Chapter 13
Mrs. James Doran, whose husband had served as commissioner of Prohibition, assembled a recipe book for nonalcoholic drinks, including one from Mabel Willebrandt. Her recipe, Portia’s Punch, included one small bottle of red Concord “California pure concentrated grape juice,” two bottles of ginger ale, one thinly sliced lemon, and a half cup of chopped mint leaves.1 Willebrandt submitted the recipe just after accepting a job with Fruit Industries, representing California grape growers.2 Fruit Industries hoped that retaining the former assistant attorney general might improve an awkward relationship with the federal government, which suspected the company of playing both sides of the Prohibition fence. Many customers used the company’s concentrates to ferment wine, drawing the ire of “gangsters,” who had threatened to disrupt distribution of the juices. The company asked the government for protection of its salesmen and distributors, claiming it had no control over the actions of its customers.3 Willebrandt’s decision to work for Fruit Industries had been fueled by her desire to support California grape growers who had suffered under the weight of drought and the expanding economic depression, but it smacked of hypocrisy to many in the Prohibition camp.
The Anti-Saloon League offered Willebrandt an opportunity to explain her seemingly contradictory position—working for an alleged winemaker while claiming to support the Eighteenth Amendment—at a meeting attended by many prominent in the Prohibition camp. To sustained applause from the 450 in attendance, Willebrandt professed her support for Prohibition, saying that she saw “an irresistible upward reaching, a spiritual flame, that can’t be argued with” from the American people, among whom she saw “no weakening” of support for the Eighteenth Amendment.4 She did not mention the alleged illegal use of her client’s product to make drinkable, intoxicating beverages.
The congressional elections of 1930 brought a flip in the balance of power between wets and drys, opening the door to the day when wets would gain the majority necessary to approve legislation allowing state legislatures to reconsider the Eighteenth Amendment. In the House of Representatives, five states—Nebraska, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington—with long histories of favoring Prohibition elected candidates favoring repeal. The electorate in three states—Illinois, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island—stated their preference for repeal in referendums on the issue and Massachusetts overturned its state enforcement, or “Baby Volstead,” law, bringing the number of states refusing to enforce Prohibition to eight, representing 25 percent of the total U.S. population. In another eighteen states, the two major parties inserted repeal planks in their platforms. New York’s legislature had gone so far as to pass a resolution stating their desire for the U.S. Congress to call state conventions for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, the position advocated by the WONPR.
Pauline Sabin resigned from the Women’s National Republican Club in November 1930, apparently after the club’s membership voted to support the continuance of Prohibition. She had been much less active in the club’s business after her resignation as president in 1925, but, as she was a founding member, her influence and the cachet of her name were still considerable. The executive committee suggested that Henrietta Livermore, another founding member and the current president, contact Sabin to ask if she truly intended to resign from the club.5 Livermore must have convinced Sabin to remain a member, because three years later she submitted another letter of resignation.6 There was no changing her mind the second time.
At the WONPR’s second annual convention, held at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., in April 1931, representatives from thirty-one states met to hear of their organization’s progress and the plans going forward. Sabin characterized the “growth of the sentiment” for repeal as “so inspiring, so convincing, that it sounds more like a song of triumph than the plain and simple annals of an organization.” She charted that progress in surging membership, the increased number of avowed wets in Congress, the refusal of many states to expend funds on Prohibition enforcement, and the Wickersham Commission’s near “complete indictment of the workings of the Eighteenth Amendment.” Behind it all, Sabin saw the WONPR’s insistence that candidates state their views on Prohibition and directing its membership to vote only for those candidates supporting reform, regardless of party affiliation. Moving forward, the organization would enlist “an army of women so great that its backing will give courage to the most weak-kneed and hypocritical Congressman to vote as he drinks,” saying, “Women will prove to them that the ballots of an aroused people are irresistible in the achievement of a fundamental project.”7 The WONPR endorsed all efforts to bring repeal, but balked at any plans for modification of Prohibition that might “leave the matter still in the hands of Congress and therefore liable to be a football in successive political campaigns.” The organization wanted state legislatures to vote on repeal and they wanted the president and Congress to make that happen. The convention’s attendees voted unanimously to send its resolutions to the president, leaders of Congress, and leaders of each party.8
Sabin had a quiet summer in terms of WONPR activities. Perhaps she was simply recuperating from surgery she underwent for an ear infection two weeks after the convention; certainly she was developing strategies for the big push that would come in 1932.
On May 12, 1931, Roy Olmstead, dapper as ever in a gray suit and tan overcoat, stepped from the McNeil Island launch onto solid ground, vowing never to return to the prison from which he had just been released, his sentence served in full, minus six months for good behavior. He didn’t know what he would do, but vowed he would not return to bootlegging. He bore no grudges, relishing the chance “to do what I like.”9 Elsie met him at the dock and the two faded into the crowd and obscurity, though the Supreme Court’s ruling in his case, in which they approved wiretapping over privacy rights, would prove a rallying cry in the anti-Prohibition crusade.
The WONPR represented a different kind of lobby, reported Vanity Fair in August 1931, and it was disorienting to congressmen comfortable with groups seeking favors for specific industries, labor interests, or those hoping to force their beliefs on other people. The WONPR, by contrast, wanted nothing for itself and did not advocate a moral agenda; the “Sabines”* wanted merely “to correct a nauseating abuse of political authority . . . by ceasing to dragoon the public in the interest of a law which nobody loves.” Ebbing membership in the WCTU and ASL, combined with economic misfortune, benefited the Sabines, “beautiful, cultured, and practical to their finger-tips,” who approached congressmen with a single question—Where did they stand on Prohibition?—treating a dry “as a future friend” and a wet “as a valued ally.” When votes arose on Prohibition-related measures, the Sabines mobilized their membership, sending telegrams to allies and prodding “future friends.” They also instituted a “social lobby,” hosting receptions, teas, and dinners for the wives of congressmen, many of whom were anxious to fit in with Washington society. “Dirty work,” Vanity Fair called such efforts by “young, pretty and intelligent women . . . to employ their wiles to ingratiate themselves.”
Such descriptions sound sexist today and probably offended the WONPR’s leaders at the time, even though the magazine acknowledged the political acumen of their approach: nonconfrontational, inviting, and entirely effective. With the WONPR leading the charge for repeal, Vanity Fair believed the movement in “capable hands,” a “cultured, charming and temperate body of women, who do not propose to let the country be ruined or their children debauched in the name of American womanhood.”10 The “Sabines” were usurping the WCTU claim that they represented women.
Testing the political deftness portrayed in Vanity Fair, the WONPR sent a letter to each congressman and senator in September 1931 asking if he would vote in favor of a bill to send the question of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment to state conventions, where the people would decide its fate. The organization did not ask whether he opposed or favored Prohibition, but only whether he would per-mit the people of the country to vote on whether the amend- ment should be sustained or repealed.11 Sabin announced the early results on December 1: nearly 60 percent of the respondents favored submitting a repeal referendum to the states. Of 251 respondents (almost half the House and Senate membership), 149 supported the proposal for submission, 49 opposed, and 53 refused to commit either way.12 Sabin announced at a meeting of the WONPR’s Executive Committee the votes of each congressman, identifying those opposed to any reconsideration of the Eighteenth Amendment and placing a target upon them in the 1932 elections, a tactic borrowed from the Prohibitionist women of yesteryear.13
As the anti-Prohibition tide rose, moderate politicians, those most likely wet in orientation but unwilling to challenge their constituencies, offered various schemes to modify the Volstead Act to allow manufacture and sale of “light” wine and beer containing less than 3 percent alcohol. Sabin and the WONPR opposed any modification, believing it “disastrous for us to think for a moment that we have thereby effected a real and lasting reform of [the] Prohibition problem.” “National Prohibition will continue to plague, disorganize and demoralize the country as long as it remains in the Constitution,” declared Sabin.14 The organization would accept nothing less than full repeal, the uncompromising simplicity of that position gaining steam. By the end of 1931, after only eighteen months of existence, the WONPR had recruited four hundred thousand women to their cause, more than the WCTU could claim at any time in its fifty years of existence. The WONPR’s membership included women from all forty-eight states, representing all manner of professional experiences and women classifying themselves simply as housewives, dispelling the “silly slander that the movement for Prohibition Reform is a leisure-class movement, maintained chiefly by ‘smart’ or fashionable women.”15
In November 1931, a federal court in Kansas City ruled that the sale of grapes, grape juice, or grape concentrate that could be fermented constituted a crime under the Volstead Act. Specifically, the court ruled against sales to consumers in their homes, where the process of fermentation was described and suppliers such as Fruit Industries provided bottling services after the fermentation period had passed. Fruit Industries immediately announced it would no longer sell its products door-to-door, would offer them only in grocery stores with-out instructions or mention of fermentation on the labels.16 Much as Mabel Willebrandt had avoided the question of whether her employer operated as a de facto bootlegger, Fruit Industries sidestepped the issue, asserting that their salesmen had done nothing more than provide advice and that they could not control the ultimate use of their product. Willebrandt made no statements on the ruling.
Pauline Sabin knew supporters of repeal resided in even the driest states, their voices and votes buried beneath a vocal minority declaring the supremacy of abstinence over temperance. In November 1931, the WONPR had established an Anti-Prohibition Institute and an associated School of Public Speaking. The institute sought to educate the organization’s members and other interested parties in the “fundamental arguments” for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the return of liquor control to the individual states. A series of lectures would be presented twice a month through March of 1932. The School of Public Speaking was organized to develop additional speakers to carry the repeal movement, using the information acquired from the Anti-Prohibition Institute lectures, to clubs and organizations around the country.17
Seeking to expose the fallacy of a unified dry front, Sabin traveled to so-called dry states to gauge the level of support for repeal. In January 1932, she and Mrs. Courtlandt Nicoll, the WONPR’s vice chairperson, traveled to Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Ohio, the birthplace of the temperance and Prohibition movements. Sabin’s belief proved prophetic a few months later, when the newly formed Dayton, Ohio, WONPR chapter registered twenty thousand members in two weeks.18
Holding to the same theme of spreading the word, and making the WONPR a truly national organization, Sabin would need to attract supporters in the Deep South, a region known for its conservative values, its disdain for anything originating up north, and its devotion to the Democratic Party. She had some familiarity with the region, though, having spent considerable time in South Carolina at the Sabins’ winter retreat, the Oaks, located a short distance from Charleston. Sabin called for a meeting of the executive committee of the WONPR in Charleston to formulate a plan to gain traction in the South. Representatives from twenty-six states, including women from several southern states, attended the Charleston meetings, which produced a resolution disputing old arguments by dry leaders that twelve million members of women’s organizations endorsed Prohibition, having drawn that number from the combined membership of groups comprising the Federated Women’s Clubs. The WONPR countered that many anti-Prohibition women belonged to those clubs and their voices were lost in such false statements. Hoping to disabuse critics branding the WONPR as a group of society ladies, Sabin presented results of a survey of the organization’s membership revealing that 37 percent identified as housewives, 19 percent as clerical workers, and 15 percent as industrial workers.19 From Charleston, Sabin and five WONPR officers traveled to Atlanta, where the Georgia WONPR chapter sponsored a luncheon for Sabin, and later an evening of speakers, in the packed ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel, which even the mayor attended.20
Shortly after the southern tour ended, Sabin got an opportunity to measure the success of the WONPR’s efforts, when a vote on the Beck-Linthicum Bill, which proposed an addendum to the Eighteenth Amendment allowing each state to vote on whether to restore its authority to regulate the manufacture and sale of liquor within its borders, was scheduled in the House of Representatives for mid-March.21 The WONPR’s members understood the bill had little chance of passage, but the vote’s importance lay in forcing Congress’ members to “go on record” for or against Prohibition, something that would prove useful in the fall elections.22 Drys, or at least those proclaiming themselves dry, defeated wets by a margin of 227 to 187, with the votes favoring the bill split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats.23 It was the first time a full vote in the House had considered the Eighteenth Amendment since its passage.
The WONPR’s southern tour continued to generate press coverage in the region into the summer—another sign of changing attitudes, believed Sabin. In June, the Baton Rouge Advocate asked Sabin to profess her views in contrast to those of Clarence True Wilson, a leader of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals. She added a new argument to the case against Prohibition, noting the opportunity voters had to assist in economic recovery, as the Depression worsened, by “voting to eliminate the stupendous waste of money squandered in an endeavor to enforce the obnoxious Prohibition law.” Sabin had begun the WONPR to challenge the “moral depression” wrought by Prohibition, but it had become equally important to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment to help heal the economic depression. The cost of enforcement, federally and locally, had been estimated as high as forty-nine million dollars, with conservative estimates on the loss of tax revenue set at one billion dollars, money that could greatly assist an economic recovery. Sabin believed the majority of Americans wanted repeal with new, responsible controls on liquor traffic, including taxation. They also wanted to rid the country of speakeasies, bootleggers, gangsters, and the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and “Other People’s Morals.” For his part, Clarence True Wilson labeled the repeal movement a conspiracy of the rich against the poor, with the latter expected “to pay the rich man’s taxes.”24 He offered no evidence of Prohibition’s successes, only indignation that it be challenged at all; he was certain that the majority of people wanted Prohibition.
While the Republican Party had no doubts about its presidential candidate, and stuck with Hoover, the party was less sure of its chances. Party leaders considered many potential vice presidential candidates who could strengthen the ticket, especially as criticism of Hoover’s response to the Depression grew. Hoping name recognition might do the trick, Charles Hilles, among others, proposed Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Roosevelt passed, noting his responsibilities as governor general of the Philippine Islands. Roosevelt did offer thoughts, though, on the pending campaign, particularly on the debate over Prohibition. The Republican plank attempted to play both sides, calling for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment but allowing for state options to enforce Prohibition within their borders. Roose-velt agreed with the position, and opposed those groups, notably the WONPR, that sought full repeal without any compromise. He compared Sabin, his old friend and ally, to Ella Boole, the strident Prohibitionist, ascribing to both “venomous personalities and general irrationality.”25 Presumably he was referring to the single-mindedness of each woman, for whom one issue superseded all others to the detriment, in Roosevelt’s mind, of the party. His harsh remarks echoed those he had shared with “Polly” several years earlier, when he had decried the politics of the National Woman’s Party and its existence separate from the two mainstream parties. Polly had agreed with Ted then, and for several years after, believing women should work within the established parties. Now the scourge of Prohibition could not be reversed by only one party, especially if her party, the Republicans, lost.
Franklin Roosevelt, Ted’s cousin and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, announced in February 1932 his commitment to returning liquor control to the states, a position he claimed to have held for a long time.26 During the rest of the campaign he would barely mention Prohibition or the Eighteenth Amendment again, favoring discussions of the worsening depression.27 Herbert Hoover continued to waffle on Prohibition, his attention focused on the economy, to his own disadvantage.
The WONPR, increasingly the loudest voice for women, and to whom men often deferred on the Prohibition question, drew like-minded groups to their movement. Sabin met with officials from the American Federation of Labor, who were interested in forming an alliance, hopeful that cooperation would “insure many wives of laboring men joining” the WONPR, which would bring “a great effect upon our Congressman and Senators,” according to one official.28 The American Hotel Association, eager to offer its customers liquor, offered to join in the WONPR’s efforts and told its managers at member hotels to assist in any way possible.29 The first step in expanding cooperation, visibility, and membership began with the National Reform Week, set for May 16 to 22 and arranged by the WONPR, with a goal to raise membership to one million. The organization planned “intensive” efforts in forty-one states and the District of Columbia, and Sabin announced this over the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. She reminded listeners that three years earlier, when she had founded the WONPR, women had feared speaking out for repeal, but the group’s efforts since then and the continuing failure of enforcement to end violence or improve the lives of women and families had put the word “repeal” “on every tongue.” Sabin declared, “We wear our wet tag proudly,” comfortable in the understanding that “wet” did not “mean a person addicted to drink any more than ‘dry’ means a person who has forsworn the consumption of alcoholic beverages.”30
Following National Reform week, the WONPR sponsored, in association with two other anti-Prohibition groups, an investigative survey seeking proof of the supposed benefits of the Eighteenth Amendment. Recent graduates of twenty colleges traveled the country in a specially outfitted bus, chasing down leads from the WCTU, ASL, Salvation Army, public health offices, and police departments to determine whether Prohibition reformed alcoholics and improved the lives of families in which alcoholism and drunkenness had been a problem. By midsummer, the bus had visited twenty states, and the students claimed they could find no former alcoholics who had reformed their ways because of Prohibition or families whose fortunes had been turned around by the abolition of liquor.31 The students provided as little hard evidence as the Prohibitionist organizations that had fostered the rumors of miraculous rehabilitations, but their efforts did raise an important question: if Prohibition was meant to correct a social evil, where was the evidence of its success?
Going beyond the usual campaign posters and buttons, the WONPR sold all manner of merchandise emblazoned with the word “Repeal”: donation boxes, thimbles, silk scarves, powder puff cases, and a spare-tire cover for an automobile.32 The organization even commissioned a song to be played at rallies, the words sung to the tune of “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile,” reminding supporters of their influence:
If all the women in the U.S.A.
Make their vote worthwhile;
Congressmen and Senators
Would know they weren’t in style—SO
Each mother’s son of them would vote repeal and
Smile! Smile! Smile!33
Sabin continued to crisscross the country, bringing her wares along, speaking at rallies of increasing size, but no rally could equal the exposure she received in newsreels seen by millions in movie houses everywhere.34
Sabin returned frequently to the impact of Prohibition on women, for whom the Eighteenth Amendment had been passed. Before the Eighteenth Amendment, women did not drink, “children scarcely knew that drink existed,” saloons could not be placed near schools, and a general sentiment favoring temperance prevailed across the nation. Sabin admitted she had “welcomed Prohibition” for the sake of her children, but her position changed after she saw the lawlessness and disrespect for law that followed in its wake. She warned, “Mothers know that today speakeasies are located next door to schools, homes, and public buildings,” and nothing under the existing law could change that. She had a growing impatience with so-called “honest, intellectual women who still believe that Prohibition prohibits, and that it should be given further trial for the sake of our children, who need its protection,” given the “glamour which attempted Prohibition has thrown about drink, making it even more attractive to youth.” The consequences might not be fully known for a generation, but Sabin would not wait for what she viewed as a continuing downward spiral of higher rates of juvenile delinquency and relaxed morals. It was not only the youth, women, and home about which she worried, but the erosion of personal liberties by a federal enforcement bureaucracy that “permitted tapping of private telephone wires, search without warrant, trial without jury,” substituting “governmental spying for individual self-control.”35
On the eve of the Republican National Convention in June 1932, Mabel Willebrandt indicated she would oppose a proposed plank calling for a national nonbinding referendum on the Eighteenth Amendment. It was “hypocritical and dishonest,” an attempt to appeal to people hoping for an economic rescue that might accompany repeal. Besides, she said, the referendum would produce no effect on the law or policy.36 Any plank should be clear, whether wet or dry. If wet, then the convention should ask for a vote on repeal, letting the country decide definitively.37 After contentious debate, the Republican Party adopted a plank favoring neither full repeal nor resubmission of the question in the form of a referendum; rather, it proposed an amendment to the Constitution that, “while retaining in the Federal Government power to preserve the gains already made in dealing with the evils inherent in the liquor traffic, shall allow States to deal with the problem as their citizens may determine, but subject always to the power of the Federal Government to protect those States where Prohibition may exist and safeguard our citizens everywhere from the return of the saloon and attendant abuses.”38 The Republicans hoped to straddle the fence, believing a position somewhere in the middle, no matter how ambiguous, stood a better chance than calls for outright repeal or no change at all.
After the failure of the Republican Party to include a plank for repeal in its platform, Pauline Sabin directed all WONPR members to send telegrams to the chairman of the Democratic National Convention urging the party to include a repeal plank in its platform at its convention.39 Her commitment to the cause over party could be seen best in her appearance at the Democratic convention in Chicago at the end of June 1932. She made no speeches or public declarations, but a photograph of Sabin laughing with AAPA president John Raskob and Al Smith, a political enemy when she had served on the Republican National Committee, ran in papers across the country, saying all that anyone needed to know.40 Not in the photo, but no doubt enjoying the moment from nearby, would have been Charlie Sabin, always the Democrat, finally working on the same political side as his wife.
Raskob also served as the Democratic National Committee chairman, wielding influence over the convention proceedings and the composition of the party platform. Franklin Roosevelt, soon to be nominated as the party’s candidate, signaled he would accept any wet plank adopted by the convention.41 Raskob had little trouble securing a vote on a plank advocating full repeal, for which convention delegates voted overwhelmingly, surprising even Raskob, according to the New York Times.42 The Democratic Party was on the record for outright repeal.
Immediately following the Democratic convention, the WONPR’s Executive Committee directed its members to vote only for congressional candidates supporting repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, regardless of their party affiliation. If both candidates in a race supported repeal, women should vote their party loyalty (though the directive favored Democrats, since many Republicans were waffling on the issue). The executive committee also directed its members to vote for Franklin Roosevelt for president; although the president had no role in changing constitutional amendments, “through the prestige of his office” the president had “the power to wield directly or indirectly great influence over legislation.”43 Such a vote might prove a bitter pill for members who were lifelong Republicans like Sabin; they would be saddled with a Democratic administration, the first in twelve years, and it might undo more than Prohibition, but for Sabin, at least, it was unavoidable.
The choice for Republicans in the WONPR and other anti-Prohibition groups grew muddier when President Hoover admitted the failure of Prohibition in some sections of the country and announced his support for the type of amendment proposed in the party platform. Sabin applauded Hoover’s acknowledgment of the failure of Prohibition enforcement and agreed with his abhorrence of the saloon, but she opposed a system where the federal government still held power over “the definition of a saloon” for the Constitution. Emphasizing her point, Sabin cautioned that a constitutional provision “prohibiting the return of the saloon would give to the Congress the power to legislate and would be an open invitation for all fanatics and hypocritical Drys to keep the pot boiling in the House and the Senate.” Sabin and the WONPR would accept only “the unconditional repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.”44
Time magazine acknowledged the growing women’s repeal movement, placing Sabin on its July 18, 1932, cover. The article described a meeting of the WONPR’s executive committee as “the cream of the nation’s womanhood” and reported that Sabin had pledged to fight for repeal “for the rest of her life.” The magazine saw little hope for the cause, with the wealth of Sabin and her cohorts on the executive committee its greatest strength and greatest weakness. The WONPR might have success with the “smalltown [sic] matron” hoping “to ally herself, no matter how remotely, with a congregation of bona fide, rotogravure society figures in a cause about which she may or may not have profound convictions,” but would struggle to attract the “populous class of rural women who also vote and who bitterly suspect, envy and hate the ground that women like Mrs. Sabin walk on.”45 The magazine’s oversimplified portrayal of women embodied a point Sabin had been making ever since her election to the Suffolk County Republican Committee in 1920: women could not be simply classified into large groups believing one thing over another. While she had railed about single-issue women in the past, she counted on them now to gather around a single issue, one last time; to do the right thing.
Sabin understood that the WONPR’s unwavering call for repeal over modification generated friction with other anti-Prohibition groups, which held positions on many other issues, making it difficult for them to abandon their respective parties and candidates. This was especially true of the AFL and American Legion. Sabin recommended to Pierre du Pont, leader of the AAPA, that a meeting of the United Repeal Council, a loose affiliation of the many groups opposing Prohibition, be called to discuss any concerns of the respective organizations; she thought it would be good to establish in which congressional districts the various organizations could work together, and she worried that without a meeting and a unified front, opposition groups might be able to exploit the divisions.46 The members of the United Repeal Council repeated their desire for outright repeal, echoing the Democratic platform, but the council as a group refused to endorse Roosevelt. When asked to comment, Pierre du Pont said the council “will not be diverted from that issue [repeal] by extraneous subjects which have no part in its work.”47
The council did not meet, but it designated the WONPR to send a one-question survey to all congressional candidates. The survey asked:
If elected, will you support a resolution for the straight repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the restoration to each state of its power to regulate the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating beverages within its limits, such resolution to be submitted to conventions in the several states for ratification or rejection?48
The WONPR received 607 responses, 553 yeses and 54 nos. Of the 553 positive respondents, 474 favored outright repeal and 79 favored repeal with qualifications.49 Unknown was whether the respondents would make public statements to that effect (or win election).
As Election Day neared, Sabin’s rhetoric became more intense; she called the divide over Prohibition “the most controversial situation which has ever arisen in this country and I do not except slavery.” Prohibition represented “an attempt to compel a hundred million people to become total abstainers,” something she regarded as impossible, sparking “resistance and derision,” as evidenced by the successful illegal liquor trade. She attacked the Republican Party’s plank that would let states determine Prohibition’s fate within their borders but leave Congress the power to “rebuke” state actions if enough congressmen felt the Prohibition on saloons had been violated. Poking fun at the obvious contradiction, Sabin explained that Congress would be forced to establish a definition to answer the question, “When is a saloon not a saloon and when does a saloon become a speakeasy and vice versa?” She provided Webster’s definition as “a place where intoxicating liquors are sold and drunk.” Did that mean a hotel restaurant, a golf club, and the diner of a Pullman car could be classified as a saloon? Causing further headache was the Republican plank’s provision for Congress to address “attendant evils” of the liquor trade, which could be applied to almost anything, putting the country on a path “far more uncertain and confusing than the Eighteenth Amendment itself.” Sabin sympathized with her estranged Republican brethren who put party loyalty first, but she had no patience for those who failed to grasp the difference between the Republican and Democratic planks or the disastrous possibilities hidden in the Republican position. For Sabin, the choice between party planks and candidates came down to Republicans’ trust in the federal government to control liquor and Democrats’ trust in the American people to choose for themselves. When critics suggested that the Republican plank of modification presented “the easiest way out” because thirteen states would always block full repeal, Sabin said she refused to believe that the people in those states “prefer the reign of intemperance, corruption and lawlessness which exists under national Prohibition, than to be willing to admit they have made a mistake.” Women, including herself, had pushed for Prohibition, believing it the path to temperance, but while they thought “they could make Prohibition as strong as the constitution, instead they have made the constitution as weak as Prohibition.” Sabin’s own loss of faith in the possibilities of the Eighteenth Amendment led her, as it did many women, to reconsider the starting point of the movement, temperance, which “always will be the woman’s cause.” Sabin wrote that the WONPR now represented that goal, not the WCTU, which had become the organization of intolerance, its motivations based in fear and their efforts ironically bringing crime and corruption to new heights, sowing “moral degeneration.” Sabin conceded that the Eighteenth Amendment was “an experiment noble in motive,” but declared, “Experiments have no place in the Constitution of the United States.”50
A few days before the election, Mabel Walker Willebrandt reemphasized her belief that the Eighteenth Amendment could be “enforced, should be and ultimately will be obeyed.” She lamented the plank adopted by the Republican Party and a recent statement from President Hoover advocating partial repeal for the sake of the economy, but respected “his view even where I differ.”51 It proved to be her final public statement on Prohibition; she would leave the debate and its results to those still invested in the political process. Willebrandt moved past politics and expanded her private practice, opening offices in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, helping to establish regulations and law doctrine concerning aviation, radio, international treaties, and labor relations. Her work with aviation companies engendered an interest in flying that led her to become a pilot and support the careers of young female pilots, notably Amelia Earhart, whose round-the-world flight was sponsored in part by Willebrandt. Her friendship with Louis Mayer of MGM Studios brought actors and actresses as clients and entrée into a world far more glamorous than she had known before. Professional success gave Mabel Willebrandt a life of excitement and security, allowing her time and resources to counsel and assist young professional women and encourage them to push the glass ceiling a little higher, if not break through, much as she had done.
Franklin Roosevelt won the election in a landslide, American voters preferring his optimism to the failed policies and dour predictions of Herbert Hoover. Sabin was delighted that not only was Hoover defeated but also dry New York State politicians, opening the door for changes in the Republican Party.52 Nationally, Congress saw the addition of thirteen wet senators and seventy-one wet representatives, giving wets a majority in both houses, though some stood for modification rather than the full repeal demanded by the WONPR. Sabin understood that modification might seem the easier and quicker path for many congressmen, but she and the WONPR would not be satisfied until the question of full repeal had been presented to state conventions. Looking ahead from “this hour of approaching victory,” Sabin reminded her membership that getting Congress to allow reconsideration of the Eighteenth Amendment constituted only the first step toward repeal; three-fourths of the states, thirty-six of forty-eight, would need to reject the Eighteenth. She encouraged members to seek counsel from constitutional attorneys about how to create their state conventions, select delegates to those conventions, and define the procedures to ensure their votes were counted.53 A week later, Sabin called a meeting of the National Executive Committee to outline the plan going forward.54 She could not emphasize strongly enough the importance of getting Congress to approve a ratification process employing state conventions rather than state legislatures, that is, the people and not career politicians. The convention proposal presented several problems, though, not the least of which was who would pay for such conventions. Until that question and the many others concerning location, selection of delegates, number of delegates, and voting procedures could be answered, Sabin recommended that the WONPR’s members refrain from expressing any opinions on the matter and any discussion of modification proposals, but stick to their original, simple goal: repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.55
Sabin knew that both the public and legislators needed to be educated on the means by which repeal would occur through state conventions, a device allowed by the Constitution but ill-defined. Some U.S. Representatives thought that Congress had authority to call those conventions, while others believed state legislatures were the only bodies that could call them.56 Hoping to avoid the involvement of state legislatures, which were filled with career politicians serving their own ambitions, the WONPR established educational programs to make its members knowledgeable about calling constitutional conventions.57 The organization did not take a formal position, but privately Sabin confided in colleagues that she hoped Congress would “set up the machinery” for state conventions; she believed repeal would be achieved more quickly that way than if left to state legislators, many of whom met only every two years.58
The new year, 1933, began with a challenge to the WONPR’s goal of full repeal, when a Senate bill proposing modification of the Eighteenth Amendment passed from committee to the full Senate. The bill proposed to leave the federal government with control of defining a saloon and to allow state legislatures to vote on the revision of the amendment. Sabin urgently telegrammed state division leaders, calling upon them to direct their members to contact their respective senators and demand that they vote against the bill.59 Any bill seeking modification, such as another to allow manufacture and sale of beer, could delay the chances of full repeal for years.60
A month later, Senator John Blaine of Wisconsin submitted a resolution to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment, hoping to leave his mark before relinquishing office after losing his seat in the recent election. The preemptive move sparked fears that the lame-duck session of Congress, still containing many drys, would defeat the measure, making it more difficult to resurrect in the new session beginning in March.61 Sabin would not support the Blaine resolution, fearing that its provision granting Congress the power to regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors “would perpetuate the proved evils of the ghastly experiment which it pretends to end.”62 After a failed vote in the House and a filibuster against a vote in the Senate, with many members voicing Sabin’s concern, Blaine consented to revisions in his resolution and stripped it down to its bones, leaving only provisions for full repeal, guarantees for states voting to keep Prohibition, and ratification of repeal by state conventions rather than state legislatures.63 The changes proved the tonic and the bill passed in both houses on February 16, 1933. Mrs. Courtlandt Nicoll, speaking on Sabin’s behalf, expressed the WONPR’s satisfaction with the “first step toward ridding the country of the evils of national Prohibition.”64
On April 7, 1933, at 12:05 a.m., a truck bearing a sign reading, “President Roosevelt, the first real beer is yours!” delivered two cases of beer to the White House. Just two days earlier the president had signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, put before Congress at his urging on March 13, which legalized the sale and manufacture of beers and wines containing no more than 3.2 percent alcohol.65 It was a temporary response to America’s demand for legal liquor based on the argument that “light” beers and wines could not be considered “intoxicating,” the type of alcohol prohibited by the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act. While the Cullen-Harrison Act was greeted with great fanfare across the country, Sabin and the WONPR barely noticed, intent as they were on their goal of full repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and restoration of the manufacture and sale of all liquor, regardless of alcohol content.
Once Congress had determined to organize state conventions, delegates had to be elected. The WONPR leaped into action again, directing its state-division chairpersons to organize committees in each county, with subcommittees in smaller districts, to advertise the upcoming elections, which would not coincide with any other ballot measures. The selection of delegates would in many ways determine a state’s vote, and the various candidates made their leanings well-known. The WONPR set up committees to phone all members and ask them to call their friends and associates who were not members to publicize the dates of the election of convention delegates and determine whether anyone needed transportation to the polls.66 Sabin advised against overconfidence, saying only twenty states could be safely counted as wet, sixteen short of ratification. At the luncheon in May she even distributed a color-coded map showing the status—wet, dry, or degree of lean to either side—of each state and the date of its election of delegates. One of the hurdles was that the legislatures in three states she considered “hopeful” for repeal had adjourned for the current term, and two were not scheduled to return until January 1934, nine months away. Without special sessions in those states to set election dates, momentum might be lost, allowing Prohibitionists to regain a foothold. She wasn’t giving up on the eight states she regarded as “doubtful,” but the WONPR’s state and county organizations in those states were undermanned in the face of such a daunting challenge.67 The election of a wet president and more wets to Congress in 1932 had suggested a popular mandate for repeal, but the constitutional necessity to ratify the proposed amendment in each state, many of which supported Prohibition, exposed the complex dynamics of American democracy, where Idaho’s 445 thousand citizens, regarded as leaning dry, had the same impact as New York’s 12.5 million generally wet residents. That reality concerned Sabin, preventing her from relaxing even a moment.
The WONPR and its allies pushed, prodded, and challenged state legislators and decision-makers to seize upon the public’s zeal and move quickly to elect state convention delegates and hold conventions, striking while the iron was hot. By late August, only three months since the luncheon where Pauline had warned about overconfidence and complacency, the end of Prohibition appeared imminent, so much so that she reflected on the end of the organization she had created. She hoped that it would fade away, quietly, forever, once the thirty-sixth state ratified the repeal amendment. The approach of the finish line brought on “a bit of melancholy” to see her organization “go out of existence without meeting once more.”68 She suggested that the organization hold a final, celebratory dinner in Washington, D.C., in January 1934, by which time she expected ratification of the Twentieth Amendment would be secured.
Her “melancholy” that summer had deeper roots, as Charles Sabin’s health began to deteriorate, prompting doctors to suggest he take time off from Guaranty Trust, which was struggling to survive the economic depression engulfing the country. Pauline took him on a trip, but it soon became clear that stress had not been Charles’ only problem. His condition worsened, sending the Sabins back home to their beloved Bayberry Land.69 Charles died on October 11, 1932, ending a life in which he and Pauline were “completely happy,” leading her to say, “Life without him seems very futile and utterly meaningless.”70 However, she had promised Charlie she would “carry on,” so close to the goal they both sought.
Sabin’s party to celebrate the end of Prohibition came a month sooner than she had forecast, as the dominoes had fallen faster than predicted. The thirty-sixth state to ratify was expected to be Utah, when its convention voted on December 5. Turning a conservative stronghold such as Utah from a probable “nay” (Sabin’s map listed it as “doubtful” only a few months earlier) to a “yea” demonstrated the full reach of the WONPR’s network and the effectiveness of its argument—moving beyond moral concerns, and appealing to constitutionally guaranteed freedoms rather than restrictions. The WONPR’S final soiree, scheduled for December 7, would be a bittersweet affair, though, with Pauline still mourning Charlie. She had soldiered on, but her friends in the WONPR felt her pain and made sure the celebratory party was full of humor, without any serious toasts or tributes to her incredible leadership that might make the evening emotionally difficult for their beloved leader.71 The only serious note came in the dinner program’s dedication to “Mrs. Charles H. Sabin; to the National Officers, State Chairmen, and the million and a half women who have untiringly and earnestly labored in the counties, the cities and even the smallest hamlets” and had sent Prohibition to perdition.72 Whether Pauline enjoyed a drink after her long fight went unrecorded.