SYMHC Classics: Pauline Sabin

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. We have another birthday Saturday classic today. Pauline Sabin was born April seven. She was one of the most visible leaders in the fight for the repeal of prohibition in the United States. This episode originally came out on February, so enjoy Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Polly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So Tracy and July of last year, we did a two partner about Carrie, a nation temperance activists, and I think a lot of people enjoyed those. Uh. You know, she's one of those interesting figures. Uh. And in her life story, the battle over temperance largely became sort of a battle of the sexes, at least the way it was being framed by her and her associates, which is that women were serving as the moral voice of sobriety. And that was due to a lot of women in the movement having experienced abuse or abandonment or other misfortunes due to the drunkenness of the men in their lives. But not in all women were anti alcohol. And today we're going to talk about a woman who is often credited as being one of the major activists behind prohibitions repeal in the United States. We also had to shout out to Amanda for suggesting this one and say hi to Amanda and her mom Lynn, because they have corresponded with us a bit. Uh and it's a good idea. So we're going to talk today about Pauline Saban. So. She was born Pauline Morton on April seven in Chicago, Illinois. Her parents were Paul and Charlotte good Rich Morton, and the family already had a really significant legacy before Pauline was even born. Yeah, she definitely came from sort of a moneyed, important family. Her grandfather, Julius Sterling Morton, had been a senator and eventually was elected governor of Nebraska and he then served under President Grover Cleveland as the U s Secretary of Agriculture. So if you are a fan of Arbor Day, you can thank Pauline's grandfather for that. He founded that day as a way to acknowledge the importance of trees, and now that day is actually celebrated on his birthday, which is April and her uncle, Joey Morton, actually founded the Morton Salt Company, which continues today. Pauline's father also served in a number of high profile and influential roles, including Secretary of the Navy under President Theodore Roosevelt. He also made a living as a railroad executive and president of a life insurance company. In nine seven, then twenty year old Pauline married j. Hopkins Smith Jr. And this was no small affair. Teddy and Edith Roosevelt, the philanthropist Andrew and Louise Carnegie, and socialite Caroline shermerhorn Astor. We're all in attendance, so this is clearly if you're high profile society event. The marriage, however, only lasted seven years, but during that time Pauline and her husband had two sons, Paul Morton Smith and Jay Hopkins Smith, the third. Pauline did not stay single for very long after that marriage was over. She divorced Smith in nine fourteen and then remarried two years later. This time the groom was president of JP Morgan's Guaranteed Trust company that was Charles Hamilton Saban. That same year that they married, they built Babery Land on Long Island, South Fork. This sounds to me like a an amusement park. It is not. It is not, although if you're into high society and beautiful landscaping, it is. It's really kind of a famous home. There was a lot written about it. That custom home was one of the grandest in the area. Uh. It was built on a two and fifty acre waterfront estate, and the architect John Walter Cross and the landscape designer Marian Krueger Coffin worked pretty closely together to create what turned out to be a spectacular show piece. And they started, as we said, in nineteen sixteen, the same year they got married. But once it was completed in nineteen nineteen, it was really a home that was focused on entertainment, and Pauline was known for throwing the very best parties, and because she moved in very exclusive circles, she often entertained politicians as well as captains of industry. A few years into her second marriage, Pauline also started to get involved in political causes. In nineteen nineteen, she was elected to the Suffolk County Republican Committee, but that was just the beginning. In nineteen twenties, she joined the New York State Republican Committee and in nineteen twenty one, she founded the Women's National Republican Club. She was president of the Women's National Republican Club from nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty six, and this is an important time because it was during this tenure that the Nineteenth Amendment, which was passed by Congress in June nineteen nineteen and gave women the right to vote, was ratified, and that happened in August eighteen of eighteen twenty. In the ninety four she became the first woman to serve as a representative to the Republican National Committee. The Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacturer, sale, and transportation of alcohol in the United States, was ratified on January twenty ninth, nineteen nineteen. And initially Saban was actually a prohibition supporter. She felt that her sons would benefit from living without the temptations and potential problems of drinking, but eventually she turned around on this. She realized that all that prohibition had really done was create an underground industry of bootleggers, and as someone who often entertained and particularly entertained politicians, she grew really, really weary of seeing so called dry politicians who spoke out against drinking and supported prohibition, but then we're perfectly happy to go to her home and want to drink there. One thing that really pushed Pauline Saban over the edge in terms of becoming a vocal opponent of prohibition was a woman named Ella Bool and this was the leader of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. And part of the rhetoric that Boule routinely employed when speaking in favor of Temperance and prohibition was that she spoke for all women in speaking out against the dangers of alcohol. Boule said, quote, women are relieved of the fear of a drunken husband. Children no longer hide with terror as they see their father reeling home. The whole United States is happier because the liquor traffic is an outlaw. I think it's important to note that when people say things like women blah blah blah, like, they're not generally literally speaking for every woman on the planet. And we all know this. But that's not the only thing that she was doing. She she The story goes that when appearing before Congress, in stated quote, I represent the women of America, and Pauline Saban thought to herself, Well, lady, here is one woman you do not represent. Yeah, that story comes up over and over in retellings of Saban's life. I think she mentioned it in an interview, and in June, Saban wrote an article for the publication Outlook titled I Changed my mind on Prohibition. She wrote quote, I was one of the women who favored prohibition when I heard it discussed in the abstract, but I am now convinced that it has been proved a failure. In a later interview, she also said quote, I began to see that whether my boys drank or not was my responsibility and not the governments. In n Pauline Saban broke with the Republican National Committee despite misgivings over the prohibition issue. Pauline remained in the Republican Party through the presidential election, and that pitted Californian Republican Herbert Hoover against New York Democrat Al Smith. Hoover, who campaign as a dry candidate, had stated while campaigning that he would look into the prohibition issue, but then once he was in office, it was not the priority that that Pauline that Pauline Saban had hoped that it would be for the new president. In Hoover's inaugural address, given on March fourth, nine, he spoke to uphold the law of the land by adhering to the eighteenth Amendment. He said, quote, no greater national service can be given by men and women of goodwill who I know are not unmindful of the responsibilities of citizenship. Then they should, by their example, assist in stamping out crime and outlawry by refusing participation in and condemning all transactions with illegal liquor. So instead of investigating prohibition, he appointed George W. Wickersham to study criminal justice in America. This is a careful step around actually having to deal with prohibition, precipitated by political favor that he owed to the various Dry senators. But the move led directly to Pauline Saban resigning from the Republican National Committee to form her own group. And we're to talk about that group in just a moment, but first we will have a word from one of our fab sponsors. After Saban left the Republican National Committee, she then founded the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform or w o n PR, and that group was focused entirely on repealing prohibition, and if someone less connected had made this move, it might have fallen flat. But because of Pauline's savvy about political relationships and her vast network of friends in very high places, the prohibition reform movement really gained some traction under her stewardship. I'm part of the success of her efforts was that, even though she was from high society, she wanted the organization to represent women from every walk of life. These are women that felt, as she did, that elible and the Women's Christian Temperance Union didn't speak for them, and this is a smart move. Temperance advocates often used language that cast the working class and immigrants as part of the problem, but the w n p R welcomed all women and united a lot of women who normally wouldn't agree on very much politically. Yes, since this was their only talking point, there was not really much to cause any strife within the organization because there were women from both sides of the political spectrum and everywhere between. That thought, prohibition is really not working out how we thought, And it did start initially though, with women much like Pauline herself, who were wealthy white socialites, but Once the w o NPR was officially launched under a one women strong advisory Council, the effort was made to reach out to that broader range of women. Their argument for repeal of the eighteenth Amendment was centered around morality. While those who had campaigned for prohibition did so under the rhetoric that alcohol was withering the moral fiber of the country, Saman's organization argued that prohibition essentially doing the exact same thing by making hypocrites of everyone. Additionally, they recognized the danger of unregulated liquor that was being consumed during prohibition, but they never spoke out against temperance specifically. They merely made the case that alcohol's illegality had just made it all the more alluring. Yeah, that was to me. It seems like a very uh savvy and careful move to go. No, it's fine if you think that people should never touch alcohol, but this law is making a problem. And the law was definitely made up making a problem. I mean we should make There was a lot of crime and lawlessness and bootlegging and people dying from tainted illegal liquor. It was a lot. Yeah, there's no secret about how you know that whole entire secondary kind of underbelly culture that grew up around it had so many problems. And she references a little bit later in a moment that we're gonna talk about, but basically, uh, the w O NPR felt that governed mental regulation of behavior in this matter was problematic rather than beneficial. And additionally, all of that personal hypocrisy was to the minds of those who turned against prohibition, eroding the stature of the Constitution and the law of the land every time the ban on alcohol was publicly supported and then privately ignored. To make their case and convince the public, the women of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform worked like any campaign. After all, Saban and other wealthy women involved in the organization had also helped all kinds of political campaigns before focusing on the repeal of prohibition, and because of the wealthy members of the organization, funding for these campaign efforts continued well after the stock market crash of nine nine, when a lot of other social organizations just did not have any more money. Yes, since this was kind of a special interest group privately funded by people that had a lot of money, and it wasn't all tied up in just the stock market. They kind of sailed through pretty unscathed, and within the first year of its existence, the New York chapter of the group was fifty thousand members strong and it's snowballed from there. There were marches, speeches, and rallies. A huge motorcade was organized by members Christina Holmes and Mabel Chall that started at Fifth Avenue and Street and then traveled through Manhattan. According to the book Women and Repeal, which was written in ninety four by Grace C. Root, one of the motorcade participants described it this way quote. Gaily decorated motor cars, varying in design from open roadsters to elaborate limousines, all bearing Repeal banners and heralded by state troopers on motorcycles, swept through the main streets. Loudspeakers amplified the addresses of the various speakers, while our pioneer organizer, Mrs Adrian Locke Langley kept up a constant valley hue the street crowds. The crowds from the factories and after theater audiences found the appeals convincing, and an ever increasing numbers signed our w O NPR membership cards. As with any hot button issue, though, there were detractors and criticisms of w O n p r's work, and sometimes these actually came from fellow supporters of prohibition repeal. Frank R. Kent of the Baltimore Sun wrote an article for Scrubner's magazine in the late summer of ninety two that criticized the w O NPR and specifically Mrs Sabin. He pointed out that she had supported Hoover even though he was a dry candidate, and that her leadership of the organization had been inconsistent. He wrote, quote, after she had exhorted her adoring followers at many she luncheons and tease to put repeal above everything else. This flaming angel of the wet cause voted for the dry Hoover and against the wet Smith. He went on to describe what would seem to the readers who have been something of an exodus from w O NPR by frustrated members. And here's how he wrote about that quote. Then one morning there appeared a list of sixty members of the organization who said that both parties now stand for repeal, that they objected to their organization being made a partisan agency that in these critical times to make the position of a candidate on control of the liquor traffic the sole test of his fitness for the presidency was very bad. Indeed, hence they advocated each individual voting for the man she considers the best qualified to lead the nation. The names on this list were just as socially important as Mrs Sabans, some of them more so, which was the reason for the split. So long as all the socially prominent ladies strung together, such as the nature of the human female that pursued by the not so socially prominent was pretty much assured. But when they divided, so did the others, and the sad spectacle was presented of a nullifying rupture in this women's organization which had done so much to force both parties to abandon prohibition. That article made Pauline's been real mad um. And she was this really interesting figure in that she was very I don't know if demure is the right word, but she was very well spoken. She carried herself with grace, she followed all of the rules of being, you know, a society woman. But she also did not back down from moments like these when people she felt were unfairly and completely falsely criticizing her organization. So we're going to talk about her response to Mr. Kant's article when we come back from a little sponsor break. So before the break, we said that Pauline Saban responded to Frank R. Kent and his article that the w O NPR was experiencing this huge fissure in its membership, and she wrote him a lengthy letter. She told him that she didn't even found the organization until May, so her support of hoover In couldn't have offended its members as he suggested. And she plainly stated that the women of the organization decided by a vote that they quote would support only those candidates for public office who favored the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to went on to dismantle his claims point by point, including giving him details on how their membership did experience a small dip, but that it was not an indicator of the health of the organization, stating, quote in regards to squeals of indignant protests were heard as a result of our action, I want you to know the truth. That is, we have had less than one and fifty resignations since we took that action, and that our membership has grown from one million, fifteen thousand to one million nineties six thousand since that meeting, an increase of over eighty thousand. Her closing paragraph reads as follows. We are really trying to do our best, and I'm sorry that you feel so ornery about us. Aren't you with us? As Seneca's pilot apostrophizing Neptune in the it's of a storm, I can say, oh, Neptune, you may sink me if you will, You may save me if you will, but I have held my rudder true. This sparked it back and forth of correspondence between Saban and Kent about the best way to achieve repeal, and Pauline Saban was polite, but she never backed down and told Kent that she looked forward to the pleasant surprise he would get when repeal was ratified by what we're considered to be quote, hopelessly dry states. And she was right in that their membership was just growing and growing, because before long there were more than one point five million women in the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform. In nineteen thirty, she appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to speak on the matter and said quote, in pre prohibition days, mothers had little to fear in regards in regard to the saloon as far as their children were concerned. A saloon keeper's license was revoked if he were caught selling liquor to minors. Today and any speakeasy in the United States, you can find boys and girls in their teams drinking liquor. And this situation has become so acute that mothers of the country feel something must be done to protect their children. And continuing her high profile advocacy, on July eighteenth, ninety two, Pauline Sabin was on the cover of Time magazine. The article within was titled a Woman Crusader for the Wet Cause, and a drawing of Mrs Saban that was done to illustrate the article is now in the National Portraits Gallery collection. She appeared in other publications throughout the country after her time cover, and in one she posed the moral quandary and raising children under prohibition quote, settlement workers tell us that drunkenness has increased, not decreased. That's what the settlement workers say, not the professional drives. The increase of drunkenness as a parent, particularly among the young. The young see the law broken at home and upon the street, can we expect them to be lawful? And she really did convince a lot of people with her her discussion of this and how morally messed up the whole situation had become. And then we get to nineteen thirty three, which was incredibly busy for Pauline Saban. That year she co chaired fear Ello LaGuardia's campaign for Mayor of New York and LaGuardia did win, and more importantly, per Apps, that year the w O NPRS mission was achieved. The twenty first Amendment was introduced, passed, and was ratified in December, and the text of that amendment reads Section one, the eighteenth Article of Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. Section to The transportation or importation into any State, territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors in violation of the laws thereof is hereby prohibited. Section three. This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by Conventions in the sub States as provided by the Constitution within seven years from the date of the submission here of to the States by the Congress. The Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform immediately disbanded. Their work was done, and Saban didn't want the organization to drag on looking for some other focus. Yeah, there had been other groups that she had seen, activism groups that had kind of had that problem where it's like, Oh, we have all these people mobilized and ready to take action on on our goals, and maybe we should keep that together. And she's like, Nope, never works. But nineteen thirty three was also, unfortunately a year of loss because Pauline Saban's husband, Charles, died once again. She did not remain single for particularly long. She married Dwight F. Davis in ninety six. She also campaigned for LaGuardia's reelection that year, and like a lot of the men that she had grown up with, Davis had an impressive list of positions that he had served for nineteen to nineteen twenty nine. He had served as Secretary of War under Calvin Coolidge. Immediately after that, he was the Governor General of the Philippines, and that was the position that he held until nineteen thirty two. In nineteen forty, Pauline became the national director of the Volunteer Forces for the American Red Cross, and that organization, while she was serving as a national director, actually used her massive estate that we talked about in Long Island for storage of some of their supplies. At nineteen forty two, her husband was Director General of the Army Specialist Corps, and this necessitated a move from Long Island to Washington, d C. Before that time, the couple had lived on the baby Land estate, but they left it to settle in the nation's capital, and Pauline remained active. She became a decorating consultant for the White House during the Truman administration. But a few years after the move, in November of nineteen forty five, Pauline's third husband, Dwight, died, and Pauline didn't move back to Long Island. She decided to stay in Washington, d C. After that. Yeah, this seemed to surprise some people because Babery Land had really been built to her specifications. It was basically her dream home. She loved it deeply, and so I think a lot of people expected her when Dwight passed away to just move back there, but she did not. U Instead, she sold a plantation that she owned through family holdings in South Carolina for thirty five thousand dollars and eventually she actually sold Babery Land for one thousand, two d fifty dollars and those property sales were what funded her retirement. Pauline Saban died on December. She was buried in Southampton next to her second husband, Charles Saban. That's always one of those things that, uh, I think many people wonder about, like what happens when you've been married multiple times when you pass like which spouse are you buried with? And clearly she loved bay Berry Land and Long Island so much. I have no idea what her her thinking was in terms of which husband, but I think it had a lot to do with the place as well. In that case, I might may have just been where she had the plot exactly exactly. Uh. I just wanted to acknowledge that sometimes those are complicated decisions, and you can't always assume anything based on where someone uh decides that their remains should end up interred. And it seems like the best way to really wrap up Pauline Saban's life and acknowledge her impact would be through the words of one of her closest colleagues. At the w O N p R and at the organization's fourth National Convention, the first Vice Chairman, Mrs Nichols said the following words about Pauline Saban. Quote, without your vision, Madam Chairman, this organization would not alone have perished. It would never have come into being. Without your wisdom and your guiding hand, it would never have grown to maturity, and without your courage and your fixity of purpose, it would never have sailed a charted core where the c's were stormy or reached port. At last, we believe that the historians of the future will rightly appraise the contribution which this organization has made to the cause of good government. With that, we are not concerned for the moment. But if the historian be a wise one and seeks an explanation for the phenomenal upheaval which has taken place in public opinion within a short time, he will find that the answer lay in the dynamic, radiant and above all loving personality of Pauline Saban. Hey so much for joining us on this Saturday, since this episode is out of the archive. 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