"Smash, Ladies, Smash!"
In an era where women were not allowed to vote, Prohibition was influenced greatly by women objecting against alcohol, the majority were housewives troubled by drunk husbands. Most women argued that liquor led a man away from his family and increased abuse against spouses and children. It was out of these women that powerful organizations started to appear, such as the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
Carrie Nation"You have put me in here a cub, but I will come out roaring like a lion, and I will make all hell howl!"
-Carrie Nation Carrie Nation
"A poor bewildered, half-crazed crone She died, forgotten and alone; And some there were who stopped to scoff When the old dame was taken off, While the busy world went wheeling on Scarce knowing even she was gone. Of course she may have done some good, But then, most any woman could Who had the muscle and a hatchet, With Irish wit as keen to match it; Yet smashing windows so erratic Soon proved her just a plain fanatic. A sort of Jezebel crusader, Like Don Quixote nothing stayed her, - No wonder people shied eggs at her, She seemed to like to watch 'em splatter, And stood like wild things when at bay So sort of fearless, old and gray. And then to die so, after all, Insane and in a hospital, Good God, suppose she had been sane And we who had the rotten brain, I hate to stand on Judgement day Beside that woman old and gray. I'd hate to face the those flashing eyes That scanned a state's hypocrisies And woke a commonwealth to shame with crashing axe and words of flame Until men dare to carry out The laws they made and lied about." -Willard Wattles (A poet and author during Prohibition) |
Frances E. Willard"An English princess looked so sad one night, at a royal banquet, that a courtier asked her why. She answered that at the bottom of every goblet that she drained she saw the word 'eternity.' That word is at the bottom of all our goblets. We eat, we drink, we die, and after death, the judgment; and the judgment, we believe, will be in strict accord with the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or whether they be evil."
-Frances E. Willard, 1891 The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.
-Frances Willard |