Pauline Sabin

The battle over Prohibition is often framed as a battle of the sexes, with women serving as the “moral” voice of sobriety. But a woman named Pauline Sabin is often credited as being one of the major activists behind Prohibition’s repeal.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuffworks dot com. 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 parter about Carrie,
a nation temperance activists, and I think a lot of

(00:25):
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. H. And that was due
to a lot of women in the movement having experienced

(00:47):
abuse or abandonment or other misfortunes due to the drunkenness
of the men in their lives. But not 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 have to shout out to Amanda for suggesting
this one, and say hi to Amanda and her mom Lynn,

(01:09):
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

(01:31):
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

(01:52):
a way to acknowledge the importance of trees, and now
that day is actually celebrated on his birthday, which is April.
And her uncle, Joy 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

(02:14):
as a railroad executive and president of a life insurance company.
In nineteen o 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 Schermerhorn asked her, we're all in attendance, so

(02:36):
this is clearly a very 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 nineteen fourteen and then remarried two years later. This

(02:58):
time the groom was president of JP Morgan's guarantee Trust company.
That was Charles Hamilton Saban. That same year that they married,
they built Baby Land on Long Island, South Fork. That
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.

(03:21):
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

(03:43):
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

(04:04):
involved in political causes. In nineteen nineteen, she was elected
to the Suffolk County Republican Committee, but that was just
the beginning. In nineteen twenty 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.

(04:25):
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 eighteenth
of nineteen twenty. In nineteen twenty four, she became the
first woman to serve as a representative to the Republican
National Committee. The Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacturer, sale,

(04:48):
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

(05:11):
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

(05:34):
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

(05:54):
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.

(06:16):
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 Will 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.

(06:40):
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 inner of view, she also said quote, I began

(07:02):
to see that whether my boys drank or not was
my responsibility and not the governments. In nine, 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

(07:23):
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, ninety nine,

(07:46):
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

(08:08):
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

(08:31):
Pauline Saban resigning from the Republican National Committee to form
her own group. And we're going to talk about that
group in just a moment, but first we will have
a word from one of our BAB sponsors. After Saban
left the Republican National Committee, she then founded the Women's

(08:52):
Organization for National Prohibition Reform or w o NPR, 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,

(09:13):
the prohibition reform movement really gained some traction under her stewardship,
and 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

(09:36):
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

(09:56):
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

(10:18):
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. Salmon's organization argued
that prohibition was essentially doing the exact same thing by
making hypocrites of everyone. Additionally, they recognized the danger of

(10:41):
unregulated liquor that was being consumed during prohibition, but they
never spoke out against temperance specifically, they merely made the
case the 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,

(11:02):
but this law is making a problem, and the law
was definitely made up making a problem we should make.
There was a lot of crime and lawlessness and bootlegging
and people dying from tainted illegal liquor. It was a yeah,
there's no secret about how you know that whole entire
secondary kind of underbelly culture that grew up around it

(11:23):
had so many problems. And she references a little bit
later in a moment that we're gonna talk about, but basically, uh,
the the w O NPR felt that governmental 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

(11:46):
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

(12:06):
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 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

(12:27):
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 Chael that started at Fifth Avenue and

(12:50):
nine Street and then traveled through Manhattan. According to the
book Women and Repeal, which was written in nineteen thirty
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

(13:11):
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 Adria Locke Langley
kept up a constant valley hue the street crowds. The
crowds from the factories and after theater audiences found the

(13:32):
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 nprs work,
and sometimes these actually came from fellow supporters of prohibition repeal.
Frank R. Kent of the Baltimore Sun wrote an article

(13:52):
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

(14:12):
tease to put repeal above everything else. This flaming angel
of the wet cause voted for the dry Hoover and
against the wet Smiths. 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

(14:33):
there appeared a list of some 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,

(14:54):
hence they advocated each individual voting for the man she
considers the best qualified to lead the nation. In the
names on this list were just as socially important as
Mrs Saban, 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

(15:18):
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 Saban real man um and she was this

(15:39):
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

(16:00):
response to Mr Kent'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

(16:21):
fissure in its membership. She wrote him a lengthy letter.
She told him that she didn't even found the organization
until May nine, 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

(16:42):
public office who favored the repeal of the eighteenth Amendment.
She 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 wheels of indignant protests were heard as a result

(17:03):
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

(17:23):
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 midst 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

(17:45):
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

(18:06):
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

(18:26):
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 teens 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, nineteen

(18:48):
thirty 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 an out in the
National Portraits Gallery collection. She appeared in other publications throughout
the country after her time cover, and in one she

(19:08):
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

(19:32):
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 ninety three,
which was incredibly busy for Pauline Sabin. That year she
co chaired Fearello LaGuardia's campaign for Mayor of New York
and LaGuardia did win, and more importantly, per Apps, that

(19:52):
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

(20:13):
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
several States, as provided by the Constitution, within seven years

(20:35):
from the date of the submission here off 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,

(20:58):
we have all these people mobilize, been 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

(21:20):
in nineteen thirty 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. From nineteen twenty five
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 a position

(21:42):
that he held until nineteen thirty two. In nineteen forty,
Pauline became the National director of the Volunteer Forces to
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 eye Land for storage
of some of their supplies. In ninety two, her husband

(22:04):
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

(22:26):
a few years after the move, in November of nine,
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
Bayberry 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

(22:48):
Dwight passed away, to just move back there, but she
did not. Uh. Instead, she sold a plantation that she
owned through family holdings in South Carolina for thirty five
thousand dollars and even actually she actually sold baby Land
for one two d fifty dollars and those property sales
were what funded her retirement. Pauline Saban died on December.

(23:13):
She was buried in Southampton next to her second husband,
Charles Saban. That's always one of those things that 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 baby Land
and Long Island so much. I have no idea what

(23:35):
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.

(23:58):
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

(24:21):
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 course where the seas
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.

(24:44):
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 person melody of Pauline Sabin. You have some listener mail.

(25:05):
I do also. I hope everybody gets somebody to say
something great like that about them in their lives, because
that's a good speech. Um, this is a cute little
card that we got in the mail from our listener Amy,
and it just delighted me. So I wanted to read it,
She says, Holly and Tracy, I just had to let
you know that when current news of politics seems so depressing,

(25:26):
I turned to your show. Even terrible mine accidents, awful poets,
and awful race riots seem bearable in the past. On
a happier note, I'm not writing to correct your pronunciation.
I just want to send my appreciations. That's all it is.
But it's so sweet. It's like the best concise, lovely card.
And so thank you, thank you, Amy, because that was lovely. Uh.

(25:50):
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(26:10):
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