spread, but she was most frightened by the impact it was having on young people.  The lesson kids were supposed to learn—“crime does not pay”—was an obvious lie.  Crime paid very well and everybody knew it.  And killers like Capone were becoming romantic heroes.  In May of 1929 she assembled a couple of dozen like-minded social divas at the Drake Hotel in Chicago and they announced the formation of the WONPR—Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform. “Many of our members  are young mothers—too young to remember the old saloon,” said Sabin. “But they are working for repeal because they don’t want their babies to grow up in the hip-flask, speakeasy atmosphere that has polluted their own youth.”  Over the next two years 300,000 women joined the WONPR and before it was over there would be 1.5 million.^[14]

This defection was a disaster for the prohibitionists. They had always claimed that women backed the 18th Amendment without reservation.  Ella Boole, president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, told Congress in 1928, “I represent the women of America!”  Now here was Pauline Sabin—elegant, commanding—leading a delegation before the House Judiciary Committee, saying just the opposite.  “Mrs. Sabin spoke bluntly,” said the New York Times of February 14, 1930, “and her emerald ring glittered as she waved her hand...”  She also spoke with chilling eloquence.

“...women played a large part in the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment.  Many were women who had unhappy experiences as a result of drunkenness among those close to them.   They are now realizing with heart burning and heart aching that if the spirit is not within, legislation can be of no avail.  They thought they could make prohibition as strong as the Constitution, but instead have made the Constitution as weak as prohibition...”  Before the Volstead Act, said Mrs. Sabin, her children had no access to alcohol.  Now they could get it anywhere.^[15]

Applause interrupted her testimony several times—an explosion of relief no doubt, from congressmen who finally saw a