Oh! the degradation among women from intoxicating drinks!  These degrade women and she degrades men.  “Rise up ye women who are at ease in Zion!” The drinking places in the cities, especially in New York, by every device get women in their dens that they may entice men.

Suffrage is not to give woman greater opportunities to be bad but to strengthen their powers to resist evil and help men to do the same.  To cause her to think more of the inmates of her home than her raiment.  Woman’s greatest sins and vices are those of vanity of appearance and dress to attract or please their male companions.  The prostitutes do the same thing.  Women should be taught to avoid the arts of such.  When I see a woman arrayed as I do these women in these homes of sin I think, “There is sympathy.”

CHAPTER XIII.

ECHOES OF THE HATCHET.

Mrs. Nation and the saloon.

It was a crisis in prohibition enforcement in Kansas.  The first smashing was like the opening of a battle.  The crashing glass sent a thrill through the community and resounded o’er the land a talisman of destruction to the liquor traffic.  It set everybody to talking, even the public school children and students in all the higher institutions were profoundly interested.  The press and the pulpit broke their silence and from all over the state came the echo.  It was the firing of the signal guns.  The response came desultory, as the rattle of musketry in a skirmish, then heavier from the bigger guns, as is the case in all reformatory work.  The criticisms and comments were varied, often amusing, reflecting the agitation from far and near and everywhere.

A few months ago and the name of Mrs. Nation was unknown outside of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, but within the limits of sixty days she has achieved notoriety, if not fame, by her unique crusade against the Kansas saloon.  Many methods have been adopted during the last two decades for the abatement of the liquor nuisance, but it remained for an American woman, under the spur of bitter memories, and a sort heart, to originate a method, at once so bold and radical as to sharply focus public attention upon the utter villainy and lawlessness of the Kansas saloon.

As was to be expected, Mrs. Nation has been subjected to unhandsome treatment.  A section of the press and the pulpit have joined forces with the rum brigade in holding her up to ridicule.  She has been burlesqued, abused and belied; but when all the facts are soberly and fairly weighed, it will be found that the scale of justice inclines, very positively, toward this sorely tried woman and her hatchet.  I do not pose as Mrs. Nation’s champion or apologist; she needs neither.  History that corrects the blunders of contemporary critics, will assign to her an honored place long after the paltry penny-a-liner and ranting pulpiteer are forgotten.  It is a simple task