Come Home, Father

Background

Henry Clay Work devoted himself to the temperance movement and promoted Prohibitionist beliefs through his songs. The movement gained traction after the Civil War, with groups like the Women's Christian Temperance Union calling for public education on alcohol's dangers. Reform literature, often in simple, sentimental lyrics, was a popular medium. Temperance reform music began gaining momentum in the 1830s, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union was established in the 1870s.

Analysis

The song presents a young girl named Mary pleading for her father, who is drinking away his pay in a bar, to come home as her brother lies dying. Work assigns the drunkard's children two typical roles: one pleading and the other dying. The lyrics are overtly sentimental yet realistic in addressing a pressing social issue, and Work received hundreds of appreciative letters from social reformers.

Legacy

Published by Root & Cady in 1864, "Come Home, Father" likely debuted earlier, in 1858, within the Broadway prohibitionist play Ten Nights in a Barroom. It found success in the United Kingdom as well. According to The New Grove Dictionary, it stands as the most renowned temperance song. In an 1879 profile, George Birdseye hailed it as the template for all subsequent temperance pieces, many of which were clear imitations.

Ewing ranked it among the two finest examples of temperance verse. An 1898 editorial by Florine Thayer McCray praised its emotional pull, calling it more persuasive than any sermon. The Women's Christian Temperance Union made it their official theme, and it became a staple at temperance gatherings. After the war, Work produced other temperance songs like "Lillie of the Snowstorm" (1866), "King Bibler's Army" (1877), and "Shadows on the Floor" (1877), but none achieved the lasting fame of "Come Home, Father."