‘Firebrands’ Review: Temperance and Its Discontents

Mabel Walker Willebrandt came to Washington to enforce Prohibition. Her boss, the attorney general, openly flouted the drinking laws.

By Charlotte Gray. She reviewed the book Firebrands: The Untold Story of Four Women Who Made and Unmade Prohibition by Gioia Diliberto. Excerpts:

"Wielding far more political muscle was Mabel Walker Willebrandt (1889-1963). Willebrandt was the daughter of Midwestern homesteaders who had raised her to be tough and ambitious. After qualifying as a lawyer in Los Angeles, she made a reputation for herself within Republican circles as a hard-working champion of the underprivileged, especially women. By 1921 the 32-year-old had moved to Washington to become an assistant attorney general in President Warren Harding’s administration. She was now an insider, but the job was not a plum. She oversaw the enforcement of Prohibition, already recognized as an impossible task. Illegal liquor flowed across the country. Bootlegging was a thriving business; in Manhattan alone, there were around 5,000 illegal drinking spots. The newly established Prohibition Bureau was understaffed and underfunded. Few senior officials took it seriously, including Willebrandt’s boss, Attorney General Harry Daugherty, who openly flouted the drinking laws."

"She knew that trying to stomp out the speakeasies was, in Ms. Diliberto’s words, “like trying to eliminate mosquitoes from a swamp.” So she focused on shutting down the nation’s biggest suppliers and distributors of illegal alcohol. It was an exhausting, relentless challenge."

"By 1926 only 5% of the illegal booze in America had been seized and 10% of the nation’s bootleg stills shut down. The courts had a four-year backlog of Prohibition cases.

Disgusted by both the lawlessness and corruption fueled by illegal booze sales, and by the hypocrisy of the Republican Party’s “coconut congressmen”—dry on the outside but wet on the inside—Sabin abandoned the party and in 1929 founded the inclusive, nonpartisan Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform. Its membership would top 1.5 million, leaving the dwindling and increasingly dowdy WCTU ranks in the dust."