The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
for it. The foreigners in a few months, or a year, after landing, are
given the ballot, but the loving, true defenders of God, home and all the
best interests of humanity, are compelled to see their sons, husbands,
and fathers, murdered before their eyes, without the sign of a protest
from the government under which they live. The outrageous unfairness
of this is quite evident when we consider that the ballot is represented
and controlled by the worst element, when it should be by the best. The
women are more affected by oppression than man. She is the mother,
the rest are the children.
The mother would vote to save the boy.
The mother would do nothing to injure her boy.
The mother makes a good citizen of her son.
The saloon man votes to make drunkards.
The saloon man does all to injure.
The saloon man makes bad citizens.
The best voters are cast out for President, the vilest are put in, no
wonder we have a snob and brewers choice.
A boy's best friend is his mother. Boys and girls go wrong when
they do not obey their mothers. God has always used women as a mighty
factor in salvation. The promise was given her in the garden, after the
fall, that she should produce the Savior, who would give the deadly wound
to man's great enemy, the devil. It was the "seed of the woman," not the
seed of the man. Christ was born of a woman and the Holy Ghost.
No man has ever been greater in God's estimation than Abraham.
Yet when he and Sarah had a dispute and Abraham went to God to
decide the matter, God said: "In all that Sarah thy wife hath said unto
thee hearken unto her voice." Rebecca understood the will of God,
contrary to the will of Isaac. She carried out the plan of God. Jacob
sent for Rachel and Leah to consult with them before he left Laban, and
he took their advice. "Moses, Aaron and Miriam were chosen by God
to lead the people out of Egypt." The Bible so states it. Huldah and
Deborah were prophets. Rahab was the first convert in Canaan; she
and her family were all that was blessed in that cursed city of Jericho.
Esther saved the whole Jewish nation. A woman smashed the head of
the wicked Abimelech as did Jael the wife of Heber also. In the Psalms,
68:11, the original says: "The Lord gave the word.--Great was the army
of women who published it."
Jesus did his first miracle at the request of a woman, still he rebuked
her. He felt her powerful influence and would know no higher will except
his heavenly Father's. Christ defended woman, saying: "Why trouble
ye the woman, she hath wrought a work on me," hereby rebuking men
to interfere with any woman's work when it is good. Christ never
rebuked even the harlot. There was not a greater preacher than the
woman at the well that brought out the city of Samaria to see Jesus.
Philip had four daughters that prophesied. Women were the first disciples,
they followed Christ from Galilee. He chose the men, the women
chose Him. Pheobe was a deaconess of the church of Cenchrea. The
Bible records no act or word of woman against Christ. With
sufferings not one was caused by a woman. The poor prostitute bestowed
the most loving service when she wept at His feet, kissing them.
This gives some of the Bible women. There have been others in all
ages. One instance in the early history of Rome. There was a band of
men who first settled Rome. They wished to get wives for themselves
and this was the plan by which they got them.
The Romans made a great feast; had games; invited the Sabine
nation to come with their wives and daughters, which they did. In the
height of the footraces and archery, the Romans rushed in among their
invited guests and each snatched a woman. The Sabines returned and
prepared for war. The lines of battle were drawn. The stolen women
had a conference and decided to stop the war. They rushed in between
the Sabine men, their former husbands and fathers, and the Romans,
their last husbands, and forebade bloodshed by saying: "You will have
to kill each other over our dead bodies."
If those heathen women by their act could reconcile two nations, is
it not a rebuke to women in this Christian age for their cowardice in not
coming forward and demanding recognition in the matter of being a
go-between, for one class of men are arrayed against another..
A hundred thousand of our sons are being sent to drunkard's graves
and a drunkard's hell every year. By a bold stand for the right, to defend
our loved ones, let us rush between and stop this deadly strife, with the
same heroism of the women of Rome, "over our dead bodies." Women
will get the ballot in time, but it can be hastened only by women themselves.
It will be a great victory for mankind when women can veto the
curse of mankind. The mother impulse is stronger with women than any,
and when she can protect her offspring, she will make a greater effort
to do so than now. She will not then do as many now do, make her
body a manikin to hang the fashions of the day on. She will not then
display her form to attract the vulgar gaze of the world. She will not
place the corpses of cats or birds on her head. She will not wear mops
at the bottom of her dress to sweep up the filth of the earth. She will
not wear shoes that injure her as the heathen do. She will not put her
body in the vice of a corset, displacing the organs of her body, unfitting
her to be a mother, causing more than half the surgical operations in the
hospitals. She will then discuss character more than fashion. She will
be ashamed of her silly, giggling and meaningless conversation. God
said, "a man shall not wear that which pertains to a woman neither shall
a woman put on a mans garment for all that do such things are an
abomination unto God" women will then see the vulgarity and immodesty
and sin in dressing in male attire or in any other form of indecent
exposure of her person.
Young men often say to me: "Mrs. Nation, if I go to see young ladies
I can learn nothing from them. They are not interested in the subjects
that are improving to young men. They read only trash." Also
they say: "I cannot afford to marry. I cannot support a woman. Their
wants are so many.' Dress is a remnant of barbarism. The Indians
delight in different colors, the plumage of birds, the skins of animals,
even rattle-snakes. We retrograde to their level when we attract the
vulgar gaze to such vanities.
God said: "I will make man a HELPMATE," a partner, a helper, not a
hinderer to success in any way. What kind of mothers will this class
of women make? It is said that a mother does more to mold the mind
and heart of the child before it is born than can be done by any one from
its birth up to twelve years. God sent an angel to the mother of Samson;
told her "not to drink wine or strong drink" before the child was
born. Why? God wishes here to teach that mothers can injure their
children or entail on them vices before they are born.
Women will triumph in this battle. The devil knows it and has put
forth every effort to forestall this great reform. Look at the shop windows,
loaded with every style and fashion to attract the eyes of the passing
woman. Things that will be but a burden to her, will cause her to use
the earnings of her husband and the patrimony of her children and destroy
her mother influence and bring upon her just censure of her husband.
This is not the rule but the exception, for women, if they are not false,
spend more for the advancement of their families than themselves. There
never will be a club or other organization of women that will ever make
any regulation that will in any way injure the welfare of their offspring.
And the interests of men are safe in the keeping of good women.
Woman is also a power for evil. Solomon, the wisest, was not wise
enough to keep out of the toils of bad women; and Samson, the strongest,
was not strong enough to break away from the bad influence.
Oh! the degradation among women from intoxicating drinks! These
degrade women and she degrades men. "Rise up ye women who are
at ease in Zion!" The drinking places in the cities, especially in New York,
by every device get women in their dens that they may entice men.
Suffrage is not to give woman greater opportunities to be bad but to
strengthen their powers to resist evil and help men to do the same. To
cause her to think more of the inmates of her home than her raiment.
Woman's greatest sins and vices are those of vanity of appearance and
dress to attract or please their male companions. The prostitutes do
the same thing. Women should be taught to avoid the arts of such.
When I see a woman arrayed as I do these women in these homes of
sin I think, "There is sympathy."
CHAPTER XIII.
ECHOES OF THE HATCHET.
MRS. NATION AND THE SALOON.
It was a crisis in prohibition enforcement in Kansas. The first
smashing was like the opening of a battle. The crashing glass sent a
thrill through the community and resounded o'er the land a talisman of
destruction to the liquor traffic. It set everybody to talking, even the
public school children and students in all the higher institutions were
profoundly interested. The press and the pulpit broke their silence and from
all over the state came the echo. It was the firing of the signal guns.
The response came desultory, as the rattle of musketry in a skirmish,
then heavier from the bigger guns, as is the case in all reformatory work.
The criticisms and comments were varied, often amusing, reflecting the
agitation from far and near and everywhere.
A few months ago and the name of Mrs. Nation was unknown outside
of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, but within the limits of sixty days she
has achieved notoriety, if not fame, by her unique crusade against the
Kansas saloon. Many methods have been adopted during the last
two decades for the abatement of the liquor nuisance, but it remained
for an American woman, under the spur of bitter memories, and a sort
heart, to originate a method, at once so bold and radical as to sharply
focus public attention upon the utter villainy and lawlessness of the Kansas
saloon.
As was to be expected, Mrs. Nation has been subjected to unhandsome
treatment. A section of the press and the pulpit have joined
forces with the rum brigade in holding her up to ridicule. She has been
burlesqued, abused and belied; but when all the facts are soberly and fairly
weighed, it will be found that the scale of justice inclines, very positively,
toward this sorely tried woman and her hatchet. I do not pose
as Mrs. Nation's champion or apologist; she needs neither. History
that corrects the blunders of contemporary critics, will assign to her an
honored place long after the paltry penny-a-liner and ranting pulpiteer
are forgotten. It is a simple task for those to whom the curse of rum
has never come close home, to condemn the methods of a woman, who,
as a drunkard's wife and widow, drank to the dregs the bitter cup of woe.
Mrs. Nation saw her brilliant and handsome young husband slowly transformed
into a demon by rum. She saw him land in an early and dishonored
grave. She saw her baby cursed by the father's sin. She saw
her early hopes blighted, and poverty haunting her door. She saw a
favorite sister grieving her heart out over a fallen husband--fallen in
purse, in character, and station. With this black catalogue of domestic
griefs "deep printed on her heart," is there a man--surely there is no
woman!--who could blame Mrs. Nation, if she turned upon the guilty
gang who had blighted her life and smote them right and left. When
the infernal record of rum is recalled, it is not so surprising that there
is one Mrs. Nation, but that there is not one in every home in the United
States.
M. N. BUTLER.
A CONTRIBUTION TO HOME FOR DRUNKARD'S WIVES.