1929 -- Four different broadsides published by the Women's Organization for Prohibition Reform by Led by Pauline Morton Sabin (later Davis) - 1929

"Put the criminal out of business . . . Repeal . . . the Eighteenth Amendment.

Each of the four broadsides measures 6.25" x 9.75". All are in nice shape. They are titled

"

Has Prohibition Brought Temperance?",

"For Your Children's Sake",

"Do You Want to Put the Criminal Out of Business? Help the Unemployed?", and

"Tax Payers! Do You Know".

While female leaders of the national temperance movement are well recognized as the driving force behind the Eighteenth Amendment, it is often overlooked that other women, specifically Pauline Morton Sabin and her Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR), led the charge to repeal it.

Sabin, who had once supported Prohibition, set out to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment after realizing that not only had it done nothing to reduce drunkenness and alcoholism, it exacerbated the problem. She saw Prohibition as the root cause underlying most of the 1920's corruption, crime, and violence and was offended by its destruction of the principles of personal liberty and local government. Sabin was even more disturbed by the harm it caused American youth. She, and mothers like her, initially believed that Prohibition would eliminate children's temptation to drink. Instead, she found that police records showed that intoxication increased by a factor of ten among young people, and young girls sought assistance for alcohol-related issues from the Salvation Army rescue shelters an average of eight to ten years younger than they had before its passage. She was disgusted by the willful 'blindness' of temperance advocates and the hypocrisy of most politicians. Sabin once related that while attending a congressional hearing, she heard the president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Ella Boole, shout "I represent the women of America!" she thought to herself, "Well, lady, here's one woman you don't represent."

A Republican activist, Sabin was familiar with the political process, and she set to work organizing the WONPR in 1929 to lead the charge against Prohibition. By the end of 1930, it had 100,000 members; 300,000 members by the spring of 1931, and 600,000 members by April 1932. That July, Time magazine featured Sabin on its cover as WONPR influence and membership continued to spike. There were 1.1 million members by November, several times as many as the WCTU. Sabin and the WONPR were loud and active and refused to be ignored. Of course, prohibition supporters contested the WONPR's position with one WCTU official declaring, "As to Mrs. Sabin and her cocktail drinking women, we will out-live them, out-fight them, out-love them, out-talk them, out-pray them, and out-vote them."

When Sabin found little support from Republican politicians, she led the WONPR en masse into an alliance with the Democratic Party and was instrumental in inserting an anti-Prohibition plank into its platform. Following President Roosevelt's re-election, state conventions ratified the Twenty-first Amendment which repealed the Eighteenth and its associated Prohibition laws. Despite temperance proponents' confidence, the vote for repeal was three-to-one. Following the repeal, Sabin found she could support nothing else in the Democratic Party's platform and soon returned to her Republican roots.

(For more information, see "Pauline Sabin: Repeal of Prohibition Leader" and "Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform" at Alcohol Problems and Solutions, online.)

Very scarce. At the time of listing, none are for sale online. OCLC shows WONPR chapter records held at two institutions and Sabin's papers at another, but between all three, only two broadsides are listed., Neither the Rare Book Hub nor Worthpoint list any auction records for examples of these broadsides.