Carry A. Nation

A Betting Woman?

In 1904 a story circulated that Carry had placed a wager with anti-cigarette crusader Lucy Page Gaston over whether President Theodore Roosevelt smoked. The story usually indicated that Carry lost the wager.

Was Carry right about Roosevelt being a smoker? Probably not. Roosevelt, who suffered from asthma, apparently smoked a cigar as a child when it was believed doing so would help his condition. But that appears to be his only experience with tobacco.

Here is Carry's version of the wager from her autobiography, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation:

In the spring of 1904, I was in the office of Miss Lucy Gaston, the National President of the Anti-Cigarette League. I saw on her walls of her room Mr. Roosevelt's picture. I said, "My dear Miss Lucy, why do you have that picture in here? Don't you know he is a cigarette smoker?" She said, she did not know it. I said: "Let me tear that up." Did this man who is at the head of affairs in this nation ever say a word against this vice? Although he is sworn to protect from just such. This brave, good woman, whose heart, soul and body is dedicated to saving the young men of our land did not seem to recognize the fact that Democrats and Republicans (so-called) were the head and front of all the corruption we have. At last, I said: "If you will write to Mr. Roosevelt and get his statement that he does not, nor ever did smoke cigarettes I will give you $50 for your work, she said she would. She wrote to the President, got no response from him, but Mr. Loeb, his secretary wrote that the President, did not and had never used tobacco in any form. She sent this to me, of course I was not to be caught with such chaff. I wrote her so, telling her of the time when Mr. McKinley wished to deny the fact, that he rented his property in Canton, Ohio, for saloon purposes, his minister denied this, but the Chicago Voice proved that he did. I suppose Mr. Roosevelt got his minister to write what he dared not. I wrote her that old birds were not easily fooled with chaff, also stating, that if she would get a statement that Mr. Roosevelt was not a beer drinker, I would give her another $50.00. Of course she could not do this, but the Republican Press published all over the country that Miss Gaston got the evidence and I paid the $50.00, but not one word of this was true.

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