by Hugh Ambrose
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A few days before the election, Mabel Walker Willebrandt reemphasized her belief that the Eighteenth Amendment could be “enforced, should be and ultimately will be obeyed.” She lamented the plank adopted by the Republican Party and a recent statement from President Hoover advocating partial repeal for the sake of the economy, but respected “his view even where I differ.”51 It proved to be her final public statement on Prohibition; she would leave the debate and its results to those still invested in the political process. Willebrandt moved past politics and expanded her private practice, opening offices in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, helping to establish regulations and law doctrine concerning aviation, radio, international treaties, and labor relations. Her work with aviation companies engendered an interest in flying that led her to become a pilot and support the careers of young female pilots, notably Amelia Earhart, whose round-the-world flight was sponsored in part by Willebrandt. Her friendship with Louis Mayer of MGM Studios brought actors and actresses as clients and entrée into a world far more glamorous than she had known before. Professional success gave Mabel Willebrandt a life of excitement and security, allowing her time and resources to counsel and assist young professional women and encourage them to push the glass ceiling a little higher, if not break through, much as she had done.
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Franklin Roosevelt won the election in a landslide, American voters preferring his optimism to the failed policies and dour predictions of Herbert Hoover. Sabin was delighted that not only was Hoover defeated but also dry New York State politicians, opening the door for changes in the Republican Party.52 Nationally, Congress saw the addition of thirteen wet senators and seventy-one wet representatives, giving wets a majority in both houses, though some stood for modification rather than the full repeal demanded by the WONPR. Sabin understood that modification might seem the easier and quicker path for many congressmen, but she and the WONPR would not be satisfied until the question of full repeal had been presented to state conventions. Looking ahead from “this hour of approaching victory,” Sabin reminded her membership that getting Congress to allow reconsideration of the Eighteenth Amendment constituted only the first step toward repeal; three-fourths of the states, thirty-six of forty-eight, would need to reject the Eighteenth. She encouraged members to seek counsel from constitutional attorneys about how to create their state conventions, select delegates to those conventions, and define the procedures to ensure their votes were counted.53 A week later, Sabin called a meeting of the National Executive Committee to outline the plan going forward.54 She could not emphasize strongly enough the importance of getting Congress to approve a ratification process employing state conventions rather than state legislatures, that is, the people and not career politicians. The convention proposal presented several problems, though, not the least of which was who would pay for such conventions. Until that question and the many others concerning location, selection of delegates, number of delegates, and voting procedures could be answered, Sabin recommended that the WONPR’s members refrain from expressing any opinions on the matter and any discussion of modification proposals, but stick to their original, simple goal: repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.55
Sabin knew that both the public and legislators needed to be educated on the means by which repeal would occur through state conventions, a device allowed by the Constitution but ill-defined. Some U.S. Representatives thought that Congress had authority to call those conventions, while others believed state legislatures were the only bodies that could call them.56 Hoping to avoid the involvement of state legislatures, which were filled with career politicians serving their own ambitions, the WONPR established educational programs to make its members knowledgeable about calling constitutional conventions.57 The organization did not take a formal position, but privately Sabin confided in colleagues that she hoped Congress would “set up the machinery” for state conventions; she believed repeal would be achieved more quickly that way than if left to state legislators, many of whom met only every two years.58
The new year, 1933, began with a challenge to the WONPR’s goal of full repeal, when a Senate bill proposing modification of the Eighteenth Amendment passed from committee to the full Senate. The bill proposed to leave the federal government with control of defining a saloon and to allow state legislatures to vote on the revision of the amendment. Sabin urgently telegrammed state division leaders, calling upon them to direct their members to contact their respective senators and demand that they vote against the bill.59 Any bill seeking modification, such as another to allow manufacture and sale of beer, could delay the chances of full repeal for years.60
A month later, Senator John Blaine of Wisconsin submitted a resolution to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment, hoping to leave his mark before relinquishing office after losing his seat in the recent election. The preemptive move sparked fears that the lame-duck session of Congress, still containing many drys, would defeat the measure, making it more difficult to resurrect in the new session beginning in March.61 Sabin would not support the Blaine resolution, fearing that its provision granting Congress the power to regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors “would perpetuate the proved evils of the ghastly experiment which it pretends to end.”62 After a failed vote in the House and a filibuster against a vote in the Senate, with many members voicing Sabin’s concern, Blaine consented to revisions in his resolution and stripped it down to its bones, leaving only provisions for full repeal, guarantees for states voting to keep Prohibition, and ratification of repeal by state conventions rather than state legislatures.63 The changes proved the tonic and the bill passed in both houses on February 16, 1933. Mrs. Courtlandt Nicoll, speaking on Sabin’s behalf, expressed the WONPR’s satisfaction with the “first step toward ridding the country of the evils of national Prohibition.”64
On April 7, 1933, at 12:05 a.m., a truck bearing a sign reading, “President Roosevelt, the first real beer is yours!” delivered two cases of beer to the White House. Just two days earlier the president had signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, put before Congress at his urging on March 13, which legalized the sale and manufacture of beers and wines containing no more than 3.2 percent alcohol.65 It was a temporary response to America’s demand for legal liquor based on the argument that “light” beers and wines could not be considered “intoxicating,” the type of alcohol prohibited by the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act. While the Cullen-Harrison Act was greeted with great fanfare across the country, Sabin and the WONPR barely noticed, intent as they were on their goal of full repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and restoration of the manufacture and sale of all liquor, regardless of alcohol content.
Once Congress had determined to organize state conventions, delegates had to be elected. The WONPR leaped into action again, directing its state-division chairpersons to organize committees in each county, with subcommittees in smaller districts, to advertise the upcoming elections, which would not coincide with any other ballot measures. The selection of delegates would in many ways determine a state’s vote, and the various candidates made their leanings well-known. The WONPR set up committees to phone all members and ask them to call their friends and associates who were not members to publicize the dates of the election of convention delegates and determine whether anyone needed transportation to the polls.66 Sabin advised against overconfidence, saying only twenty states could be safely counted as wet, sixteen short of ratification. At the luncheon in May she even distributed a color-coded map showing the status—wet, dry, or degree of lean to either side—of each state and the date of its election of delegates. One of the hurdles was that the legislatures in three states she considered “hopeful” for repeal had adjourned for the current term, and two were not scheduled to return until January 1934, nine months away. Without special sessions in those states to set election dates, momentum might be lost, allowing Prohibitionists to regain a foothold. She wa
sn’t giving up on the eight states she regarded as “doubtful,” but the WONPR’s state and county organizations in those states were undermanned in the face of such a daunting challenge.67 The election of a wet president and more wets to Congress in 1932 had suggested a popular mandate for repeal, but the constitutional necessity to ratify the proposed amendment in each state, many of which supported Prohibition, exposed the complex dynamics of American democracy, where Idaho’s 445 thousand citizens, regarded as leaning dry, had the same impact as New York’s 12.5 million generally wet residents. That reality concerned Sabin, preventing her from relaxing even a moment.
The WONPR and its allies pushed, prodded, and challenged state legislators and decision-makers to seize upon the public’s zeal and move quickly to elect state convention delegates and hold conventions, striking while the iron was hot. By late August, only three months since the luncheon where Pauline had warned about overconfidence and complacency, the end of Prohibition appeared imminent, so much so that she reflected on the end of the organization she had created. She hoped that it would fade away, quietly, forever, once the thirty-sixth state ratified the repeal amendment. The approach of the finish line brought on “a bit of melancholy” to see her organization “go out of existence without meeting once more.”68 She suggested that the organization hold a final, celebratory dinner in Washington, D.C., in January 1934, by which time she expected ratification of the Twentieth Amendment would be secured.
Her “melancholy” that summer had deeper roots, as Charles Sabin’s health began to deteriorate, prompting doctors to suggest he take time off from Guaranty Trust, which was struggling to survive the economic depression engulfing the country. Pauline took him on a trip, but it soon became clear that stress had not been Charles’ only problem. His condition worsened, sending the Sabins back home to their beloved Bayberry Land.69 Charles died on October 11, 1932, ending a life in which he and Pauline were “completely happy,” leading her to say, “Life without him seems very futile and utterly meaningless.”70 However, she had promised Charlie she would “carry on,” so close to the goal they both sought.
Sabin’s party to celebrate the end of Prohibition came a month sooner than she had forecast, as the dominoes had fallen faster than predicted. The thirty-sixth state to ratify was expected to be Utah, when its convention voted on December 5. Turning a conservative stronghold such as Utah from a probable “nay” (Sabin’s map listed it as “doubtful” only a few months earlier) to a “yea” demonstrated the full reach of the WONPR’s network and the effectiveness of its argument—moving beyond moral concerns, and appealing to constitutionally guaranteed freedoms rather than restrictions. The WONPR’S final soiree, scheduled for December 7, would be a bittersweet affair, though, with Pauline still mourning Charlie. She had soldiered on, but her friends in the WONPR felt her pain and made sure the celebratory party was full of humor, without any serious toasts or tributes to her incredible leadership that might make the evening emotionally difficult for their beloved leader.71 The only serious note came in the dinner program’s dedication to “Mrs. Charles H. Sabin; to the National Officers, State Chairmen, and the million and a half women who have untiringly and earnestly labored in the counties, the cities and even the smallest hamlets” and had sent Prohibition to perdition.72 Whether Pauline enjoyed a drink after her long fight went unrecorded.
Acknowledgments
After years of working on World War II projects and feeling privileged for the opportunities, I felt my attention begin to turn slowly, fully revealing itself after I had completed The Pacific. The object of my curiosity, a dream taking shape over time, had been investigating the era of Prohibition. My appetite had been whetted in 1999 by Owen Patterson of Louisiana, who had sent me, unsolicited, a sheaf of information about his grandfather, a successful and ingenious rumrunner named Alonzo “Pat” Patterson. I included part of Patterson’s story in a documentary entitled Moments of Truth, of which my father (the late historian Stephen Ambrose) and I were the executive producers. Alonzo “Pat” Patterson had considered himself an entrepreneur, one who repudiated the overtures of gangsters and thugs, who devised a means to avoid armed confrontations with law enforcement, who eventually proved himself, in the run-up to World War II, a patriot. The story intrigued me—centering not on machine guns, common thugs, or Al Capone, but upon a man who considered himself a good citizen and a lover of his country, despite his flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States. To get at the truth about Prohibition and its enforcement and, in so doing, savor the absurdities it generated within American society, I began exploring the impact of the Eighteenth Amendment upon upstanding Americans. The investigation would take me far beyond my initial conceptions and generate for me a new understanding of Prohibition, one embedded in the women’s movement, one distinct from and often at odds with the prevailing historiography of the era, much to my surprise and, admittedly, delight.
In the summer of 2011, I was ready to present to my editor, Natalee Rosenstein, a proposal for a radical new interpretation of Prohibition, one written as a narrative account, drawing out a few key figures from the dark, misunderstood corners to which they had been relegated and revealing how their lives illustrated the era’s successes, failures, and farce. The gulf between an interesting proposal and a completed manuscript grew, much to my dismay, wide. I am most grateful to Natalee and to Penguin for their unswerving support for this project and its author. I could not imagine better partners. I also thank my agent, Brian Lipson, for being a great advisor and an even better friend.
Able to work only part-time, I would have needed many years to assemble the massive collection of primary sources forming the foundation of this book. My choice of a research assistant, John Schuttler, was all I could have wanted. Gifted and driven, he welcomed each new request as he welcomed the ideas I bounced off him: with the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of an experienced research historian, looking for sources I had not identified, until eventually I teasingly began to call him my unindicted coconspirator. Often, the websites of the various archives listed in the bibliography allowed me to pick and choose what needed to be reviewed. To avoid costly travel when possible, I asked John to hire local researchers to help. The assigned task may have required only a day or two, although on occasion it required more, but I owe all of these folks my thanks for their efforts to provide me detailed information on the selected boxes and files and then, following my review, to send me copies of the relevant material. They were (in alphabetical order): Maria Brandt, Heather Furnas, Eileen Glaholt, Glory-June Greiff, Warren Hower, Kevin Leonard, Michelle Reeder, Reeves Richards, John Warner, and Cynthia Wrightsman. My thanks also to my cousin Chris Clarke for his assistance deciphering legal definitions and procedures.
Among the organizations whose leadership and archivists extended themselves to help me were the following: Mrs. Catherine Lenihan of the Women’s National Republican Club in New York; Kate Humble at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia (www.mmbc.bc.ca). Katy Hughes at the Royal British Columbia Museum (www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca). Chris Adams with Discover the Past, a company he and his father run, took me on a Smuggler’s Tour of Victoria, British Columbia, one fine August evening. Captain Brett Rosson of Highliner Charters guided me and my redoubtable “Gunkholer Crew” through the San Juan Islands, telling us about the winds, the tides, and the challenges and joys of operating a boat in the upper reaches of Puget Sound. James Ritter, founder of the Seattle Metropolitan Police Museum, a dedicated historian of the force, and a longtime peace officer himself, went well out of his way to help me understand the Seattle Police Department and allowed me to review the relevant documents and images he has so painstakingly assembled from the time period. The LeMay, America’s Car Museum, in Tacoma presented a great wealth of information about the automobiles of the 1920s. I also relied upon the collections and staff of the Lewis and Clark County Library.