The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation

Yale is supposed to be a christian college, but to give boys these poisons by consent of the college authorities is nothing more or less than starting them on the road to hell! Please give this matter your earnest attention and see if you can not stamp this serpent out." "Dear Mrs. Nation:--Although it pains me deeply, I feel it my duty to inform you that even after your soul-stirring address of warning and reproof, the Devil still grins at Yale Dining Hall. The enclosed menus tells the story. The hateful practice of serving intoxicating liquors has not ceased. Capt. Smoke holds open wide the gates of hell. Oh, this is terrible! Satan loves to shoot at brightest marks. "Here are eight hundred shining young souls, the cream of the nation's manhood, on the broad road which leadeth to destruction. God help us. Assist us, Mrs. Nation; aid us; pray for us. Let the world know of this awful condition and rouse the public indignation until it has ceased. Publicity will do it. Let the world know that Yale is being made a training school for Drunkards, and Capt. Smoke will never dare to serve liquors again. A LONE BUT TRUE FRIEND OF THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE." I spoke to the students at the entrance of their dining hall. They spoke up and told me that "Champagne" was served on their ham three times a week. They gave me the menus, and on them were: "Claret Wine Punch", "Cherry Wine Sauce", "Apple Dumpling and Brandy Sauce," "Roast Ham and Champagne Sauce," and "Wine jelly". While I was talking to the young men, many were smoking cigarettes in the entrance of the dining hall, which was contrary to rules, but Capt. Smoke only laughed at this practice of vice. There should be an investigation and that quick. Students are crying for it. Faculties should demand of students a high standard. At Yale the students are pleading for a moral faculty. I then went to the Y. M. C. A., and found on the first floor, billiard tables, cigars and cigarettes; they also have a "smoking room." A poor mother wrote to a friend of mine in New Heaven to please use her influence to save the boys. That her boy wrote her that the brandy was so strong on the food that it made his head dizzy. One poor boy said that he did not wish such food but that he had no other to eat. Students are crying out against this outrage. While I was there a "Smoker" was advertised to be held by the law students. A student told me that a beer wagon was engaged by the Seniors of Sheffield School of Yale for their wrestling match procession. These Seniors upon application can get a tin cup and help themselves to this rotten slop that will destroy their willpower and make them slaves of the drink habit. What can be expected of Freshmen if Seniors set such an example? This will show what it leads to: The demoralization of the students is talked of universally. They have what is called Freshman "Games", which are as follows: Upon appointed evenings they will meet at a select hotel (saloon). They take their places at the table, then, each one at the table, "sets them up" to all the rest. If there are twelve at the table each one gets twelve drinks. You can imagine the "games" after such a debauch. I saw some young men there from Kansas and I asked them: "Why do you come to Yale?" I would never send a boy of mine to Yale. If I had a hundred I would send them to a state, that made such things a crime. Here is a college that has received donations of millions lately, that young men may be prepared and fitted for stations of moral, mental and physical eminence and it is a school of vice to a great extent. The distillers and brewers dominate the republican party and they are the controlling party at Yale and will desolate and enslave our darling boys. I went to see the president of Yale, Professor Hadley, and I asked him about these things. He said he thought the intoxicants were "fruit juices". I spoke of the smoking. He said he used to think it was wrong but when he went to Germany he saw they smoked there. He was taught it was wrong in America but when he saw it in Germany he thought better of the vice and is now teaching it to our boys. People ought to demand another faculty or refuse to patronize such a school. While I was at Harvard I saw Professors smoking cigarettes. Parents should demand that the teachers in these colleges and schools should be free from the practice of the vices of drinking intoxicating liquors and the use of tobacco. I hope we will have some generous hearted man who will donate to build a college in Kansas with the capacity of Yale. What a shame to have professors in our schools aping the vices of foreigners. These same professors are the followers of Huxley and Herbert Spencer, who did far more to make the world ignorant than wise. Huxley saw in man only the elements of a weed. Herbert Spencer would have destroyed all family life. Such men as these degrade thought and see only the animal. "For after that in the wisdom of man, the world by wisdom knew not. Yet it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to confound the wise" (as a fool would determine wisdom). The great controversy between Yale and Harvard now, is, which shall excel in brute force, and foot-ball seems to be the test. Colleges were founded for the purpose of educating the young, on moral, intellectual, and spiritual lines. The test of these is oratory, debate, intellectual contests. It used to be conceded, that the mind made the man, now the forces of the mule and ox are preferred. Taft, of the noted 'Taft' Cigar has position of lecturer, and the inference is, there will be more vile cigars smoked than ever, under such patronage. Oh, mothers and fathers! Rise in protest against these outrages, slaughter, bloody anarchy, and treason. CHAPTER XVIII. PROHIBITION OR ABOLITION.--WHAT IT MEANS.--THE FREE METHODISTS AND OTHER MINISTERS ENDORSE THE WORK.--A CATHOLIC PRIEST'S ENDORSEMENT.-- MODERN DEBORAH.--JOHN P. ST. JOHN. God is a politician; so is the devil. God's politics are to protect and defend mankind, bringing to them the highest good and finally heaven. The devil's politics are to deceive, degrade and to make miserable, finally ending in hell. The Bible fully explains this. The two kinds of seed started out from Abel and Cain, then Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob. There are but these two kinds of people. God's crowd and the Devil's crowd. The first law given and broken in Eden was a prohibition law. God said: "Thou shalt not." The devil tempted and persuaded the first pair to disobey. He did it by deceiving the woman. The fact of redemption now is to bring them back to the law of God. What is law? God says that sin is a transgression of law. Blackstone says: "Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong." Law is one, as truth is one. It is not possible to make a bad law. If it is bad, it is not a law. We have bad statutes. Law is always right. Nothing is wrong that is legal, and wrong may be licensed, but never legalized. I find lawyers who do not understand this. I often hear the term "legalized saloon". When I was passing the building of the supreme court in New York City, on Madison Avenue, I read an inscription on one of the marble statues representing a judge with a book on either side of the door: "Every law not based on wisdom is a menace to the state." This is a false, misleading sentence for all law is wisdom. It might have read: "All statutes not based on wisdom, are a menace to the state." Then at the base of the statue of a soldier, on the other side of the entrance, was this statement: "We do not use force until good laws are defied." Which ought to read: "We do not use force until laws are defied." Such ideas as these are corrupting courts, and biasing the public mind, and the injury is more than apparent to the observer. If law is not a standard, what standard can we have? We must have one. We repeat again: "Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong." Any statute that does this is lawful. Any that does not, is anarchy. God is truly the author of law. The theocratic form of government was perfect and the only perfect government that ever existed, we need no other statutes than those that God gave. He said: "We must not kill a bird sitting on her young; must not see our enemy's beast fall under his burden and not help him rise." And the refinement of mercy was taught in the statute that said: "You must not kill the mother and lamb in one day; must not seethe a kid in its mother's milk; must not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." The use, and the only use, of law is to prevent and punish for sin. All law has a penalty for those who violate it. Governments that are the greatest blessing to its citizens are those who can prohibit, or abolish the most sin or crime. Crime is not prevented by toleration, but by prohibition. Nine of the ten commandments are prohibitive and begin with: "Thou shalt not." The success of life, the formation of character, is in proportion to the courage one has to say to one's ownself: "Thou shalt not." It is not the man or woman who has no temptation to sin, who has the strong character, but the man or woman who has the desire but will not yield to sin. Some people ask: "Why did God make the Devil?" The Devil is God's fire. Like an alchemist God is purifying souls. The Devil is an agent in salvation. "Every Devil in hell is harnessed up to push every saint into heaven." Those who are counted worthy to enter into the delights of that heavenly land are those who have had their "fiery trials," tried and made white. Man would have no credit and could not hear: "Good and faithful servant;" if he had no temptations to do otherwise, man would be but a mere machine. God has never used for his work, any but those who prohibit evil. The pilgrim fathers were forced from the mother country because this principle of prohibition burned in their hearts. When England would oppose the colonies, it was prohibition that smashed the tea, over in Boston harbor. George Washington was put at the head of the colonial armies that prohibited, by much bloodshed and suffering, the oppression from the mother country. Our Civil War was the result of the principle to abolish or prohibit the slavery of the colored race. Now we have a worse slavery than England threatened us with or the poor blacks suffered at the hands of their taskmasters. This slavery of soul and body, is one that leads to eternal death. The forces of God are with the abolition, or prohibition of wrong. The forces of darkness and death are with those who are willing to be led captive by the Devil at his will, and to lead others under this grievous yoke of those who are trying to perpetuate the cause of evil. There are men who desire to be loyal, who are voting for license or in license parties, because they do not stop to think. The people are generally right on all questions. They go wrong more for lack of thought, than for lack of heart. Edmund Burke, the greatest English stateman, said: "The people have as good government as they deserve." Because the people have always had the power, and in America especially, they are sovereign. The president and all others in office, are but servants of the people. In another chapter I have given what the supreme court says about the impossibility of licensing wrong by law, or according to law. Hear the language of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created free and equal, that they are endowed by their creator, with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their