Liberated Spirits

by Hugh Ambrose

  The delegates arrived at the Chicago Coliseum, the castellated entrance on Wabash Avenue welcoming the throngs, on the morning of Tuesday, June 8; all were determined to make their respective votes count.11 According to one observer, the women participants fell into a few classifications. A few came “because it was the fashionable thing to do.” The overwhelming majority of women fell between two groups, one wearing campaign buttons of rival presidential candidates and enjoying the hospitality extended at each of the candidates’ hotels, the other wearing their hearts on their sleeves. The second group wanted to contribute, asking for meetings, conferences, and directions from their leaders on how to solve the problems of their communities, only to find there were no provisions for such engagement. The top brass were closeted away, cutting the deals, determining the future of the party. The women chosen to serve on the committee of one hundred, appointed by Chairman Hays months earlier, felt the sting of disillusionment most keenly, for their mandate had been to serve as advisors, a task for which they had prepared with care, yet they had no one to advise. As a member of this group, Pauline Sabin could only have been enraged at being patronized, ignored, and insulted. The committee held two meetings, the upshot being a request that the Republican National Committee increase its executive committee from ten to fifteen members—seven men, seven women, and Chairman Will Hays—and to give a leadership position, such as the vice chairmanship, to a woman.12

  Chairman Hays took the podium to welcome the party faithful, and his confident pronouncements into the microphone echoed through the vast reaches of the hall bedecked with flags and bunting. Delegates held placards but not their tongues, the constant murmur pushing each successive speaker to shout louder as the first order of business, agreeing on the planks of the party platform, began. Over the next three days, resolutions were made and the intent of the party’s leadership, solidly conservative, seemed to peek through the generalities used to express them. Senate Republicans were not going to approve anything remotely resembling the League of Nations, which they believed would compromise the country’s independence, but party leaders agreed to stand “for agreement among nations to preserve the peace of the world,” balancing the competing interests within the party and a noisy antiwar movement, led predominantly by women, within the nation.

  Having dispensed with the burning issue in foreign policy, the party produced a domestic agenda reflecting the values of the conservatives, a set of planks under the heading of ending “executive autocracy and restoring to the people their constitutional government.” The Wilson administration “has used legislation passed to meet the emergency of war to continue its arbitrary and inquisitional control over the life of the people in the time of peace, and to carry confusion into industrial life” just as society and business sought to rebound from sacrifices necessitated by the Great War.13 The burdensome oversight and intrusion into business by the federal government was detailed, the resulting planks calling for cutting taxes and regulations, unequivocally conservative positions.

  Mrs. Maude Wood Park, president of the League of Women Voters, was allowed to address the committee of resolutions and to insert planks into the party platform,14 including making “the woman’s bureau in the Department of Labor” permanent, and addressing one of women’s biggest political objectives by declaring “the Republican party stands for a Federal child labor law and for its rigid enforcement.” Other requests included appropriations to continue the campaign against the spread of social diseases and for education in sex hygiene.

  The Committee of Resolutions inserted every plank the LWV submitted, except the three it wanted most: support for the Shep- pard-Towner Bill, a federal program for maternity and infant care; federal aid for reducing illiteracy; and regulation of the marketing and distribution of food. The conservative leadership opened the door to more legislation put forward by the women’s movement by recognizing that the twelve million wage-earning women “have special problems of employment” and demanding, among other things, “federal legislation to limit the hours of employment for women,” “equal pay for equal work” for those employed by the federal government, and, more ambiguously, the promise of “an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice.” With that seemingly benign recognition of women’s right to equality in the workplace, the party had inadvertently stepped into a deeply buried schism in the women’s movement in particular, and in the labor movement in general. The party’s assertion that “the federal jurisdiction over social problems is limited” would not suffice to contain all the ambitions it had set loose.15 The federal government’s latest and most extensive intrusion into the autonomy of the states, Prohibition, went unmentioned at the convention in Chicago, the home of gangster Al Capone.

  On the morning of Friday, June 11, the conventioneers were treated to the speeches of party leaders nominating the various presidential candidates, the bloviating measured in hours, an unfortunate tendency given the withering heat. Unlike the men, women gave short speeches. After one leading contender’s name and qualifications had been put forward, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, sister of the recently deceased Theodore Roosevelt, delivered the seconding speech as red and green feathers floated down from the rafters of the barnlike arena. Her presentation offered such a welcome change that, as one female journalist wrote, “all the Presidential candidates were thereafter desirous of having women speak for them. Mrs. James W. Morrison, who seconded Herbert Hoover’s nomination, was the old fashioned motherly type.” She held the attention even of those well to the back, the chatter and clatter dying away. “It was difficult to believe . . . that she was the type of woman who had marshaled 8000 women in a suffrage parade in Washington and had worked effectively for suffrage for years, at the same time rearing a fine family of five children.”16 The speaker who rose to nominate the senator from Ohio kept his remarks blessedly short and had a bit of fun, leaning over the podium to holler directly at the delegates on the floor, “Say, boys—and girls, too—why not nominate Warren Harding?” The improvisation tickled the audience’s fancy, causing a stir as conventioneers “rose and cheered and began to march in the aisles, saying ‘that’s right we are all boys and girls, the girls are in politics now, too.’”17

  The first ballots were cast that afternoon, a great moment for all the female delegates. Over the course of four ballots, the candidacy of Senator Hiram Johnson failed to catch fire, but he and Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler remained in the running, the latter having no reason to thank the New York delegation, which splintered to other candidates “before a shot was fired,” as the Republican committeeman from New York conceded.18 The party’s front-runners split votes over several ballots, their supporters unwilling to yield to one another. As the convention adjourned for the evening, it was clear that a compromise candidate would be required if the first ballot of the following morning failed to produce a clear majority.19

  That night, a group of Republican senators met in the Blackstone Hotel, away from the party’s headquarters, and chose Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, then presented their choice to Chairman Hays and other key leaders in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Given Senator Wadsworth’s prominence as head of the New York delegation, the largest in attendance and the greatest prize to secure, word of the compromise candidate must have passed like wildfire to the New York caucus held at nine fifteen a.m. Saturday.20 In the first few ballots of the morning, the conventioneers proved obstreperous, unready to kowtow, although Dr. Butler conceded early and released the delegates pledged to him, but by the end of the ninth vote, everyone in the bleachers knew the tenth would be the finale. Wads-worth pushed his New York delegation to fall into line as he switched horses, producing a convincing tally for the GOP nominee, Senator Warren Harding.

  During the course of the convention, the realities of the party machine demolished the ideals of the women’s movement. They accepted the presidential nominee, grudgingly, his selection less offensive than the “steam roll
er on which the party machine rode him [Harding] straight over the other candidates . . . On that last day, the wheels ground into their very souls.” The women would vote the ticket, but the zeal, the desire to put their shoulders to the wheel, was gone. As the New York Times put it, “They left for home dazed, benumbed. Their future performances for the party hang in the balance.”21 Their party had not recognized the voice of the people in choosing its nominee, much less given the female attendees a meaningful role in the proceedings. The whole process seemed a sham.

  Chapter 3

  As the Olmstead trial approached, Prohibition director MacDonald sought to eradicate not just the liquor trade, but liquor consumption. MacDonald promised that “any man who carries a bottle on the hip places himself liable to restraint by injunction brought in the federal courts. This provision of the Prohibition law is the only instance I know of in jurisprudence where an injunction may be brought to enjoin a man from committing an offense. The man who totes liquor on the hip is classed as a public nuisance in federal law.” MacDonald’s assessment hit on one of the finer points of the Volstead Act, and the earlier Washington State law, which established the manufacture and sale of alcohol as crimes, but not its consumption. MacDonald sought to prevent consumption by curbing the possession of liquor, making criminals of citizens who had not violated the federal law.

  He also promised moonshiners they would not be treated as they had been by the revenuers of old. Now prosecution would be pursued vigorously, with jail time and the threat of government seizure of all personal property associated with moonshining. MacDonald extended the threat of property seizures to include “any vessel, boat, cart, carriage or automobile used to transport liquor . . . It does not mat- ter who may own the vehicle used in transportation. The liveryman who rents a team, or the garage proprietor who sends a car out may lose it if the passenger has ‘a half pint on the hip.’”1

  MacDonald’s warnings came the same day that news of the federal court’s crowded docket was reported. One hundred and fifty cases against suspected violators of the National Prohibition Act were on the court’s May calendar, along with many others of more traditional fare, making the month “one of the largest in the history of the United States to district court.”2 Of course, the case against Roy Olmstead and Thomas Clark, representing smuggling on a major scale, the indictments against them having to be reset because additional civilians had been added to the conspiracy, was featured, while a number of lesser trials would have to be put off until the fall, a disturbing sign that the federal court system was being overwhelmed by the new statute.

  In early June, the bootlegger cops and their cohorts pled guilty, Olmstead and Clark each receiving a 500-dollar fine for importing 1,072 quarts of liquor with a street value of roughly 21,500 dollars at 20 dollars a quart; it was a slap on the wrist more than a deterrent to further criminal activity.3 Though individuals continued to be convicted for producing or peddling small amounts of liquor, reports of liquor rings operating throughout the Northwest disappeared from the newspapers.

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  The 20th Century Limited returned the Sabins to New York on June 14, ahead of the rest of the Republican delegation. In the afternoon, Pauline attended her regularly scheduled Republican women’s meeting and was asked to speak. She declared that the party’s presidential nominee “is satisfactory to East and West alike, and he has a good clean record which cannot be challenged in any particular.” A reporter for the New York Times quoted her at length, which was appropriate given her various offices within the party; included in the article was her assurance that all Republican women “will stand united” for their party’s presidential nominee, despite the ongoing fight over the reelection of Senator Wadsworth.4 Other female leadership agreed. A week later, Henrietta Livermore related her experiences in Chicago at a tea held for one thousand women at the Vanderbilt Hotel in Manhattan. She described how the party leaders had turned to women often for their opinions, and excitedly illustrated how involved women had been in the proceedings, her presentation leading up to the big announcement: the national committee had promised to create the positions of vice chairman, assistant secretary, and assistant treasurer, each position to be filled by a woman. The national committee would also expand from ten members to fifteen, and include women.

  Whether Mrs. Livermore got it wrong or the reporter did is unclear, but her pronouncement suggested membership on the “national committee” determining all party policies, though it was actually an executive committee formed to oversee the Harding presidential campaign, or, more correctly, to handle those tasks delegated to it by the nominee and his close advisors. Senator Harding and Chairman Hays insisted that New York’s national committeeman, Charles Hilles, be named chairman of the executive committee and that Hays approve the other members.5 Charles Hilles had worked with Pauline Sabin, had a house in the Hamptons not far from the Sabins, and knew her as a proven fund-raiser and organizer of women’s votes. The day after his own appointment, he sent Pauline a note acknowledging certain promises he had made to her. He said Harriet Taylor Upton had accepted his appointment to the committee, and reported that he’d told Chairman Hays he himself wouldn’t serve unless Henrietta Livermore was also named to the committee.6 He had, therefore, delivered all Pauline had insisted of him, a recognition of her ascendancy in the party.

  Pauline’s party work continued. On July 11, she hosted a luncheon for sixty at her summer home outside Southampton.7 It was a small affair by Sabin’s standards, likely the kind of summer garden party a society woman was expected to throw for her friends and acquaintances. Safely appointed to the Suffolk County Committee, she invited area committeemen as well as “many from the smart set in Bay Shore and Easthampton,” observed one attendee.8 Cultivating the “smart set” and showing gratitude to her fellow committeemen satisfied personal goals, among them abandoning the meaningless “pink tea parties” to which her mother and grandmother had been consigned.9 A squall sent everyone into the ballroom, elaborately if hastily decorated for the occasion. Her friend Henrietta spoke, as did the chairman of the Republican state committee, before Senator Calder took the podium. Sabin and her female friends served the guests refreshments on the porch after the speechifying, presenting each one with a portrait of the GOP’s nominee, Warren Harding.

  Ten days later, James Wadsworth invited reporters to his home in upstate New York, to hear his reply to the attacks made against him by the ASL. He declared himself ready to explain his vote against the Nineteenth Amendment and to take his candidacy to the people. Identifying the key issues, he emphasized the question of “whether or not irresponsible and reckless agitators can succeed in their efforts to terrorize men in public life into abject submission to their will and thus destroy popular government.” Wadsworth’s list continued, naming the important national and international debates of the day, including “the growth of the bureaucratic system and its tendency toward State socialism; [and] the enforcement of National Prohibition Amendment.”10 Prohibition, and responsibility for its enforcement, passed from a state to a federal issue with the Supreme Court’s recent denial of New Jersey’s challenge to the Eighteenth Amendment, rendering null and void the light-beer-and-wine bill enacted by the New York legislature earlier in the year.11 New York’s challenge to Prohibition had failed, pleasing the WCTU and ASL, but also encouraging violation by those who would not be denied their alcohol or good times.

  Wadsworth’s ongoing travails were an issue on the eve of the state convention,* party leaders knowing a certain segment of the party was up in arms about him. As far as the New York Times could discern, the anti-Wadsworth faction of the party represented an alliance between the Prohibitionists, suffragists, pacifists, and those who disliked a party run by its most powerful, entrenched members.12 Various segments of the women’s movement could lay claim to membership in each of the opposing groups, but they did not function as a united front. Nevertheless, a
significant portion of the electorate seemed to stand against Wadsworth.

  The GOP’s second “unofficial” convention of the year met in Saratoga Springs on July 25. The first had established a series of planks and selected delegates to the national convention. This second convention, “unofficial” because the primary chose “official” nominees, would endorse preferred candidates. The GOP hoped to dismantle the direct-primary system if it won the governor’s office and control of the legislature. The attitude of women on this subject became an object of much discussion at the convention, since women, particularly those from the city, did not like the party leadership naming a slate of candidates without discussion or approval from all convention delegates. The State Committee, which included four women, Mrs. Sabin among them, declared that the eleven hundred delegates to the convention should decide upon the candidates and the platform, rather than allowing backroom deals like the one that chose candidate Harding in Chicago.

  Wadsworth, upon arriving in Saratoga Springs, confessed he did not know whether he should ask the convention to endorse him, while he tried to figure out how to allay the opposition “of Republican women who form practically the only stumbling block in his way.”13 Jim certainly sought the opinion of Pauline and others in the female leadership, and secured a measure of comfort in advance of the vote. “Certain women made a demonstration against Wads-worth,” observed Charles Hilles, “but in the main there was a fine feeling for him.”14 Mary Garrett Hay and her supporters presented their resolution against Wadsworth, but he was endorsed as the candidate overwhelmingly, with 988 votes of 1,103 cast.