USED A HATCHET.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 302, 21 December 1931, Page 5

USED A HATCHET.

Carrie Nation Smashed Many Saloons. CUSTOMERS FLED. (Special to the “ Star.”) NEW YORK, November 15. Carrie Nation, the militant Prohibitionist, who, between 1900 and 1910, gained international fame by her campaign to smash the saloon with a hatchet—will soon be honoured with a memorial. The citizens of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, her home town by adoption (she was born in Kentucky), have baiicjed together to preserve her house there as a museum devoted to her meThis is not the first such honour she has received. In 1924 a granite shaft was erected over her grave with the inscription, “ She Hath Done What She Could.” In Union Square, Wichita, Kansas, there stands a memorial fountain dedicated to her, and in the State Historical Society are preserved her portrait and one of her famous hatchets. Carrie Nation was fifty-four when she broke up her first saloon in 1900. Before that she had been an active member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; a zealot with ideas of her own about how the services should be conducted; a friend of the poor, whom she aided without stint by distributing food and clothing, thereby gaining for herself the name of “Mother” Nation. In her crusades against the saloons, which were already prohibited in Kansas but flourished despite the law, she had limited herself to scathing speeches. Then suddenly, in June, 1900, she received a “ call.” She hitched up her buggy, drove over to the town of Kiowa, and, armed with bricks, marched into the first saloon she reached. Singing hymns, as Cromwell’s Roundheads had done when marching into battle, she smashed the big mirror behind the bar with her first throw, and used the remaining bricks on the bottles, glasses, and fixtures. The customers fled in terror.

Her fame became nation-wide when she repeated these tactics in Wichita and other towns. She was frequently assailed and was arrested a score of times, but, far from being disturbed by the law, she enjoyed this “ martyrdom.” Soon she began a lecture campaign which took her to New York City in August, 1901. The saloons here named drinks after her and displayed signs saying, “All Nations Welcome but Carrie.”