by Hugh Ambrose
Pauline’s mentor, Mrs. Henrietta Livermore, also chose mid-January to reiterate the demand for equality with the Republican Party, a powerful statement from the chairwoman of the Women’s State Executive Committee, but not nearly so radical as the other demands. Livermore reminded party leaders that a half million women in New York still had not enrolled in either party, and these women would join the GOP if given the proper incentive. She intended to hold the party to Chairman Will Hays’ admonition not to relegate women to “auxiliary, supplemental or ancillary” membership.29 Pauline Sabin’s party had contorted itself in the past few years, offering women a place alongside men in lower-level municipal and county organizations while separating them from men at the state level and above. It was less than the Democrats were doing. Nor did it satisfy the more conservative women in the party, such as Livermore and Sabin, who continued to urge, quietly, in party meetings, equal representation by doubling the number of seats on any given committee. Still, as the presidential election of 1920 took shape, New York Republicans had registered about 1.5 million women.30
Neither party could ignore the doubling of the electorate, but some of what Republican women were demanding was anathema to the leadership. The faction led by Henrietta Livermore, however, sought to work within the party, not take it on like Miss Hay and Mrs. Vanderlip. The way to translate those potential votes into positions of authority, she assured Pauline Sabin, was to prove to the leadership that women could be trusted, starting by accepting Wads-worth, whom party bosses had made clear they had no intention of discarding.
Meanwhile, Senator Wadsworth conceded that the time for debating Prohibition and suffrage had ended. The first was part of the Constitution and the latter would soon be.31 He would not oppose either one. When asked if he supported suffrage, though, he replied, “Well, I haven’t been converted to it yet, but it will soon be in the same position as Prohibition. I opposed both reforms, but I believe in upholding the Constitution. I voted for the Volstead Enforcement act because I believe that, having passed Prohibition, Congress should have the power to provide for its enforcement.” Despite this change of heart, long-term suffragists and Prohibitionists continued their opposition to Wadsworth’s candidacy.
In February, Sabin went to Carnegie Hall for the state Republican convention, technically an unofficial meeting, yet important for establishing the candidates and ballot measures to be voted on later, in the party’s state primary.32 Much of the discussion centered on opposition to the Treaty of Versailles while supporting creation of a world court, smaller government, and lower taxes, but New York Republicans found time to endorse “speedy ratification of the suffrage amendment.” The conventioneers did not debate the plank, but merely ratified it, in a style of governance women found offensive.33 For her part, Pauline Sabin served on the Committee on Delegates; she was the only woman in a room with forty-one men, selecting the people who would represent New York at the Republican National Convention in June. The committee nominated four of the state’s leading GOP politicians. The choice of James W. Wadsworth Jr. as a delegate-at-large, “to be voted for at the Primary Election April 6, 1920,” brought three cheers from the crowd; it was a boisterous vote by the party faithful. Henrietta Livermore was named an alternate delegate-at-large; obvious to all, it was a choice designed to placate women, but at least it gave women, and their causes, a voice amongst a sea of men.34 Henrietta’s selection also granted her the position of chair of the Women’s Executive Committee of the Republican State Committee.
Following the convention, the women got to work. As a vice chair of the Republican Ways and Means Committee, Sabin traveled around the state, holding classes to educate women on the important issues and the stances of the candidates, hoping to persuade her audiences—most of whom remained uncommitted to either of the two national parties—to join the GOP.35 Only enrolled party members could vote in the primary and therefore play a critical role in the election. She had to avoid any hint of partisanship and try to convince her audiences of her party’s commitment to their issues, running the gamut from social justice, social welfare, and public health to international peace. The needs of her party trumping her personal beliefs, she would have to cite the successes of her party’s progressive wing without letting her eyes roll. Ironically, the sublimating, compromising nature of being a party member was one of the main reasons many women feared political parties. Women’s clubs were altogether different, went this way of thinking, and thus the prickliest questions directed at Sabin would come from members of the LWV, the Congress of Mothers, the WCTU, or one of the other national women’s clubs. Rather than address the unique concerns of each group, Sabin advocated for party unity, focusing on her main goal: raising campaign funds.
Meanwhile, the New York legislature began debate over its light-beer-and-wine bill, which would allow the manufacture and sale of those products, in defiance of the Volstead Act, which detailed the agencies and mechanisms for enforcement of national prohibition and the penalties for violation. After a little more than a month of debate, the light-beer-and-wine bill passed on April 24, but sat in limbo awaiting decisions from the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Eighteenth Amendment and the possible limits of its restrictions.36 New York was not the only state where people thought the Volstead Act should be amended. So far as public opinion can be determined in an era before scientific polling data, most Americans had thought that voting for the Eighteenth Amendment would eliminate saloons, that scourge on society and family life—not their right to have a drink.37
Chapter 2
Walking the few blocks from her office to the GOP state headquarters in the Hotel Stowell again and again, Mrs. Arthur Willebrandt eventually earned the right to volunteer for the party, although she was given menial errands, not tasks befitting an experienced attorney and political operative.1 Even peripheral involvement at the GOP headquarters allowed Mabel Walker Willebrandt to cultivate relationships with leaders in politics, business, and law and to serve as a link between the party and politically active club women. Being a link in a chain involved, of course, holding on to two sides. The local party organization had accepted her, at least in part, because it needed its female volunteer to bring in the women’s vote for its slate of candidates. Unfortunately, the highest-profile contest in the election divided California Republicans. The California presidential primary in May pitted the state’s sitting U.S. senator, Hiram Johnson, against a political newcomer, Herbert Hoover.
Club women and progressives in general leaned in the direction of the candidate with a national reputation but an unknown political philosophy. Herbert Hoover was a hugely successful mining engineer and had won fame for organizing international relief efforts for the millions of starving Europeans displaced by the vast destruction of the Great War. Orphaned at the age of nine and raised primarily in Oregon, Hoover, armed with a degree in civil engineering from Stanford University and rare abilities to assess potentials in and manage ore extraction, had catapulted himself into the ranks of the fabulously wealthy. Onto such a biography many Americans, from both political parties, had grafted their own beliefs about Hoover, putting him in the sweet spot in American politics, that of a draftee for president by acclamation instead of a political candidate by desire. Having let his interest in the Republican nomination be known, Herbert Hoover had enjoyed moderate successes in the primaries as an Independent, showing strength among Democrats as well, in March and April. His decision to enter the California primary in May as a Republican represented an important strategic decision, reflecting his belief that voters desired a change from the policies of the Democrats.2
Mabel Willebrandt chose to back Senator Hiram Johnson in the primary. Senator Johnson had helped found the Progressive Party in 1912 and had run as Theodore Roosevelt’s vice presidential nominee in that election. The Roosevelt/Johnson ticket, a third-party insurgency, had endorsed women’s suffrage as well as a host of other reforms for which women’s clubs
had organized, such as eliminating child labor, creating food safety standards, and establishing ballot measures—referendums, initiatives, and recalls—allowing voters redress. The Progressive Party had failed in the election, but the spirit survived in some areas of the country, especially in Los Angeles, and its standard-bearer was Hiram Johnson. In his years as governor (1910–1916), Johnson’s reforms had curtailed the influence of the lobbyists of the seemingly all-powerful Southern Pacific Railroad, among other improvements in the structure of California’s government, propelling him into the U.S. Senate in 1916. When Johnson offered himself as a presidential candidate in 1920, his strength was his national reputation and his belief in Progressivism as a political force. Although his campaign centered upon the denunciation of the League of Nations, Johnson had a strong domestic policy message: government had to improve the common good at the expense of the power of the captains of industry.
Her backing of Johnson placed Willebrandt at odds with many members of the women’s movement, who had not abandoned the ideals of world peace embodied in the League of Nations and the World Court as quickly as Senator Johnson.3 A leading activist, Katherine P. Edson, informed the senator that his attacks upon the league “would be fatal as far as the woman’s vote in California was concerned.” In addition, many club women were unimpressed with Hiram Johnson’s record on women’s issues. He had steered clear of the vote to ratify the antiliquor amendment and had appeared ambivalent toward efforts to win suffrage in California in 1911, but in serving as chairman of the Senate Committee on Suffrage, he had advanced the Nineteenth Amendment through the Senate on its way to ratification in the states.4 In many meetings of the organizations devoted to women’s rights and social justice to which she belonged, Willebrandt heard her friends commend Johnson for his commitment to the good-government side of Progressivism, while condemning him for his lack of leadership on moral issues, such as creating a public defender’s office, a women’s court, and a process to rehabilitate fallen women, and the revision of the community property law.
Choosing a side in the contest between Hoover and Johnson, therefore, represented no idle game. The traditional path to success for male attorneys had opened, slightly, for women. President Wilson’s administration had appointed to high office two prominent women who had campaigned for him. If her candidate won, there was a real possibility of advancement for Willebrandt. On the other hand, backing Johnson risked alienating important female political leaders.
On the reasons for her decision, Willebrandt kept her own counsel, leaving no direct statement for posterity. However, while Senator Hiram Johnson’s record on women’s issues may have been checkered, he was a proven commodity, having won his campaigns for governor and for the Senate by wide margins. Whether he won his state’s presidential nomination or not, the old curmudgeon would remain California’s senior senator, his dour face ready to unleash a stream of vituperation upon any who dared disagree with him. While Herbert Hoover had filed the requisite forms to put together a campaign committee, had informed the world he was a Californian, and had stockpiled a formidable campaign fund, the famous engineer had little at stake—if he won the primary, he was expected to blow into the Republican National Convention that summer claiming to be a viable compromise choice in a year featuring six contenders for the Grand Old Party’s nomination. If he failed, little would be lost. Hoover made it a race, though. He and Johnson spent tens of thousands of dollars in Southern California, an area much more progressive than the north, where the power of San Francisco’s pro-business elite, which had once ruled the state, faded as Los Angeles’ population grew by leaps and bounds.
The winds of change blew Mabel Walker Willebrandt’s way in May, when Senator Johnson glided to a comfortable win over Herbert Hoover in the Republican primary. Papering over the widening rift between conservatives and progressives in the GOP, Johnson insisted his victory had been a referendum on the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, and he positioned himself for the Republican nomination by attracting conservative, and predominantly male, Republicans, who opposed Wilson’s diplomacy. Neither Johnson nor Hoover had once mentioned Prohibition.5
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In mid-May, the chairman of the New York Republican state committee announced the names of those who would serve on the executive committee overseeing the fall campaign. Balanced between male and female, the committee included Mrs. Sabin and her friend Mrs. Henrietta Livermore. Seeking party loyalty over personal biases, Pauline hosted leaders of several prominent women’s groups, none more important than Mary Garrett Hay, who served as president of the Women’s City Club of New York and probably had registered more women in the state than anyone else.6 Despite her enmity for James Wadsworth, Miss Hay pledged her party loyalty. Days later, the state chairman announced that Senator Wadsworth would head the state’s delegation to the Republican National Convention.
In early June, at a gala at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Pauline Sabin had the pleasure of announcing that “the New York City women members of the Ways and Means Committee of the Republican Party is the first to complete its quota of money to be raised for campaign purposes this year.” She stressed “the fact that we have completed our quota before the convention begins proves that the women are giving for the party and not for the election of any particular candidate,” an effective way of endorsing the party’s choices while sidestepping the growing gender divide within her party.7
The following day, Friday, June 4, she departed for the Republican Convention in Chicago; she was listed officially as an alternate delegate but known to have secured a voting position, and had talked her Charlie into traveling with her.8 The couple decided to spare Mr. Sabin, a lifelong Democrat, the ebullient partisanship filling the train cars of the “GOP convention special” leaving the following day and chartered to bring New York’s thundering herd of conventioneers to Chicago. Those 255 delegates and alternates gathered at New York’s Grand Central Station for their two o’clock train, cheered by a crowd of friends and supporters. All seemed in a festive mood as reporters sought to capture one moment in a new age. “Scorning wardrobe trunks, hat boxes and all the other paraphernalia usually considered indispensable by women travelers,” as one reporter explained it, “the seventy-five women took only suitcases,” making light of the ladies’ choice, missing the significance of their action in a society where rich women were expected to change outfits four to six times daily. For the inquisitive reporters, the seventy-five female delegates had a message. They were not going as women, or asking for any special treatment or designated cars; they were going as “Republican voters,” expecting to mingle with their male counterparts during the long trip. Declaring the day of “petticoat politics” over, the women explained that they “want no distinction made between them as voters and their husbands, and fathers and brothers and sweethearts who have been voting for years.” Their slogan, “Not what we can get, but what we can give,” to which all of them had pledged, was inscribed on their banners and emblems, “and also on their hearts.”9 The reporter assured his readers, though, that despite their protestations to the contrary, women like Henrietta Livermore could never be imagined “looking like proverbial ‘frumps,’ no matter what sincere resolutions they had made,” a twist on the popular perception of politically active women as matrons of morality with all the style of a spinster. With the final stragglers, mostly the main leadership, climbing aboard as the whistle blew and the conductor bellowed, “All aboard!” the next step forward in the republic’s history started west.
The female delegates from other parts of the country resembled those of New York. The women had come, wrote one perceptive female reporter, “believing that they were about to write a fresh page in American history.” Yet their situation was hardly conducive to bold strokes: none of the delegates down on the floor had ever been a delegate before; three-fourths knew little of practical politics; only 10 percent had attended a
previous national convention; “and nine-nine per cent. [sic] of them had brought to the convention not only zeal for their party and their particular candidate but a superb vision of what they, as members of their party, could contribute to the great task of re-establishing confidence and contentment in a nation more or less disrupted by war.”10
The national committee stayed at the Congress Plaza Hotel, where the New York State Committee had two parlors reserved for their own use. None of the members could say how long they would be in Chicago; they would be released only after a nominee was selected and the convention adjourned. The New York delegation was full of disagreement, and the discussion sessions in their two parlors seemingly never ended. Senator Wadsworth, appointed chairman of the delegation, instructed his delegates to vote unanimously for Dr. Nicholas Butler, president of Columbia University and his dear friend. But the delegates were not interested in wasting a vote on a candidate who had no chance of winning, however much they respected Butler personally. Remaining loyal to the leadership fit Pauline Sabin’s political proclivities, a tendency sure to establish an alliance with the senator. She and Jim Wadsworth surely began to address each other by their first names in the course of the feverish discussions, if they had not done so already.
On the eve of the convention’s opening, the Supreme Court rendered its decision on the State of New Jersey’s challenge to Prohibition, rejecting the state’s contention that the Eighteenth Amendment was unconstitutional because it had not been ratified properly by several states, enacted statutory regulations that the Constitution had reserved for states, and sought to restrict personal behavior. Without comment, the court proclaimed it constitutional, ending any future challenges on the question. Elihu Root, one of the nation’s preeminent attorneys, a public servant of great distinction and a guest at Pauline Sabin’s first wedding, had failed. Doubtless, Root’s close partnership with Wadsworth would have produced a tele- gram informing the senator of the ruling, effectively ending any discussion of Prohibition at the convention.