When Thermopolis pioneer, businesswoman and advocate Dora McGrath decided to run for the Wyoming senate in 1930 it was with one purpose in mind.
She wanted to help the soldier boys who had come back broken from World War I and build a veteran’s hospital in Hot Springs County.
McGrath also believed in giving them the right to all the freedoms for which they had risked their lives. This included the freedom to drink alcoholic beverages even though she herself was “dry.”
“I’m so thirsty, soon I’ll die, I’m simply goin’ to ‘vaporate, I’m just that dry,” the lyrics in “The Alcoholic Blues” lamented just as the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified.
In January 1919, Albert Von Tinzler and Edward Laska had published the popular song that captured the feelings of a World War I veteran returning home to a dry United States.
“I wouldn’t mind to live forever in a trench, if my daily thirst they only let me quench,” the lyrics said. “But not with Bevo or ginger ale, I want the real stuff by the pail.”
Mothers Against Prohibition
In 1931, the Cheyenne Associated Press carried the story, “Woman Senator For Law Change Despite Dryness” at the beginning of McGrath’s tenure in the legislature.
The story was carried across the nation that a woman senator dared to speak against prohibition when the common thought was that all women supported a dry America.
“It is a difficult problem and it is not for me to say how it may be solved,” McGrath said. “But I do think the prohibition law cannot be enforced, regardless of how much money is spent or how hard the government tries to enforce it.
The associated press said McGrath had lived in Wyoming since 1887 when it was the “raw West” and cowboys were the main inhabitants. Liquor flowed freely at the saloons and the richest businessmen were those that poured the spirits.
“It may seem like a paradox but while I am dry I do not believe in the Volstead act,” McGrath told the reporter, condemning the act that made alcohol illegal nationwide.
Her sentiments were echoed by women across America.
Pauline Sabin was taking the lead of a movement to eradicate the new amendment on the East Coast as McGrath was also publicly making her own stance clear that she was in favor of legal alcohol in the West.
The wife of a staunch Democrat, Sabin was an independent thinker and moved into her role as a leader against prohibition almost by accident. She had discovered that to do charity in New York City, one had to be involved in politics so she joined the Republican party and was a known advocate for many issues.
Her own concern over prohibition grew slowly during the 1920s while she devoted herself to Republican causes. At first, she had supported the Eighteenth Amendment.
"I felt I should approve of it because it would help my two sons,” Sabin said. “The word-pictures of the agitators carried me away. I thought a world without liquor would be a beautiful world."
As she observed the effects of prohibition, her motherly and political concerns caused her to change her mind.
Hypocritical Politicians
According to author David Kyvig in his article, “Women Against Prohibition,” Sabin’s concerns were on several issues which were also reasons that swayed McGrath to support legalizing liquor.
For one, the women were disturbed by the hypocrisy of politicians who would support resolutions for stricter enforcement and half an hour later be drinking cocktails.
The ineffectiveness of the law, the apparent decline of temperate drinking, and the growing prestige of bootleggers troubled the women even more.
Mothers, Sabin said, had believed that prohibition would eliminate the temptation of drinking from their children's lives, but found instead that "children are growing up with a total lack of respect for the Constitution and for the law."
“The young see the law broken at home and upon the street,” she said. “Can we expect them to be lawful?”
In pre-prohibition days, Sabin testified to the House Judiciary Committee, mothers had little to fear in regard to the saloon as far as their children were concerned. A saloon keeper's license was revoked if he was caught selling liquor to minors.
After prohibition, in any speakeasy in the United States, boys and girls in their teens were drinking liquor. This situation had become so acute according to Sabin that the mothers of the country felt something must be done to protect their children.
“It is an appalling situation when young girls have to be assisted from dance halls, so under the influence of intoxicating liquor they do not know what they are doing,” McGrath said. “Young people cannot go two blocks down a street without being offered a hip flask.”
Both women opposed federal involvement in matters of personal conduct. National prohibition was seen to be undermining personal liberty and decentralized government, all important elements in the world of these conservative, upper class, politically active women.
The Wyoming Drinking Scene
When the Eighteenth Amendment became effective, 117,790 saloons, 1,247 breweries, 407 distilleries, and 275 Keeley cure institutes went out of business in the United States according to Wyoming Senator Stephen Sibley.
“I do not believe the ‘dry’ sentiment in Wyoming has decreased,” he said in 1927, advocating for stiffer laws against alcohol. “Maybe this liquor is now being supplied by bootleggers, but I doubt it.”
However, he was mistaken, and McGrath saw the results of illegal alcohol everywhere in the state.
As a pioneer and businesswoman of Wyoming during the early days, she had personally known saloon owners and outlaws. In Old Thermopolis, she had witnessed drunk cowboys careen down the streets shooting their guns and she brushed shoulders with madams and other colorful characters.
However, McGrath had never seen the likes of this type of lawlessness. Especially when her own young relative, Deputy Ted Price, was killed in a shootout over a hidden still.
Saloons had simply taken down their signs and were now illegally pouring drinks for everyone, including young teenagers. Speakeasys had sprouted up in every town along with the crime that came with openly flaunting the law.
The liquor was still flowing in Wyoming and bootleggers were going to extremes to keep their clients well supplied. Gun battles, car chases, bribery, and general mayhem followed in the wake of these rum runners.
The Politics For Drinking
When Dora McGrath was chairman of the law enforcement committee in 1931 for the Wyoming senate, the Casper Star Tribune reported that a bill to abolish the state law enforcement department had made it out of committee.
The bill was considered an anti-prohibition gesture and although the individual votes were secret, it was surmised by the paper that McGrath had voted in favor of the bill.
It was well known that she was dissatisfied with conditions under prohibition.
The bill ultimately failed but showed that there was support, despite what Sabine and others thought, for the Cowboy State to be ‘wet’ rather than ‘dry.’
The next summer, McGrath was chosen to be part of a delegation traveling to the Republican National Convention in Chicago. The AP carried the story that she would be the first woman to be bestowed the honor of representing Wyoming as a member of the state delegation.
“I expect no special privileges because of my sex,” she said in response to the attention. “I see no reason why women should be accorded any such privileges when they enter public life.”
It was while there that McGrath joined the Republican Citizens Committee Against National Prohibition and mingled with like-minded politicians and advocates who supported legalizing liquor and saloons.
In December 1933, their goal was achieved when Prohibition was repealed.
Senator McGrath was in the legislature from 1930 to 1934 but chose not to run for a third term. She had achieved her goal. A veteran’s hospital was to be built in Wyoming, although she had to concede for it to be in Cheyenne rather than by the healing waters of Thermopolis.
She had also helped to bring about the end of prohibition in Wyoming and the United States. The saloons were back.
It was no longer the wild west of her youth, however liquor once again flowed freely in Wyoming thanks in part to mothers like Senator Dora McGrath.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
