Mrs. Carrie Nation

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 6, 10 February 1909, Page 45

Mrs. Carrie Nation

THE KANSAS SALOON SMASHER

RS CARRIE NATION, who is fwß quite an old woman bow, did I I not lose much time after she I landed in England bringing herself prominently under the notice of the public—and the police. She started her campaign in Scotland, and—to use her own expression—was “fired” twice in one day from two of the largest public houses in Dundee. She was removed by force by publicans who failed to see the humour of her crusade. The publicans display placards bearing the words, “All nations welcome here except Carrie/' but she was undismayed by this opposition. “I saw a woman and a child in a saloon to-day,” she said to a pressman, “and, as straight as one woman can talk to another, I said: 'Straight out of it. Your place is at home.’ She slammed the door in my face. “At another saloon I saw a lot of children coming down the street. I said to them, showing them the bar: ' 1 hese are hell holes. If any one wants to go to hell, that is the hole to go into.’ “The youngsters took up the cry. It did mv heart good, I can tell you.” Next to liquor, Mrs Carrie Nation condemns tea-drinking, and she regrets that it is so common in Scotland. It may be classed with the morphine habit, she says. Dancing she bans whole-hcart-edlv. and if Scottish girls accept the attentions of young men who reek of tobacco smoke they are hard run for “beaux.” she declared. Mrs Nation met a clergyman in the street in Dundee smoking a cigarette. “Take that vile thing out of your mouth.” she exclaimed, but the minister passed on with a smile. The martyr’s crown persists in eluding her grasp. She ha’s waited in vain for the police to arrest her, and now she says the force is deficient in “hustle.” On her way from Dunfermline to Kircaldy. Mrs Nation had to wait at Thornton Junction. She improved the occasion by addressing the passengers on the evils of smoking, and terrified one man by telling him that if the Almighty had intended him to smoke he would have been built with his nose upside down to serve as a chimney. She also remarked that some smokers would continue in their evil ways until they reached the region of everlasting smoke. MRS. NATION’S.STORY OF HER LIFE. “ Your labour is never in vain in the Lord. “ Accept this book from one who loves you for your work. Like me, you are bearing the reproach that others may not. 1 hope to see you when 1 am in London, and give you a hearty congratulation. — Your loving home defender, Carry A. Nation ” With this autograph dedication the famous “salo-on smasher” forwarded a copy of her book, “ The Use and Need ot the Life of Carry A. Nation,” to Mrs. Pankhurst, tire suffragist, who was serving a sentence in Holloway Prison. The militant teetotalist and militant suffragist have much in common. Both believe intensely in their mission; both speak strong, “ unguarded ” language in their public utterances; both urge an appeal to the “gospel of force”; and both, to quote from Mrs. Nation’s work, have journeyed in the Black Maria and endured the physical agony of the prison cell. Mrs. Nation on love is interesting. “1 was a great lover,” she declares. “ 1 used to think a person never could love but once in their life, but 1 often now say I would not want a heart that could hold but one love. My native modesty,” she is referring to the days of her girlhood, “prevented me from ever dancing a round dance with a gentleman. I cannot think this hugging school compatible with a true woman.” Mrs. Eddy receives no sympathy from the teetotalist. This is what she says about Christian Science:—“lt is the presence of all lies and the absence of all truth.” A KISS. In a chapter devoted to the story of her marriages, Mrs. Nation relates how a

Dr- Gloyd astonished her one evening by kissing her. “ I felt so shocked," she says, “ and threw up my hands to my face, saying several times, ‘ I am ruined.’ ” She eventually married Dr. Gloyd, who became a confirmed inebriate. These are the Carryisms evolved from this experience:— “ Drinking men neglect their wives. “Tile drink habit destroys in men the appreciation of a home life. “ A woman loses love for a husband through his indifference. “ Drinking men are drugged and diseased men.” Equally unhappy was her life with Mr. Nation. “ I found out he deceived me in many things,” she declares- Here, again, the reader is overwhelmed by more Carry isms:—■ “ I hated lying because I loved the truth. “ I loved, therefore I hated.” “ Had I married a man 1 could have loved, God could never have used me.” Millionaires come in for the “ hatchet ” criticism. Here is what Mrs. Nation has to say about them: —■ " The time is coming when the millionaires will be despised of the people. “ There is a class of rich men who would now howl and weep with all their money, if they knew their fate. “The display of wealth is an evidence of a depraved nature. “ I wish for the power to make the rich take back seats.” Mrs. Nation began her “saloon smashing” career in Kansas. “I smashed five saloons with rocks before ever I took a hatchet,” she says. Nor were weapons difficult to find. On one occasion she threw a brick at a mirror. The glass remained unbroken, and she looked round for some other missile. "I saw a billiard ball,” she says, “picked it up. and made a hole in the mirror.” Then followed a crusade with a rod of iron and a stout cane, which ended in—• prison. Mrs. Nation’s description of her experiences in an American gaol is graphic: — “I tried to be brave, but the tears were running down my face. I took hold of the iron bars of my door and tried to shake them, and said, “You put me in here a cub, but I will gc out a roaring lion, and I will make all hell howl.” The origin of the notorious “hatchet" is curious.’ Mrs. Nation was speaking in Topeka, Kansas, when a man ran out of a “candy store,” and, handing her some little pewter hatehets, suggested she should sell them and pay costs and fines with the proceeds. “This gave me an idea,” says Mrs. Nation. “Since that time the little hatchets have been my faithful little defenders. *. . . They cause people to talk, to think, to act. God has blessed the mission of the hatchet.” The anger aud indignation which. Mrs. Nation aroused is indicated by an incident which occurred in Enterprise, Dickinson Country, Kansas. She “broke up a dive, and smashed up twelve cases of beer.” The proprietor thereupon held her, while a crowd of women “beat her with their fists, whipped her with a raw hide, pulled her hair, and kicked her into the gutter.” HATCHET AT WORK. Here is a description of the hatchet at work:—“I came to one dive. The bar-tender ran towards tno with a yell, wrenched my hatchet out of my hand, and shot off his pistol towards the ceiling. I got another hatchet from a woman companion. “I ran behind the bar, smashed the mirror and all the bottles under it; picked up the cash register; threw it down; then broke the faucets of the refrigerator; opened the door and cut the rubber tubes that conducted the beer. It be’ gan to fly all over the house. “I threw over the slot machine, breaking it up, and got from it a sharp piece of iron with which I opened the bungs of the beer kegs, and the faucets of the barrels, and then the beer flew in every direction, and I was completely saturated.” It was after this exploit, which resulted >n a fine of £2O and imprisonment,

that Mrs. Nation founded a newspaper, "The Smasher's Mail”—but it only lived to see thirteen issues. "It sufficed, however,” says Mrs. Nation, “to prove that 1 was not. as many people declared, insane.” The book, as already indicated, abounds with characteristic sayings—• aimed chiefly, of course, at alcohol and tobaeeo. Here are some quotations: — "Preparation for war is inhuman. “Angels wept; and devils yelled with diabolical glee. "It ought to be a erime to manufacture or give away tobacco in any form. "A man has no more "right to poison the air 1 breathe than the water 1 drink. “Clears are like snakes—they are ail bad. "If it is manly to smoke, why isn’t it womanly to smoke? “It is my place to meddle with the devil’s business. “The nation is what its homes are.”