Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Carrying a Nation into Prohibition

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Welcome to the first episode in our new series, From Hatchets to Hoods: The Mayhem of a Dry America! We’re going to begin our series a number of years before the iconic 18th Amendment went into effect, with a growing movement born of domestic and religious fervor, and the women who were gutsy enough to face social problems head on… a hatchet in hand. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Give to the Winds Thy Fears sung by Brianne Flanagin Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome to the first episode in our new series, From Hatchets to Hoods, The Mayhem of Dry America. And I cannot wait to talk to you about the origins of prohibition and how it ties into the civil and women's rights movements and politics. We're going to learn about a few key players you've probably never heard of, and how temperance and prohibition have connections to the Quaker community, Coca-Cola, and even the Ku Klux Klan. We'll talk about Walter White, not the guy who started the Meth Empire and Breaking Bad. Some shockingly scandalous things that were

happening in Warren Harding's White House, and of course, Al Capone and the iconic speakeasy culture of the 1920s. We begin with today's episode about religious fervor and the women who were gutsy enough to face social problems head-on, a hatchet in hand. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Carrie Moore was born in 1846 in Kentucky. She was devoted to her father, but never really felt connected to her mother, who spent most of her days struggling with her mental health. When Carrie was 19, a young doctor came to their home to rent a room. Dr. Charles Gloyd was smart

and tall and dashing. He was jovial, spoke several languages, and had recently opened a small school nearby, teaching there while he decided where to set up his medical practice. And I mean, if you are a 19-year-old, Carrie, you are going to swoon. The couple courted by leaving little notes for each other inside volumes of Shakespeare in her father's library. As their romance progressed, Carrie began to sneak Charles little gifts, and she was head over heels. Here was a man who was intellectually exciting, and he was not intimidated by her six-foot-tall frame. After two years of secretly courting each other, they set a wedding date. However, on the day of the wedding in 1867, Charles Gloyd showed up late to the ceremony. And when he did finally make his

appearance, he was very, very drunk. So let's back up for a moment because I said something important. Carrie and Charles had courted secretly for two years. Why secretly? Because Carrie's parents objected to their romance. They saw what a lovesick Carrie couldn't. That Charles Gloyd was an alcoholic and they did not want her to marry him. But Carrie and Charles persisted, and so after the wedding, in which uninebriated Charles slurred his vows, Carrie got a first-hand education on what alcohol addiction was doing to her new husband. The newlyweds moved in with Charles's mother, and while Carrie began to set up a home for the three of them, Charles kept his face firmly stuck in the rum bottle. He would sometimes be gone for days at a time, coming back drunk and abusive. When she spoke about him in her autobiography, Carrie said,

I did not find Dr. Gloyd to be the lover I expected. He was never home, out drinking every night. I loved him, and he loved the rum. The increasingly drunk doctor began to lose patience, and the meager savings they had dried up. Carrie was without proper clothing, living in a home that was crumbling around her, and food for the household was scarce. And then Carrie discovered that she was pregnant. She left Charles and returned to her parents' home. Every single day, she wrote to Charles, asking him to please take the temperance pledge.

Charles wrote back and begged her to come home, telling her that he couldn't quit drinking without her by his side. Carrie was heartbroken, but refused to do so until he signed the pledge. Charles would sometimes stand outside of her parents' house and scream, if you don't come back to me, I'll be dead soon. Carrie named her daughter Charlene in honor of Charles. But within six months of Charlene's birth, Charles Gloyd was dead from alcoholism. And after only two years of marriage, Carrie was a mother and a widow. mother and a widow.

In the history of the United States, over 12,000 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed. 12,000! But to date, only 27 of those 12,000 have been adopted. And of those 27, only one has been both enacted and then later repealed. Prohibition. It's actually very difficult to make an amendment to the Constitution. The founders of

our country created it that way by design. They did not want people being flip-floppers on the Constitution. They didn't want you to get a bee in your bonnet and be able to add something crazy one day and then just cross it out the next day. That's not what they wanted. Amending the Constitution was intended to take a lot of work. In order to make an amendment, two-thirds of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the Senate have to support it. And then three-quarters of the states have to ratify it. There is another, even more difficult way. Two thirds of the states can call for an Article 5 convention. And then after the convention, three quarters of the states can ratify any amendment that

passes the convention. But we've never done that before. Because it's hard enough to get like a majority of your family to agree on something like, where do you want to go for dinner tonight? Imagine trying to get the majority of politicians in this country today to agree on how to amend the law of the land. So with such overwhelming odds of bringing a proposed amendment to fruition, how on earth did we get one approved for essentially the eradication of something that has almost always

been present in human history? Alcohol? As with most things, it was a slow and steady process. It was a slow and steady process. By the start of the 19th century, there were over 2,000 distilleries in the United States producing 2 million gallons of whiskey per year. Whiskey specifically, because we had a corn surplus, which made it cheaper to produce because fermenting corn was done domestically and didn't need to be imported like sugar cane or molasses. Which is to say that Americans didn't drink other kinds of alcohol because they did. In America in 1790, most people over the age of 15 consumed an average of five gallons of distilled spirits, a gallon of wine, and 34 gallons of beer

or cider annually. Each person did that every year. That is more than a gallon a week. Can you imagine the average 16-year-old like, this is my gallon of liquor for the week. That's a lot, y'all, okay? That is a lot. And by 1830, Americans hit their alcohol consumption peak and drank an average of over seven gallons of distilled liquor per person each year. So to put that in perspective, So to put that in perspective, today, the average American consumes about two gallons a year. People were literally more than three times as drunken as they are today. Taverns became the center of American social life, and they played a prominent role as the main public spaces where men gathered to talk about the news and organize movements and play cards, pick up their mail, and while they're doing all those things, they can have a drink or two or five. But notice that I said that taverns were the main public

spaces where men would gather. That's right, women were not allowed to visit the taverns. They could work in taverns, and they often did if they were of a lower class without means to support themselves, but they were rarely patrons. Occasionally, a tavern would allow women usually through a separate entrance, and sometimes with an entirely separate area for the women. But mostly, bars were reserved for men. And that social rule continued well into the 1960s. Yes, you heard me. The 1960s. Bars were usually considered, you know, like too rough for women and their reputations. too rough for women and their reputations, and they were not allowed to enter. But being barred from the bars didn't stop women from being affected by the drinking that was happening in them. Men who drank a lot began to develop health problems, for starters, and violence that began

in the taverns was brought into the home. Domestic violence became a huge problem. Wives were already living under the laws of coverture, which meant that they had no rights apart from their husbands. They couldn't own anything or claim anything, including their children and the clothes on their backs and their own bodies. Men could legally beat their wives as long as they stopped short of killing them. The problems for women went beyond the increase in domestic abuse. Drinking men habitually spent all of their wages at the taverns, and familial poverty grew to alarming levels. So in 1826, the American Temperance Society formed to

convince the public that all of this alcohol consumption led to what they called morality problems. It was an umbrella under which they included all sorts of things like domestic violence or failing to work and provide for your wife and children. And the leaders of the American Temperance Society, who were mostly women and religious leaders, said that these morality problems were destroying more than just individual families. They were wreaking havoc on communities and the country as a whole. The American Temperance Society's mission was for men to lower or temper the amount of alcohol they consumed. State and local networks of temperance societies quickly organized and began to convince men to sign abstinence pledges.

By 1835, just nine years after the ATS began, over 2 million men had signed temperance pledges to abstain from liquor. I can't really give you numbers on how many of those 2 million men followed through with their pledges. Nobody was collecting that data. But we do know that by the 1840s, drinking had dropped to half of what it had been in the 1820s. Half, which sounds like amazing progress. But it wasn't enough to eliminate the morality problems the American temperance society fought against. Domestic violence continued to occur at alarming rates. And for many, excessive drinking and alcohol addiction was not cured by taking a pledge. At the time,

people understood that it was possible to be addicted to alcohol, but they didn't understand science and the nature of addiction like we do today. They thought of it as a moral failing and a bad choice, rather than a chemical dependence that required more than willpower to overcome. Many people who championed temperance thought they could reason or shame people out of their drinking habits. This moral reform movement claimed that it was disrespectful to both God and man to be a heavy drinker, and they wanted people to change their behavior through choice and not the law. At the forefront of this reform movement was the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the WCTU, which officially began in 1874, in part because of a woman named Eliza Jane Thompson. Eliza Jane was born and raised in a little town of Hillsboro,

Ohio. As the daughter of Ohio Governor Alan Trimble, and later the wife of a respected judge, Eliza Jane lived a relatively comfortable life, with one notable exception. She lost her oldest son, Alan, to alcoholism. Doses of alcohol, by the way, had long been prescribed by physicians for various medical ailments, and this was how Alan's addiction began. In mourning, Eliza attended a local lecture on temperance by the famed Dr. D.O. Lewis, and his message gave her a spark of inspiration and an outlet for her sorrow. In his talk, Dr. Lewis encouraged the town's wives and mothers to protest all of this inebriation. to protest all of this inebriation. Eliza Jane's husband called it utter tomfoolery,

but she followed back saying, I venture to remind you that the men had been in the tomfoolery business a long time and suggest that it might be God's will that women should now take part. She wasted no time organizing, for literally the next night, on Christmas Eve of 1873, she and nearly 200 other women attended the local First Presbyterian Church. When the service ended, Eliza Jane led them in her favorite hymn, Give to the Winds Thy Fears. As they walked together down the street to the drugstore business of William Smith and asked this licensed physician to sign a pledge that promised to never again fulfill a prescription for alcohol. If to thou it's thy fears, Hope and beyond is made, God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,

God shall lift up thy head. Two other businessmen were present with William Smith, and they agreed to stop selling alcohol as well. From there, the women gathered in front of a saloon, blocking the entrance, to pray. Their fervor, their large numbers, and their commitment in the cold temperatures on Christmas Eve attracted a good amount of attention, and their movement quickly spread all over the state of Ohio. The Women's Crusade, as it became known, went from town to town, praying and singing in front of the saloons. They didn't yell or raise a fuss, but their presence held power. The New York Times ran a profile on the movement, noting that the spirit of love was the keynote of this movement.

Ladies said there were those engaged in the sale of liquors who had good hearts in them, and they could be reached and persuaded to abandon the traffic of it all. The women have no fear about entering the saloons and praying for them. After one protest, a woman named Eliza Hackett wrote to a friend and said, it's easy enough to conquer a man if you only know how. I wish you could see me talking to some of these saloon men that I would have never spoken to before. I employ my sweetest accents. I exhaust all the arguments I am possessed of. I look into their eyes and grow pathetic. I shed tears and I joke with them, but all in terrible earnest. And they surrender. But while the spirit of the protests were peaceful, trouble brewed regularly. In large cities like Dayton, there was rowdy

pushback to their protests. The New York Times reported that a large turbulent rabble followed them from place to place, swearing crowds of beer drinkers pressed into the saloons and drank as fast as they could, loudly mocking the praying women with blasphemy. Fire companies in Cincinnati sprayed the women with freezing water. Bartenders pretended to give them warmth and shelter indoors, but would instead dump buckets of beer over their heads and push them back out into the snow. They were even once threatened with cannon fire, until one woman climbed on top of the cannon and led her fellow protesters in a new and louder song until the jeering crowd just gave up and left. The movement began to grow in other states as well.

In California, the San Francisco Saloon Keeper Society threw rocks at the praying women while they huddled together on their knees. Despite the pushback, the ladies who participated in the Women's Crusade in the winter of 1873 and 1874 held 911 protests in 31 states and territories, protests that led to the closing of 1,300 liquor cellars. It was a baptism of power and liberty for these women. They had proved to themselves and to society that their actions could make a difference. A commentator remarked that it can scarcely be possible that these women can again settle back into the old ruts and betake themselves once more to hemming flounces, as if the issue of life depended on the amount of stitches they

sewed into each garment, they can hardly ever persuade themselves or others that they are content to let the men attend to the politics of the country while they play pretty poly. But the hard work of civil protest that had pulled the women away from their homes and families took its toll on them, and they eventually returned to their domestic lives and duties. Gradually, as their protests lessened, saloons reopened, and the men continued to drink. So the Women's Crusade evolved into the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the WCTU. The WCTU recognized that peaceful protesting and the signing of pledges wasn't going to get the job done. So the organization's leadership began to make plans to create a national prohibition through governmental legislation. But some women in the movement decided to take action

in a different, more hands-on approach. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends, and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's Steve Carell in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The office and our friendship with brand new guests

and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments so join us for brand new office ladies 6.0 episodes every wednesday plus on mondays we are taking a second drink you can revisit all the office ladies rewatch episodes every monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode well we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. When we last checked in on the young Carrie Moore, her husband had drank himself to death. With no income and both a child and a mother-in-law to support, Carrie earned her teaching certificate and taught for a few years.

But she felt that getting married again would eliminate the stress of living off her meager salary. Later in her life, Carrie wrote that she prayed one night saying, My Lord, you see the situation. I cannot take care of mother and Charlene. I want you to help me. I have no one picked out, but I want you to select the one that you think is best. A few days later, as she was walking down the street, she met a man who was nearly 20 years older. His name was David Nation. She said, I felt a thrill through my whole body, and I instantly knew that this was the one God had chosen for me. David and Carrie were married within two months. To make friends and connect with the community in Medicine Lodge, Kansas,

where the family settled, Carrie joined the local chapter of the WCTU. Although she had remarried, she still ached for her deceased first husband and grew comforted by the thought of doing something positive with the tragedy of his death. But Carrie was not the demure type. She was aggressive and fervent in her beliefs, and she did not pull any punches. It was her calling to champion godliness and temperance, she believed. And so she was in it to win it 100%. She would accost people in the street, getting in their faces and asked them, do you love God? It was said that she got so bold as to rip cigars from men's mouths as they smoked. Her aggressive tactics often got her kicked out of churches. But Carrie was not virtue signaling or calling out others while not doing

the work herself. She was as charitable as she was brazen. And she regularly helped residents of her town who lived in poverty by giving them lodging or food or connecting them with work. She held Bible studies in her living room and kept up her involvement with the WCTU. And when her second husband, David, changed professions and studied to be a preacher, she supported him wholeheartedly, although she was known to heckle him from the front row if she didn't agree with his sermons. It had to be really delightful to be heckled by one's own spouse. All in all, I mean, nobody really knew what to think of Carrie. She publicly berated men who drank and called them low-life sinners

and then turned around and gave the coat off her back to someone in need. Her reputation was one of a fearsome woman. She was someone you definitely did not want to cross. The formidable, literally and figuratively, Cary Nation really began to make a difference after 1881. The state of Kansas had adopted prohibition, which meant that the sale of liquor was illegal, but the ban was not enforced. Cary began to give lectures about the dangers of drinking and hung around the saloons greeting the barkeepers by saying things like, good morning, destroyer of men's souls, or hello, Mr. Creator of widows and orphans. She was savage, truly. Which I mean, like, day, the next time you need an insult,

try destroyer of men's souls. Just pull that out of your pocket. Lay that one on the table. Nobody will know what hit them. And she also preached against other vices that she found disagreeable, including relying on foreign goods, smoking tobacco, and wearing corsets. Carrie appointed herself as a liaison between the WCTU and various jails because she was convinced that every person behind bars was there because of alcohol. She became the jail evangelist and preached temperance to literally a captive audience. There was nowhere for them to go. And though what may have seemed like sheer force of will to the residents of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, Carrie managed to make the small town completely dry. No one wanted to cross her. Instead, they started drinking in the nearby town of Kiowa. At one point, Carrie got really into performance

art. She wandered through the streets wearing a burlap sack with ashes sprinkled on her head and preached that it was what everyone would become if they kept drinking. She'd say, a woman is stripped of everything by saloons. Her husband is torn from her. She is robbed of her sons, her home, her food, her virtue. Truly, the saloon makes a woman the bearer of all things. This might be a good time to remind you that Carrie was six feet tall. As a fellow tall human, I would like to stress that she truly had to have been a sight, right? All six feet of her women at the time were quite small. People of the past were much smaller than people of today. And so here she is, what people thought of as a giant walking down the street with a burlap sack filled with ashes on her head. And if you

think Carrie's tactics are starting to get a little kooky, buckle up. She became even more of a spectacle when she picked up a weapon. After a night of prayer, Carrie claimed God's voice spoke to her and told her to go to Kiowa and start smashing. The next day after David left for work, Carrie wrapped up bricks and rocks to look like packages, loaded them into her wagon, and set off for the town of Kiowa. Her first stop was a business called The Refreshment Stand, owned by John Dobson. She entered, looked at Mr. Dobson, and said, get out of the way. I don't want to strike you, but I am going to break this place up. And with that, she began singing hymns and smashed two pieces, the establishment's glasses, beer bottles, bar fixtures, and mirrors.

And once she had destroyed everything, she looked at the gobsmacked Mr. Dobson and said, I have finished. God be with you. And she walked out the door. She made her way through the town and continued to smash up every liquor establishment she saw, claiming that she was empowered by God. Crowds formed to watch her. And if you're wondering why no one tried to stop her, remember that the sale of alcohol was technically illegal in Kansas. No one had any leverage to prosecute her without also incriminating the bars and taverns. When word of what Carrie had done got back to the WCTU, they were happy with the results, but not exactly pleased with her methods. Carrie told them, there was nothing crooked about what I did. I collected the rocks, drove straight to Kiowa, threw them as straight as I could, and didn't hurt anyone.

I did not make a single crooked step in my smashing. Carrie herself felt empowered to go on to bigger and better things. It was the year 1900, a new century, and she was in her mid-50s. She felt confident that she was living out her life's purpose. So she set her sights on the famous Cary House Hotel in Wichita. The Cary House Hotel was a famous and ritzy establishment with a 50-foot-long cherry wood bar. The decanters were cut crystal, and the huge mirror behind the bar had been imported from Venice and was considered one of the finest European pieces in America.

But the true showstopper at the Cary House Hotel was a life-size mural by John Noble called Cleopatra at the Roman Bath. And as its title implies, it featured mostly nude women. Cary, armed with rocks, a hard wooden cane, and an iron rod, entered the hotel with the same force she had in every other drinking establishment in Kansas, and her first target was the Cleopatra painting. She went on to break up the Venetian mirror and the chandelier. She demolished the crystal decanters and ruined the woodwork. She did thousands of dollars worth of damage in the year 1900. And it was the straw that broke the camel's back. By the end of the day, Carrie found herself in jail charged with malicious destruction

of property. Her witty reply to the charge was, I think you mean to say destruction of malicious property. The charges were eventually dropped, and when Carrie returned home to her husband of over 20 years, he didn't shake his head and call her crazy. No, he told her that next time she should use a hatchet because it would do more damage. She told him, that is the smartest thing you have ever said in our whole marriage. So Carrie would go on to use a hatchet to smash bars and cut beer lines all over Kansas. But she always made sure that bar workers and customers were out of the way and that nobody got hurt. And each time she was arrested for defacing property, she always replied, I am defacing nothing. I am destroying it.

In one of her 30 arrests, she yelled out, you have put me in here like a cub, but I will come out roaring like a lion and I will make all hell howl. Think of Carrie, whatever you will, but she knew how to make a statement, okay? When she had the opportunity to go before the Kansas State Legislature to both answer for her actions and lobby for the state's enforcement of prohibition, Carrie told them, If you don't do it, then the women of this state will do it. You refused me the vote, so I had to use AROC. Religious fervor continued to propel her mission. Before she entered bars, she was known to announce her arrival by loudly screaming Bible verses, and she often described herself as a growling bulldog at Jesus' feet. But bars were not her only target. Much of the alcohol that flowed came in

from pharmacies in the form of medicinal whiskey and wine. And Carrie attacked those establishments with the same energy she used at saloons because she saw sales of alcohol for any reason as an absolute evil. The WCTU, who was a little worried at this point about how the fervor of her actions would mar their reputation, confronted her. She ignored their requests for her to be reasonable by telling them, Ladies, you do not know how much joy you can have until you smash, smash, smash. until you smash, smash, smash. A sentiment we're maybe just beginning to understand in the 21st century, with the increasing popularity of things like rage rooms,

where you can pay money to smash stuff in a controlled environment. The WCTU distanced itself from Carrie, but her notoriety around the country grew. Women regularly mailed her hatchets and hammers with their letters of encouragement. She got financially savvy, capitalizing on her fame by charging for lectures, and she sold little hatchet pins that people could wear in solidarity. And through those sales, she could make up to $300 a week. That's like 10 grand in today's money. That is a lot. It's a lot. She even published a newsletter called Smasher's Mail and found a way to get onto the vaudeville stage as herself, putting on a show by wrecking everything with a hatchet and snapping back at pre-planned hecklers. The crowds went crazy for it. Bars everywhere hung signs in their

establishments that read, All Nations Welcome, except Carrie. To earn back some of the money lost in the destruction, the smart saloon owners began to sell fragments of what she had destroyed. Her popularity grew, and she was invited to speaking engagements all over the country, including to a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and a series of speeches in Atlantic City where she sold over 2,000 of her hatchet pins and met Susan B. Anthony. Although by all accounts, they did not hit it off. Carrie wrote that, An elite East Coast woman like Susan B. Anthony doesn't seem to understand the need for and the power in my hatchet. Even though her husband had long supported her crusade,

he eventually divorced her because she had been derelict of her domestic duties. He told reporters, I married this woman because I needed someone to run my house and she doesn't do it. Carrie responded by saying, David isn't a bad fellow, but he is too slow for me. Between 1900 and 1910, Carrie traveled all over the United States and even up through Canada, smashing, getting arrested, bailed out, giving lectures, with her most famous speech called, How I Smashed, Why I Smashed, and How You Can Smash. In January of 1911, when she was talking to an audience in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, she collapsed. She was hospitalized, and a few months later,

Carrie Nation passed away from heart failure at age 64. It was almost a decade before prohibition would become federal law, but the swing of her hatchet had undoubtedly cracked open a national fervor for temperance. Join us again over the next few weeks as we discuss the people and beliefs of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, and the players who brought prohibition to legality. We'll explore the people who enforced it and those who didn't, and the figures who found fame, fortune, and power through the 13 years that it was law. I'll see you again soon. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and

researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice. We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews, and sharing on social media. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon.