Pauline Morton Sabin Davis was an American politician, the first woman appointed to the Republican National Committee and a leading advocate of prohibition repeal in the early 1930's.
Background
Pauline Morton Sabin Davis was born in 1887 in Chicago. She was the daughter of Paul and Charlotte Goodridge Morton. The exact date of her birth is unknown. Her father, a railroad executive, later served for a year as secretary of the navy in Theodore Roosevelt's cabinet and as president of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. (He was also an heir to the Morton Salt fortune, and upon his death his daughter inherited several million dollars derived from that source. ) As a girl of sixteen Pauline Morton accompanied her father to Washington, D. C.
Career
Davis became interested and active in politics and remained so for the rest of her life.
She soon began to give lawn parties at their Southampton estate for the benefit of the local Republican party. Although she did not campaign for woman suffrage, by the time the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified in 1920, she had already been elected to the New York Republican Women's State Committee, and in that year was chosen as a delegate to the party's national convention.
In the decade that followed, Pauline Sabin rose rapidly in the party ranks. She founded and for five years was president of the Women's National Republican Club. In 1923 she was named to the newly created Advisory Council and then was the first woman to be appointed to the Republican National Committee itself. The following year her status as the party's leading woman was confirmed when her colleagues elected her to the Republican Executive Committee.
As a member of the National Committee, she traveled extensively, talking primarily to women about the need for greater involvement in the political process. Pauline Sabin originally favored prohibition and in 1924 said that she believed in its strict enforcement.
Two years later, without indicating whether she had changed her mind, she supported a series of state referenda on the subject; in 1928, she published an article in Outlook calling for repeal and condemned the "noble experiment" as a failure that had bred crime and disrespect for the law. The article shocked many Republicans, since the party's presidential candidate, Herbert Hoover, had come out for strict enforcement. With the Republicans evidently firmly committed to prohibition, Pauline Sabin resigned from her party offices and with sixteen other women founded the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform in 1929.
As president of the group she utilized her considerable political skills to marshal an impressive force lobbying for repeal. The Women's Organization, which ultimately enlisted 1. 5 million members, worked to rebut the classic dry arguments that women favored prohibition, that drink destroyed the family, and that repeal would undermine social morality. Pauline Sabin admitted that she had originally supported prohibition for the sake of her two sons. Eventually, "I began to see that whether my sons drank or not was my responsibility, not the government's. I realized that by prohibition I was endeavoring to shove off upon the government a job that was properly my own. "
In 1932, when the Republicans reaffirmed their dry position, she bolted the party and announced her support of Franklin D. Roosevelt, since the Democratic platform called for repeal.
In 1933, following the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment and the death of her husband, she retired temporarily from politics. But although she had supported repeal and Roosevelt in 1932, Pauline Sabin remained an essentially conservative person. By 1934 she was sufficiently antagonized by New Deal measures to speak out against the president's program and to join the Liberty League as a member of the executive committee. In 1936 she returned to the Republican fold and campaigned for Alfred Landon.
When World War II broke out, Pauline Davis joined the American Red Cross as director of volunteerspecial services. She traveled to England on behalf of the organization and later received the British Dame of St. John Award. She managed to enroll more than three million women as Red Cross volunteers before she had to resign in 1943 because of poor health.
Achievements
Pauline Davis contributed a lot to the repeal of Prohibition. Also, she was a founder of the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform.
Politics
Throughout these years she urged women to get involved in politics. Eschewing the argument that women were finer or nobler than men, she argued that if they wanted to have any say in the country's future, they would have to learn about the issues, make decisions, and then work within the two-party system to effect their beliefs.
Membership
She was a member of the National Committee.
Personality
Sabin was very active in politics and known for her social status and charismatic personality.
Connections
Davis was married to James Hopkins Smith for seven years, when she devoted her time to her husband and two sons. She divorced Smith in 1914 and in 1916 married Charles Hamilton Sabin, chairman of the Morgan Guaranty bank.
In 1936 Davis had married Dwight Filley Davis, who had served as secretary of war under President Coolidge and as governor-general of the Philippines under President Hoover.
