The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
Your smashing of saloon fixtures has been but a very little thing beside
the effect it had, and was bound to have, all over the country, and the
world, in building up backbone and courage and holy emulation in hundreds
of thousands of those reading of it. You are a credit to womankind
and humanity; you are infinitely more deserving of the gratitude
of the country than are the men at the head of our armies and fleets
in needless and demoralizing war. I want to send you $2.00 but have
some fears it may not reach you safely if I enclosed it herein. Praying
that the Lord may comfort and sustain you, I am yours very respectfully,
MARTIN MAHONY.
Trinadad, Colorado, Feb. 28, 1901.--Dear Carrie Nation:--Go on
save all you can. If it had not been for the drink and dance halls I
would not be at deaths door at the age of 28. I am thankful to have
enough life to repent, MINNIE MAY.
Mrs. Nation a Modern Deborah.. Thus Saluted by the Boston, W. C.
T. U., at Memorial Service in Honor of Francis Willard. Boston, Mass.--
Mrs. Carry Nation, the strenuous Kansas temperance reformer, was
hailed as a "modern Deborah" at a meeting of the local W. C. T. U.
yesterday afternoon in the vestry of Park Street Church. Not a dissenting
voice was heard from among the gathering of perhaps 200
women, but all over the room there was audible expressions of approval
of the Characterization, which was applied by Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, a
prominent member of the local branch of the union. Mrs. Hunt said
that Mrs. Nation is like Deborah of the Book of Judges, who led an
army of 10,000 men to victory against her country's enemies, when not
a man could be found to lead the enterprise. She aroused unmistakable
evidences of indorsement from her audience when she remarked that
the lady with the hatchet can truly say, "Until I arose, there was no
man to punish unpunished rebellion against the law." Mrs. Hunt concluded
by saying that thoughtful reformers are waiting with much interest
to see what will be the result of Mrs. Nation's cyclonic campaign.
A Son Wrecked By Liquor. "Some day the mothers of this country
will burn all the saloons and never a man in all the land will dare to
check them."--New York Journal.
DEAR MRS. NATION:-I am one of these mothers and would be willing
to help you to wreck or burn these saloons. I have a son who is a
wreck from the accursed stuff. Oh! 'tis a dark blot on this republic. Even
Mohammedans do better than we, a Christian people, for in all Turkey
one can not purchase strong drink. But it follows our flag wherever
it is planted. Let me know if I can help you. MRS. P. D. OLIVER.
Helen M. Gougar, Lafayette, Ind., writes: "I want to thank the
editor of the SMASHER'S MAIL for the good she has done by her unique
method of campaigning against the liquor traffic. Her message has gone
around the globe for everybody has heard of Carrie Nation and her
hatchet. By the way I think the funniest thing on the pages of history
is the scare that has caused men (God save the mark!) to bolt and bar
their doors and turn pale with fright, because one little, old enthusiastic
lady was headed their way!! Oh, ye braves!! You are almost as brave
as if you used your opportunities to protect your offspring from the
accursed liquor traffic. Let the smashing go on."
Far Away New Jersey. Camden, N. J.--"Mrs. Carry Nation: DEAR
SISTER:--When our New Jersey Prohibition Conference was held at
Trenton February 14, we sent a telegram to you endorsing your work
in Kansas, a prohibition State. It was signed by our former candidate
for governor, Rev. Thomas Landon, Rev. James Parker, a former state
chairman, and myself, who offered the resolution. Not having received
an acknowledgement, I do not know that you received it; if so, will you
kindly let me have a word from you to give to our State Convention
that will be held May 7? I wish New Jersey had either statutory or
constitutional prohibition, there would be some smashing done here,
too. Yours for the extermination of the liquor traffic, D. W. GARRIGUES."
What St. John thinks of my work in Kansas: John P. St. John,
who was governor of Kansas twice and once headed the National Prohibition
ticket as candidate for President of the United States, warmly
indorses the acts of Mrs. Nation in her crusade against the liquor traffic.
In a letter written to Judge W. J. Groo from Olathe, Kans., he likens
her crusade to that of John Brown against slavery. The letter was not
written for publication, but Judge Groo secured permission to give it
to the World. It says: "My dear Judge: It was almost like grasping
the hand of an old friend to receive your letter of the 31st ult. Mrs.
Nation is all right. She is engaged in the very laudable business of
abating what our statute declares to be a common nuisance. She is not
crazy, nor is she a crank, but she is, a sensible Christian woman and has
the respect of our best people. Her crusade is much like that of John
Brown's, and I hope and pray that it may terminate as disastrously to
the liquor traffic as John Brown's did to human slavery. How much
more in accord to Christianity it would be if our government would use
its soldiers to protect our own homes in our own country, instead of
sending them 8,000 miles away to destroy the homes of a people who
wanted to be our friends and whose only offense is their love of human
liberty, the same that actuated our Revolutionary fathers four generations
ago. Yes, the Leavenworth mob was an awful affair and a burning
shame and disgrace to Kansas. But it seems that under the reign of
William of Canton the burning of negroes at the stake and the killing
of Filippinos has become a very popular source of amusement. Very
truly your friend, JOHN P. ST. JOHN."
SOME OF THE RESULTS OF THE MRS. NATION TEMPERANCE CRUSADE IN KANSAS.
(By Rev. H. A. Ott, in Lutheran Observer.)
Since sending my last article on the Nation temperance crusade,
the writer has received a large number of letters thanking him for the
article, many of which asked for a second article giving the results of
the movement after it had spread over the State. This is the only
apology for my intruding a second time on your columns. From these
letters I find that the good people of the East do not and can not understand
the situation here, because the laws and public sentiment here are
so different from what they are in eastern States. It seems strange to
us to find many good people in the East indirectly supporting the saloon
by their wholesale condemnation of a woman who has had the courage,
nagged on by what she has suffered from the drink devil through a former
drunken husband, to go right into the drink dens and smash their bottles and
fixtures with a hatchet. The smashing of joints and joint fixtures
is at an end without doubt as far as Kansas is concerned, although
Mrs. Nation still believes that that method of suppression of a public
nuisance is the very best. However, the effect of that smashing has been
to marvelously stir up the officers of the law, our legislature, and
public sentiment all over the State. Mrs. Nation was let out of jail on
the bond signed by Rev. J. B. McAfee, an esteemed member of my
congregation here. Her bond now is a bond to keep the peace, and her
smashing is at an end.
The times were ripe for just such a movement. The people of Kansas,
through the indifference and neglect of her officers of the law, saw
the jointists getting bolder every day, having their fines paid by the
breweries and distilleries of other States, until they started in to give
the State "open" saloons, with all the brazen ways in the East, Then
Mrs. Nation came. Everything was ripe for a reaction against all this.
The coming of this woman was simply the lighting of the match which
set off a temperance pyrotechnic display which has lighted up the temperance
horizon all over the Union, and has created an unparalleled
degree of temperance sentiment and activity. The writer has had Mrs.
Nation at his table; has discussed with her her ideas; has differed
with her as to the final utility of the "hatchet" as a cure for the disease;
has one of the hundred of hatchets and axes sent her from all over the
country, this a fierce broad-axe sent her from Hartsel, Col., and which
he keeps as a souvenir; has investigated the charges as to her sanity,
finds her entirely sane, though possibly somewhat of a crank because
of her ultraradical methods in furthering reform against strong drink,
tobacco, and other social evils; yet he feels that the temperance cause,
despite all her faults, has much for which to thank Mrs. Nation. It
needed just such severe movements to arouse the easy-going masses
of our State, and awaken public sentiment along these lines, and Mrs.
Nation was the "John Brown" for the movement.
The movement in the city of Topeka, a city of 35,000 population,
brought out a meeting of 3,000 men who demanded that liquors no longer
be sold contrary to law, and that all joint fixtures be removed or they
would be smashed. This was promptly done. It was a grand sight to
see a dozen men carry down, from upstairs back rooms, long bars to
be stored or sent out of the city. What brought them down? Public
sentiment, the education resulting from twenty years of constitutional
prohibition. To-day the city of Topeka is absolutely free from joints,
as far as the writer can see. Of course, liquor can be bought secretly,
and always will be, but our boys do not know where it can be bought.
You might as well try to absolutely bind the devil as to absolutely bind
the liquor traffic in one State with all the brewers and distillers in a
dozen surrounding States seeking with determined and cunning methods
to extend their business within its borders.
It is like heaven to live in a city where there are no open saloons.
There are thousands of public school children here, now nearly of age,
who have never seen here a beer-wagon or a beer-keg! Recently a child
who had never been out of the State, on going to Kansas City, Mo.,
looked out of the car window and saw a sign on a building, and spelled,
"S-a-l-o-o-n, saloon," and then exclaimed, "Mamma, what is that?"
There is no better city in the world in which to bring up a family of
boys than Topeka, and many fine eastern families are coming here for
that very reason. It amuses me to see the comments made on Kansas
in the East. To some it is truly, "The wild and woolly West." One
pastor writes: "Is it safe for the next General Synod to go out there?"
Let me tell your readers just two or three things about Kansas. Her
educational exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair took the highest prize;
her per cent of illiteracy is the lowest of all the States of the Union;
her regiment, the 21st of Kansas, was the only regiment of the 65,000 men
at Chickamauga Park during the late war with Spain in which every
man could write his own name on the muster roll; and this same regiment
voted unanimously not to have the infamous "canteen" in their
regiment, and they would not have it. This is the result of the influence
of twenty years of constitutional prohibition. Topeka has far better
paved streets and more of them than most other cities of its size in the
United States, its sidewalks are all brick, and this without a dollar coming
from bleeding the saloon in the shape of a license! Prosperity without
the saloon is seen on every hand. True, some people stay away from
Kansas because of its stringent liquor laws. That, however, largely
accounts for the general intelligence here. Let them stay away. The
West is all right educationally and morally. Your readers may not
know it, but the State which has the largest per cent of her population
in her colleges is a western State.
The influence of the Nation crusade has spread all over our State,