The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. NationNation, Carry Amelia
History
The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
Nation, Carry Amelia
Nation, Carry Amelia, 1846-1911; Social reformers -- United States -- Biography; Temperance -- United States
America claims more civilization than any other nation on earth. In
the main this is so. But certainly she is not true to the motherhood, and
THIS is her peril.. Some of the best reigns have been those of queens.
All nations have had their women rulers, but the mothers of America
are not allowed to say who shall be the ones to help them make good
citizens of their own children, while their bitter foes prey upon their
offspring as cannibals. A widow with six sons has a little home. She
is taxed the same in proportion as the brewer, who carries on the human
butcher-shop that grinds up the six sons of the widow. He and his crowd
(republicans and democrats) have the ballot that smashes the poor
widow's boys and takes her substance to prosecute her boys after they
are made criminals, to pay for their arrest, to build a jail for them. Her
heart is broken, home is gone, and disgrace is hers. To accomplish this
she is rendered helpless by having no voice or ballot to protect herself.
God never made an animal that he did not give it some means of defense.
While I am writing this I am in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I find this a
city of eighty-two thousand. The PRESIDENT of the board of education is
P. W. Wren, who is president of the Connecticut Breweries and owner
of one of the largest wholesale whiskey houses in the state. This is as
consistent as if one were to start a ranch to raise chickens, ducks, pigs
and calves and then place a wolf to guard them from harm, The business
of the brewer is to sell beer. No animal but mankind will use this
rotten slop, for the others by instinct know it is poison. No man would
let his horses drink it, for they would be dangerous instead of being
useful. The only way to make the brewer's business profitable is to have
boys and girls as consumers. The brewer is not the worst to blame. It
is the voter. Mothers would never vote for such a man to be the public
guardian of the morals of their children. All liquor men, or liquor
license men, are opposed to woman's suffrage, for the reason that should
women vote, we would have prohibition or abolition of the vice. The
women saved prohibition in Topeka in the year 1903 by five hundred
majority, while it would have been lost by two hundred if men only had
voted. The contest was between the WET and DRY mayors. Where women
have the ballot, even in municipal affairs, no state has resubmitted or
brought back the saloon. God said: "It is not good for man to be alone.
I will make him a helpmate, a partner, a companion, a guardian." When
man elevates a woman he elevates himself. A degraded woman means
many degraded men. Free men must be the sons of free women. This
land cannot be the land of the free or home of the brave, until woman
gets her freedom and men are brave and just to award it to her. No
man can have the true impulse of liberty and want his mother to be a
slave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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