The Temperance Archive"Not merely a political debate, temperance permeated American culture through tracts, dramas, songs, and illustrations that presented stories of liquor-induced fall and redemption, not to mention the temperance conventions and parades that took place in many cities and towns. Barnum, a staunch temperance advocate, promoted the cause of sobriety at the American Museum in a variety of ways. Beginning in 1849, he drew large audiences to the Lecture Room with The Drunkard, or The Fallen Saved, a pro-temperance moral melodrama. Barnum also served free ice water on every floor of the Museum, employed plainclothes detectives to eject patrons "whose actions indicated loose habits," and forced male Lecture Room audience members who spent intermission at a nearby saloon (a long-standing theatrical tradition) to pay a second admission fee when they returned for the second act."