Existing comment:
Pauline Morton Sabin, 1887-1955
This elegant drawing of Pauline Sabin was published to illustrate the May 8, 1932, New York Times Magazine article "A Woman Crusader for the Wet Cause." Sabin led a group of wealthy, stylish, and politically savvy women, who -- after seeing the rise of organized crime, speakeasies, and other results of life under Prohibition -- worked relentlessly to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment and renew the public sale of alcohol. In 1929 Sabin founded the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, which grew to more than one million members, making it the largest anti-Prohibition organization in the country. Detractors harped on Sabin's success; one writer called the WONPR members "the scum of the earth, parading around in skirts, and possibly late at night flirting with other women's husbands at drunken and fashionable resorts." By 1933, public opinion had shifted, and Prohibition was repealed upon ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment.
Samuel Johnson Woolf, 1932 |