Speaker 1: Hey there, it's your host ed helms.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted
Speaker 1: to remind you that my brand new book is coming
Speaker 1: out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive
Speaker 1: Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre
Speaker 1: order it right now at snaffoodashbook dot com. Trust me,
Speaker 1: if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
Speaker 1: It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we
Speaker 1: just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: I am also going on tour to celebrate that's right.
Speaker 1: I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q
Speaker 1: and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting
Speaker 1: turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head
Speaker 1: to snaffoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book
Speaker 1: and check out all the tour details in day, or
Speaker 1: just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snaffoo Season
Speaker 1: three Formula six previously on Snaffoo. In the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: New York City was facing a record number of unsolved murders.
Speaker 3: There are death certificates that literally say, could be diabetes
Speaker 3: or possibly an auto accident.
Speaker 1: You're just going seriously until unlikely. Duo Charles Norris and
Speaker 1: Alexander Getler teamed up to investigate.
Speaker 3: They're like a buddy cop movie of like these two
Speaker 3: scientists in the trenches together.
Speaker 1: And while America braced itself for the new normal of prohibition.
Speaker 4: Georgia becomes the thirteenth state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: Norris and Getler issued a warning to the public as
Speaker 1: the bodies kept stacking up at Bellevue Hospital. The winter
Speaker 1: of nineteen oh one in Topeka, Kansas was a cold one.
Speaker 1: Temperatures hovered in the single digits. I imagine the wind
Speaker 1: howling down the streets. Too much snow for a car,
Speaker 1: although someone might bust out a horse drawn slay or two.
Speaker 1: But inside one saloon, the Senate Bar, the regulars got cozy.
Speaker 1: This was a favorite haunt for elected officials, situated not
Speaker 1: far from the state capitol, equipped with enough booze for
Speaker 1: the local elite to forget all about the cold weather,
Speaker 1: and also the fact that many of them had recently
Speaker 1: voted to ban the sale of alcohol statewide. At least
Speaker 1: that's how it was on most nights, but one freezing
Speaker 1: called dawn. Before the place opened up, a silhouette fills
Speaker 1: the doorway. It's a woman six feet tall and easily
Speaker 1: able to stand eye to eye with any corn fed
Speaker 1: man in Topeka. She wears a black dress and black
Speaker 1: ribbons in her hair, like she's attending a funeral, and
Speaker 1: she peers into the darkened saloon her little oval shaped glasses.
Speaker 1: It's highly unusual for any woman to enter a saloon
Speaker 1: in this day and age, let alone at five point
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning. But this is a highly unusual woman.
Speaker 1: Her name is Carrie Nation. There's one employee inside the
Speaker 1: closed bar as Carrie forces the door open. Even if
Speaker 1: he doesn't know her, by the look of righteous fury
Speaker 1: in her eyes, he can probably guess her intentions from
Speaker 1: the hatchet she's wielding in her hand. Carrie Nation didn't
Speaker 1: come here to crack open a cold one with the boys,
Speaker 1: or at least not the way you'd think. This hatchet
Speaker 1: is her signature accessory, and before the barman can stop her,
Speaker 1: she starts putting it to use. Carrie jumps behind the
Speaker 1: bar and smashes the liquor bottles. Carrie, no, she smashes
Speaker 1: the glasses. She smashes the faucets, the cash register, the
Speaker 1: slot machine.
Speaker 5: Oh, my peavies.
Speaker 4: Well, at least I'm still looking down.
Speaker 1: Even the mirror on the wall.
Speaker 6: My reflection.
Speaker 1: But all of this is prelude, because finally Carrie Nation
Speaker 1: lays into her number one target, the kegs.
Speaker 7: It was beer o'clock.
Speaker 1: She drives her hatchet into the beer kegs, flooding the
Speaker 1: bar floor with the devil's elixir. By the time the
Speaker 1: sheriff arrives, Carrie is soaked to the bone. Her behavior
Speaker 1: was extreme, but Carrie Nation was nothing if not a zealot.
Speaker 1: By nineteen oh one, she had become the axe wielding
Speaker 1: face of the Temperance movement. The Senate Bar is just
Speaker 1: the latest stop in her crusade to destroy every last
Speaker 1: keg in America, and in that crusade, Carrie is far
Speaker 1: from alone. Before she started smashing stuff up, Carrie was
Speaker 1: a devout Christian and felt compelled by God to do
Speaker 1: things like making clothes for the poor or opening a
Speaker 1: shelter for the families of violent alcoholics. Her first husband
Speaker 1: had been a severe alcoholic himself, dying of drink in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine and leaving Carrie with their infant daughter.
Speaker 1: Influenced by her own experience and that of others around her,
Speaker 1: Carrie would later say that she felt personally called by
Speaker 1: God to rid the country of alcohol. Her devoted service
Speaker 1: to the poor earned her the nickname Mother Nation. At
Speaker 1: the same time, her manic attacks on saloons earned her
Speaker 1: the nickname hatchet Granny. Carrie referred to herself as.
Speaker 5: A bull dog running along at the feet of Jesus,
Speaker 5: miking it way.
Speaker 4: He doesn't like you.
Speaker 1: Call her a bulldog, Call her hatchet Granny, call her
Speaker 1: whatever you like. Carrie Nation was an impassioned anti alcohol activist.
Speaker 1: She and people like her were determined to remake America
Speaker 1: by any means necessary. I'm at Helms and this is Snaffo,
Speaker 1: a show about history's greatest screw ups. This is season three,
Speaker 1: the story of Formula six. How prohibitions wore on alcohol
Speaker 1: went so off the rails the government wound up poisoning
Speaker 1: its own people. Today we're taking a look at the
Speaker 1: people responsible for prohibition. See, before the government set about
Speaker 1: watching the enforcement of dry laws, lone wolves like Carrie
Speaker 1: Nation had already been taking matters into their own hands
Speaker 1: for decades.
Speaker 8: Even in the years leading up to Prohibition. I think
Speaker 8: half the states were already going dry. It was already starting.
Speaker 8: It was this ground swell.
Speaker 1: That's Terence Winter, legendary TV writer and creator of Boardwalk Empire.
Speaker 1: His show like Ours, takes place in the twenties, but
Speaker 1: the full story of Prohibition begins a lot earlier.
Speaker 8: I got where it came from. Alcoholism was devastating. You know,
Speaker 8: if you had the cliche as the data got paid
Speaker 8: on Friday and then you didn't see him and spent
Speaker 8: all his money at the bar, and your family went
Speaker 8: destined to This is been days before social programs or
Speaker 8: even before AA was a thing.
Speaker 9: It was a real problem.
Speaker 1: Terry made himself an expert on this stuff for Boardwalk Empire,
Speaker 1: digging into the research.
Speaker 10: You know, at the time we created National Prohibition, sixty
Speaker 10: five percent of America already lived in a dry town.
Speaker 10: Sixty five percent of Americans already couldn't buy liquor in town.
Speaker 1: That's historian Paul Thompson anti alcohol sentiment, also called temperance,
Speaker 1: was a social movement. It eventually led to prohibition, the
Speaker 1: outright banning of alcohol, but it didn't start out that way.
Speaker 10: What is called the temperance movement lasted over a century.
Speaker 10: It started by meaning simply, individuals should avoid drunkenness, and
Speaker 10: so it was temperate use of alcoholic beverages, with a
Speaker 10: particular focus on distilled beverages, so you're whiskey and your
Speaker 10: gins and your brandies.
Speaker 1: Early temperance supporters urged people to abstain from drink, starting
Speaker 1: with liquor, but eventually also beer and wine. For them,
Speaker 1: it was a personal choice you could make to improve
Speaker 1: both yourself and society. Here's Tom Pegram, author of Battling
Speaker 1: demon Rum the Struggle for a Dry America.
Speaker 11: Temperance is a self control movement not tied to legal restrictions.
Speaker 1: Self control was all the rage in the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and not just when it came to booze. Case in point,
Speaker 1: New England Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham.
Speaker 11: Sylvester Graham was a diet and health reformer in the
Speaker 11: early nineteenth centuries.
Speaker 12: Also a temperance guy so Lester.
Speaker 11: Graham believed that meat was sexually stimulating, and in fact
Speaker 11: he led an attack I think.
Speaker 12: In somewhere in Massachusetts on Butcher's.
Speaker 1: Graham loved temperance in all its forms, you name it,
Speaker 1: he didn't want you to enjoy it. He encouraged a
Speaker 1: diet of vegetables and whole wheat in order to best
Speaker 1: suppress those bodily urges. Today, he's most famous for his
Speaker 1: cracker recipe. Yep, that's right, Graham. Crackers were designed to
Speaker 1: stop people from masturbating. But it wasn't all about self denial.
Speaker 1: Temperance advocates tended to believe in other types of social change,
Speaker 1: things which, even if they sound like basic human rights today,
Speaker 1: were actually quite radical in eighteen hundreds of America.
Speaker 10: Guess what else they wanted. The people that wanted a
Speaker 10: prohibition party wanted to give women the right to vote.
Speaker 10: This is eighteen sixty nine, and that should tell you
Speaker 10: how radical these people were. Because women didn't get the
Speaker 10: right to vote nineteen nineteen, so these people are decades
Speaker 10: ahead of the nation on women. There was a lot
Speaker 10: of temperance people that were not abolitionists, but every abolitionist
Speaker 10: was a teetotal.
Speaker 1: Temperance could easily go hand in hand with blatant racism.
Speaker 1: In fact, put a pin in that for later. But
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, the likes of Frederick Douglass and
Speaker 1: sojourn her Truth were prominent figures in the temperance movement.
Speaker 1: The people fighting hardest for causes like racial equality and
Speaker 1: women's rights were often supporters of temperance as well.
Speaker 10: It's very hard for people in the late twentieth and
Speaker 10: twenty first century to understand that temperance and prohibition advocates
Speaker 10: were progressives.
Speaker 1: Here's author Dan Okrant on what it meant to be
Speaker 1: a progressive back in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 9: You believe in the betterment of society through government action
Speaker 9: and an expertise and turning things over to the people
Speaker 9: who really knew what they were doing. It was kind
Speaker 9: of an anti democratic impulse. It's not related really to
Speaker 9: the progressivism that we know today.
Speaker 1: But the dries, as the temperance advocates came to be known,
Speaker 1: didn't arise in a vacuum. In fact, Temperance started to
Speaker 1: gain steam at precisely the same time as immigrants from
Speaker 1: Europe streamed into American cities. In record numbers, packed into
Speaker 1: unsafe tenement buildings. Compelled to work exhausting and often dangerous jobs,
Speaker 1: these newcomers were in desperate need of a place to
Speaker 1: unwind and throw back a few beers.
Speaker 11: There were public houses, there were taverns, and colonial and
Speaker 11: Revolutionary America in the early part of the nineteenth century
Speaker 11: in rural areas, often servingo's hotels as well. But the
Speaker 11: saloon was tied to urbanization and also tied to beer
Speaker 11: culture and the Germans, you know, as the Germans came in,
Speaker 11: they brought in lager beer. Americans had English type ales,
Speaker 11: but the lager beer revolution really switched American drinking practices.
Speaker 6: Who wanted to improve society that they had their ideas
Speaker 6: of how to improve it, tended to associate the evils
Speaker 6: of urbanization, the evils of industrialization, with immigration, because all
Speaker 6: of those things come together.
Speaker 1: That's Annie polland the president of the Tenement Museum. In
Speaker 1: the heart of New York City's Lower East Side.
Speaker 6: There were five hundred and twenty six lagger beer saloons
Speaker 6: in the neighborhood then known as kleindoutsch Lund. Now we
Speaker 6: think of the Lower east Side and the East Village
Speaker 6: and so saloons were everywhere, and saloons were the living
Speaker 6: rooms of the community.
Speaker 1: Take us inside, Annie.
Speaker 6: You would take a few steps down from the street
Speaker 6: into a lower level opening an all wooden door. It
Speaker 6: would probably be lit very well, with beautiful lanterns and lamps,
Speaker 6: wooden tables filled with different foods, pretzels, hard biled eggs, cheeses,
Speaker 6: sauer kraut, different kinds of meat. Do you'd have musicians
Speaker 6: there because it was a place for musicians together.
Speaker 1: Welcome to yummytown. That almost makes all the turn of
Speaker 1: the century typhoid and dysentery worth it.
Speaker 6: It would be noisy, lots of the sounds of people
Speaker 6: singing or talking. Maybe there'd be newspapers out, maybe there'd
Speaker 6: be different games out. You'd probably see children coming downstairs
Speaker 6: with a growler to fill to bring back upstairs to
Speaker 6: the family.
Speaker 1: Our man Alexander Gettler, chief toxicologist at Bellevue Hospital, and
Speaker 1: himself an immigrant, would have been quite familiar with places
Speaker 1: like this. His family actually brewed their own beer in
Speaker 1: their bathroom, and their social lives would have been intimately
Speaker 1: tied to the saloons around them.
Speaker 6: Of Course, the smell of beer but also the smell
Speaker 6: of cooking and the smell of tobacco. You might also
Speaker 6: have people conducting business in a saloon. One of the
Speaker 6: things that the Germans and the Germans speaking immigrants did
Speaker 6: a lot was form associations, mutual aid associations, political associations,
Speaker 6: associations for singing, for dancing, for gymnastics, like you name it.
Speaker 1: Hitler was more workaholic than an alcoholic, and there's no
Speaker 1: record of him joining any associations for singing, dancing, or gymnastics.
Speaker 1: But this was his world. People like Getler worked their
Speaker 1: asses off to make a life for themselves and their
Speaker 1: families in the US, but as they did, they faced
Speaker 1: discrimination from the blue blooded Protestants of this country. Ironically,
Speaker 1: people quite similar to Getler's partner Charles Norris, who were
Speaker 1: fed up with immigrants, their foreign cultures, and their pernicious booze.
Speaker 10: The native born white middle class by late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 10: that's already bought into abstinence sees these what they called
Speaker 10: hordes state of Jews and Catholics coming in, who are
Speaker 10: also a lot of times halfway literate in English, and
Speaker 10: living conditions aren't great. And somebody called it the working
Speaker 10: man's palace, and these places are elaborate. By the turn
Speaker 10: of the century, saloons.
Speaker 1: Became the primary targets for the carry nations of the world,
Speaker 1: as did the immigrants who frequented them. Even though prohibition
Speaker 1: was not technically an anti immigrant policy.
Speaker 11: Prohibition developed as a movement to change laws to prevent
Speaker 11: access to alcohol.
Speaker 1: As its proponents began trying to force it on the country,
Speaker 1: the battle lines became clear. On the dry side was
Speaker 1: the Temperance movement, zealous and all too willing to throw
Speaker 1: in their lot with outright racists. On the other side
Speaker 1: a whole lot of German, Italian, Irish and Jewish immigrants.
Speaker 1: Here's historian David Goldberg Well.
Speaker 2: Prohibition played a huge role in what you might call
Speaker 2: the culture the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: We can only get in touch with David over the phone,
Speaker 1: which is why it kind of sounds like he's calling.
Speaker 1: From the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2: Prohibition had been favored by those who were Protestants, and
Speaker 2: the major organization that had pushed the Prohibition Amendment, the
Speaker 2: Anti Saloon League, was tied to the Protestant churches, and
Speaker 2: prohibitions had been motivated by a great deal of anti
Speaker 2: immigrant sentiment because many of those who were members of
Speaker 2: this organization, the Anti Saloon League, were specially hostile the immigrants,
Speaker 2: specially immigrants from Catholic backgrounds.
Speaker 1: David's not exaggerating in the slightest. Before long, Catholics across
Speaker 1: America were being smeared as not only drunkards, but traders
Speaker 1: as well. Alexander Getler was born Jewish but married an
Speaker 1: Irish Catholic girl and then converted. That means he left
Speaker 1: one faith targeted by the dry movement, only to join another.
Speaker 1: The Anti Saloon League's efforts were one of the first
Speaker 1: instances of single issue lobbying to dramatically influence American politics.
Speaker 10: They drafted model legislation and said, you support what we do,
Speaker 10: here's a sample law. Maybe you could write a law
Speaker 10: like this that still goes on With interest groups. They
Speaker 10: created me bill lists of people they knew who would
Speaker 10: vote for dry candidates. People do that today, Every interest
Speaker 10: group does that today.
Speaker 9: Your position, if you were a politician on other issues
Speaker 9: was meaningless to them if you were okay on the
Speaker 9: prohibition issue.
Speaker 1: The Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti Saloon League
Speaker 1: were the two main organizations carrying the torch and or
Speaker 1: occasionally hatchet for prohibition. They were the definition of single
Speaker 1: issue voters, and when they found a candidate willing to
Speaker 1: vote for prohibition, they would go all in to get
Speaker 1: their guy elected.
Speaker 9: I think one of the key things that one has
Speaker 9: to know about prohibition there was never any education that
Speaker 9: a majority of Americans believed in it.
Speaker 1: In other words, when dry candidate's won, it didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean they'd won a majority of voters' hearts and minds.
Speaker 1: It just meant that the WCTU had an influential group
Speaker 1: of voters who could swing elections, and it worked time
Speaker 1: and time again. State after state went dry.
Speaker 7: The Anti Saloon League, the main lobbyist organization for temperance,
Speaker 7: use this moment really to the emptyent degree.
Speaker 1: That's historian Garrett Peck.
Speaker 7: They stigmatize alcohol, they turn beer drinking into treason, and
Speaker 7: they basically question the patriotism of every German American.
Speaker 1: Here are a few actual lines from the Anti Saloon
Speaker 1: League's propaganda.
Speaker 4: The breweries and the saloons of the country continue to
Speaker 4: waste foodstuffs, fuel.
Speaker 12: And manpower to impair.
Speaker 4: The efficiency of labors and the maniance factories and even
Speaker 4: immunitions plants near which saloons are located. German brewers in
Speaker 4: this country have rendered thousands of men inefficient and thus
Speaker 4: crippling the Republic in its war on the Prussian militarism.
Speaker 4: How can any loyal citizens vote for a trade that
Speaker 4: is aidy a pro German alliance. Everything that is pro
Speaker 4: German is anti American. Everything that is pro German.
Speaker 12: Must go.
Speaker 1: To me. This is starting to sound like just good
Speaker 1: old fashioned prejudice and alcohol just the latest convenient issue
Speaker 1: to inflame people's fears. The war unleashed a tidal wave
Speaker 1: of immigrant and ethnic hatred, all dauled up in red,
Speaker 1: white and blue. As one Wisconsin politician put it, we
Speaker 1: have German enemies across the water.
Speaker 4: We have German enemies in this country too, and worst
Speaker 4: of all, our German enemies, the most treacherous, the most menacing.
Speaker 4: Perhaps Schlitz Blats and Miller turns out.
Speaker 1: Fear mongering beer boycotts are as American as hot dogs,
Speaker 1: which incidentally got their name around this time too, because
Speaker 1: Frankfurter sounded a little too German. I'm assuming sauerkrowd also
Speaker 1: became liberty cabbage and German breweries became targets.
Speaker 11: Caps, twits, blats, and killer.
Speaker 1: Watch your glass.
Speaker 4: The ug killer, don't eat that brat, don't drink those
Speaker 4: such or don't check.
Speaker 12: You out in fu Oh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventeen, the US entered the war. That year,
Speaker 1: Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, which gave the government the
Speaker 1: power to ban alcohol sales. All that was left was
Speaker 1: for Congress to actually use its new power. Finally, after
Speaker 1: almost a century of organizing, sloganeering, and hectoring, the dryes
Speaker 1: got their way. Prohibition became law with the Volstead Act.
Speaker 1: But that raises a very critical question. Who the hell's
Speaker 1: going to enforce it? Will meet them after the break.
Speaker 1: In a nondescript office building somewhere in the nation's capital,
Speaker 1: a man stands over a beaker of liquid. He's white,
Speaker 1: middle aged hair starting to thin, heavy circular glasses peering
Speaker 1: over his experiment like the eyes of doctor tj Eckelberg.
Speaker 1: And not to get all middle school English teacher on
Speaker 1: you here, but just like those famous eyes from The
Speaker 1: Great Gatsby, James Duran was looking down on nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: America with more than a little bit of judgment. Duran
Speaker 1: is a chemist and an avid supporter of the dry movement.
Speaker 1: Mild mannered, methodical, a hard worker with a keen scientific mind.
Speaker 1: He busies himself with government work, while his wife dedicates
Speaker 1: her time to the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In fact,
Speaker 1: she'll go on to author a book of non alcoholic
Speaker 1: cocktail recipes. There are even substitutes for baking recipes that
Speaker 1: happen to involve alcohol.
Speaker 4: Mince pie is delicious without brandy if made properly.
Speaker 1: Not to nitpick here, missus Duran, but the alcohol bakes away.
Speaker 1: People aren't out here getting drunk off pie. But in
Speaker 1: the Duran's defense, people in nineteen twenty can find a
Speaker 1: way to get drunk off just about anything. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's precisely James Durant's problem. See James is a chemist
Speaker 1: for the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the predecessor to the IRS.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering why the IRS needs chemists, you're not alone.
Speaker 1: But as Thomas Pegram says, it's something that still happens today.
Speaker 1: You see evidence of it. Anytime you walk into a
Speaker 1: liquor store.
Speaker 11: You go get your rum or risky, and it's got
Speaker 11: that tape on it at the top that that's a
Speaker 11: sign that the Federal Excise Text has been passed. So
Speaker 11: there's a tradition of internal revenue regulating alcohol.
Speaker 1: The thing is, alcohol has a lot of different uses.
Speaker 1: In addition to being a wonderful social lubricant, it's commonly
Speaker 1: used as a solvent in industrial chemistry, a medical disinfectant,
Speaker 1: and as fuel. But I bet you've never been offered
Speaker 1: a medical alcohol swab as an apparitive, at least I
Speaker 1: hope not. And there's a really good reason for that.
Speaker 1: It's not the same stuff. Alcohol you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: drink gets denatured. In other words, it's made unnatural by
Speaker 1: adding a lot of really bad chemtmicals. These chemicals don't
Speaker 1: diminish the alcohol's industrial value, but they make it really
Speaker 1: hard to drink, which is the whole point you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to drink it. All of this allows the IRS
Speaker 1: to draw a chemical distinction between industrial alcohol and all
Speaker 1: that other yummy stuff you're supposed to drink. And the
Speaker 1: reason all this matters to the IRS is because different
Speaker 1: types of alcohol get taxed differently, and Uncle Sam needs
Speaker 1: a way to ensure nobody skirts the tax code by
Speaker 1: making drinking alcohol out of the stuff you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be using to sterilize needles. Since nineteen oh seven, James
Speaker 1: duran has been proudly polluting, sorry, denaturing, industrial alcohol in
Speaker 1: service of our nation's tax code. But with the passage
Speaker 1: of the Volstead Act, James job suddenly becomes crucial not
Speaker 1: only to tax enforcement, but to enforcement of the new
Speaker 1: nationwide dry law.
Speaker 12: And so you had this prohibition unit.
Speaker 11: It was originally called tied to the Internal Revenue Service
Speaker 11: in the Treasury Department, you know, not Justice, you know,
Speaker 11: which usually enforces the laws.
Speaker 1: Yep, and its infinite wisdom, Congress has decided to make
Speaker 1: alcohol illegal and to make the Irs enforce it. James
Speaker 1: Durant's job is about to get a whole lot more interesting.
Speaker 1: And he's not the only one you ever see. Mister
Speaker 1: Smith goes to Washington. It's an old Hollywood classic, A
Speaker 1: Scout troop leader from the American West, played by a
Speaker 1: yet again Jimmy Stewart. What's with this guy? Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart, and basically I just play every American archetype
Speaker 1: under the sun. You see. Anyway, he gets hand picked
Speaker 1: for a Senate seat by a bunch of fat cats.
Speaker 1: He comes into Congress still brushing the Oregon trail dust
Speaker 1: off his necktie. The political bosses think he's such a rube.
Speaker 1: They can pull his strings and he'll be none the wiser.
Speaker 1: Of course, they get him all wrong. Why well, they
Speaker 1: think loving the founding fathers and reciting their speeches by
Speaker 1: heart makes him a naive bumpkin. But that turns out
Speaker 1: to be exactly what lets him see right through their
Speaker 1: greedy schemes. He's got principles. God damn it. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: I mean nag nabbitt, And that means something. In America,
Speaker 1: all you people don't.
Speaker 12: Know about loss causes. The only cause is worth fighting.
Speaker 1: But two decades before mister Smith, another plucky Westerner arrives
Speaker 1: in DC for real. Her name is Mabel Walker Willebrandt.
Speaker 1: She's a rising legal star, the first woman in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to serve as a public defender, and the parliamentarian
Speaker 1: of the city's Women Lawyers Club. She made a name
Speaker 1: for herself providing free counsel to sex workers, and she's
Speaker 1: already proven that she can captivate a courtroom. Mabel is
Speaker 1: a trail blo, a crusading attorney who never hesitates to
Speaker 1: stand up for women, definitely not easy in nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: she has a well earned reputation for defying men's expectations.
Speaker 1: So when President Warren G. Harding begins searching for someone
Speaker 1: to lead the charge for federal prohibition, a host of
Speaker 1: California lawyers and judges tell him we want Walker wille Brandt.
Speaker 1: Harding offers an interview. Mabel says farewell to her parents
Speaker 1: in Cali and rides the rails across the country full
Speaker 1: of confidence she'll be hired as Assistant Attorney General of
Speaker 1: the United States. And when I think of her stepping
Speaker 1: off the train with her big canvas bag and her
Speaker 1: hair and tight braids over her ears, I see a
Speaker 1: lot of that mister Smith's story. I mean, Jimmy may
Speaker 1: not have had the braids. But as Mabel catches a
Speaker 1: trolley through the busy streets of DC, she's also riding
Speaker 1: into a world she doesn't know. At just thirty two,
Speaker 1: Mabel has a resume that would make more most lawyers
Speaker 1: in Washington green with envy, But enforcing prohibition remains an
Speaker 1: unenviable and largely untested task, because by nineteen twenty, the
Speaker 1: national experiment in prohibition is going pretty much exactly like
Speaker 1: Getler and Norris had predicted. Enterprising Americans find all sorts
Speaker 1: of ways to skirt the law, from making moonshine out
Speaker 1: in the boonies to smuggling in the good stuff from
Speaker 1: across the Canadian border, to going full mad scientist and
Speaker 1: making Franken cocktails out of industrial alcohols. If this thing's
Speaker 1: going to actually last, the Feds are going to need
Speaker 1: a steady hand at the helm of the brand new
Speaker 1: prohibition unit.
Speaker 9: She didn't particularly believe in prohibition, but she believed in
Speaker 9: the law, and she believed in her assignment. And if
Speaker 9: this is what you want me to do, damn it all,
Speaker 9: I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: So despite her reservations, Mabel aces her interview with the
Speaker 1: Attorney General. Then, with his stamp of approval, she catches
Speaker 1: a cab to the White House for a face to
Speaker 1: face meeting with President Warren Harding. Harding and his Attorney
Speaker 1: General had a long history together. They were something of
Speaker 1: an old boys club, backroom deals, etc. Mabel was a
Speaker 1: buy the book's West Coast lady trying to break in.
Speaker 1: All that is to say that whatever her principles. She
Speaker 1: needed to know how to play ball if she wanted
Speaker 1: this job.
Speaker 5: Give me the authority and let me have my pick
Speaker 5: of three hundred men, and I'll make this country as
Speaker 5: dry as is humanly possible.
Speaker 1: As the story goes, President Harding told Mabel, there's only
Speaker 1: one thing against you. You're too young. Mabel takes what
Speaker 1: Harding gives her and sends it right back at him.
Speaker 5: I'll outgrow it.
Speaker 1: She knocks the interview out of the park. She gets
Speaker 1: the job. It's a huge moment for Mabel and for
Speaker 1: the country. Mabel Walker Willebrandt is now the highest ranking
Speaker 1: woman in government. She's young and ambitious, and in all
Speaker 1: likelihood she's thinking that if she plays is her cards right,
Speaker 1: she could get herself a federal judge ship or even
Speaker 1: become America's first female Attorney general. But the reaction in
Speaker 1: the press is sadly predictable. These are actual headlines from
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 4: LA Woman to fight wetts Man's job is given to
Speaker 4: missus Willibrandt by Harding, California. Woman gets federal plumb may
Speaker 4: want to primp up extra extra woman swayed by logic.
Speaker 4: New Assistant Attorney General is not emotional.
Speaker 1: The media was already on Harding's case for handing out
Speaker 1: jobs to his friends and political allies, and now they
Speaker 1: were going to turn that anger on Mabel with an
Speaker 1: extra layer of misogyny just for kicks. When she announces
Speaker 1: to the papers that she's not giving interviews until she's
Speaker 1: gotten her feet under her, one paper proclaims.
Speaker 4: A woman who was not ready and willing to talk
Speaker 4: or be photographed has been found.
Speaker 1: Mabel probably saw this coming. There's no question she's hit
Speaker 1: with snide remarks every time she steps into the spotlight.
Speaker 1: But what she can't have prepared for is the resistance
Speaker 1: she'll meet from her colleagues and the corruption she'll find
Speaker 1: around every corner. All Right, Prohibition's the law of the land,
Speaker 1: and President Harding has hired Mabel Walker Willebrandt to come
Speaker 1: to DC and get to work enforcing it. Just one problem,
Speaker 1: the apparatus that's supposed to enforce this law is less
Speaker 1: a finely tuned machine and more like, well, what's the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties equivalent of a shit show? I guess it's
Speaker 1: also a shit show for starters. There's her boss, the
Speaker 1: Attorney General.
Speaker 9: He was a a drunk and be corrupt. That doesn't
Speaker 9: make it easy.
Speaker 1: Thanks Dan Akrant. Then there's her staff. You'd think the
Speaker 1: newly created Prohibition Unit would be designed to resist the
Speaker 1: corrupting influences of the booze business. After all, most civil
Speaker 1: servants at the time had to pass a series of
Speaker 1: tests confirming their aptitude and integrity. But this new unit
Speaker 1: was made exempt from those tests, which.
Speaker 9: Is another way of saying we're going to use it
Speaker 9: for political payoffs.
Speaker 1: Which means Mabel is essentially the meat in a corruption sandwich.
Speaker 1: She's more or less the only person anywhere in the
Speaker 1: chain of command who isn't interested in taking bribes to
Speaker 1: look the other way. The guys enforcing this law, and
Speaker 1: the guys overseeing the whole enterprise, they're all in somebody's pocket.
Speaker 9: The Secretary of Treasury who was directly in charge of enforcement,
Speaker 9: Andrew Mellon. He owned Old Overhoult.
Speaker 1: That's Old Overholt, the bourbon. Yeah, it's bad enough for
Speaker 1: any member of the cabinet to own a liquor company.
Speaker 1: But as Secretary of the Treasury, Melon has a major
Speaker 1: role to play in prohibition enforcement. He's supposed to work
Speaker 1: closely with Mabel's office and he's James Durant's bought drunks, bribetakers,
Speaker 1: liquor magnates. These are the people Mabel's supposed to work
Speaker 1: hand in glove with in the fight to enforce prohibition.
Speaker 1: Whatever the IRS gets wind of some alcohol related skull duggery,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to investigate, gather evidence, and package it all
Speaker 1: up so the Assistant Attorney General, Mabel Walker Willebrandt can
Speaker 1: swoop in and make the arrests. Mabel then wins the case.
Speaker 1: The bootleggers get tossed in the clink, rinse, and repeat
Speaker 1: until the country goes drier than an anti masturbatory cracker. Again,
Speaker 1: that's how it's supposed to work, but in practice, most
Speaker 1: of the people around her are either uninterested in enforcing
Speaker 1: dry laws or actively breaking them.
Speaker 5: There's one way it can be done, get at the
Speaker 5: source of supply. I know them, and I know how
Speaker 5: they could be cut off. I have no patience with
Speaker 5: this policy of going after the hip pocket and speak
Speaker 5: easy cases. That's like trying to dry up the Atlantic
Speaker 5: Ocean with a blotter.
Speaker 1: Come as a huge relief to Mabel when she finally
Speaker 1: finds someone in the IRS bureaucracy who takes the law
Speaker 1: as seriously as she does James Dran. She's an ambitious
Speaker 1: lawyer in the Department of Justice. He's a behind the
Speaker 1: scenes chemist in the Department of Treasury. Fate has brought
Speaker 1: them together. Mabel Walker Willebrandt and James Duran will enforce
Speaker 1: prohibition despite the corruption all around them. As such, they'll
Speaker 1: both quickly realize enforcement is going to require some new approaches,
Speaker 1: a new formula, if you will. But they're determined, they're idealistic,
Speaker 1: and together these two dedicated bureaucrats are about to unleash
Speaker 1: hell on American drinkers. Next time on Snafu, we meet
Speaker 1: the defiant bootleggers who were already making life a nightmare
Speaker 1: for the prohibition bureau.
Speaker 10: He didn't give a shit who you were, where you
Speaker 10: were from, what you did, or any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Come on up, have a drink with me. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: our pal Alexander Getler was back on the case in
Speaker 1: New York and making some shocking discoveries.
Speaker 3: Unless you're rich, you're drinking whatever you can get your
Speaker 3: hands on. So one of the cocktails of the Bowery,
Speaker 3: which is a really poor neighborhood in New York was
Speaker 3: called Smoke and That was Fuel, Alcohol and Water.
Speaker 1: Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
Speaker 1: Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl
Speaker 1: Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Nevin Calla, Poly,
Speaker 1: Stephen Wood, Carl Nellis, and a kemedy Ekpo, with additional
Speaker 1: writing and story editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms.
Speaker 1: Additional production from Stephen Wood. Tory Smith is our associate producer.
Speaker 1: Our story editor is nicky Stein. Our production assistants are
Speaker 1: Nevin Calla, Polly and A kimminy Ekpo. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris, Editing music
Speaker 1: and sound design by Ben Chug Engineering and technical direction
Speaker 1: by Nick Dooley Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director.
Speaker 1: Theme music by Dan Rosatto. The role of Mabel Walker
Speaker 1: will Brandt was played by Kerrie Bische. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Alison Cohen Daniel Welsh and ben Ryzak