Liberated Spirits
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Seeking clarification and support, she contacted David Blair, commissioner for the Internal Revenue Bureau. Blair believed his agents understood the importance of cooperating with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Savannah, and appreciated the interwoven relationship between tax evasion and liquor violation charges. He assured Willebrandt that any and all evidence gathered would be shared.44 He noted, however, that his revenue agents “must adhere to their specific field” because their “commissions restrict them to it,” and offered, “Other branches of the service, and other Departments, are especially concerned with matters beyond the scope of tax determination.”45 This was disingenuous, because he oversaw the Prohibition Unit as well as the Intelligence Unit, and had the authority to insist on cooperation between the two, had he desired to do so.
Blair’s equivocating aside, information did pass from revenue and Prohibition agents into the hands of a special prosecutor sent by Willebrandt to Savannah to prepare the cases against Haar and his coconspirators. Linking the tax case to the liquor law violations sharpened charges of conspiracy against the Big Four.46 In June 1923, Willebrandt’s team succeeded in convicting two of the Big Four, and she was happy to have ended the “political chicanery and pull” that had kept the bootleggers out of jail for so long.47 Two months later, a grand jury issued indictments against seventy-two of Haar’s coconspirators.48 To complete the conviction and end the criminals’ appeal, Willebrandt had brought witnesses to Washington, away from Haar’s influence peddlers, to tell the truth, finally. She took great pride in breaking through the corruption, which Willie Haar’s brother had characterized as covering everyone in Washington except for Robert Crim, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, and that “damned woman.” Willebrandt called “it some of the highest praise I have received.”49 Later, the agent from the Internal Revenue Bureau’s Intelligence Unit who had refused to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney was prosecuted for his interference.50
Convictions like that of the Haars did much to slow smuggling and generated good press, but Mabel Willebrandt wanted cases with potential to establish legal precedents, giving definition to the National Prohibition Act, closing loopholes, leaving rumrunners and bootleggers with less room to operate and district attorneys with more charges and higher penalties to assess. The case of George Remus, a big-time bootlegger out of Cincinnati, provided just such an opportunity, his case having wound its way through the courts for two years by 1924. Remus had owned numerous distilleries, all of which obtained permits to produce liquor for industrial and medicinal purposes, but Remus sold much of the output illegally through a vast network stretching from Ohio across the Midwest and the South, using his former wholesale warehouses as distribution centers for smaller bootleggers. In late 1921, Prohibition agents had arrested Remus and several associates on permit violations. In April 1922, as a grand jury in Cincinnati convened to assess the charges against Remus and his associates, Harry Daugherty directed Willebrandt to conduct “any kind of legal proceedings, civil or criminal, including grand jury proceedings and proceedings before committing magistrates, which district attorneys now are or hereafter may be by law authorized to conduct.”51 The newness of the Volstead Act, recently amended for clarification on the finer points of enforcement, and the seriousness of big cases like Remus’, warranted deeper involvement from an assistant attorney general than might usually be expected, a development that became more routine than extraordinary over time.52
In May 1922, Remus and his associates were found guilty of violating the National Prohibition Law, but they appealed.53 The Circuit Court of Appeals finally affirmed Remus’ conviction on the Prohibition violations in June 1923, sending Remus to the Atlanta Federal Prison for two years. Willebrandt was “exuberant” over the result. She made particular note of the court’s opinion that it was not necessary to prove that the “acts alleged” to have been committed by Remus and his coconspirators were actually committed.54 Remus set the wheels in motion for the illegal sale of liquor, authorizing overproduction from his distilleries, providing trucks and railroad cars for distribution, maintaining contacts around the country to receive illegal liquor, receiving payments, and paying employees to perform the illegal work. The court’s ruling, which would be applied in thousands of other cases, determined that Remus did not have to carry, make, or deliver illegal liquor to be guilty.
Willebrandt was pleased with the conviction, but it applied only to the production, sale, and distribution of liquor; Willebrandt had hoped to develop a case against Remus for failing to pay fees required under his permit to sell liquor legally. The judge in the Cincinnati case had quashed the counts regarding internal revenue statutes prior to the start of the trial, charging that the penalties imposed in the National Prohibition Act superseded any earlier laws and penalties concerned with liquor taxation.55 Shifting gears, Willebrandt devised a strategy to charge bootleggers with income tax evasion on the profits they received from their illegal activities, an approach that would be used to its greatest success in bringing down Al Capone some years later.
Looking for additional means to weaken those networks, she landed on the idea of issuing injunctions to halt operations at establishments where liquor violations occurred. She described the use of injunctions as a “very effective weapon for wholesale elimination of places running contrary to Prohibition law.”56 While happy to add another weapon to fight rumrunners and bootleggers, Mabel Wille-brandt knew it should not have taken nearly three years since Prohibition’s enactment to devise a system for effective enforcement.
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In the summer of 1923, Roy Olmstead’s network of customers came to include some of Seattle’s finest and most exclusive men’s clubs. These clubs could afford to pay top dollar so long as what they received was top-shelf, making them, in other words, Roy’s ideal clients. Though primarily a rumrunner, unloading his wares to bootleggers at the wharf, Roy had always done some bootlegging. Making regular deliveries to the Arctic Club, situated just around the corner from the Prohibition Unit’s headquarters, certainly tickled the fancy of the Olmstead gang. It also encouraged a belief that anything was possible. Olmstead strode boldly about town, fashionably dressed, his pockets full of cash, and greeted anyone in his path, even fervent Prohibitionists, exhorting them not to take life so seriously. One reporter credited Olmstead with the “power that goes with good liquor, easy to get, and good money, easy to give.”57 The so-called King of the Bootleggers appeared to have the easy life to which he had always aspired.
But while the money was flowing in, it flowed out just as quickly. Employees’ salaries, petty fines, and payments for boats and delivery vehicles consumed most of the revenue. Not making enough money to pay for his equipment, even as large sums passed through his business, provoked Roy. He began planning the moves it would take to build a more profitable business.
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Anti-Prohibitionists achieved a victory in June 1923, when Governor Al Smith signed a bill repealing the Mullan-Gage Act, New York’s “baby Volstead Act,” which had committed the state to enforcement of Prohibition by state and local authorities. The law’s revocation did not nullify the Volstead Act, but it did relieve local law enforcement agencies from pursuing cases or making arrests for violations of the national Volstead Act. Local authorities would cooperate with federal agents when formally asked, and were not to turn a blind eye to liquor violations when spotted, but police would not undertake concerted efforts to enforce Prohibition, and local courts would see their dockets cleared of any liquor-related cases. Women in particular took the news hard, feeling betrayed for believing Smith’s promise to uphold the Eighteenth Amendment.58
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On June 26, 1923, President Harding gave a speech, his last of any significance, offering strong statements on the importance of adhering to the laws of the land, particularly the Volstead Act, as
“the most impressive mark of a civilized community.” Harding stressed that disregard for the law was driven by a “small and a greatly mistaken minority” who believed the Eighteenth Amendment would be repealed. He saw the challenge not as an “issue between wets and drys, not a question between those who believe in Prohibition and those who do not,” but “an issue of whether the laws of this country can be and will be enforced.” The president vowed that they would, and he called on local and state governments who had abdicated their responsibilities for enforcement to the federal government to reconsider what could “prove one of the historic blunders of political management” and predicted that “neither of the great parties will see the time, within the lives of any who are now voting citizens, when it will declare openly for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.”59 Harding would be dead in two months, but Mabel Willebrandt felt hopeful at his vision.
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Mabel remained married to Arthur Willebrandt, but she had had no involvement with him for several years, the issue never discussed in public circles. In the intervening time, a relationship with her law partner, Fred Horowitz, had grown to be more than a friendship, but not something easily categorized by Mabel herself: “The years of association to you have been built up [sic] protons (positive electricity) and to me electrons (negative) and I further wonder whether yielding to our natural attraction would prolong or intensify our electrical energy—or lessen it.”60 Considering her feelings and intentions for Fred, Mabel, separated but still legally wed, wondered, “Why should society be so cruel. Why should I care what it thinks. Is that strength or numbness.”61 Contorting her emotions further, Mabel questioned, “Why should I so fiercely refuse at slavery. Why when I’m so tired & perplexed at the world so yearn to yield my wrists to manacles that I know I most fiercely hate.” Clearly, her experience with Arthur Willebrandt had tainted her belief in the institution of marriage, but not in love and companionship, though neither conviction brought her any closer to a decision about Fred.
Mabel’s mother, Myrtle, could read the doubts and unhappiness in Mabel’s letters, and cautioned her daughter to be “very careful” in any decision to marry, referencing a potential suitor in the East Mabel had mentioned. Myrtle feared marriage to an “eastern” man would require her to “change inside,” and chase “soap bubbles” of “ambition, wealth, power” that would float away. Myrtle advocated finding a man back in the West. Later that fall of 1923, Myrtle pressed her daughter to resign and return to California, suggesting Mabel’s desire to stay in politics for the hope of a judgeship was not worth the sacrifice.62 Mabel appreciated her mother’s concern, but the subtle pressure could not have made her choices any easier, especially as another court opening went to someone else. A few months later, Mabel described herself as “a pawn fate had marked for a different move.”63
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Like a nagging sprain to his ankle, questions and concerns about William Whitney reemerged in the fall of 1923, forcing him to play defense, hobbling his efforts to manage his agents as he saw fit. In early September, two agents of the Internal Revenue Bureau (IRB), men nominally allied with the Prohibition Unit, began investigating Lyle and Whitney’s office.64 The IRB agents paid particular attention to requests for travel reimbursements submitted by Whitney and his men, the agents combing through court records to determine which payments had been made to agents of the unit. They looked into the auditor’s books, examined the warrants issued, and even opened old case files looking for patterns that might betray an intent to defraud the government. Director Lyle, while concerned, was the type to put his faith in the righteousness of the work. His legal advisor, though, had as much trust in the “special representatives” of the IRB as he did in the officers of the other law enforcement agencies with whom his office worked, which was none. Whitney and his trusted agents made no attempt to cooperate with the investigation.
The hard line taken by Whitney only made his situation worse. On September 11, 1923, the district attorney for San Francisco, John Williams, arrived in Seattle to make a “detailed survey of the law enforcement situation in the Pacific Northwest,” focused specifically on “obtaining closer cooperation between all federal agencies and state, county, and city officials.” Williams’ presence generated interest from reporters, who got him to announce, “There is an abnormal situation in Seattle. I do not know of any place in the United States where a similar situation is to be found. As I understand it, the office of the Prohibition director has a legal advisor, who in Prohibition cases fixes the crime the person arrested shall be charged with. This is unusual as the district attorney is the legal advisor of the Prohibition director.”65
Williams’ point seemed clear to the reporters: legal advisor William Whitney was an unnecessary cog in the wheel of justice; the Prohibition Unit needed to focus on catching the bootleggers and leave prosecutions to the Justice Department. Yet Williams must have noticed that Whitney and Revelle worked in lockstep. Revelle had too many cases and needed the extra support provided by Whitney, a trained attorney who kept abreast of the evolving legal situation surrounding Prohibition. On the other hand, Whitney did not trust most of his law enforcement partners in Seattle, seeing the U.S. Marshals’ office rife with men who opposed Prohibition, the Coast Guard littered with drunken sailors, and the city and county police departments filled with wayward officers. Whitney had no interest in working with agencies he viewed as corrupt and rarely passed up an opportunity to impugn them.
Senator Wesley Jones, responsible for most of the federal patronage jobs in Washington State, including those of William Whitney and Roy Lyle, rushed to stem the rising tide of criticism, declaring, “Before any man was appointed in this state as United States Attorney, marshal, collector of customs, collector of internal revenue, or commissioner of immigration, each assured me that regardless of his personal views on Prohibition he would cooperate to the utmost in enforcement of the Prohibition law. I hope each has done so.”66 The senator did not rule out problems, but laid the responsibility at the feet of underlings—“deputies,” he called them. “If any deputy is winking at or condoning violations of the law,” Jones would not “hesitate to ask for his removal.” The promise sounded good, but it avoided the issues surrounding Whitney—that his agents were overzealous, that false reimbursement requests for travel had been filed, that he had failed to cooperate with other agencies, and that one of his job titles, legal advisor, was unnecessary.
Before the IRB agents even submitted their report finding no direct evidence of wrongdoing,67 Senator Jones claimed “that any interference with Director Lyle or his administration will be playing directly into the hands of wet interests in the state of Washington,” and furthermore, “Sincere Drys have no complaint against the director.” His preemptive statement suggested Jones was less concerned about the veracity of any charges against the Seattle Pro-hibition Unit office than he was about the perception of misconduct they created. The perceived threat to the Prohibition Unit brought forth a powerful response from the senator’s allies in the war to end the consumption of alcohol. The WCTU, ASL, YMCA, Seattle Federation of Churches, and other religious organizations quickly sent telegrams of support for Director Lyle “and his agents” to Jones in Washington, D.C., with copies for the local papers.68 These organizations rose as one to declare “a conspiracy exists to defeat enforcement of the Prohibition law in this state by discrediting federal officers in charge of enforcement.”69
Roy Lyle had spent more than a year encouraging citizens to support the law of Prohibition. This was not exactly the same aim as William Whitney’s.
Chapter 6
Pauline Sabin found a political ally in Senator James Wadsworth, their conservative values meeting on common ground, but her continued support of Prohibition put her on the opposite side of the fence from Wadsworth and even her own husband, though it did lend her credibility with most women, placing her in
the role of trusted liaison between the two factions. In October 1923, the League of Women Voters asked Pauline, who had remained a member of the group even after her caustic statements about the LWV in 1922, to join a delegation slated to meet with James Wadsworth to “express to him satisfaction in his stand in favor of the World Court.” Pauline supported U.S. membership in the World Court, but correspondence with Wadsworth showed a great deal of apprehension. She judged, “There is no doubt a very large majority of Republican women” who endorsed the World Court, feeling “it is a Republican measure,” but Pauline felt “damned if I do and damned if I do not” regarding her participation in the meeting, perhaps sensing ulterior motives in the LWV’s desire to have her participate. Wadsworth and the LWV clashed on several issues, dating back to his opposition to Prohibition, suffrage, certain child labor restrictions, and equal rights amendments, all measures overwhelmingly favored by women. Pauline asked Wadsworth, whom she had taken to calling “Jim,” to give her “some general idea of what you are going to say to them because it is needless for me to say I’m going to stand by you, but I do not relish the idea of having them spring something on me for which I am unprepared!!!” Any advice or warning from Wads-worth went unrecorded, but Sabin, already politically astute, sensed the best way forward was through the middle. She would join the delegation “as an individual, not as the President of the Women’s National Republican Club or as the Associate member of the National Republican Committee,” begging the organization’s “cooperation in making this fact understood should any publicity be given out on this matter.”1