As a young man, John Brown, Hammond (d. 1938) believed in and used violent action to try to bring about alcohol prohibition in the United States. However, over time, he came to pursue non-violent actions through the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and other temperance groups.
Although prohibition was repealed in 1933, Hammond promoted a return to it for the rest of his life. Several months before his death in a nursing home he was working to organize "The Eighteenth Amendment Rescue Association" and believed that prohibition would eventually be re-imposed.