by Hugh Ambrose
The issue of equal rights arose, again, at the New York Republican Convention in September, when representatives of the National Woman’s Party tried to take credit for a party plank calling for legislation that would abolish discrimination against women, primarily in the workforce. Pauline Sabin fired back, “We have been working on that plank for several months. It represents our work entirely,” referring to Republican women.12 The National Woman’s Party had wanted to go further, admonished Sabin, hoping to force their blanket legislation, “which would wipe out with one stroke of a pen all the inequalities between men and women.” She understood that differences in education, opportunity, physical strength, and familial roles, obligations, and expectations varied greatly, making the imposition of equal rights inherently unfair, for the time being. Protecting against discrimination demanded equal and fair treatment, but did not insist that women meet the same standards applied to men. Insisting on equal rights before women had gained equal opportunity and political footing might permit employers to create unattainable goals for women, holding them back.
In October 1922, Sabin was appointed to the executive committee of the New York Republican State Committee, and also joined the newly formed Women’s State Executive Committee.13 Using the pulpit afforded her by her position as president of the WNRC, Pauline praised Governor Nathan Miller’s achievements over the past two years and advised, “Women who are really interested in welfare work in this State would do well to inspect” his record “along welfare lines.” She contrasted Miller’s record with that of his Democratic predecessor and opponent in the upcoming election, Al Smith. Miller had pushed through legislation establishing a juvenile court, securing additional money for treating the mentally ill and physically handicapped, training teachers for epileptics, assisting blind citizens to become self-supporting, and providing nurses to expectant mothers to improve infant care.14 Sabin predicted women in the state and in Suffolk County, her home, would give Miller a big boost on Election Day.15 Miller agreed, charging Smith and the Democrats with offering the “bunk promise to give the people rum,” to which women would stand opposed.16 Both Miller and Sabin were wrong; the women’s vote was divided, just what Sabin had feared, and a wave of anti-Republicanism in the state sent Al Smith back to Albany for two more years.17
* * *
• • •
Roy Olmstead’s ability to elude conviction spoke to the difficulties faced by Mabel Willebrandt, whose Department of Justice could not trust the evidence and testimony collected by the Prohibition Unit. She vowed, after Olmstead’s first trial, to take a more active role in cases against large-scale smugglers; she would direct her district attorneys to strengthen relationships with Prohibition agents, would guide their collection of evidence, verify the reliability of witnesses, and ensure the proper execution of search warrants.
Mabel Willebrandt’s high profile and party loyalty placed her in great demand as the 1922 congressional campaign season began. Her old patron, Frank Doherty, was working for Hiram Johnson’s reelection, and believed that “women occupying a position as important as hers [would] become the vogue among club women and she no doubt would be much sought after and looked up to. She has the courage to express her opinions and I believe would have no hesitancy in doing so.”18 Willebrandt pledged to aid Johnson in whatever way possible.19 No sooner had Johnson asked her to campaign in California, however, than she informed him that pressing matters—notably the Haar case, which concerned an extensive smuggling operation in the southern United States and the possible corruption of Prohibition agents—would prevent her from making the trip for another month. Doherty suggested Johnson talk to Harry Daugherty, the attorney general and Willebrandt’s boss, to impress upon him the necessity of her trip, which would serve, also, to quell rumors that the Harding administration opposed Johnson’s reelection because of his opposition to Harding’s nomination in 1920.20 Dinner at Hiram Johnson’s Washington, D.C., residence secured Willebrandt’s timely assistance. In advance of her first California speech, Senator Johnson told her, “You may be interested in knowing that you had two great opponents for the exalted position you present[ly] hold, Clara Shortridge Foltz and Gail Laughlin. Both of them are perniciously active against us in California. I do not fear ten thousand such with Mrs. Willebrandt with me.”21
Mabel fulfilled her obligation to Johnson with a series of speeches to women’s clubs in August and September. At the end of her tour, another old friend, James Pope, warned her about political affiliations that came with strings attached. Pope did not consider her affiliation with Johnson a problem, but he recommended she stay so busy with Justice Department work that she would have no time for “political missions.”22 While she was obligated to Johnson, Daugherty, and Harding for their roles in getting her into office, Mabel Willebrandt always gave her highest allegiance to the causes that mattered most to women. At a speech before the Women’s Branch of the Republican Party in October 1922, she stated that the GOP stood “for those things that have promoted nationally, and in State government, the ideals in which women are largely interested—the preservation of the home, safeguarding the educational and other rights of childhood, promotion of business and the establishment of economic security.”23 Her knowledge and accomplishments gave her credibility, but so did her femininity, a quality her secretary noted as a sharp contrast to her predecessor, Annette Abbott Adams, whom she regarded as “rather masculine and so terribly cold.”24
Her boss, Attorney General Harry Daugherty, certainly trusted Mabel Walker Willebrandt. He told Harriet Taylor Upton, “I’ll put her up alongside any several men—(In fact I’ve just done so in a recent matter) and she comes out ahead from sheer reasons and judgments & convinces me too!”25 The admiration went both ways. Willebrandt wrote in her diary, “He’s the only one with sand.” She was contrasting Daugherty with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, titular head of the Bureau of Prohibition, whose friends had become entangled in bribery accusations. Mellon had asked Daugherty to intervene, but Willebrandt opined in her diary, “Why should the A.G. [pull] Mellon’s chestnuts out of the fire?” perhaps expressing her own frustrations with the treasury secretary, whose subordinates in Savannah continued to impede the Haar investigation. “I hope he refuses to protect Mellon,” she wrote.26
Willebrandt noted in her diary that her “self dependence” had grown such that she no longer felt the “inward terror at the magnitude” of the job. But while crediting herself for growing into her myriad responsibilities, she admitted moments of uncertainty, especially related to the “dread shadow of deafness.” Her partial hearing loss was a huge secret, unknown to anyone at the Department of Justice, let alone her boss. She had developed multiple strategies to mask her disability, but whenever she received a compliment, she thought to herself, “‘Damn you, you think that good, do you know what then could I do if I weren’t struggling under the most horrible handicap that you do not guess.’ In other words if I could use in intellectual energy that extra attention, and nerve, and willpower that I always exert to even keep the drift of what’s going on what couldn’t I do? It cuts so deeply to be thought stupid or appear so because you haven’t heard & can’t therefore make the connection.”27 The only thing worse, to her mind, was the sympathy she would get if people knew.
Willebrandt secretly hoped her service in the Department of Justice would afford her the chance to become a federal judge. Unbeknownst to her, the idea was floated to Senator Hiram Johnson in early 1923.28 Johnson asked the opinion of Frank Doherty, Willebrandt’s champion, who hesitated at giving his recommendation— not for a lack of faith in her abilities, but for the perception that might attach to Johnson’s endorsement of her. Doherty regarded Willebrandt as “industrious, level-headed and with great possibilities,” but balked at naming someone only thirty-three years old to a lifelong post.29 Doherty worried, also, that Johnson might be accused of pandering to women voters, which might raise questions about the political motivati
ons of all of his judicial recommendations. Perhaps, Doherty offered, a few more years of government service would erase any doubts about her credentials and the justification of her appointment. While Willebrandt was expected to honor political obligations, it seemed the arrangement did not run both ways. The point was set aside after Harry Daugherty let it be known that he felt Willebrandt could do more good in her current position than as a judge.
As the possibility of a judgeship receded, Mabel was torn between a request from her parents to resign by the end of 1923 and loyalty to the job and to Harry Daugherty, who was beset by failing health and mounting scandals. Given the circumstances, she did “not feel in conscience or honor, I could resign and wish upon him the perplexity of choosing a woman substitute.” She recognized her position as the domain of a woman, a sort of birthright accorded for the decades of women Prohibitionists who had brought the Eighteenth Amendment to realization. Her resignation, Mabel believed, would produce “a much more serious complex in choosing a woman assistant than in filling any of the places held by men. With the Republican Party in the condition it is today, of course it would have to be another woman.” Her loyalty to Daugherty clearly included the the GOP and, by extension, President Harding, but she questioned whether Harding could be renominated amid the escalating financial scandals. She liked the president personally, but, unwilling to campaign on his behalf, she vowed to resign if he was renominated. If Harding resigned, Willebrandt feared Herbert Hoover would win the Republican nomination, “in which case I would certainly resign. I owe something to Harding and Daugherty and Johnson but, thank Heaven, I owe nothing to Hoover, and I do not have personal respect for him enough to do any campaigning.”30 Her old ally James Pope recommended she hang on through the 1924 elections, increasing her recognition around the country, but most significantly in California, where she planned to return, and where, Pope hoped, she would run for office.31 A few months later, Harry Daugherty, reeling from the suicide of his trusted ally Jess Smith amidst more rumors of scandal, asked Mabel Willebrandt to “stay by me—no one ever lost by staying by me. I’m not going to resign unless I completely collapse. You’ve done so wonderfully so much better than I believed any one could do that no one can fill your place.”32
* * *
• • •
Pauline Sabin’s loyalty to the Republican Party, reflected in the organization she helped found, the Women’s National Republican Club, occasionally put her at odds with speakers brought to the club. In late 1922, Sabin had rescinded an invitation to William Anderson, the New York State superintendent for the Anti-Saloon League, after Anderson made a “slanderous” attack upon Senator James Wadsworth. Anderson had charged Wadsworth with supporting Al Smith in the governor’s race in exchange for a promise of support from Tammany Hall, still regarded as the headquarters for New York’s Democratic Party when Wadsworth ran for reelection in 1926.33 Anderson had been scheduled to debate Wadsworth on the liquor question at the club in January 1923.
Looking ahead to the 1924 governor’s race in particular, Charles Hilles stressed the importance of securing the women’s vote by utilizing the skills of Mrs. Henrietta Livermore and Mrs. Pauline Sabin, who knew “the problem,” which he characterized as exaggerating the “oscillations of the pendulum of politics unprecedently [sic] and unexpectedly.”34 To correct the situation, “women must be ‘domesticated’ in politics until they cease running wild, organization work must continue in season and out of season,” the effort “as essential as any work we may undertake.” Surely, Pauline Sabin would have encouraged Hilles to use The Republican Woman, a newsletter created by Sabin and Florence Wardwell, to reach women across the state.35
A few months later, Pauline Sabin questioned the faith placed in her, telling Hilles she could not “fathom” Mrs. Livermore’s “attitude in some instances,” her views differing to such a degree that Sabin judged, “One of us is certainly lacking in political acumen and I am beginning to think that I am the guilty one.”36 The admission could be read as a polite rebuke of Mrs. Livermore, one of Sabin’s role models and one of the few suffragists who had proudly worked from within one of the established parties. Pauline’s confession to Hilles suggested she knew which woman he would support, but the issue resolved itself when Livermore announced her resignation as chairwoman of the state’s women’s executive committee.37 Charles Hilles advised George Morris, the state’s party chairman, to ask for the input of the women’s executive committee, keeping in mind that the woman selected to replace Livermore must be in tune with Morris and with “a real taste for politics, some experience at the game, enthusiasm to impart to others and the ability to organize.”38
Days later, Pauline Sabin was named to the newly formed Women’s Advisory Council to the Republican National Committee, a group first proposed two years earlier. Sabin and other women appointed to the advisory council, one from each state, could not be granted full status as members of the national committee, composed only of men, until the next national convention, which was a year off. As the title denoted, the women would offer advice to the committeemen from their respective states, and in doing so exert influence in the selection of delegates for the national convention in June 1924, where they fully expected to receive all rights and privileges accorded the men.39 Sabin characterized the appointment as “a test rather than an achievement,” explaining, “There are still many men who seem to think women merely wanted the right to vote, that now they have it, they will lose interest as if it were some fashion or a dress fad.”40 On the contrary, Sabin declared, “Women are taking politics seriously,” and they were “going to stay interested, seriously interested, more than many men realize.” Sabin did not naively believe women could “direct the political affairs of the nation,” there being much to do, learning “the whole business from the ground up.” Taking a page from her own experiences, she advised women to start at the bottom, learning the political “machinery” in district and county organizations, moving up to state committees and, then, onto the national scene, whether as candidates or leaders in the party. She felt “very strongly” that women should follow that path through the established political parties, “taking advantage of existing machinery, at least while we are educating ourselves politically, instead of trying to scrap what we find before we have anything adequate to put in its place.” She had been told on several occasions by men that they expected little of women, assuming they would “do sudden, rash, illogical things.” Staying within the parties would demonstrate to suspicious men that women were serious, willing to learn, and eager to help. Sabin was opposed to the single-issue organizations, predominantly female. Men would not take women seriously until they considered all legislation equally important. “If we are to help the organizations,” Sabin instructed, “and have a part in them, we must take up the work of the organizations,” performing, at first, “hard, quiet, efficient work, work of real value.”41 Seven months later, in February 1924, Sabin and her fellow Republican women adopted a resolution favoring the McGinnies Bill, which would grant men and women equal representation on state committees. “A woman’s vote counts for as much as that of a man,” Sabin declared, “and for that reason we should have equal representation.”42
* * *
• • •
Mabel Willebrandt’s early efforts to bring down large-scale smugglers revealed a significant challenge: her Department of Justice was reliant on evidence and testimony collected by the Prohibition Unit, a Treasury Department agency over which she had no influence and whose employees had little, if any, law enforcement training. Compounding the disconnection between the two agencies, the Treasury Department sometimes assigned its Intelligence Unit to lead investigations when illegal income was identified and could be assessed tax penalties. A secondary mission of the Intelligence Unit concerned the investigation of Prohibition agents suspected of corruption, a situation that impeded investigations, because Prohibition agents were fearful they were being surveilled
while building cases against bootleggers and rumrunners. While she could not directly instruct Prohibition and intelligence agents in methods of investigation and the building of airtight cases, Willebrandt repeated her instructions to district attorneys, reminding them to guide agents in proper methods of evidence gathering and verification. She hoped a spirit of cooperation would emerge, especially as the case of Willie Haar and his associates, known as the Big Four, in Savannah, Georgia, presented the opportunity for a big win.
However, Mabel Willebrandt received reports in early 1923 that more than a lack of cooperation in the Haar case was preventing it from going forward. An Intelligence Unit agent alleged systemic corruption among the Prohibition officials in Georgia and South Carolina, preventing the collection of evidence and the ability to catch smugglers in the act. The agent also accused U.S. Attorney Charles Donnelly with being a Wet, suggesting he was disinclined to dig deeper into the activities of men who could quench his thirst.43 Willebrandt’s doubts about her underlings must have increased when she visited the federal prison in Atlanta, a few hours from Savannah and the planned future home of Willie Haar and his associates. Escorted by the prison warden and local officials, she took a “lovely moonlight ride” during which mint juleps were offered for refreshment. When liquor was offered to one of the top law enforcement officials in the country, Willebrandt must have been thinking about the difficulties she faced not just in Georgia with the Haar case, but in similar pockets of rebellion across the United States.