by Hugh Ambrose
Shortly after the southern tour ended, Sabin got an opportunity to measure the success of the WONPR’s efforts, when a vote on the Beck-Linthicum Bill, which proposed an addendum to the Eighteenth Amendment allowing each state to vote on whether to restore its authority to regulate the manufacture and sale of liquor within its borders, was scheduled in the House of Representatives for mid-March.21 The WONPR’s members understood the bill had little chance of passage, but the vote’s importance lay in forcing Congress’ members to “go on record” for or against Prohibition, something that would prove useful in the fall elections.22 Drys, or at least those proclaiming themselves dry, defeated wets by a margin of 227 to 187, with the votes favoring the bill split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats.23 It was the first time a full vote in the House had considered the Eighteenth Amendment since its passage.
The WONPR’s southern tour continued to generate press coverage in the region into the summer—another sign of changing attitudes, believed Sabin. In June, the Baton Rouge Advocate asked Sabin to profess her views in contrast to those of Clarence True Wilson, a leader of the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals. She added a new argument to the case against Prohibition, noting the opportunity voters had to assist in economic recovery, as the Depression worsened, by “voting to eliminate the stupendous waste of money squandered in an endeavor to enforce the obnoxious Prohibition law.” Sabin had begun the WONPR to challenge the “moral depression” wrought by Prohibition, but it had become equally important to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment to help heal the economic depression. The cost of enforcement, federally and locally, had been estimated as high as forty-nine million dollars, with conservative estimates on the loss of tax revenue set at one billion dollars, money that could greatly assist an economic recovery. Sabin believed the majority of Americans wanted repeal with new, responsible controls on liquor traffic, including taxation. They also wanted to rid the country of speakeasies, bootleggers, gangsters, and the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and “Other People’s Morals.” For his part, Clarence True Wilson labeled the repeal movement a conspiracy of the rich against the poor, with the latter expected “to pay the rich man’s taxes.”24 He offered no evidence of Prohibition’s successes, only indignation that it be challenged at all; he was certain that the majority of people wanted Prohibition.
While the Republican Party had no doubts about its presidential candidate, and stuck with Hoover, the party was less sure of its chances. Party leaders considered many potential vice presidential candidates who could strengthen the ticket, especially as criticism of Hoover’s response to the Depression grew. Hoping name recognition might do the trick, Charles Hilles, among others, proposed Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Roosevelt passed, noting his responsibilities as governor general of the Philippine Islands. Roosevelt did offer thoughts, though, on the pending campaign, particularly on the debate over Prohibition. The Republican plank attempted to play both sides, calling for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment but allowing for state options to enforce Prohibition within their borders. Roose-velt agreed with the position, and opposed those groups, notably the WONPR, that sought full repeal without any compromise. He compared Sabin, his old friend and ally, to Ella Boole, the strident Prohibitionist, ascribing to both “venomous personalities and general irrationality.”25 Presumably he was referring to the single-mindedness of each woman, for whom one issue superseded all others to the detriment, in Roosevelt’s mind, of the party. His harsh remarks echoed those he had shared with “Polly” several years earlier, when he had decried the politics of the National Woman’s Party and its existence separate from the two mainstream parties. Polly had agreed with Ted then, and for several years after, believing women should work within the established parties. Now the scourge of Prohibition could not be reversed by only one party, especially if her party, the Republicans, lost.
Franklin Roosevelt, Ted’s cousin and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, announced in February 1932 his commitment to returning liquor control to the states, a position he claimed to have held for a long time.26 During the rest of the campaign he would barely mention Prohibition or the Eighteenth Amendment again, favoring discussions of the worsening depression.27 Herbert Hoover continued to waffle on Prohibition, his attention focused on the economy, to his own disadvantage.
The WONPR, increasingly the loudest voice for women, and to whom men often deferred on the Prohibition question, drew like-minded groups to their movement. Sabin met with officials from the American Federation of Labor, who were interested in forming an alliance, hopeful that cooperation would “insure many wives of laboring men joining” the WONPR, which would bring “a great effect upon our Congressman and Senators,” according to one official.28 The American Hotel Association, eager to offer its customers liquor, offered to join in the WONPR’s efforts and told its managers at member hotels to assist in any way possible.29 The first step in expanding cooperation, visibility, and membership began with the National Reform Week, set for May 16 to 22 and arranged by the WONPR, with a goal to raise membership to one million. The organization planned “intensive” efforts in forty-one states and the District of Columbia, and Sabin announced this over the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. She reminded listeners that three years earlier, when she had founded the WONPR, women had feared speaking out for repeal, but the group’s efforts since then and the continuing failure of enforcement to end violence or improve the lives of women and families had put the word “repeal” “on every tongue.” Sabin declared, “We wear our wet tag proudly,” comfortable in the understanding that “wet” did not “mean a person addicted to drink any more than ‘dry’ means a person who has forsworn the consumption of alcoholic beverages.”30
Following National Reform week, the WONPR sponsored, in association with two other anti-Prohibition groups, an investigative survey seeking proof of the supposed benefits of the Eighteenth Amendment. Recent graduates of twenty colleges traveled the country in a specially outfitted bus, chasing down leads from the WCTU, ASL, Salvation Army, public health offices, and police departments to determine whether Prohibition reformed alcoholics and improved the lives of families in which alcoholism and drunkenness had been a problem. By midsummer, the bus had visited twenty states, and the students claimed they could find no former alcoholics who had reformed their ways because of Prohibition or families whose fortunes had been turned around by the abolition of liquor.31 The students provided as little hard evidence as the Prohibitionist organizations that had fostered the rumors of miraculous rehabilitations, but their efforts did raise an important question: if Prohibition was meant to correct a social evil, where was the evidence of its success?
Going beyond the usual campaign posters and buttons, the WONPR sold all manner of merchandise emblazoned with the word “Repeal”: donation boxes, thimbles, silk scarves, powder puff cases, and a spare-tire cover for an automobile.32 The organization even commissioned a song to be played at rallies, the words sung to the tune of “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile,” reminding supporters of their influence:
If all the women in the U.S.A.
Make their vote worthwhile;
Congressmen and Senators
Would know they weren’t in style—SO
Each mother’s son of them would vote repeal and
Smile! Smile! Smile!33
Sabin continued to crisscross the country, bringing her wares along, speaking at rallies of increasing size, but no rally could equal the exposure she received in newsreels seen by millions in movie houses everywhere.34
Sabin returned frequently to the impact of Prohibition on women, for whom the Eighteenth Amendment had been passed. Before the Eighteenth Amendment, women did not drink, “children scarcely knew that drink existed,” saloons could not be placed near schools, and a general sentiment favoring temperance prevailed across the nation. Sabin admitted she had “we
lcomed Prohibition” for the sake of her children, but her position changed after she saw the lawlessness and disrespect for law that followed in its wake. She warned, “Mothers know that today speakeasies are located next door to schools, homes, and public buildings,” and nothing under the existing law could change that. She had a growing impatience with so-called “honest, intellectual women who still believe that Prohibition prohibits, and that it should be given further trial for the sake of our children, who need its protection,” given the “glamour which attempted Prohibition has thrown about drink, making it even more attractive to youth.” The consequences might not be fully known for a generation, but Sabin would not wait for what she viewed as a continuing downward spiral of higher rates of juvenile delinquency and relaxed morals. It was not only the youth, women, and home about which she worried, but the erosion of personal liberties by a federal enforcement bureaucracy that “permitted tapping of private telephone wires, search without warrant, trial without jury,” substituting “governmental spying for individual self-control.”35
* * *
• • •
On the eve of the Republican National Convention in June 1932, Mabel Willebrandt indicated she would oppose a proposed plank calling for a national nonbinding referendum on the Eighteenth Amendment. It was “hypocritical and dishonest,” an attempt to appeal to people hoping for an economic rescue that might accompany repeal. Besides, she said, the referendum would produce no effect on the law or policy.36 Any plank should be clear, whether wet or dry. If wet, then the convention should ask for a vote on repeal, letting the country decide definitively.37 After contentious debate, the Republican Party adopted a plank favoring neither full repeal nor resubmission of the question in the form of a referendum; rather, it proposed an amendment to the Constitution that, “while retaining in the Federal Government power to preserve the gains already made in dealing with the evils inherent in the liquor traffic, shall allow States to deal with the problem as their citizens may determine, but subject always to the power of the Federal Government to protect those States where Prohibition may exist and safeguard our citizens everywhere from the return of the saloon and attendant abuses.”38 The Republicans hoped to straddle the fence, believing a position somewhere in the middle, no matter how ambiguous, stood a better chance than calls for outright repeal or no change at all.
* * *
• • •
After the failure of the Republican Party to include a plank for repeal in its platform, Pauline Sabin directed all WONPR members to send telegrams to the chairman of the Democratic National Convention urging the party to include a repeal plank in its platform at its convention.39 Her commitment to the cause over party could be seen best in her appearance at the Democratic convention in Chicago at the end of June 1932. She made no speeches or public declarations, but a photograph of Sabin laughing with AAPA president John Raskob and Al Smith, a political enemy when she had served on the Republican National Committee, ran in papers across the country, saying all that anyone needed to know.40 Not in the photo, but no doubt enjoying the moment from nearby, would have been Charlie Sabin, always the Democrat, finally working on the same political side as his wife.
Raskob also served as the Democratic National Committee chairman, wielding influence over the convention proceedings and the composition of the party platform. Franklin Roosevelt, soon to be nominated as the party’s candidate, signaled he would accept any wet plank adopted by the convention.41 Raskob had little trouble securing a vote on a plank advocating full repeal, for which convention delegates voted overwhelmingly, surprising even Raskob, according to the New York Times.42 The Democratic Party was on the record for outright repeal.
Immediately following the Democratic convention, the WONPR’s Executive Committee directed its members to vote only for congressional candidates supporting repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, regardless of their party affiliation. If both candidates in a race supported repeal, women should vote their party loyalty (though the directive favored Democrats, since many Republicans were waffling on the issue). The executive committee also directed its members to vote for Franklin Roosevelt for president; although the president had no role in changing constitutional amendments, “through the prestige of his office” the president had “the power to wield directly or indirectly great influence over legislation.”43 Such a vote might prove a bitter pill for members who were lifelong Republicans like Sabin; they would be saddled with a Democratic administration, the first in twelve years, and it might undo more than Prohibition, but for Sabin, at least, it was unavoidable.
The choice for Republicans in the WONPR and other anti-Prohibition groups grew muddier when President Hoover admitted the failure of Prohibition in some sections of the country and announced his support for the type of amendment proposed in the party platform. Sabin applauded Hoover’s acknowledgment of the failure of Prohibition enforcement and agreed with his abhorrence of the saloon, but she opposed a system where the federal government still held power over “the definition of a saloon” for the Constitution. Emphasizing her point, Sabin cautioned that a constitutional provision “prohibiting the return of the saloon would give to the Congress the power to legislate and would be an open invitation for all fanatics and hypocritical Drys to keep the pot boiling in the House and the Senate.” Sabin and the WONPR would accept only “the unconditional repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.”44
Time magazine acknowledged the growing women’s repeal movement, placing Sabin on its July 18, 1932, cover. The article described a meeting of the WONPR’s executive committee as “the cream of the nation’s womanhood” and reported that Sabin had pledged to fight for repeal “for the rest of her life.” The magazine saw little hope for the cause, with the wealth of Sabin and her cohorts on the executive committee its greatest strength and greatest weakness. The WONPR might have success with the “smalltown [sic] matron” hoping “to ally herself, no matter how remotely, with a congregation of bona fide, rotogravure society figures in a cause about which she may or may not have profound convictions,” but would struggle to attract the “populous class of rural women who also vote and who bitterly suspect, envy and hate the ground that women like Mrs. Sabin walk on.”45 The magazine’s oversimplified portrayal of women embodied a point Sabin had been making ever since her election to the Suffolk County Republican Committee in 1920: women could not be simply classified into large groups believing one thing over another. While she had railed about single-issue women in the past, she counted on them now to gather around a single issue, one last time; to do the right thing.
Sabin understood that the WONPR’s unwavering call for repeal over modification generated friction with other anti-Prohibition groups, which held positions on many other issues, making it difficult for them to abandon their respective parties and candidates. This was especially true of the AFL and American Legion. Sabin recommended to Pierre du Pont, leader of the AAPA, that a meeting of the United Repeal Council, a loose affiliation of the many groups opposing Prohibition, be called to discuss any concerns of the respective organizations; she thought it would be good to establish in which congressional districts the various organizations could work together, and she worried that without a meeting and a unified front, opposition groups might be able to exploit the divisions.46 The members of the United Repeal Council repeated their desire for outright repeal, echoing the Democratic platform, but the council as a group refused to endorse Roosevelt. When asked to comment, Pierre du Pont said the council “will not be diverted from that issue [repeal] by extraneous subjects which have no part in its work.”47
The council did not meet, but it designated the WONPR to send a one-question survey to all congressional candidates. The survey asked:
If elected, will you support a resolution for the straight repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the restoration to each state of its power to regulate the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating beverages within its limits, s
uch resolution to be submitted to conventions in the several states for ratification or rejection?48
The WONPR received 607 responses, 553 yeses and 54 nos. Of the 553 positive respondents, 474 favored outright repeal and 79 favored repeal with qualifications.49 Unknown was whether the respondents would make public statements to that effect (or win election).
As Election Day neared, Sabin’s rhetoric became more intense; she called the divide over Prohibition “the most controversial situation which has ever arisen in this country and I do not except slavery.” Prohibition represented “an attempt to compel a hundred million people to become total abstainers,” something she regarded as impossible, sparking “resistance and derision,” as evidenced by the successful illegal liquor trade. She attacked the Republican Party’s plank that would let states determine Prohibition’s fate within their borders but leave Congress the power to “rebuke” state actions if enough congressmen felt the Prohibition on saloons had been violated. Poking fun at the obvious contradiction, Sabin explained that Congress would be forced to establish a definition to answer the question, “When is a saloon not a saloon and when does a saloon become a speakeasy and vice versa?” She provided Webster’s definition as “a place where intoxicating liquors are sold and drunk.” Did that mean a hotel restaurant, a golf club, and the diner of a Pullman car could be classified as a saloon? Causing further headache was the Republican plank’s provision for Congress to address “attendant evils” of the liquor trade, which could be applied to almost anything, putting the country on a path “far more uncertain and confusing than the Eighteenth Amendment itself.” Sabin sympathized with her estranged Republican brethren who put party loyalty first, but she had no patience for those who failed to grasp the difference between the Republican and Democratic planks or the disastrous possibilities hidden in the Republican position. For Sabin, the choice between party planks and candidates came down to Republicans’ trust in the federal government to control liquor and Democrats’ trust in the American people to choose for themselves. When critics suggested that the Republican plank of modification presented “the easiest way out” because thirteen states would always block full repeal, Sabin said she refused to believe that the people in those states “prefer the reign of intemperance, corruption and lawlessness which exists under national Prohibition, than to be willing to admit they have made a mistake.” Women, including herself, had pushed for Prohibition, believing it the path to temperance, but while they thought “they could make Prohibition as strong as the constitution, instead they have made the constitution as weak as Prohibition.” Sabin’s own loss of faith in the possibilities of the Eighteenth Amendment led her, as it did many women, to reconsider the starting point of the movement, temperance, which “always will be the woman’s cause.” Sabin wrote that the WONPR now represented that goal, not the WCTU, which had become the organization of intolerance, its motivations based in fear and their efforts ironically bringing crime and corruption to new heights, sowing “moral degeneration.” Sabin conceded that the Eighteenth Amendment was “an experiment noble in motive,” but declared, “Experiments have no place in the Constitution of the United States.”50