In May 1938,Elizabeth Washburn Wright lead a group of 50 women to protest President Roosevelt's "pump priming program" at the office of Senator Burke of Nevada.
Elizabeth Washburn Wright (known in much international documentation as Mrs. Hamilton Wright) was an anti-opium campaigner in the United States during the early twentieth century,a passion which she carried with her to lead the United States' anti-opium campaign of 1908 alongside the famous Bishop Charles Brent.[1] She was the first woman in the history of the United States ever granted plenipotentiary powers abroad.[2] She represented the interests of the United States at the League of NationsOpium Advisory Committee (OAC),and also worked with Stephen G. Porter and her counterparts at the OAC to create the organization that would eventually become the International Narcotics Control Board.[2] With her counterparts in the international community,Dame Rachel Crowdy and Helen Howell Moorhead,she is considered an "honorary gentleman" of what had been dubbed the "Gentlemen's Club" of the international narcotics control regime.[3] Where Bishop Brent (who introduced Wright to the President) was open about his religious frameworks as a facet of his occupation,Wright's religious Christian motivations were rarely mentioned,but were indeed one of her primary motivations in seeking the complete ban on the international opium trade.[4]Rachel Crowdy,once while speaking to a crowd,placed Wright's efforts alongside those of Marie Curie as an example of women who paved history.[5] Wright was involved in nearly every facet of the fight against opium in the early twentieth century,especially in playing a key role in the creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) alongside Levi G. Nutt and Stephen Porter.[6][7] She knew and often debated against most everyone involved in international diplomacy related to narcotics enforcement in her era,and especially used her connections to campaign for her cause,positioning herself in key positions to effect change.[4]
Her hatred of opium was a passion that she shared with her equally-obsessed opium-despising husband,Hamilton Wright,the famous United States Opium Commissioner for two successive Presidents of the United States,the man who was primarily responsible for the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.[4] Some scholars write that she was uninterested in opium before she met her husband.[4] Yet other scholars write that the Commissioner was uninterested in politics until he met his wife,who came from a well-connected political dynasty of firebrand abolitionist Republicans.[8] Hamilton died in 1917 from wounds he sustained while serving in the Medical Corps during World War I. She nevertheless outlasted his own legacy by working against opium around the world for the rest of her life,nearly another four decades.[4]
Biography
Wright was the daughter of William D. Washburn,part of the flour and railroad aristocracy of the 1850's. On the part of flour,her family created the companies that would eventually become General Mills and Gold Medal Flour,and as well were competitors for many years to the Pillsbury company,until her father's company was absorbed into it. Her father was also a member of the United States Congress,serving from 1879 to 1895.[9][10] By the 1880's,her father had become one of the wealthiest men in Minnesota. Wright grew up in a mansion called "Fair Oaks," that is no longer standing,but the grounds are part of the Washburn-Fair Oaks Mansion District today. The mansion was designed by E. Townsend Mix,and the gardens were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Despite the fact that she was born and raised in Minnesota,her family had deep connections to the state of Maine,where she would spend the summer months of her youth in a house called "Topside," in a town very near The Norlands.[6] Archival materials of Washburn's youth can still be found at the living history museum located here,called the "Washburn-Norlands Living History Museum."[6]
In 1909,she was present in Shanghai for the International Opium Commission,living in Shanghai at the time with her husband,who was the American delegate to the Commission.[11]
She also represented the United States in the 1920's as the first US Assessor to the Opium Advisory Committee (OAC) of the League of Nations,despite the fact that the Congress of the United States had not ratified membership in the League.[12] While on the committee,she presented herself with an attitude which what the British representatives would label her:far too passionate –but they also used other words to describe her personality in their private telegrams.[11] Specifically,the British representatives on the committee thought that she was:"incompetent,prejudiced,ignorant,and so constituted temperamentally as to afford a ready means of mischief-making."[11] However,despite their privations about Wright,she remained a part of the committee for half a decade,acquiring the position as one of the two most significant Americans of the era to engage with the League regarding narcotics,the other being Richmond Pearson Hobson.[4]
Five years after she had left her position with the League,the United States Congress then,in disagreements with certain findings of the League,sent her to the Philippines on a fact-finding mission,to compare the success of the complete abolition of opium in the Philippines to the programs of the opium monopolies in Southeast Asia,such as the Opiumregie and the Opium Regie. She reported that opium was being smuggled into the Philippines from Iran,Yunnan,French Indochina,the Dutch East Indies and the foreign concessions of Amoy.[13]
Around the same time as her trip to the Philippines,in February of 1930,Wright received the Lin Tse Hsu Memorial Medal,awarded by the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek,and in her acceptance speech she outright condemned the practices of the United States government in international narcotics control. She received the medal on the same day as Stephen G. Porter and Ellen La Motte.[14]
In 1942,Wright came to loggerheads with George Morlock concerning trade negotiations between Harry J. Anslinger,the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN),and Allah Yar Saleh,the Chief of the New York–based Iranian Trade and Economic Commission. Wright insisted that negotiations with Iran include American demands on the Iranians regarding narcotics,but Morlock was against this,insisting that opium was a small issue.[15]
At the end of World War II,Wright was considered for a mission by Anslinger to be deployed to Iran to inspect that country's opium production and agricultural sector,but the mission never occurred.[16] The first FBN mission to Iran would later be taken underway by Supervisory Agents Garland H. Williams and George Hunter White.
In 1944,she also came to an impasse with Anslinger. Wright was certain that the only way to end narcotics was to force the issue in the old asian colonies of Europe,but Anslinger had already moved his attention to Iran. She maneuvered around Anslinger and convinced Congressman Walter Judd to deliver the "Judd Resolution."[15]
Wright was involved in campaigning against opium until she died in 1952,having only the year prior been instrumental in getting the Boggs Act of 1951 passed through Congress.[17]
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