Mabel pulls the bung

WAYNE CARD

How a former Joan of Arc of Prohibition became the Portia of the Winegrowers and gave wine to America

Back in 1928, before it was obligatory to smile when you called a law a son of a noble experiment, Mabel Walker Willebrandt, LL.B., LL.M., LL.D. was the Joan of Arc of Prohibition. Attractive, quick-witted, with the scruples of a corporation lawyer, and on the political make, she was a leader of the crew who helped make Hoover President, and who hit the political skids almost immediately afterwards. No one guessed that within the short space of two years Mabel would have quit the holy war to make America dry. No one could have prophesied that within a year of President Hoover's failure to put the lawyer lady from the Grizzly State in charge of Prohibition enforcement, Mabel would have pulled the bung and, immaculately legal, would have flooded Methodist America with blushing wine. Yet today, if your winter overcoat is steeped in the odor of alcoholic unsanctity, it is largely because the Joan of Arc of Prohibition refused to take the "Rule or Rouen" route to political glory.

Balked of her laudable ambition to make us dry, she has helped the California grape juice industry make us wet. Today any American who wants wine in his home can have it, without benefit of bootlegger and without violating the Volstead Act, and, to a certain extent, at Federal expense. But Mabel is the one person who, more than anyone else, has brought wine back to the American home, and today her fellow general in the Hoover campaign, Dr. Clarence True Wilson,; wails that she has "put one over on him."

Mabel was, indeed, the Portia of Prohibition in 1928. Frequently she appeared before the Unjted States Supreme Court, and usually she won her cases. At the Republican nominating convention in Kansas City, Mabel, the shrewd lawyer and the attractive grass widow, was all smiles. Plenty of corks were popped, but, publicly, the party was as dry as a Presidential message. Her convention activities gave rise to the remark that Hoover's nomination was determined "up in Mabel's room." Later on in the campaign, she addressed two thousand Methodists at Springfield, Ohio, and urged them to rally their fellow churchmen to elect Hoover and keep the country dry.

After the election, there was much speculation over the reward which might fall to this go-getting campaigner. Would she be the first woman in the President's cabinet or the first lady on the federal bench? Alas, she became neither! Two months after the inauguration, Mabel parted company with the Great Engineer. And now the woman who became Assistant Attorney General at thirty-two is chief legal counsel for Fruit Industries, Ltd., a co-operative organization which represents the growers of more than eighty-five per cent of California's grapes.

Today, Mabel's job is to make Americans wine-conscious. And how she is doing it! She is not only giving her employers able help in flooding the country with grape juice, which becomes palatable wine upon being left in a warm place for two months, but government money is helping in the good work, and she has even talked many of the dry leaders into approving of her new occupation.

In September, 1930, Mabel was in Washington, corralling the knights of prohibition, and, with the aid of generous dinners, convincing them of the legality and high moral purpose of her new work. Some of the high drys were dubious at first, but most of them felt easier when, on September 27, the new Commissioner of Prohibition, Amos W. W. Woodcock, made a public statement explaining clearly that making wine at home, for home consumption, was within the law and would be free from federal molestation. The only restrictions were that the wine must not be sold and that it must not be "intoxicating in fact," the latter point to be determined only by jury.

Colonel Woodcock's ruling brought joy to Californians in the San Joaquin valley, the Valley of the Moon, and other sunny slopes which then held enough ripening grapes to make approximately 121,800,000 gallons of choice wine, almost a gallon for every American. Yet this was the only attitude he could have adopted consistently. His statement was almost identical with one which his predecessor, James M. Doran, had made in August, 1929. Woodcock's stand was merely a bit more explicit.

Both statements were based solidly upon the Volstead act and upon consequent decisions of the federal courts. In Section 29 of Title II, the prohibition act states that "the penalties provided in this act shall not apply to a person for manufacturing cider and fruit juices exclusively for use in his home, but such cider and fruit juices shall not be sold or delivered except to persons having permits to manufacture vinegar."

Most of the dry leaders were satisfied with the Woodcock ruling and made no trouble for Mabel. And many were convinced by such statements as this one, made in a letter from Mabel to the president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Maryland:

"I have not deviated a hair's breadth from the principles which governed my action as a public official. I still believe in prohibition; feel that it is enforceable, and desire to support its enforcement as a private citizen. The work I do as counsel for the national organization of grape growers gives an opportunity for service to a most important, and the largest industry of my state of California, as well as an opportunity to further, unofficially as a citizen and as a lawyer, the principles of the prohibition law which I respect."

Early in December, Mabel appeared before a convention of dry leaders in Washington and addressed them so convincingly that she left with applause ringing in her ears. She told these leaders that she was still heart and soul with the drys and that evaporated fresh grape juice was "just like canned milk" and just as harmless.

Yes, Mabel has been giving the fruit growers their money's worth. She aided them in obtaining large loans from the Federal Farm Board and other sources; and throughout her present connection she has served as an ideal front window for the grape juice industry.

The plight of the California grape growers had been serious. The enactment of prohibition was a hard blow, and a still heavier one came with the collapse of the international grape and raisin market in 1922. To supply the world demand for raisins during the war, Californians planted new vineyards on a large scale. But after the crash of 1922, prices remained so low that often it hardly paid to pick the grapes. Mortgages were foreclosed, and many families were driven from the land. The cities were glutted with cheap grapes which brought profit only to bootleggers and racketeers.

The only new outlet was through the sale of unfermented grape juice or concentrates made by condensing the juice. These products, as Mabel has explained to the dry leaders, can be used for jellies, sauces, flavorings, and non-alcoholic drinks.

This juice has been sold for several years by private companies which have offered it in many varieties in five, ten, fifteen, and twenty-five gallon kegs. An advertising booklet issued a few years ago by one of these companies, one that is now a constituent corporation in the government-aided Fruit Industries, Ltd., offered "Sparkling champagne that an expert taster cannot distinguish from a rare old vintage . . . Champagne! Clear, dry, sparkling, exhilarating. Champagne to gladden the heart, lend zest to a dinner. Champagne made from a cuvee of selected grapes—made by you, in your own home, legally!"

Mrs. Willebrandt, then a dry crusader, considered this appeal too bold. She went to Buffalo to prosecute the company but came back defeated. Today the concerns, which she represents are sending out advertising, the intent of which is scarcely less obvious.

This fresh grape juice found a ready market, and many thousands of Americans began to regard their cellars as more than coal piles and furnaces. In an official report, Colonel Woodcock estimated the average annual production of wine from California grapes in 1925-29 at 135,781,810 gallons, or nearly three limes the average for 1915-19. Some unofficial figures for American wine production under prohibition run much higher.

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With all this wine making, however, the California grape growers continued to suffer from an unsalable surplus until Mabel, and the Federal Farm Board came to the rescue. A grape control board was organized to dispose of the annual surplus, and in the Farm Board's first year $8,175,400.94 was advanced to the California vineyardists. This was a larger allowance than that made to any other agricultural commodity except wheat and cotton. A recent report showed that the Farm Board had lent more than nineteen million dollars to California grapegrower co-operatives, of which four million had been repaid. Not all of this money was to finance the sale of wine juice, however; more than half of it went to raisin growers. Since then, the vineyardists have been seeking fourteen million in new loans —three million of this for juice.

Mabel and her associates opened their wine juice selling campaign in Milwaukee in November, 1930. It was reported that New Haven and Cleveland were the first and second choices of the distributors, but that Washington officials vetoed these preferences and insisted that the test be made in Milwaukee.

From billboards and from their morning and evening papers, citizens of this Wisconsin city were confronted with inviting pictures of twin glasses filled with bubbling wine. They were informed that they could order through their corner drug stores, for immediate delivery, the "juice" of Port, Muscatel, Tokay, Virginia Dare, Claret, Sauterne, Burgundy, and Reisling.

Before the people of New York and other cities had a chance to help the impoverished California vineyardists, both the Wickersham commission and certain United States Senators paid their respects to this home wine movement, but their efforts resulted only in additional free advertising for the potent juice.

The Wickersham body viewed the cider and fruit juice loophole in the Volstead act as an invitation to hypocrisy and evasion. "Why home wine-making should be lawful while home-brewing of beer and home distilling of spirits are not," wrote the commissioners, "why home wine-making for home use is less reprehensible than making the same wine outside the home for home use, and why it should be penal to make wine commercially for use in homes and not penal to make in huge quantities the materials for wine making, and set up an elaborate selling campaign for disposing of them, is not apparent."

So thought the brewers also. And so thought Senator Millard E. Tydings, a dripping wet from Maryland. In the Senate, Tydings called attention to the discrepancies to which the Wickersham commission had referred, pointed out the inconsistency of the government's lending money to encourage home wine-making while suppressing the home making of beer which contains less alcohol than wine, and dared the drys to equalize matters.'

The Farm Board's plan "rescues for human society the native values of the grape," shouted Tydings, paraphrasing a quotation on the front cover of Mabel's pamphlet. "It banishes as criminal the similar native values of the grain."

Mabel Willebrandt's cohorts invaded New York early in March, 1931. Their full-page advertisements for Vine-Glo, "the pure juice of California's wine-grapes," appeared in the staid Times, in papers which never would consider accepting "liquor" advertising. "It is legal," New Yorkers were told. "You can enjoy the full, matchless flavor and bouquet of the juice of California's finest wine-grapes in the full knowledge that you are not a law-breaker."

All thanks to Mabel! Just a few years ago, she was the high priestess of prohibition. Today the cellars of the country are well stocked with odorous kegs which their owners watch and care for with as much consideration as that bestowed upon household pets.