60 Nebraskaland • January-February 2024
magine that you are in a bar in the early 1900s — a glass
of cold beer in your hand, a spittoon within easy spitting
distance on the hardwood fl oor, and a racy painting of
some unclothed beauty hanging on the wall.
You turn at the sound of a
woman's voice singing hymns,
and in walks a mature woman
in a long, black dress. Standing
nearly 6 feet tall, she wields
a hatchet and has fi re in her
spectacled eyes.
And then she starts smashing
the place up until she is tackled
and hauled away by police.
Starting in 1900, Carrie
Nation became a household
name for her fanatical (she
agreed with that word)
opposition to alcohol. The
55-year-old Kansan spent
much of early 1902 crusading
in Nebraska.
In March, some saloons in
Fullerton and Hastings locked
their doors as soon as Nation
arrived in their town. One
Hastings bar owner probably
wished he had done likewise
after Nation "grabbed a chunk
of ice from a dish of olives" and
"slammed it through" a "breezy
picture" she didn't like, in the words of the Lincoln Courier.
Days later, the mayor of Blair refused to let the Kansan
speak at the city opera house, saying, "We have enough
trouble of our own, without importing any more." But Nation
spoke at Boyd's Opera House
in Omaha, a city she called a
"Hell-hole of iniquity." Sipping
from a "pitcher of light-brown
Missouri River water," Nation
"shot ragged holes in the
social system, upset theology,
ripped politics up the back, and
with a well-primed charge of
verbal dynamite blew up the
government in Washington,"
according to the Omaha Bee.
"You business men here that
want saloons are nursing the
adder in your bosoms that will
sting you," she said. "You men
can vote it out, and you women
can smash it out."
The City of Lincoln,
meanwhile, was seriously
considering a local prohibition
ordinance, and Nation went
there to campaign for it. When
it failed in a close vote, she
blamed local resident William
Jennings Bryan — recent
presidential nominee and the
By David L. Bristow, History Nebraska
I
Saloon-Smashing
Carrie Nation in
Nebraska
Stickpin
engraved
with the
words,
"Carry
A. Nation
Hatchet."
Nation sold
these for a dime
as a fundraiser. She
gave this one to a
railroad station agent
at a telegraph offi ce in
Exeter, Nebraska.
HISTORY NEBRASKA, 10376-1
Carrie Nation in 1903. NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
