Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Luck Be A Lady Governor

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

In the middle of the 1920s, when Prohibition was at its peak, leaders and law enforcement could go one of two ways: they could crack down on Volstead Act violators… or they could look the other way. Today, we’ll meet the first two women governors in the nation’s history–and a couple of lawmen–and learn how they handled their duties during Prohibition.  Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to Episode 10 of our series on Prohibition, From Hatchets to Hoods. On Christmas Eve 1926, a man burst through the doors of Bellevue Hospital in New York City, screaming hysterically that Santa Claus was chasing him through the streets with a baseball bat. Before staff could make sense of the outlandish claim, the delirious man died. By the end of Christmas Day, 60 patients at Bellevue were gravely ill and eight were dead. By New Year's, another 41 people at Bellevue had died. The cause? Alcohol poisoning. Six years into Prohibition, doctors were used to treating the symptoms of alcohol poisoning. It was common for people to get sick

from the questionable ingredients of bootlegged whiskeys and bathtub gins. But this was different. This alcohol poisoning was killing people fast. Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City, called it our national experiment in extermination because he knew who was responsible for the lethal outbreak. The United States government. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Our newly industrialized country in the 1920s couldn't run without industrial alcohol. It was used for manufacturing detergents, cleaning, flavoring extracts and perfumes,

as well as for gasoline, solvents, paints, medical supplies, and countless other things that kept day-to-day life flowing smoothly. But it was not fit for consumption. During Prohibition, when there was precious little drinkable alcohol commercially available, this industrial alcohol started looking like a viable alternative, especially for people who couldn't afford anything else. By the mid-1920s, bootleggers would steal up to 60 million gallons of industrial alcohol every year, and they would pay chemists to redistill it and make it drinkable. And when I say drinkable, I mean just barely. Imagine boiling hand sanitizer or stain remover until you felt, you know, reasonably confident that even if it made someone sick, it wouldn't kill them. I'm, of course, I'm oversimplifying the chemistry,

but that is the general idea here. Okay. First of all, not delicious. Second of all, no, thank you. Frustrated with the thefts of industrial alcohol and that it was being turned around, marketed as whiskey and sold to the public, the government's solution was to make it too poisonous to drink. Federal authorities wrote a mandate to add specific poisons, namely methanol, to industrial alcohol. Methanol not only smells bad, but it can cause blindness, hallucinations, bad, but it can cause blindness, hallucinations, dementia, and very often, death. As we saw at Bellevue Hospital in 1926, poisoning the alcohol didn't stop everyone from drinking it, but it did lead to a lot of pain, suffering, and death. And not everyone felt bad about it. Wayne Wheeler, who we talked about a few

episodes ago, the guy who was the head of the Anti-Saloon League, called the deaths deliberate suicides for whom no one should feel sorry. But a Chicago Tribune journalist shot back saying that normally no American government would engage in such business. It is only in the would engage in such business. It is only in the curious fanaticism of prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified. Dr. Norris, New York's chief examiner, determined that all of the Christmas deaths were due to additives in industrial alcohol that had been required by the federal government. His office issued a public alert and they published every death from alcohol poisoning in an effort to warn the city's residents. But their attempts were futile. 1,200 people got sick and at least 400 people died in New York City in 1926.

The following year, 700 more people in New York City died, and the numbers were staggering in other places too. In one Kansas County alone, there were 15,000 reports of alcohol poisoning in the year 1927. Some historians estimate that close to 50,000 people died from alcohol poisoning during the 14 years of Prohibition. Where the blame lies is murky at best. Were some of the deaths the federal government's fault for mandating that known poisons be added to industrial alcohol, or was it the bootleggers who didn't care what they sold as long as they profited? One woman, the first woman governor in the nation, didn't care where the fault lay. She cracked down on both politicians and bootleggers with gusto. with gusto. In January 1925, Nellie Taylor Ross was certain she was in over her head. Her life over the past few months had been a total whirlwind. Her husband, the late Governor William

Ross of Wyoming, had died suddenly, leaving her, as one would expect, heartbroken and grieving. And to top it all off, on the very day of her husband's funeral, the chairman of Wyoming's Democratic Party brought up politics. He wanted Nellie to run for governor in her husband's place. They were desperate, he said, and the election was only four weeks away. I can only imagine how her brain turned over trying to make sense of this enormous ask. There were no other female governors, okay? That was considered a man's job. When I say no other female governors, I mean zero.

Zero percent. Politics were not the women's domain. Would running honor her late husband? Would it seem cold and callous? Was it a cruel trick? She knew she needed money, but how could she possibly win the election as the wife of a deceased Democrat in a Republican-dominated state. Would the people of Wyoming laugh her out of town? But something stirred inside of Nellie. She had always been ambitious, and she had long had a head for politics. She had helped her husband behind the scenes after all, and loved giving educational lectures at the Cheyenne Women's Club.

So after a few days of mulling it over, she paid a visit to the state Democratic Party. She was in. She'd run for governor of Wyoming, and even though the mourning period for her husband's death prevented Nellie from campaigning too publicly, her supporters stepped in and helped out. She beat her opponent by over 8,000 votes, which is how, in January of 1925, smack dab in the middle of Prohibition as the state battled bootleggers, outlaws, and corruption, Nellie Taylor Ross found herself inaugurated as the new governor of Wyoming. And Nellie wasn't the only elected official who found herself tasked with leading the charge against the uphill battle of prohibition enforcement. Of all the states in the union, only Connecticut and Rhode Island outright rejected the 18th Amendment. Other states adopted the law in theory, but not as much in practice.

The Detroit Free Press once cheekily wrote that it was extremely difficult to get a drink in Detroit. You'd have to walk into a bar and shout really loudly above the noise of the crowds that the bartender could hear you. Such a burden. Marylanders felt that the 18th Amendment was a federal intrusion into what they saw as their own state's rights. So they enacted, but never endorsed or really enforced prohibition in many areas of the country. Local law enforcement and federal authorities constantly clashed on the prosecution of violators. Let's use Las Vegas as an example. In 1920, the town was barely 15 years old and was originally built as an outpost for the Union

Pacific Railroad. Officially, the railway company supported prohibition, but unofficially, they 100% understood that towns along their railroad tracks benefited from alcohol sales, especially in the Nevada desert, where there literally was nothing else to do. To try and keep some control over how and where alcohol was permitted, Vegas leaders only allowed it to be sold on one square block called Block 16, which was a short distance from the railroad depot. Block 16 was where all the action happened anyway. Since 1906, it had housed the city's most debaucherous row of saloons and brothels and gambling houses.

When Prohibition was federally enacted, the county sheriff distributed a leaflet on every corner of Block 16 that read, I am going to enforce the Prohibition law to the letter. I am going to enforce the prohibition law to the letter. Mr. Bootlegger, this is your first and final notice from me. Your next notice will be a warrant for your arrest. All drugstore clerks should read this notice. It was a completely empty threat. Local law enforcement had no desire to raid Block 16 and shut it down. And by 1923, Nevada repealed its state prohibition law. Federal agents were not impressed. If the local law enforcement wasn't going to do anything, they were. Feds regularly raided Sin City.

It was a game of back and forth. Federal agents would shut down Block 16 businesses and the local authorities would look the other way when they opened back up. But in February of 1931, Special Agent Wayne Cain traveled to Las Vegas with a plan. The construction of the Hoover Dam was bringing Las Vegas nationwide attention, and Kane wanted to be the hero who finally enforced Prohibition in the city where it seemed the least enforceable. Agent Kane recruited, or bribed, depending on how you look at it, a local guy named Ralph Kelly to help him pull off his scheme. He paid Kelly $900 and promised him a future job as a prohibition agent. Kelly then made a big show of opening a new saloon called Liberty's Last Stand.

Their goal was to sniff out which officials were taking bribes from Sin City establishments. Kane and Kelly installed a recording device that worked essentially like a baby monitor in order to eavesdrop on private conversations at the fake saloon. Within three weeks, Kane had all the evidence he needed. He called in reinforcements and dozens of federal agents descended on Vegas. They made 108 arrests in a single day. Ralph Kelly said that it was by far the largest raid in Nevada. The surprise was complete and the action was perfect. Cain got the headlines that he wanted.

Ralph Kelly got his promised job as a prohibition agent in San Francisco. And in 1932, he published a best-selling book about the Sting operation called Liberty's Last Stand. While listening in on people's conversations worked out pretty well for Agent Kane, it caused major problems for a man named Roy Olmsted. Lieutenant Roy Olmsted was one of the most well-liked members of the Seattle Police Department. He was quick with a compliment, reliable, and generally a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. But as a husband and father who struggled to make ends meet on his meager salary, Roy opened a small business on Seattle's waterfront that sold gas and oil and boating accessories as a front

for buying and selling liquor. He became an officer by day and a bootlegger by night, running whiskey down from Canada through Puget Sound. In March of 1920, bootlegger Roy and his team, which included his daytime colleague, Sergeant T.J. Clark, unloaded their Canadian whiskey from boats, and as they prepared to hit the road and take the contraband inland, the whole marina suddenly filled with blinding floodlights and police sirens. Sergeant Clark was arrested. Roy escaped, but he had already been identified. Roy escaped, but he had already been identified. Roy was fired from the Seattle Police Department and required to pay a fine of $500.

But really, for Roy, it barely mattered. He was free to spend more time on his bootlegging business because he didn't have to go to his police job. And his bootlegging business expanded into a huge operation and quickly made him the largest employer in Seattle. Before Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, there was Roy Olmsted growing his startup and making a quarter of a million dollars a month. That's like almost four million dollars a month today. Impeccably dressed and always ready with a joke, Roy became known as the good bootlegger. He was committed to delivering a quality product. None of these poisoned industrial bananas. No, there were no chemicals or additives in the whiskey that Roy sold.

Customers knew that if you wanted something safe and pure, you went to Roy. Another thing that set him apart from other bootleggers was his commitment to safety. He never allowed anyone on his team to carry a gun, despite the risks they faced. He said he would rather lose the liquor than someone's life. Doesn't he seem like the perfect criminal? Dashing with a heart of gold, looks good in a suit, the kind of guy who would be played by, like, George Clooney in the movie version of his life. But the higher they climb, the harder they fall. The Prohibition Bureau had Roy's number, literally.

And they began to tap his phone lines. literally. And they began to tap his phone lines. In November 1924, they had enough evidence to raid the home Roy shared with his second wife, Elise. In January the following year, Roy was indicted for conspiracy to violate the National Prohibition Act. And he was not alone, by the way. There were 89 other defendants that were indicted along with him. It was the largest prohibition trial in U.S. history. 21 violators were convicted, including Roy, who spent five years at McNeil Island Penitentiary and paid an $8,000 fine, which is like $136,000 today. But Roy went down fighting.

but Roy went down fighting. In 1928, he filed an appeal claiming that wiretapping his phones was unconstitutional. Roy's lawyers argued all the way to the Supreme Court saying that the Fourth Amendment grants the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. reasonable searches and seizures. Unfortunately for Roy, the Supreme Court said, no, sorry, you are on the hook for this one. It was not unreasonable search and seizure. Olmstead v. United States was a completely groundbreaking interpretation of the Fourth Amendment because the law was suddenly having to account for new technology like phones. Basically, the Supreme Court's decision said that a private phone conversation is the equivalent of a conversation in a public place and doesn't need a search warrant to be used as evidence. It's actually a fascinating ruling to study because guess what? Technology keeps advancing.

actually a fascinating ruling to study because guess what? Technology keeps advancing. In 1967's Katz v. U.S., the Supreme Court reversed their earlier decision and ruled that warrants were needed in order to tap payphones. And then in 2018, the Supreme Court again redefined the way we protect rights under the Fourth Amendment with Carpenter v. United States, which ruled that a person keeps their rights to their cell phone location data even if the data is tracked by third parties, like their cell phone companies. But back in 1928, Roy was out of luck. The evidence they collected from the wiretapping stood. But in 1935, President Roosevelt granted Roy Olmstead a full pardon. With his bootlegging days long over, he stayed active in his Seattle community by teaching Sunday school on the weekends.

I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. on the weekends. next to me is Steve. It is Steve Carell in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests.

And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays,

we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when I said that Nellie Taylor Ross was the first woman governor in the nation? That unofficial title is Nellie's thanks to a technicality. One of the slogans Nellie's campaigner used in her 1922 election was, beat Texas to it.

Because in the same election cycle, a woman named Miriam Ferguson was running to be the governor of Texas. Both women won their elections on the same day. If we stop there, the women's victories happened simultaneously. But Nellie's inauguration happened on January 5th, 1925, while Miriam wasn't sworn in until January 20th. Nellie edged her out by a couple of weeks, although Texans in the know will tell you that Miriam was actually the first woman governor in the United States because she won her election in a general campaign. Nellie's was a special election. Just like Nellie, Miriam Wallace Ferguson had also been the governor's wife first. She was born and educated in Texas and then married James Edward Ferguson, a Democrat who was against prohibition. He was elected governor of the state in 1914. was elected governor of the state in 1914. In 1917, during his second term, James, who was known as Pa Ferguson, was impeached on a whole slew of charges, including taking bribes and misappropriating

public funds. Some of the charges may have been trumped up by a couple of state congressmen who publicly faded with James, but he was convicted, removed from office, and banned from ever seeking election to a Texas office again. Ousted from the governor's mansion, Pa and Ma Ferguson decided on a new way to influence Texas politics. Miriam would run instead of James. In 1924, Miriam announced her campaign for governor, assuring Texans that they would get two governors for the price of one. Her platform opposed the Ku Klux Klan and Prohibition, and she was eager to clear her husband's name. At the start of her campaign, Ma Ferguson said, Mother, Father, Son, or Brother, won't you help me? Jim and I are not seeking revenge. We're asking for the name of our children to be cleared of

this awful judgment. If any wrong has been done, God in heaven knows we have suffered enough. been done. God in heaven knows we have suffered enough. Her words hit home. On the campaign trail, she repeated more of the same. Eyes downcast, the picture of humility, and then Paul would step in and take it from there. The Dallas News did a story on Miriam, complete with pictures of her with chickens, peeling peaches, and standing in a cotton field wearing a bonnet. The public loved it, and whenever Ma took the stage at rallies, crowds would sing as the pianists played, put on your old gray bonnet. She handed out campaign pins that said, me for Ma, while her opponents wore pins that said, no Ma for me, too much Pa. Miriam's campaign did nothing to hide Pa Ferguson's involvement. The couple made it abundantly clear that Jim would do the actual governing if Miriam won, which infuriated some women voters.

But despite the unconventional campaign and the naysayers, Ma Ferguson was elected governor of Texas with 58% of the vote. And although she was technically the second woman governor elected in the nation and ran on a campaign that promised her husband would do most of the actual work, Miriam rather liked her new role. As governor, she issued thousands of pardons to prisoners being held in Texas jails. They were overcrowded with people, mostly Black men who had small prohibition law infractions. In her first 70 days in office, Miriam pardoned 239 people. It was rumored that Pa Ferguson handled the details about who would be pardoned,

based largely on who paid him, and Maja signed the paperwork. But if that's how it happened, no one ever squealed. And when the Fergusons died, they had barely a penny to their name, which goes against the theory that they were being paid large sums of money by prisoners' families. Most of the families were poor, working class themselves. As governor, Miriam also signed a bill into law that might surprise us post-pandemic. It prohibited the wearing of masks in public.

But Miriam wasn't targeting medical masks during a health crisis. The law was supposed to make it easier to prosecute members of the KKK in Texas. In hoods, Klan members were anonymous. Without them, of course, they were easier to identify. In her final months in office, Miriam pardoned 417 people, mostly Volstead Act violators, but 133 of them had been convicted of murder. This, of course, created rumors and controversy, but Ma Ferguson always claimed that her pardons were only about mercy and forgiveness. In Wyoming, Nellie Taylor Ross was less merciful.

Nellie's husband, William, was gone. She had buried him a few months earlier and did not have his advice to fall back on when she was inaugurated as governor. Her agenda was built on top of one key principle. Think beyond what Will had done. She didn't just fight to get the legislation that he had wanted passed. She pushed for as much reform as she could. She was a Democrat with a state congress full of Republicans. No one thought she'd be effective in her new role, but she proved them wrong. A handful of her extensive list of priorities, including protecting water and public safety, tightening regulations on banks, finding more

funding for school districts and state universities, and working for greater safety for minors and women in the workplace. And where Miriam pardoned people with prohibition convictions, Nellie cracked down. She herself did not have a moral issue with alcohol consumption, but she did have a problem with people breaking the law. She advocated for tightening up prohibition laws in Wyoming and worked hard at corruption cleanup by firing officials who failed to enforce them. This included men that her husband had appointed while he was in office. Nellie dismissed the state's game commissioner because he was constantly drunk on the job. And then the law enforcement commissioner was taking bribes from bootleggers, but not on Nellie's watch. Proud of what she had accomplished in her first few years,

Nellie ran for re-election in 1926. She said, I'm not running on the gender card. I'm running on my record. Her campaign posters proudly called her the woman who made good. Nellie lost her re-election by just over a thousand votes, but she was a national celebrity by then and admired by women across the country. And truthfully, Nellie's time as governor was just her first chapter. She was soon appointed by President FDR as the first woman director of the United States Mint, a position she held for five terms. In part, it was Nellie's leadership in that role that helped stabilize the mint after the Great Depression. Nellie never did anything by halves, and she didn't let her

late husband's public work be the start and end of her own legacy. She made a name for herself all on her own. A goal that young Vincenzo, growing up on the streets of Brooklyn, knew all too well. Often called the white sheep in his family, Vincenzo was not like his brothers. He actively avoided getting into fights and took pains to fly under the radar. His first love wasn't the rough-and-tumble lifestyle of an Italian street gang member. From an early age, he daydreamed about becoming a cowboy. He longed for the open plains and spent his spare time daydreaming at the horse stables near his neighborhood. When he was 16, Vincenzo found his out.

He left New York to work with a traveling circus show. His little brother, just eight years old, tried to join him that day, but Vincenzo knew he was too young. He made him get off the ferry and told him, stay in New York. Vincenzo began to reinvent himself. He ditched his old name and introduced himself as Richard. Richard J. Hart. It was a nod to his favorite actor, the biggest star in the silent era westerns, William S. Hart. And y'all, he was not fooling around with this new persona. Okay, he lost his Brooklyn accent and started wearing a 10-gallon cowboy hat and a spangly vest and he kept his pearl-handled pistols on each hip. He tucked the bottoms of his pants into his cowboy boots. As one does. Some say that thanks to his time with the circus, Richard could even do some acrobatic stunts on horseback, like handstands on the saddle.

There's no proof of it, but if it's true, it sure drove home the believability of his image. Horseback stunts or not, Richard was not lacking in bravery. After he served in World War I, he made his way westward, riding as a passenger with some acquaintances in their automobile one afternoon, Richard saved the entire family after their car was swept up in a flash flood. He helped everyone to safety as the water rushed around them, including 19-year-old Kathleen. The destined-to-be pair married not long after that. Richard was hired as a federal prohibition agent in the summer of 1920 and moved with his new wife to Nebraska where he helped crack down on bootlegging operations.

By 1926, he had four sons and a new job as a special agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was sent to the Standing Rock Reservation on the border of North and South Dakota and learned to speak a few of the native languages. Richard became popular among many tribal leaders because he showed a genuine interest in improving the quality of life on reservations. They may have also trusted him in part because he lied and said he himself had some Native American ancestry rather than admitting he was Italian. The Lakota gave him a teasing nickname, which translated to mean Big Hairy Thing. Richard's work in the remote parts of the country meant that he did not have time to visit his

family back in New York. He rarely even heard from them because his location was often changing. He was busy living the life he had always wanted, bringing criminals to justice, fighting in shootouts, and enforcing prohibition as a lawman in the Wild West. Richard's success in arresting bootleggers was happening right around the same time that one of his own brothers, who had moved to Chicago, was gaining the reputation as one of the most ruthless bootleggers of the Midwest. Richard's wife Kathleen started to notice something was off about Richard. He disappeared for days on end. And while that wasn't uncommon in his line of work, she caught him coming home again wearing a suit instead of his cowboy duds. And that was definitely different. After 10 years of marriage, Richard finally came clean to his wife. His real name was Vincenzo, and his mysterious disappearances were

trips to Chicago to see his brother, Al Capone. Al was that eight-year-old brother who had so desperately wanted to get on the ferry with Vincenzo when he left New York, and over the years, the brothers secretly kept in touch. As their paths started moving in opposite directions of the law, the two Capone brothers agreed not to interfere with each other's business. In fact, Al and Richard seemed to have genuinely admired each other. Even though Richard confessed his identity to his wife, he didn't go public with it until 1951 when his brother Ralph went on trial for tax evasion. He testified on Ralph's behalf, revealing Richard Hart to be Vincenzo Capone and setting off a total media frenzy. of a total media frenzy.

But nothing could take the Wild West out of Richard. He walked into the courtroom wearing his signature 10-gallon cowboy hat. And if this mishmashed tale of the godfather meets the Lone Ranger, what's your appetite for more gangsters and Dust Bowl dynamics? I've got you covered. Tune in next time to hear more about the Valentine's Day massacre,

the stock market crash, and a woman who changed her mind about prohibition and wanted everyone else to do the same. I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice. We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews,

and sharing on social media. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon.