hachetation

If you know me at all, then you'll know this isn't because I'm a teetotaler. But when you think about an era where men had exclusive access to the best-paid jobs, where any money a women did earn legally belonged to her father or husband, when divorce was difficult to impossible, I at least begin to see how prohibition became a cause a lot of women could get behind. Few, I think, had quite the extraordinary style of Carrie Nation, March 11th's woman of the day. Using rocks (which she called "smashers") to break the bottles of alcohol bartenders had in stock, and eventually using axes to smash up the bars themselves, Nation was a kind of one-woman whirlwind (though sometimes accompanied by women singing hymns). She was an utterer of great lines (to bartenders: "Good morning, destroyer of men's souls") and all the more formidable for being active in an era which widely referred to women as the "gentler sex." Bars took to saying "All nations welcome except Carrie." I have a strange respect for the woman.