anization
will do for you will be to show you how utterly powerless you are
to put down the liquor traffic. You never can talk down or sing
down or pray down an institution which is voted into existence. You
never will be able to lessen this evil until you have votes.
Frederick Douglass used to tell how, when he was a Maryland slave
and a good Methodist, he would go into the farthest corner of the
tobacco field and pray God to bring him liberty; but God never
answered his prayers until he prayed with his heels. And so, dear
friends, He never will answer yours for the suppression of the
liquor traffic until you are able to pray with your ballots.[80]

Miss Anthony's sentiments on this question are further expressed in a
letter to her brother Daniel R., editor Leavenworth Times:

I like the Times' article on the women's whiskey war. Emerson says,
"God answers only such prayers as men themselves answer." After
ignorant and helpless mothers have transmitted to their children
the drunkard's appetite, God can not answer their prayers to
prevent them from gratifying it. But this crusade will educate the
women who engage in it to use the one and only means of regulating
or prohibiting the traffic in liquor--that of the ballot. As soon
as they find this crusade experiment a failure, which they
certainly will, because all spasmodic, sensational religious
efforts are transient and fleeting, they will realize the enduring
strength and usefulness of the franchise. However little that is
permanent may come of this movement, it is good in itself because
anything is better for women than tame submission to the evils
around them; and when they find kind words, entreaties and tears
avail nothing, they will surely try the virtue of stones (votes) to
bring down the great demon that desolates their homes.

An entry in the journal made soon afterward says: "I dropped into the
Industrial Congress today and was invited to speak. I told the men that
the degraded labor of women made them quite as heavy a millstone round
the necks of working-men as is the Heathen Chinese." And a few days
later: "Dr. Dio Lewis called today, and I went to hear him speak this
evening. Same old story--men make and break the laws, and women by love
and persuasion must soften their hearts to abandon their wickedness.
Never a hint that women should have anything to