Part 18 (1/2)
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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.ses 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 const.i.tutional 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 const.i.tutional 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, and as a result the joints have been suppressed on all sides. Our legislature, just adjourned, gave us the most drastic legislation against the liquor business in her history, and with tremendous majorities. The result of the movement started by this brave woman, who is roundly condemned in the East, is best summed up in the words of a Kansas wholesale liquor dealer, who said recently, ”A few weeks ago we had a very fine trade in Kansas, s.h.i.+pping out many car-loads of liquor, but just now they are coming back as fast as they went out.” Our city, Topeka, has had considerable notoriety all over the country as the center of the Nation temperance crusade, and because of the presence of Mrs.
Nation. However, we think your readers will quite agree with us when we say their eastern cities could well afford such notoriety if thereby they could be rid of their debauching and terribly corrupting saloons.-- Pastor, Topeka, Kansas.
TRIBUTE TO MRS. NATION.--CORRESPONDENT OF THE STATE JOURNAL GROWS
ELOQUENT ABOUT HER.
A correspondent of the State Journal who is evidently an admirer of Mrs. Nation has written the following tribute the famous smasher of joints:
”Carry A. Nation, prophetess of G.o.d and prohibition, came suddenly like the furious driving Jehu. Her cyclonic joint smas.h.i.+ng shook the rum power of the United States from apex to foundation-stone.
The great American G.o.d Bacchus turned pale on his throne. Gambrinus and his thirty thousand white-ap.r.o.ned priests of debauchery and licentiousness trembled in every saloon and bagnio throughout the union.
No whirlwind, tornado or simoon of the desert ever startled a nation as her volcanic career. From ocean to ocean, from Canada to Texas.
she faced a storm of relentless criticism and bitter sarcasm from political curs, clerical hirelings and editorial henchmen of the murderous liquor traffic such as no mortal ever faced before. A star of hope to the one hundred thousand despairing drunkards, already in the death-grasp of this licensed Moloch of perdition; volunteer liberator of the hundreds of thousands of hapless slaves of this greater ”curse of curses” and more than ”sum of all villainies;” precursor of emanc.i.p.ation of the millions of sad-faced women and children whose lives are blasted and crushed beneath the wheels of this cruel Car of juggernaut; betrayed by false friends, imprisoned by the courts, and manacled; no martyr of old ever ran the gauntlet of hotter persecution, yet like Banquo's Ghost and the Man of Galilee she will not down. Denounce her as you may, she is such an one as heroines and world-wide characters are made of.
Every one will want a copy of her ”Life,” forthcoming publication.
The boys and girls will find the Old Kentucky Home plantation scenes, interesting as Uncle Tom's Cabin and well worth the price of the book.
The pictures and portraits of the noted Smasher of joints are more than worth the nominal sum. To every citizen, student and philanthropist the legal citations for reference are worth it. No temperance person or prohibitionist can afford to be without a copy.--RAY RAND.
WORDS PROPHETIC.
The liquor traffic will never see another hour of peace in this country. Mrs. Carrie Nation has sounded the alarm. There's a growing hatred of the saloon. The speaker has sworn hostility to an inst.i.tution that feeds on the bodies and souls of men. I will pay my taxes like an honest man and not saddle by my vote, the burden on the tempted and weak, who will pay them over the bar and throw his wife and children on the charity of the public.
What shall the harvest be?