Liberated Spirits
Page 25
She did not shy from accusing Prohibitionists, either, notably the Anti-Saloon League, of failing to support the Eighteenth Amendment; she accused them of having “rocking chair-itis,” leaning “back in complacent enjoyment” of past victories. The absence of “quiet, steady, forceful education on the value of temperance, community by community,” formerly promulgated by the ASL and WCTU, opened the door for anti-Prohibitionists to create doubt, focusing on the crime and corruption brought by Prohibition.16
Willebrandt had understood from the beginning that it would take time to clarify the laws of enforcement and establish permissible methods of search and seizure and the penalties to be assessed. When “harmony of interpretation could not be obtained in lower courts,” cases advanced to the Supreme Court, where she had argued nearly 80 cases and submitted certiorari (i.e., sympathetic) briefs in another 278. Several of those cases would have far-reaching implications beyond Prohibition. In U.S. v. Carroll, the court ruled that automobiles could be stopped and searched and incriminating evidence seized without a search warrant if law enforcement officers had sufficient reason to believe the vehicle’s occupants had participated in criminal activity. In U.S. v. Marron, the court ruled that business records could be seized without a warrant if thought to reveal illegal operations. Previously, such records were regarded as self-incriminating and, therefore, inadmissible as evidence. Crimes of omission came under scrutiny in U.S. v. Donnelly, where the court determined that federal agents and attorneys could be found guilty of violating the Volstead Act if they failed to pursue cases against known violators. The Grace and Ruby cases found British rumrunners guilty when two ships anchored in international waters allowed smaller boats to be lowered from the main vessels and used to shuttle liquor to shore with the aid of a boat sent from the mainland.17 Court rulings gave Prohibition agents and policemen more means to secure arrests and collect evidence, resulting in more arrests, but inadequate penalties did not prove a sufficient deterrent.18 The recent passage of the Jones Five and Ten Law, she believed, with its higher fines and longer jail terms, would go a long way to slowing bootleggers and rumrunners, giving courts the freedom to assess sentences commensurate with crimes.
Willebrandt reminded her readers that only 305 out of 2,540 counties nationwide had declared themselves “wet,” making repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment “almost an impossibility.” Only thirteen state legislatures would need to oppose repeal to keep the amendment in place should a serious opposition movement arise. Willebrandt admitted gains in anti-Prohibition sentiment as demonstrated by the repeal of state enforcement laws in New York, New Jersey, Montana, Nevada, and Wisconsin, but saw a reinvigorated effort at education and resistance from traditional temperance and Prohibition organizations during Al Smith’s presidential campaign. Women’s interest in sustaining Prohibition had been revived, in particular, though Willebrandt observed a difference between single and married women: the “modern girl” was willing to share a flask with her escort, but “the moment that girl marries, she likely will, whether consciously or not, become a supporter of Prohibition, because she will always be unwilling to share any part of her husband’s income either with a bootlegger or saloon keeper.”19 If women were not enough to hold Prohibition in place, the American people’s characteristic desire to “accomplish the impossible” would.20
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Enduring his time on McNeil Island, subjected to the penitentiary’s rigid structure, Roy Olmstead had begun to change. The desires and goals that once had driven him had begun to drop away. He had become interested in the Christian Science religion. Into his contemplations of its tenets—including the belief that the material world is an illusion blinding humans from the truth of spiritual reality—about a year into his sentence, stepped an unexpected guest. Entering the visitors’ room, Olmstead saw Tom Revelle waiting. The former district attorney had just learned of the bribes the rumrunner had paid to Clifford McKinney, Revelle’s former assistant, and he wanted to make sure Olmstead knew that he had never known about the transactions. Revelle admonished Olmstead not to tell him anything now, or anyone else, for that matter, warning that additional charges could be brought against him. As the conversation ended, Revelle buried his veiled threat by proclaiming, “God bless you, my boy, you don’t know how I’ve suffered for you. I’ve thought of this many, many times and I want to see you out of this trouble.”21 Olmstead made Tom Revelle not a single promise.
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The October 4, 1929, headline in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer read, “Mysterious Investigation of Seattle Prohibition Office” in large block letters across the top. The investigation had been announced by none other than J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. Assistant Attorney General Howard T. Jones, “temporarily filling the position left by the resignation of Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt,” stated that “many complaints from the Seattle district have been forthcoming for a long time.” The news surprised Roy Lyle, but he would not back down, declaring, “I am not afraid of anything—there is nothing here to investigate.” Going on the offense, both he and Whitney attributed the investigation to the work of locals “seeking to discredit enforcement of the Prohibition law here,” aided by imprisoned bootleggers seeking pardons. Al Hubbard, whose work with Olmstead and then with Lyle “had brought him considerable publicity,” according to the newspaper, had furnished the FBI with a great deal of information. Lyle cautioned readers to remember, “Hubbard is a dismissed Prohibition agent,” but the account mentioned that Hubbard had been “exonerated” by a federal grand jury before concluding with a reminder of the two previous investigations of the unit by the Internal Revenue Bureau’s Intelligence Unit, whose report “was never acted upon,” leaving readers to ponder why.22
Privately, Lyle and Whitney were furious, considering the latest investigation unfair and even ridiculous, based as it was on “the alleged evidence” from prejudicial and criminal sources. While this “fake investigation” would subject them again to “the personal discomforts and injury and serious interruption of our work,” the real issue was attacks on honest and efficient officials by “the unscrupulous and treacherous opposition of an enemy, not without but within the very government itself.” These forces were intent upon destroying enforcement of the Volstead Act “through discrediting the efforts of the personnel.” This point was echoed by many drys throughout the country. Failing to maintain the dignity of the office and the confidence of the public, agents of the Prohibition Bureau would lose the ability to gather evidence and tips from the public, and to win cases in front of juries.23
Along with the anger, there was great pain for both leaders of the Twentieth District. As Lyle put it to Senator Jones, “I am very resentful and bitter, as I feel I am justified in being because of these unwarranted attacks, yet in my own conscience I feel gratified in having had the privilege of doing my bit for my country in what I honestly believe to be one of its greatest contests and its greatest crises.” Whitney made it plainer, telling Jones, “It does seem more than passing strange that we can get no action on such matters, but when any scoundrel and crook or Prohibition violator goes to any unit that can possibly investigate the Prohibition office a statement of the crooks are excepted [sic] as facts and they immediately start to harass Prohibition enforcement officers.”24
Pressing upon Whitney as much as his perceived enemies was the very real possibility that the Prohibition Bureau would be transferred from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice, home to the FBI now investigating him. Senator Jones had received assurance from President Hoover that the bureau’s leadership supported the transfer, leaving Whitney “dumbfounded.” He believed Mabel Willebrandt and Alf Oftedal, both of whom had resigned after only six months under Hoover’s presidency, had clouded the president’s thinking.25 Whitney assaulted the notion that moving the bureau into the DOJ would somehow make everything “Lily white.” Exhibit A was the DOJ�
�s investigation into his own office. Swinging wild punches, he asserted that the U.S. Attorneys and Marshals had been the source of more corruption than the “carefully selected and civil service administrators,” the garbled syntax an attempt to paper over his own problems.
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Finally, on November 1, 1929, President Hoover named his replacement for Mabel Willebrandt: C. A. Youngquist, the attorney general of Minnesota and a friend of Attorney General William Mitchell and Andrew Volstead. On assuming the mantle, Young-quist said, “I am dry politically and personally, but I am not a fanatic on the subject,” a clear sign of change in the government’s approach to Prohibition.26 At the same time, Mitchell hinted at moving all functions under the Department of Justice’s umbrella, an idea long advanced by Willebrandt. As the legislation came before Congress, a House committee asked Willebrandt to appear and offer her comments on the proposal. She asked to be excused from the proceedings, saying, “Out of courtesy to those who are discharging the responsibility of enforcing the law I would prefer that you hear their views rather than mine.”27 Congress relented and Willebrandt did not appear before the committee.
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Without the crushing demands of her former position, Mabel Willebrandt could give time and voice to the plight of professional women, a subject which had greatly influenced her acceptance of the job as assistant attorney general. In late September 1929, she had given a radio address advising women on how to achieve success in business or professional endeavors. She advised women not to yield their feminine sexuality to mannish appearance or allow men to exaggerate women’s successes or failures using misperceptions about their defining characteristics. Willebrandt assigned some blame for those misperceptions to “self-conscious” behaviors that led women to believe failures resulted from conspiracies or prejudice against them rather than the typical mistakes or bad judgment of a novice. Neither did Willebrandt excuse men from needing to grant young women the same “right to make mistakes” as young men and for believing that women harbored inferiority complexes preventing them from reaching greater heights.28
In a magazine article printed in February 1930, Willebrandt went further, declaring: “Women have no fair chance in the business world yet. To say that they have is just ‘Pollyana talk.’” Beyond doing her job well, a woman must “walk the tight-rope of sexlessness without the loss of her essential charm,” pursuing “an impersonal fight against constant efforts to sidetrack her.” Willebrandt granted, “Every woman wants a home,” but men couldn’t “sympathize with the pioneer spirit of the modern girl he marries,” couldn’t allow her to work outside the home without fearing questions or ridicule from his peers. Women could not overcome such prejudices without the help of a husband committed to preserving his wife’s freedom, self-respect, intellectual acumen, and economic independence. Doing so, Willebrandt asserted, would produce a true “home” instead of the “outgrown ‘manly’ theory of ‘my wife can’t work for a living!’” Without a job, or some other outlet outside the home, she foresaw only desperation and anger for a woman. Even in instances where women, on their own or with their husbands’ blessings, entered the workforce, they must be prepared to have their credentials and capabilities challenged by male bosses and colleagues. Maintaining “a subtle attitude of confidence and resourcefulness, revealed through quiet, restrained and womanly dignity” would slowly melt “stubborn prejudice.” She expressed great hope for the future, but warned, in the interim, the successful woman was “bound to look back with yearning and perhaps with regret at dead hopes—the boy she loved but rejected because in his masculine egotism he demanded without understanding her free spirit’s sacrifice—the children she could have had—the companionship she missed.”29
If readers could have glimpsed the past ten years of Willebrandt’s diaries they would have seen the roots of every declaration she made in the article. Her struggles with Fred Horowitz’s ego coupled with the social stigma of a divorce and remarriage had convinced her to remain alone, seeking contentment in her career. Mabel Willebrandt would have great success in her professional life, achieving the financial stability she craved, and a certain amount of fulfillment with Dorothy’s adoption, but her failure to find a sympathetic companion, a desire for which she expressed many times in her diaries and personal correspondence, served as the unstated example in her article.
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As President Hoover’s National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (better known as the Wickersham Commission after its chairman, George Wickersham) began its investigation into the effectiveness of federal Prohibition enforcement, several members of the U.S. House of Representatives, feeling empowered by potential change, advanced a series of proposals to amend the Constitution in relation to the Eighteenth Amendment. The proposals, variously, would have allowed the federal government to regulate the manufacture, sale, transportation, import, and export of alcoholic beverages; created a federal permitting system allowing manufacture and sale of alcohol; returned the decision to manufacture or sell alcohol to the states, individually; set a date for a referendum on repeal; or repealed the Eighteenth Amendment.30
On February 12, 1930, Pauline Sabin appeared on the first day of hearings on yet another proposed amendment to modify the Volstead Act. She came “to refute the contention that is often made by dry organizations, that all the women of America favor national Prohibition.” She believed women had been significant in securing enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment, but their hopes of strengthening a weak will had not worked as desired: “They have seen an alleged moral reform debauch public and private life.” Increases in crime, government expenditure on enforcement, prison population, death from alcoholism, and drinking among teens, Sabin declared, brought increasing dissatisfaction with the law. Worse were the lawmakers, in Congress and state legislatures, who were “notoriously wet in their personal conducts, but continue to vote under the whiplash of that political cabal called the Anti-Saloon League.” Sabin called for the end of the hypocrisy that was “rapidly becoming our national characteristic” and “remedial” legislation to “replace the present era of lawlessness, corruption, hypocrisy, and killings with honesty, temperance, and sobriety.” The assembled gallery applauded.31
After dozens of women, claiming to represent millions of women, had spoken against any modification of the Volstead Act or the Eighteenth Amendment, Sabin requested a chance for rebuttal, which was granted, but she could not appear on the appointed day because she was in Cleveland attending to the details of the WONPR’s national conference, so she sent Elizabeth Harris, prominent in the Washington, D.C., chapter of the WONPR, in her stead. Harris took issue with the women favoring Prohibition and claiming they represented a majority of women throughout the country. She refuted claims by Mrs. Henry Peabody, president of the Women’s National Committee for Law Enforcement, and Mrs. John Sippel, president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, who said they represented twelve million women, by saying, “That Mrs. Jones is a member of a reading club, of a women’s club and parent-teacher association does not make Mrs. Jones three women with three votes for or against Prohibition!” Harris reported on the receipt of numerous complaints sent to the WONPR and to newspapers across the country from women, many associated with clubs Peabody claimed for Prohibition, stating their offense at the suggestion that any of the groups in question had polled its membership regarding Prohibition. Returning to a familiar WONPR theme, Harris concluded there could be no response “to those who confined their statement to excited declaration that never, while the nineteenth amendment stood, could the Eighteenth be repealed.”32
Away from the hearings, the WONPR attacked—if the use of statistics and hard questioning could be regarded as attacking—the WCTU and other women’s Prohibitionist groups, challenging their assumptions that Prohibition was succeeding. At a forum headlined by Ella Boole an
d Pauline Sabin at the Women’s National Republican Club, Boole shied from the obvious failure to slow the liquor trade, saying success could be measured by the “disappearance of the saloon,” downplaying the existence of speakeasies as solely a New York City phenomenon.33
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The Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform’s first national conference in Cleveland in April 1930 created a “Declaration of Principles” labeling Prohibition as “fundamentally wrong.” National Prohibition destroyed “the balance” between state and federal authority, ignored the fact that only “moral sense and the community conscience” could promote abstinence, and produced “disastrous consequences in the hypocrisy, the corruption, and the tragic loss of life and the appalling increase of crime which attended the abortive attempt to enforce it.” The WONPR called for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the enactment of state regulations “forbidding the return of the saloon,” driving “crime-breeding speakeasies” into extinction. Noting that the Eighteenth Amendment had been enacted by votes in state legislatures, the WONPR urged Congress “to submit to conventions of the people” (a nod to Jim Wadsworth’s failed amendment), ensuring a true mandate would be heard.34