This smashing aroused the people of the county to this outrage and these dive-keepers were arrested, although we did not ask the prosecuting attorney to get out a warrant, or sheriff to make an arrest.  Neither did we take the case before any justice of the peace in Kiowa or Medicine Lodge, for they belong to the republican party and would prevent the prosecution.  The cases were taken out in the country several miles from Kiowa before Moses E. Wright, a Free Methodist and a justice of the peace of Moore township.

The men were found guilty, and for the first time in the history of Barber County, all dives were closed.  Of course it took two or three months to accomplish this and not a word was said about suing me for slander, until after the dives were closed.  Then I began to hear that Sam Griffin was going to sue me for slander, because I said he took bribes.  The papers were served on me, but I was not at all alarmed, for I thought it would give me an opportunity to bring out the facts of the case.  I knew little about the tricks of lawyers, and the unfair rulings of judges.

I will here speak of the attitude of some of the W. C. T. U. concerning the smashing.  Most of this grand body of grand women endorsed me from the first.  A few weeks after the Kiowa raid, I held a convention in Medicine Lodge.  I got letters from various W. C. T. U. workers of the state that they would hold my convention for me.  I said:  “No, I will hold my own convention.”

Up to this time, no one had ever offered to hold my convention, and I fully understood, although I did not say anything, that the W. C. T. U. did not want it to go out that they endorsed me in my work at Kiowa.  The state president came to my home the first day of the convention.  I believe this was done, thinking I would ask her to preside at the meeting, or convention.  I was glad to see her and asked her to conduct a parliamentary drill.  She came to me privately and asked me to state to the convention that the W. C. T. U. knew nothing about the smashing at Kiowa and was not responsible for this act of mine.  I did so, saying the “honor of smashing the saloons at Kiowa would have to be ascribed to myself alone, as the W. C. T. U. did not wish any of it.  So far as Sister Hutchinson, who is, and has been the president for some time, is concerned, I believe her to be a conscientious woman, and whose heart is in the right place.  She and I have been the best of friends and love each other, and she has often defended me and spoken well of my work.  But I think the W. C. T. U. would be much more effective under her management, if she had understood that Stanley, the republican governor, wished to handicap her in her prohibition work when he appointed her husband as physician in the reformatory at Hutchinson, Kansas.  Be it said to the credit of this christian physician he never used alcohol in his practice.  And perhaps other bearings have prevented her from seeing that the republican pressure has injured our work more than anything else in Kansas.  Many of the wives of these political wire-pullers are prominent in the Union.  A W. C. T. U. must of necessity be a prohibitionist, for her pledge is a prohibition pledge, not a temperance one.