers of alcohol. This resulted in the most widespread campaign in WCTU history. Publicity condemning alcohol as a deadly narcotic carpeted the nation in the form of radio programs, magazine and newspaper articles, educational films, and billboards. Ida Smith was always a strong believer in the power of the ballot and the common sense of the voter. In her far-reaching program, citizenship courses were held in each of the 10,500 local WCTU chapters.
Ida Smith was a semi-vegetarian.
Quotes from others about the person
In 1927 Iowa Governor John Ham- mill named her the "Most Distinguished Woman in Iowa" for her contributions to child welfare, and she represented Iowa at the "Famous Women’s Luncheon" at the Woman’s World Fair in Chicago.
John Fletcher College in University Park, Iowa, awarded her an honorary LL.D. "for distinguished service to the state and meritorious service to humanity."
Ida Smith married twice. In 1889, she married James A. Wise. The couple had one son who lived to adulthood. After the death of her first husband in 1892, she married Malcolm Smith in 1912.