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?"
