Liberated Spirits
Page 11
The meeting between the LWV delegation and Wadsworth appears to have gone off without a hitch, but just days later Pauline reported to Jim on growing agitation over the child labor amendment. The Women’s National Republican Club had not proffered an opinion on the amendment, but Pauline knew the membership was split, with all opposed to child labor, but many “equally opposed toward cluttering up the Federal Constitution in any more amendments.” Before someone or some group asked the club’s position, Pauline wanted Jim Wadsworth’s opinion on the proposed amendment and on how the WNRC could best state its position. If the club came out publicly opposing the amendment, a position held by Wadsworth and many leading Republicans, “we will undoubtedly have many resignations from the club, and have most of the women’s organizations down on us and it seems to me we must have something to offer in its place.”2
Wadsworth believed the child labor amendment was unnecessary, since all but a few states had their own child labor laws, and he recommended instead that groups endorsing child labor legislation attack the states where none existed. On a deeper level, Wadsworth opposed the amendment because it sought to impose a “police statute into the Constitution.” Wadsworth charged, “That is exactly what we did in the case of the Eighteenth Amendment and we made an awful mistake,” enacting the only amendment granting the federal government police powers, a license which had existed only for investigation of mail fraud previously.3 The WNRC, clearly influenced by Pauline and her correspondence with Jim Wadsworth, took a diplomatic stance, issuing no opinion on the child labor amendment, allowing members, as individuals, to choose their side.4
Wadsworth teamed with a Democratic counterpart, Representative Finis Garrett of Tennessee, to propose that any future amendments to the Constitution must be ratified a second time if changes in a state legislature had occurred since the first vote.5 Supporters of the Wadsworth-Garrett measure suggested the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, both of which Wadsworth opposed, might have failed if the proposed bill had been in effect. Legislative bodies, “composed of comparatively few men,” judged Wadsworth, could not be expected to withstand “the modern machinery of propaganda” when its full weight was brought down upon them.6 Wadsworth’s references to “propaganda” were directed at the ASL, WCTU, and similar single-issue organizations that beat state legislators over the head with threats of public shaming when their votes were made public, a common practice during the fight to get the Eighteenth Amendment passed. Few men could withstand charges of opposing family stability in favor of the saloon. Similarly, proponents of a child labor amendment threatened political retribution.
The Wadsworth-Garrett proposal moved in fits and starts, from subcommittee to committee hearings in both the Senate and the House, with discussion extending from January 1923 into the spring of 1924. Pauline Sabin traveled to Washington, D.C., along with Alice Chittenden, who had replaced her as president of the WNRC, to submit to a House committee conducting hearings on the amendment the results of a poll taken at the club. Chittenden provided the testimony, reporting that an overwhelming majority of the club’s membership, which drew women from thirty-seven states, supported the Wadsworth-Garrett amendment, seeing it as restoring stability to the Constitution, which had undergone too many additions of late, and granting the people, not state legislatures, greater influence in the constitutional process.7
The Wadsworth-Garrett amendment’s proposition concerning the requirement that one house of the state legislature be elected after the U.S. Congress submitted an amendment to the states for ratification left many scratching their heads. Wadsworth argued that state legislators elected prior to congressional approval of an amendment did not reflect current realities in a constantly changing political landscape where voters might have selected different candidates if they had known legislators would consider certain amendments.8 This argument failed with many congressmen, who observed that change was inevitable and trying to stay current meant you might never get ahead. People also misconstrued the Wadsworth-Garrett provision as allowing a popular vote to decide an amendment’s fate after a legislative vote. That provision had grown from Wadsworth’s experiences in his home state, where popular opinion, dominated by New York City’s wetness, had failed to overcome ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment by the state legislature, dominated by Drys from upstate, rural districts. Wadsworth-Garrett’s attempt to allow for second chances smacked of sour grapes, dooming its passage in Congress, but its illumination of excessive calls for constitutional amendments appeared to stymie the efforts of those supporting the child labor and equal rights proposals.
Shortly after the defeat of the Wadsworth-Garrett amendment proposal, the movement to draft a child labor amendment arose, much in the way Wadsworth had warned; the movement attempted to put into the Constitution strictures governing the ages at which children could be employed and the types of industries in which they could work. The senator walked a fine line trying to explain his opposition, which was not based on the intent of the amendment—for he found no fault with protecting children—but on the manner in which protection would be mandated, regulated, and enforced by the federal government, overreaching its authority and the intent of the founding fathers. The proposed child labor amendment, much like the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, were “whittling at the structure framed by the founders of this Government,” warned Wadsworth, and “if we whittle long enough, we will destroy it.”9
When the movement to draft a child labor amendment failed, many women blamed its downfall on James Wadsworth, who could not convince women that he did not oppose suffrage, Prohibition, and protection of children out of misogyny, but on constitutional grounds, where he saw states holding the authority to determine what happened within their borders. Most women did not agree, failing to see how a patchwork of differing laws and conditions from state to state best served half of the population. Pauline Sabin, though very much a Wadsworth supporter, was probably concerned about the same thing.
While the political positions of Sabin and the WNRC remained in nearly constant debate, Pauline did take a moment’s respite to enjoy a significant achievement, the opening of a new clubhouse for the WNRC in February 1924. Having outgrown two temporary locations, the Women’s National Republican Club had purchased a permanent home in May 1923, in the heart of one of Manhattan’s best shopping districts and convenient to Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station.10 Club members from thirty-eight states had subscribed $257,000 in bonds for the building’s purchase.11 Mrs. Warren Harding had purchased the first bond.12 Pauline Sabin regarded the building and its acquisition as a “milestone in the history of feminism,” the building “indicative of the permanency and importance of the place which women are achieving in political affairs.” When the new headquarters opened, the five-story building contained meeting rooms, a library, a lounge, two dining rooms, and fourteen bedrooms for visiting guests, all rooms decorated with early American furnishings, evocative of the Federalist period, Pauline’s skills as an interior decorator on elegant display.13
At its opening day reception on February 11, 1924, the new home of the Women’s National Republican Club hosted sixteen hundred people. The following day, President Coolidge, the vice president who had become president upon Harding’s death, attended a reception at the club, and was greeted by more than one thousand people on the street outside.14 Belying his moniker, “Silent Cal,” the president did not remain mute while at the club, taking tea and chatting with members, impressed with the headquarters, the organization, and its president, Pauline Sabin.15
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In early 1924, Mabel Willebrandt learned she had been denied another appointment to the federal bench, but she could live with it, knowing she would have had to compromise her integrity to get the position. Hiram Johnson had suggested she go to California’s junior senator, Sam Shortridge, and ask for his endorsement, hinting that placing herself in Shortridge’s debt would
seal the deal. Willebrandt told Johnson, “Ten judgeships would not be worth it. I have to respect at least anyone of whom I will ask a favor.” She did not regret her decision, but missing another opportunity to return to California and her family hurt.
Attorney General Harry Daugherty had managed to hold on to his office into early 1924, despite numerous calls for his resignation amid a new scandal involving a speck of a place called Teapot Dome in Wyoming. Daugherty vowed to fight, calling Mabel Willebrandt back to Washington from a conference in Chicago. Willebrandt decided that President Coolidge was owed, if not allegiance, a certain amount of faith, since he had asked Daugherty to stay on after Har-ding’s death despite being fully aware of the enemies facing the attorney general. Willebrandt felt that Coolidge would be “a yellow livered, dishonorable craven” if he failed to give Daugherty all his support. Regarding the scandals that swirled around Daugherty, Willebrandt declared that the attorney general “had no more official opportunity to know of the mistakes of the administration for the past few years than Coolidge did.” Rather, she charged Coolidge with being “closer, officially, to the mistakes being made” than Daugherty because the vice president had greater access to Harding and his cabinet than the attorney general did. (In fact, Harding and Coolidge had very little interaction, Harding remaining close to Daugherty and the rest of the “Ohio gang” that had secured him the presidency.)
Willebrandt was inclined to stay on, believing Coolidge had an excellent chance for reelection and fearing her departure would send a political message damaging to the Republican Party.16 Two days later, her inclination had changed, and she told her parents if Daugherty was forced to resign, she would follow suit rather than work with those who’d brought down her boss, a man who had earned her trust through continued support and confidence in her abilities. Willebrandt’s loyalty to Daugherty blinded her to the facts; the attorney general and his cronies had taken advantage of their positions to secure financial gain at public expense. Less than two months later, evidence mounting against him, Daugherty resigned, admitting nothing. As per her earlier vow, Willebrandt resigned, unofficially.
Harlan Fiske Stone assumed the position of attorney general on April 9, 1924, and promptly asked Mrs. Willebrandt to continue in her work. Loyal to the cause she had inherited, she agreed, though she judged Stone “not so loyal nor lovable a man as Mr. D.”17 She agreed to a request from her old boss to speak at a women’s club meeting in Marion, Ohio, Warren Harding’s hometown, in support of Daugherty’s bid to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention—he hoped Mabel’s appearance would demonstrate that he had not been “crooked”—but she did not relish the opportunity. She was tired. In the previous weeks, she had made numerous speeches in the Northeast, prepared two cases for the Supreme Court, and appeared before a congressional hearing in addition to her usual workload; she was working so much that her secretary took on the task of writing Mabel’s parents on her behalf.18 The appearance for Daugherty added another chore, but, more than that, she was fed up with people who instead of being “for Prohibition are for politics first.” Daugherty had given Willebrandt free rein to pursue enforcement, but others—Roy Haynes, the Prohibition commissioner; Wayne Wheeler, head of the ASL; and Andrew Mellon, treasury secretary and nominal head of the Internal Revenue Bureau—played a game, each trying to hold on to his place on the board, often at the expense of sound policy. Wille-brandt charged, privately, “More skullduggery can be unearthed [in the Treasury Department] than in all Washington put together.”19 Willebrandt chose to remain as assistant attorney general to serve the greater good, rather than personal ambition, in the hope that Washington culture would change, and believed that if vice were to be eradicated “women must use the scrubbing brush and soap.”20
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After elections for the New York state assembly in the late fall of 1923, in which the Republicans had lost several seats, Charles Hilles proposed a meeting among party leaders to set a course of action, not only for the upcoming legislative session, but for the 1924 elections. The meeting would select the “Big Six” delegates, as Hilles called them, to the national convention, with two positions reserved for women, one from the New York City area and one from upstate. Hilles advised leaders from the southern area to talk with their “women associates” to gain a consensus, but he clearly favored Pauline Sabin. Similarly, he saw Henrietta Livermore as the logical choice from upstate.21 Hilles appreciated Sabin’s political acumen and value to the party, regardless of her sex, but he was, at heart, a politician and hoped the appearance of diversity would define the Republican Party as the more inclusive. After the “Big Six” delegates, including Pauline Sabin, were set, Hilles proposed the selection of alternate delegates, who would also attend the convention, representing the diversity of the state of New York; he suggested “colored,” Jewish, and Irish representatives, and also allowed political bosses in Syracuse, Buffalo, and Albany to offer candidates. He recommended that Sabin be among those consulted in framing the party platform, which Hilles advised should focus solely on national issues, with the hope that much of it would serve as the basis for the platform adopted at the national convention, a not-unreasonable hope given New York’s influence upon national elections, whether it was the production of political leaders or its large electorate.22
While Hilles’ “rainbow” coalition might have given a picture of unity, campaign efforts divided along gender and racial lines. Sabin spearheaded the party’s drive to bring women to vote for Republican candidates.23 Her status meant men in the party sought her advice on women’s issues, their views on matters of general interest, and the selection of women for roles in the party leadership and the discussion of candidates and strategy.24 Pauline appreciated the idea behind dividing the electorate into distinct groups, securing votes by addressing the unique interests of each group, but she knew, if women were to play a larger role in party politics and leadership, they needed to be more than a special interest group. Unfortunately, stepping ahead of women’s issues proved difficult, even for someone as politically astute as Pauline Sabin.
The taint of Prohibition touched Pauline Sabin on April 4, 1924, when Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith, perhaps the most famous Prohibition agents in the country, raided a garage she owned, seizing fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of liquor. The raid seems to have occurred by accident; the agents were merely looking for a parking space when they were tipped off that the garage “was full of liquor,” at which point they entered and found Samuel Carter, the Sabins’ chauffeur, who said he alone owned the liquor.25 Despite Carter’s claim of sole responsibility, a newspaper saw fit to criticize Pauline, calling her a “misrepresentative of the nobler class of women,” who could be “aptly termed the representative of the bob-haired, bandit Mrs. Cooney [a convicted bootlegger] and other women criminals or law-breakers of the Commonwealth, by her avowed advocacy of opposition to the law.”26 Despite her association with many anti-Prohibitionists, Pauline had always supported Prohibition publicly. Strangely, the newspaper did not assign any responsibility for the liquor to Charles Sabin, who openly opposed Prohibition. A week later, the same newspaper printed a halfhearted retraction of its criticism after “a friend” reported a “probability” that Mrs. Sabin was unaware of the liquor in her garage. The paper offered an apology “for the injustice done the accused,” if indeed Sabin did not know about the liquor in her garage.27 The paper did not, however, mention Pauline’s support of Prohibition, leaving readers to wonder, perhaps, where she stood. For her part, Pauline never addressed any of the paper’s claims.
Nothing further about Carter’s arrest appeared in the papers and any stain attaching to Pauline appears to have washed away, but the criticism signaled her arrival as a recognized party leader.
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The success Roy Olmstead was enjoying did not go unnoticed. William Whitney and his agents had been busy interrogating men arr
ested for peddling bottles of alcohol or for transporting small amounts, and were trying to connect those “bottlemen” to their suppliers. The assembled evidence, much of it hearsay, indicated a large, well-organized conspiracy for distributing liquor throughout the Pacific Northwest. Conspiracy charges, as Whitney well knew, carried the maximum penalties under the Volstead Act. The key was to convict what Whitney called “the higher-ups,” the executives of the operation, and he had a plan to do so: force enough of the petty criminals to testify to build up a body of evidence. Of all the men engaged in transporting and selling liquor, Whitney explained, “there are but a few men now engaged in the liquor business who are still importing, and doing their own distribution.” Refusing to offer names, Whitney declared, “Our office is rapidly closing the net upon some of the biggest men now engaged in this character of law violations.”28
The reappearance of “Miss Potter,” the bookkeeper whom William Whitney hoped would bring Roy Olmstead to his knees at the 1922 trial before her mysterious disappearance, would have brightened prospects of convicting the “King of the Bootleggers” in 1924, if she had not emerged from hiding on the arm of Olmstead. Whether Elsie Potter had told Roy of her conversations with William Whitney is uncertain, but her relationship with Olmstead had begun about the time she vanished. Had she purposely led Whitney astray, offering false hope, at the instigation of her lover, or had Olmstead, upon learning of Elsie’s betrayal, banished her, only to fall for her charms? In either case, they had become inseparable. Roy Olmstead’s marriage had been over for a few years, probably since his first arrest in early 1920. Viola Olmstead had been satisfied to be the wife of a police lieutenant, not one of Seattle’s most infamous rumrunners. Viola filed for divorce in January 1924, “alleging cruelty,” bringing to an end their fifteen-year union.29 Despite her discomfort with Roy’s illegal activities, Viola wanted her share of the money he had made as well as custody of their two daughters. According to the state’s community property laws, her interests were defined as “equal and unified,” so her share amounted to what she could prove he owned, a difficult task; few documents showed the value of boats, trucks, and warehouses owned by Roy or the volume of profits derived from his illegal activities.30 Whatever he offered, it proved sufficient. Viola disappeared from public life and Roy married Elsie a few months later.