The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation

by Carry Amelia Nation

The home was given me, and the divorce and a small piece of property in Medicine Lodge to Mr. Nation. I shortly after sold this home for $800. It was part of the payment for "Home for Drunkards' Wives" in Kansas City. It was as I expected, a means used by my enemies to hinder me in my work. I was blamed for the divorce. It was said, "I broke up a home." That if I was in a good work I would not do these things. And while delivering my lectures, it was often called out; "Why don't you go back to your husband? No wonder he got a divorce from you," and all such sayings. But I learned to expect and was prepared for such treatment.

We hear, "A woman's place is at home." That is true, but what and where is home. Not the walls of a house. Not furniture, food or clothes. Home is where the heart is, where our loved ones are. If my son is in a drinking place, my place is there. If my daughter, or the daughter of any one else, my family or any other family is in trouble, my place is there. That woman would be selfish or cowardly who would refuse to leave her home to relieve suffering or trouble. Jesus said, "Go out into the highways and hedges." He said this to women, as well as men. If the women of Galilee had not left their homes they would not have followed Jesus. If Phoebe had not left her home, she would not have gone on the business of the church to Jerusalem. We would have no woman missionaries—Women now, are forced to go out to save the homes.

D. L. Moody once said, and which I hardly understood at the time: "When a wife knew that the man that should be her husband was unfaithful and corrupt, she was as bad as he if she lived with him." I have thought much of the meaning of husband. He is one who is a man who provides and cares for his family, as much as it is in his power to do, but when he refuses and will not do this, he breaks his marriage vow and becomes his wife's enemy. A husband is not an enemy. This will place many women in the roll of living with men who are not their husbands, and this is so. I do not favor divorce, but it is better to separate, than bring up children of drunkards or licentious fathers. There is nothing which is making so much enmity between the sexes as intoxicating drink. This is the cause of so many divorces. Men who go into saloons generally visit houses of prostitution. The women they meet there have been deceived and lost their self respect, become discouraged because men have made them their victims through treachery and in turn these women revenge themselves by taking all means to drag these men down. Prostitutes do not like men; they often hate them. The man who goes there generally loses respect for the virtues of women, and from associating with bad women they judge other women to be vile. These men hate the very women they go to see. Married men who drink are bad husbands, for they deceive their wives, who soon find it out; and the husbands and wives cannot be happy. A woman leaves all others for one man and she wishes his society. In the evening the clubs and drinking places take up men's time when their families should have it. These things destroy love and confidence between husbands and wives. 'Tis not all men's fault, for there are some drinking women.

A man came to me just before I went on the stage at Newport, and said: "Carry Nation, step aside here, I must speak to you. I am in so much trouble. Give me some advice. My wife is at home drunk; she is that way most of the time. We have six children and they feel disgraced. What can I do? I am almost wild."

I asked: "Did you ever drink with your wife?"

He looked confused. I said: "Women do not usually go to saloons but you men bring it home and use it on the table and women are just as apt to catch the disease of alcoholism as men. This may be the way your wife learned to be a drunkard. Wives have been nursing their drunken husbands for years; now the chickens have come home to roost, and you are nursing your drunken wives."

Poor man! He, indeed, seemed distracted; and he is not alone, there are hundreds of cases.

I met a lovely creature on the train, who had been married a few months. Her husband was a lumber merchant in Chicago. She sat by me and told me her sad story. She had been a poor girl and dearly loved a man whose mother opposed the match and prevented the marriage. The young lumber merchant, left rich by the death of his father, proposed and she married him. In a month, the mother of the man she loved first, died and the obstacle was removed. In telling me this story I smelled liquor on her breath. She would say a few sentences and then say: "Oh, Carry Nation I am so miserable! If Charlie would only be true to me I would not grieve for the man I love, but Charlie drinks and he goes with other women, and leaves me alone. He gives me all the money I want. I have everything that money can buy; but, Oh! I almost hate these things! I had rather have a hut with someone to love me." She kept talking this way until it was enough to break my heart. She said: "Charlie will be in from the smoking car, and please Mrs. Nation speak to him. I want to be a good wife and I will do all I can to make him a good man. But he laughs at me when I talk to him, he never takes me in earnest. Go speak to him."

So I did. I found him to be a young man about twenty-three, with the marks of dissipation on his face. I said: "I have something to say to you privately. You have a beautiful young wife. If you wish to make her happy you can do so. There is one thing that will ruin the happiness of both. That is intoxicating drink. Did you know your wife is under the influence of some drug?" He said: "Oh, don't say a word to her about that, I am the cause of it. I drink and have persuaded her to, because she has a right to do what I do."

I told him of the fatal results and asked him to quit or it would be the ruin of both. Here were these two on the brink of ruin, so young, so attractive. I never shall forget the pathos of that woman's story. The yearning of that heart for love. Of course in her unhappiness she would turn to the benumbing fascination of the poisonous drug.