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We're talking today with National Portrait Gallery Commissioner Dan Okrent
We're here in front of a portrait of a beautiful lady,
can you connect us with this lady
in a very important date in twentieth-century American history, December 5th, 1933
Well December 5th, 1933 is something that I celebrate as a holiday every year
it's the end of prohibition, it's the date that repeal came into effect after nearly 14 years in which
alcoholic beverages were illegal in this country, and if you can attribute the end
of Prohibition to one single individual, it's this beautiful, intelligent
fabulously wealthy woman, Pauline Morton Sabin.
So, how did Pauline Morton Sabin help us get the 21st (inaudible)?
She was a woman with a great deal of credibility.
she was vastly wealthy, she was the daughter
of cabinet secretary the inherits to the Morton Salt fortune
she was married to a JP Morgan partner but more than that,
she was an early political activist, 1920 shortly after
the Woman Suffrage Amendment has passed, she becomes the first woman member
of the Republican National Committee, she founded the Women's National Republican Club
and she was a very prominent figure in national politics
but around 1927-1928, she came to realize that
prohibition, which was something that she had not
particularly opposed and thought that might have some virtues, she had come to the opinion
that it was a failure and that it needed to come to an end so she founded
an organization called the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform,
which became a marching army of over a million women
who fought to bring about the end of prohibition and her credibility made that possible.
She was connected at every possible level and one of the things that enabled her to turn
the women of America against prohibition was her social stature
In 1931-1932, she and friends in the organization, other aristocratic women from New York
went on a tour of the south
and they would show up in towns like Charleston and Atlanta and they would
have a banquet to talk about why prohibition should end and all the Junior
League women in these towns would show up
to be with Mrs Sabin, and the story was covered both on the society pages
and on the front page, she made it respectable to oppose prohibition.
You were telling us she didn't start out
with that same position, she began as
if not a prohibitionist, then someone who accepted prohibition.
She accepted prohibition, she thought it might be a good idea because she saw the problems that
liquor had caused in our society, Americans drank
way more back then than they do now, but she came around 1927-1928
to realize A: that it was a failure and B: that it was really corrupting
in a way that upset her relating to her own son, she had two
teenage sons and she was very concerned that they were growing up in a world in
which the law said one thing and people's behavior said another thing and
she said how can they possibly have respect for law, have respect for the democracy even
if they're going to see all of this depredation going on around them in
violation of the law
and that's when she determined that she would work to bring about the end of prohibition
Of course, prohibition yielded all sorts of stories and
W.C Fields is one of them eminently quotable
folks who experience those very dry days
however, you were telling us a very interesting story about a wall in her home
She had in Southampton on Long Island a playground of the rich, one of the very
largest homes in the nation probably, but certainly in Southhampton
and in one of her drawing rooms, there was a wall, it was a library wall that
moved aside and behind it was a bar, it was not uncommon for people to do this
particularly wealthy people. It was legal to drink in your own home
if it was liquor you had acquired before January, 16th 1920,
well, who had the money to acquire it and save it and who had the space to store it
but the wealthy and this was quite common where people would drink throughout prohibition
entirely legally within the walls of their own homes.
Thank you for talking with us today about this. I'll talk about her anytime.
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