In the early twentieth century, Hunt County saw major changes in public life as temperance and Progressive ideas challenged the normal use of alcohol, Carrie Nation visited East Texas Normal College in Commerce on March 30, 1905, and spoke against alcohol and tobacco, World War I shifted local opinion from neutrality to patriotism, encouraged young men to enlist or register for the draft, led women in Commerce and Greenville to organize Red Cross Auxiliary chapters, and brought major Liberty Bond contributions from the county, while the influenza pandemic reached Hunt County in October 1918 and prompted closures of public gatherings, and the 1920s brought a statewide rat-eradication campaign in which Hunt County schools paid children a penny for each rat tail turned in. Henrietta "Etta" Booth Mayo, wife of East Texas Normal College founder William L. Mayo, supported the university as a music teacher, helped bring Carrie Nation to Commerce, worked in the Women's Christian Temperance Movement, advocated women's suffrage, led a suffragist parade in Commerce on May 1, 1915, and in 1916 walked seventy-five miles to Dallas with her children and nine Boy Scouts in an act of civil disobedience. Campbell Franklin "Cam" Dowell, born in Lone Oak in 1912, became a banker and rancher, served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Philippines, later led several Dallas-area banks, and was appointed by Governor Dolph Briscoe to the Board of Regents of East Texas State University.