Oh! that the W. C. T. U. would do as they did, what a reform would take place.  I love the organization of mothers.  I love their holy impulses but I am heart-sick at their conventionality, their red tape.  This organization could put out of existence every drinking hell in the United States if they would demand it and use the power they have even without the ballot.  I intend to help the women of the Kansas W. C. T. U., but not one that has any respect for either Republican or Democratic parties shall ever be called on to aid me in my work, women who are not wise enough to know that the rum voting parties are traitors, can be nothing but a hindrance to the interests of mothers.  One said to me, “You will cause many women to leave the organization.”  I said:  “Good riddance to bad rubbish, the quicker they get out the better.”  As Nehemiah, that grand prohibitionist, said:  “What have you to do to build the walls of our God.”

CHAPTER XVI.

IN NEBRASKA.—­WHAT I DID WITH THE FIRST MONEY I GAVE TO THE LORD.—­ AT CONEY ISLAND.—­WHAT I SAID OF MR. MCKINLEY.—­IN CALIFORNIA.  “CRIBS” AT LOS ANGELES.—­ARREST IN SAN FRANCISCO.—­CONDEMNED BY SOME MINISTERS.—­WHISKEY AND TOBACCO ADVERTISEMENTS,

I told my manager James E. Furlong, to give W. C. T. U. and Prohibitionists the preference, and not to charge them as much.  I tried to get into churches, but only a few would open to me.  I had many inducements financially to go on the stage but I refused to do so for sometime.  Like a little child I have had to sit alone, creep and walk.  I paid my fines by monthly installments and in December, of 1902, I settled with the court at Topeka for the “Malicious destruction of property,” when, in fact, it was the “Destruction of malicious property.”

In the spring of 1902, I went to Nebraska, under the management of Mrs. M. A. S. Monegan.  This woman had also made dates for J. G. Woolley and other prominent prohibition lecturers.  She was a thorough prohibitionist and by conversing with her I for the first time found the remedy for the licensed saloon.  This is “National Prohibition”.

I held a debate in Lincoln with Bixbee, of the Journal, a rank republican, who used only ridicule and satire, for he had no argument of course.  I lectured for and with the “Red Ribbon Alliance” there who were so faithfully working and praying for the abolition of the saloon.  The spring election in Lincoln was for prohibition but lost by sixty votes.  William Jennings Bryan lives there and if he, the man who poses as a friend of the people, had opened his mouth against the saloon he could have made this great cause more than the sixty votes.  From that time forth I knew Bryan was for Bryan and what Bryan could get for Bryan.