WILLEBRANDT, Mabel Walker.

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The Inside of Prohibition. First edition, first printing, of this account of prohibition by one of its chief enforcers. Mabel Willebrandt (1889-1963) was the Assistant Attorney General from 1921 to 1929, the highest-ranking woman in the federal government during that time."Faced with smuggling, bootleggers, conniving local politicians, incompetent federal enforcement units, and public indifference, she became known in the press as 'Prohibition Portia' and sought public support through lectures and magazine articles. Her division averaged more than fifty thousand prosecutions annually, winning highly publicized cases against the 'Savannah Four', the 'Mobile Six', and the 'king of the Bootleggers', George Remus. The division also won appeals of the padlocking of New York speakeasies. Willebrandt herself argued more than forty cases before the Supreme Court and presented cases in federal district courts when congressmen or local political figures were on trial. As public support withered, however, she admitted feeling like the boy who stood with his finger in the dike, adding, 'I've prevented floods of wrong things, but it's a wearing way to be a hero'. She summed up her frustrations in The Inside of Prohibition (1929)" (ANB).During the 1928 presidential election, Willebrandt organized several high-profile raids of speakeasies, all to benefit the election prospects of Hoover - one newspaper noted that "no other woman has ever had so much influence on a presidential campaign" (Th

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