Warren Gamaliel Harding was born on 2 November 1865
near Blooming Grove, Ohio, the oldest of eight children.
His father was a Union soldier.
His mother Phoebe taught him how to read by the age of four,
and at that age he participated in an oratorical contest.
Phoebe often predicted that someday Warren would be President.
His father Tyron Harding studied with a local physician and became a medical doctor.
Warren was introduced to good literature by several editions of McGuffey’s Readers,
and he learned how to play the cornet and joined a band.
In 1876 Tyron became the owner of the Caledonia Argus newspaper,
and Warren became his apprentice and began learning the newspaper business.
Later Warren would lecture on Alexander Hamilton.
In autumn 1879 he enrolled in Ohio Central College in Iberia,
and he paid for college by painting houses and barns
and by doing construction work in the summers for railroads.
He was six feet tall and worked with men thrashing grain on the Harding farm.
His favorite classes were in literature and philosophy.
He and his roommate Frank Harris started the college newspaper,
the Iberia Spectator, and they published their first issue in February 1882.
In his senior year Harding was president of the
Philomathic Literary Society that met weekly.
He was influenced by the theory of evolution and became a freethinker.
Warren Harding earned a bachelor of science degree in 1882
and returned to his family in Marion, Ohio.
Dr. Tyron Harding had a successful medical practice,
and Warren taught grade-school in a one-room schoolhouse for one term.
Tyron acquired some old lawbooks so that Warren could become a lawyer,
and he studied Blackstone’s Commentaries.
The People’s Band borrowed money to buy uniforms
and went to the State Band Tournament at Findlay
where they won a prize that paid for the uniforms.
His father helped Warren become the editor and publisher of the Star Publishing Company.
He was given a press pass for the railroads, and in early June 1884
Warren went to Chicago to cover the Republican National Convention.
He heard the renowned orator Robert B. Ingersoll of Illinois
help nominate Secretary of State James G. Blaine for President.
Harding supported Blaine and respected young Theodore Roosevelt for his convictions.
When Harding returned to Marion, he learned that purchase of the Star
had been legally canceled by the sheriff.
His father helped him get the paper back, and Harding became editor in November.
On 14 June 1885 Harding began issuing the Marion Weekly Star for the county.
He wrote about politics, and they doubled their circulation.
In August he wrote in this editorial on prohibition:
Every good citizen desires that this evil which is certainly
not becoming less widespread from year to year
shall be repressed and so on.
The difficulty that confronts the policy of prohibition
is the fact that it does not prohibit.
The stubborn fact is that where prohibition
has never been found competent to prohibit,
other marks of controlling liquor traffic have been effective,
with advantage more or less marked
because of temperance.
The three months of experience of Wisconsin
with the high license is notable proof of this.
Restraint people will submit to.
They do in every relation, and there are very few who will
not make every reasonable concession for the general good.
But absolute interdiction, that is felt to be
destructive of personal liberty when the object sought
is believed to be obtainable without it,
and when the interdiction is proved to be,
except in a very limited degree, inoperative,
always has and always will be resisted.
Theories that contravene all facts
will not solve the question.
It must be dealt with in the practical way
which experience unmistakably points out.1
Harding got a new Babcock press in January 1886.
Their competitors were the Democratic Marion Mirror
and George Crawford’s Independent for Republicans.
On February 26 he got into a debate against Crawford who claimed that
the Weekly Star had a circulation of only 150.
Harding wrote a long editorial condemning Crawford.
Their quarrel continued.
After the election of the Republican Benjamin Harrison as President in November 1888
Harding went to Washington and met Ohio Congressman William McKinley
who introduced him to Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.
In February 1889 Harding began publishing the Star every evening except on Sunday.
The Star became a 6-page daily and an 8-page Sunday edition in 1890,
and that year he joined the Young Men’s Republican Club in Marion.
So far Harding is the only U. S. President who had worked full-time as a journalist.
He had an emotional breakdown in October,
and in November his father persuaded him to go to the Battle Creek Sanitarium
in Michigan that was sponsored by vegetarian Seventh-day Adventists.
His spirit was renewed, and he lost twenty pounds.
He would go there five more times in the next twelve years.
For three decades Harding wrote thousands of editorials for the Star.
The population of Marion increased from
4,000 in 1880 to 8,000 in 1890 and to 12,000 in 1900.
Harding invested in stocks, and at his death in 1923
he left behind an estate worth $850,000.
On 9 July 1891 Harding married Florence M. King.
She was born in 1860 and was the only daughter of the wealthy Amos Kling
who disliked Harding because he thought he was a negro.
The Harding family had been abolitionists and had lived in a negro district.
Florence had a natural (illegitimate) son Marshall,
left her father’s home, and taught piano lessons.
Harding went to Washington again in 1892,
and he met the Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska.
In 1893 Harding went to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
In 1894 while he was at Battle Creek;
his wife Florence handled the newspaper’s business.
Democrats controlled Marion County.
In 1895 Harding agreed to run for county auditor;
he lost and did better than was expected.
Republicans nominated William McKinley for President in 1896,
and Ohio’s Republican Speaker’s Bureau asked Harding to travel and give speeches
supporting McKinley who had only a “front porch” campaign.
Ohio’s Republican leaders in 1899 chose Harding to run for the state senate,
and he won with four times the votes the previous Republican had.
Harding soon made friends in the Ohio Senate at Columbus,
and a reporter described him as
the most popular man in the legislature.
He was soon regarded as a coming man in Ohio politics.
He was an excellent “mixer,” he had the inestimable gift
of never forgetting a man’s face or his name,
and there was always a genuine warmth in his handshake,
a real geniality in his smile.2
The senators chose him to present the eulogy
or the assassinated McKinley in September 1901.
He became a trusted ally of Ohio’s Gov. John Nash.
The Republicans in the Senate made Harding their floor leader,
and they abolished the rule that prevented his re-election.
Early in 1903 Harding said he was going to run for governor,
and he changed his mind and decided to run for lieutenant governor instead.
In 1904 he was nominated and elected the Lieutenant Governor of Ohio.
He presided over the Ohio legislature and helped resolve disputes.
He became a popular speaker on the Chautauqua circuit,
and he lectured on “Hamilton, Prophet of American Destiny.”
His wife Florence became ill in 1904,
and in 1905 he retired from politics to run his newspaper business.
He restructured the Harding Publishing Company
and gave shares of stock to the employees.
Jim Phillips in Marion was his best friend.
Harding fell in love with Jim’s beautiful wife Carrie,
and their affair would go on for 15 years.
On 6 January 1908 Harding and the Star endorsed former Governor
and US Senator Joseph B. Foraker for the Republican nomination
instead of Roosevelt’s choice of William Howard Taft.
In 1910 Harding ran for governor against the incumbent Democratic
Gov. Judson Harmon who won with 477,077 votes to 376,700 for Harding
and 60,637 for the Socialist Tom Clifford.
Former President Theodore Roosevelt criticized President Taft,
and in 1912 he ran against him.
Taft asked Harding to place Taft’s name in nomination
at the convention at Chicago.
Harding said,
Progress is not proclamation nor palaver.
It is not pretense nor play on prejudice.
It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought,
nor a promise proposed.
Progression is everlastingly lifting the standards
that marked the end of the world’s march yesterday
and planting them on new and advanced heights today.
Tested by such a standard,
President Taft is the greatest Progressive of the age.3
The Republicans nominated Taft.
Roosevelt then became the candidate of the new Progressive Party.
This enabled the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson to be elected President
with a plurality of the votes and the largest number of electoral college votes so far.
Harding in the Star wrote that Wilson
“is a clean, learned, honorable, and patriotic man.”4
He criticized Roosevelt severely and praised Taft who came in third.
In 1914 Warren G. Harding in Ohio ran for the United States Senate
against Joseph B. Foraker and businessman Ralph Cole.
Foraker had been Governor of Ohio 1886-90 and U. S. Senator 1897-1909,
and the editor Harding had supported him enthusiastically.
Harding’s biographer Randolph Downes wrote,
He put on a campaign of such sweetness and light
as would have won the plaudits of the angels.5
This was the first U. S. election following the 17th Amendment
which was ratified on 8 April 1913 and made U. S. Senators
elected directly by the states’ voters rather than their legislatures.
Ohio’s Senator Theodore E. Burton chose not to face Ohio’s voters and retired.
Harding won the primary election with 88,540 votes
to 76,817 for Foraker and 52,237 for Cole.
Former President Taft of Ohio endorsed Harding in the general election
saying that he was “a man of marked ability, of sanity, of much legislative experience,
and … a regular Republican of principle.”
Although he was running against Ohio’s Democratic Attorney General Timothy S. Hogan,
the Progressive Arthur L. Garford, and the Socialist E. K. Hitchens,
Harding saved his criticism for the Democratic President Woodrow Wilson
and expressed his own ideas in platitudes with patriotism.
In the election on 3 November 1914 Harding won with 49% of the votes
to 40% for Hogan, 6% for Garford, and 5% for Hitchens.
Senator-elect Harding began by appointing his friend George B. Christian as secretary.
Christian had been a secretary for his father’s business
and had worked on Harding’s campaign.
In the election in November 1914 Democrats had taken three seats
away from the Republicans giving them a 56-39 advantage.
The Senators would not meet until December 1915.
Harding spoke at county Elks’ dedications and
at the Grand Army of the Republic memorial exercises.
The New York Times mentioned Harding as a possible Favorite Son from Ohio,
and on May 27 he was invited to speak along with former President Taft
to the National Association of Manufacturers in New York.
Harding often made contradictory remarks.
In October he announced he was for preparedness, and then he said,
It is not wise to rush militarism, and we will not do it.
We do need an army double the present force,
with some practical method of providing
trained officers for the available volunteers.6
Harding’s committee assignments were Commerce, Claims, Coastal Defenses,
Investigations of Trespasses on Indian Lands, and Sale of Meat Products.
His Senate seat was next to that of Albert B. Fall of New Mexico
who was a very successful lawyer and
had been a justice on New Mexico’s Supreme Court.
Because Fall’s family were usually on their ranch,
he often visited Harding’s home on Wyoming Avenue.
Harding and other senators often enjoyed playing poker,
and friends gathered at his home.
Republicans chose Harding to be their keynote speaker at their
National Convention in 7-10 June 1916 in Chicago,
and he was also confirmed as permanent chairman.
In his speech on June 9 he tried to heal the conflicts between
Conservatives and the Progressives, and his criticism
of President Woodrow Wilson pleased the delegates.
He blamed Democrats for ruining the economy by removing protective tariffs
that also reduced revenues.
He said,
I choose the economic policy which sends
the American workingmen to the savings banks
rather than the soup houses.
The failure of revenues under existing Democratic policy,
the necessary resort to the imposition of direct
and offensive taxation—war taxes on a people at peace—
to meet deficiencies which ever attend Democratic control,
the depression and disaster which followed
Democratic revision, which were relieved
rather than caused by the European war—
all these argue the Republican restoration.7
The U. S. Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes was the leading candidate,
and he was easily nominated on the third ballot.
Harding had said he did not want to be considered as a dark-horse candidate.
Harding was the chairman of the official committee sent to notify Hughes
of his nomination which he accepted at Carnegie Hall in New York on July 31.
Harding praised Hughes before he made his acceptance speech.
In the election on November 7 Wilson with 9,129,606 votes
and 277 electoral college votes defeated Hughes who got 8,538,221 votes
and 254 electoral college votes.
On 4 April 1917 the United States Senate debated the war resolution
requested by President Wilson.
Harding was one of the 17 Senators who spoke in favor, saying,
It is my deliberate judgment that it is none of our business
what type of government any nation on this earth
may choose to have; and one cannot be entirely just
unless he makes the admission in this trying hour
that the German people evidently
are pretty well satisfied with their government,
because I could not ask a better thing
for this popular government of the United States of America
than the same loyal devotion on the part of every American
that the German gives to his government….
World domination is not of man.
That is of God, the Creator.
It has become the fortune of this Republic to cry, “Halt!”
to a maddened power casting aside
the obligations of civilization and the limitations
of that which we look upon as highest humanity.
I know that the task will be undertaken
by the American people not originally committed
to the cause of war, but a people who will understand that
when the Congress speaks after due deliberation,
after the patience which this body and this government
have exercised, the voice of the United States Congress
is the voice of the nation,
and one hundred millions of people will commit themselves
to the great cause of the maintenance
of just American rights—a thing for which
the nation can well afford to fight, and while fighting for it
put a new soul into a race of American people
who can enthusiastically call themselves
truly and spiritually and abidingly an American.8
According to the Miller Center this is the speech Harding gave on 4 April 1917:
My countrymen, the surpassing war of all times
has involved us, and found us
utterly unprepared in either a mental or military sense.
The Republic must awaken.
The people must understand.
Our safety lies in full realization the fate of the nation
and the safety of the world
will be decided on the western battlefront of Europe.
Primarily the American Republic
has entered the war in defense of its national rights.
If we did not defend, we could not hope to endure.
Other big issues are involved but the maintained rights
and defended honor of a righteous nation includes them all.
Cherishing the national rights the fathers fought to establish,
and loving freedom and civilization, we should have
violated every tradition and sacrificed every inheritance
if we had longer held aloof from the armed conflict
which is to make the world safe for civilization.
More, we are committed to sacrifice in battle
in order to make America safe for Americans
and establish their security on every lawful mission
on the high seas or under the shining sun.
We are testing popular government’s
capacity for self-defense.
We are resolved to liberate the soul of American life
and prove ourselves an American people in fact, spirit,
and purpose, and consecrate ourselves anew and
everlastingly to human freedom and humanity’s justice.
Realizing our new relationship with the world,
we want to make it fit to live in,
and with might and fright and ruthlessness and
barbarity crushed by the conscience of a real civilization.
Ours is a small concern about the kind of government
any people may choose,
but we do mean to outlaw the nation which violates
the sacred compacts of international relationships.
The decision is to be final.
If the Russian failure should become
the tragic impotency of nations—
if Italy should yield to the pressure of military might—
if heroic France should be martyred on her flaming altars
of liberty and justice and only the soul of heroism remain—
if England should starve and her sacrifices
and resolute warfare should prove in vain—
if all these improbable disasters should attend,
even then we should fight on and on,
making the world’s cause our cause.
A republic worth living in is worth fighting for,
and sacrificing for, and dying for.
In the fires of this conflict we shall wipe out the disloyalty
of those who wear American garb without the faith,
and establish a new concord of citizenship
and a new devotion, so that we should have made
a safe America the home and hope of a people
who are truly American in heart and soul.9
The five Senators voting against the war resolution were Robert La Follette,
George Norris, Asle Gronna, William J. Stone, and James Kimble Vardaman.
The next morning the House of Representatives passed the resolution
by a vote of 373 to 50, and Jeannette Rankin,
the first woman elected to the U. S. Congress, voted no.
On April 10 Theodore Roosevelt went to the White House
and asked President Wilson for a division.
Wilson was gracious and made no commitment.
On April 23 Senator Harding introduced an amendment
so that the President could raise up to three divisions of volunteers.
Wilson and War Secretary Baker removed Harding’s amendment
before the Senate and the House of Representatives passed that bill.
On April 28 Harding offered an amendment to the truncated draft bill
to authorize “raising of four divisions of volunteers for service abroad.”
Roosevelt began recruiting in New York, and by May he had 2,000 applications.
The Congress passed the draft bill by May 17.
Wilson signed the bill, and he did not plan to allow amateur divisions.
Roosevelt wired Wilson who explained that his decision was because of
“imperative considerations of public policy, not open personal or private choice.”
On May 25 Roosevelt disbanded his paper divisions and sent an address
to the 200,000 men who had volunteered to fight for him.
In the elections on 5 November 1918 the Republicans regained the U. S. Senate
by taking over six more seats giving them a 49-47 margin.
In the House of Representatives the Republicans gained 24 seats
while the Democrats lost 22.
That gave the Republicans a 240-192 majority.
Harding had love affairs with two mistresses that involved occasional meetings.
He admitted to his friend Scobey that he had heart trouble
over a period of two or three years and that he was never really free of it.
News of the armistice on November 11 prompted
speeches by members of Congress, and Harding said,
The terms of the armistice are in every way simple.
They mean the final end of the war.
They announce a dictated peace.
It is not so spectacular as a march to Berlin,
but it proclaims the collapse of German autocracy
and the dawn of a new era in the world.
Surely all American aspirations are met.10
Senator Harding often left Washington to give speeches,
and during his time in the Senate he missed at least 46 roll-call votes.
Theodore Roosevelt died on 6 January 1919, opening up the Republican nomination.
Harding gave a memorial address for Roosevelt in the Ohio General Assembly,
and he said that Roosevelt was “inseparably linked with the finding
of the American soul, with the great awakening and conservation.”11
Frank Scobey wrote to Harding asking if he would consider running for President,
and on January 14 Harding replied,
I expect it is very possible that I would make
as good a President as a great many men who are talked of
for that position and I would almost be willing to bet that
I would be a more “common sensible” President
than the man who now occupies the White House.
At the same time I have such a sure understanding
of my own inefficiency that I should really be ashamed
to presume myself fitted to reach out
for a place of such responsibility.12
On January 29 at the McKinley Day banquet in Dayton, Ohio,
the county Republican chairman hailed Harding as “our next President.”
On that occasion Harding said,
I am not opposed to the League of Nations, a world court,
anything else that you may wish to call it.
I think that something of the kind can be worked out,
not as a guarantee against war, for that is impossible,
but some sort of system of deliberation among the nations
before resorting to war
as a means of settling their differences.
If President Wilson can do that,
I say Godspeed to him in his efforts,
but am opposed to anything that smacks of surrender.13
Harding made speeches as a candidate,
and some were printed in newspapers and sent out by friends.
On August 17 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge became the majority leader,
and he put Harding on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Harding also became chairman of the Philippines Committee.
On the 19th Wilson invited the Foreign Relations Committee
to the White House and asked them to support the League of Nations.
Harding raised several issues questioning the plan.
On September 4 President Wilson spoke at Columbus, Ohio
and asked why the Senate had not approved the peace treaty.
Senator Lodge led the opposition to Wilson’s League of Nations and the treaty,
and before the vote on the proposed reservation of the controversial Article 10
he was glad that Harding was going to make a speech during the debate.
After a quorum call on September 11 provided 59 senators
Harding made a speech explaining why he was not going to vote for the treaty
unless Lodge’s proposed reservations were accepted.
Harding objected to Wilson trying to help European nations to protect their secret
agreements made during the war on nations’ borders
because this was not a responsibility of the United States.
Early in the speech Harding said,
The other day the President called upon
the opponents of this league to “put up or shut up.”
Nobody is going to “shut up.”
Democracy does not demand such a surrender….
A Senator may be as jealous of his constitutional duty
as the President is jealous of an international concoction,
especially if we cling to the substance
as well as the form of representative democracy.14
The following is a transcript of the last part of Harding’s speech that he repeated
so that his friend Thomas Edison could record it:
Nationality is the call of the hearts of liberated people,
and the dream of those to whom
freedom becomes an undying cause.
It’s the guiding light, the psalm, the prayer,
the confirmation for our own people,
although we were never assured indivisible union
until the Civil War was fought.
Can any red-blooded American consent—
now when we have come to understand its priceless value—
to merge our nationality into internationality,
merely because brotherhood and fraternity and fellowship
and peace are soothing and appealing terms?
Out of the ferment, the turmoil, the debts,
and echoing sorrows, out of the appalling waste
and far reaching disorder,
out of the threats against orderly government
and the assault on our present day civilization, I think, sirs,
I can see the opening way for America.
We must preserve the inheritance
and cling to just government.
We do not need, and we do not mean to live within
and for ourselves alone, but we do mean
to hold our ideals safe from foreign incursion.
We have commanded respect and confidence;
commanded them in the friendships
and the associations of peace; commanded them
in the conflicts and comradeships of war.
It’s easily possible to hold the world’s high estimate
through righteous relationships
if our ideals of civilization are the best in the world.
And I proudly believe that they are.
Then we ought to send the American torch bearers
leading on to fulfillment.
America aided in saving civilization.
Americans will not fail civilization
in the deliberate advancement of peace.
We’re willing to give, but we resent demand.
I do not believe, Senators, that it’s going to
break the heart of the world to make this covenant right,
or at least free it from perils
which would endanger our own independence.
But it were better to witness this rhetorical tragedy,
than to destroy the soul of this great republic.
It’s a very alluring thing, Senators,
to do what the world has never done before.
No republic has ever permanently survived.
They have flashed, illumined, and advanced the world,
and then faded or crumbled.
I want to be a contributor to the abiding republic.
None of us today can be sure
that it shall abide for generations to come.
But we may hold it unshaken for our day,
and pass it on to the next generation
preserved in its integrity.
This is the unending call of duty to men of every civilization.
It is distinctly the American call to duty, to every man
who believes we have come the nearest to dependable,
popular government the world has yet witnessed.
Let us have our America walking erect, unafraid,
concerned about its rights and ready to defend them.
Proud of its citizens and committed to defend them.
And sure of its ideals and strong to support them.
We’re a hundred million or more today,
and if the miracle of the first century of national life
may be repeated in the second,
the millions of today will be the myriads of the future.
I like to think, sirs, that
out of the discovered soul of the republic,
and through our preservative actions
in this supreme moment of human progress,
we shall hold the word American
the proudest boast of citizenship in all the world.15
Harding and three other senators were chosen to inform President Wilson
that reservations must be attached to articles X and XI
so that the treaty could be ratified.
They did not want to give the League of Nations the power to mobilize American troops.
Wilson explained that all nations were accepting those terms,
and he had given his word not to alter the treaty.
Harry Daugherty was a lawyer who got involved in Ohio’s politics.
He wanted to support Harding for President.
In October 1919 he persuaded the Republican State Central and Advisory Committees
to let Senator Harding be re-nominated without opposition
so that he could run for President and not have to file
for re-election for the Senate until 12 June 1920.
On 17 December 1919 Harding announced that he was running for president,
and he appointed Daugherty as his campaign manager.
Daugherty advised getting delegates at the convention to choose Harding
as the second or third choice.
On December 30 Harding wrote to Scoby,
The only thing I really worry about is that I am sometimes
very much afraid I am going to be nominated and elected.
That’s an awful thing to contemplate.16
Senator Harding in five years introduced 134 bills,
and 122 were related to local affairs in Ohio.
He was present for roll calls only 43% of the time.
Sixteen states in 1920 had presidential primary elections,
and Harding chose not to run in any primary
where a favorite son was seeking to be nominated.
Harding in his state of Ohio was challenged by the prominent candidate,
General Leonard Wood who was associated with Theodore Roosevelt.
Wood was managed and funded by the wealthy soap manufacturer
Col. William C. Procter who pledged $250,000 and contributed at least three times that.
Dan Hanna said he would raise $600,000.
In February 1920 Hearst’s New York American exposed Wood’s wealthy supporters.
Harding’s campaign manager Daugherty made sure that
Senator Borah learned about Wood’s supporters.
Borah insisted that the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections
appoint a subcommittee led by Senator Kenyon to investigate campaign expenditures.
Wood’s campaign had officially spent $1,773,303 and probably much more.
Illinois Governor Frank Lowden’s campaign raised only $35,000
while using his own money they spent $414,984.
Hiram Johnson’s campaign spent $194,393, and Harding trailed behind at $113,109.
Harding developed the “America first” policy that he described
in his 1921 book Our Common Country that Americans should
make sure our house is in perfect order
before we attempt the miracle of Old World stabilization.
Call it selfishness or nationality if you will,
I think it an inspiration to patriotic devotion—
to safeguard America first, to stabilize America first,
to prosper America first, to think of America first,
to exalt America first, to live for and revere America first.17
On April 27 Harding won the Ohio primary by a margin that was closer than expected.
He did not win any delegates in the Indiana primary on May 5
and did even worse in Montana.
His wife Florence persuaded him to persevere.
On May 14 Harding spoke to the Home Market Club in Boston
that introduced the main themes of his campaign.
He said,
My countrymen, there isn’t anything the matter
with the world’s civilization except that humanity is
viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war.
Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been wracked,
and fever has rendered men irrational.
Sometimes there have been draughts
upon the dangerous cup of barbarity.
Men have wandered far from safe paths,
but the human procession still marches in the right direction.
Here in the United States we feel the reflex, rather than
the hurting wound itself, but we still think straight;
and we mean to act straight;
we mean to hold firmly to all that was ours
when war involved us and seek the higher attainments
which are the only compensations
that so supreme a tragedy may give mankind.
America’s present need is not heroics, but healing;
not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration;
not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity;
not the dramatic, but the dispassionate;
not experiment, but equipoise;
not submergence in internationality
but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
It’s one thing to battle successfully
against the world’s domination by a military autocracy
because the infinite God never intended such a program;
but it’s quite another thing to revise human nature
and suspend the fundamental laws of life
and all of life’s requirements.
The world calls for peace.
America demands peace, formal as well as actual,
and means to have it
so we may set our own house in order.
We challenged the proposal that
an armed autocrat should dominate the world,
and we choose for ourselves to cling to
the representative democracy which made us what we are.
This republic has its ample task.
If we put an end to false economics
which lure humanity to utter chaos, ours will be
the commanding example of world leadership today.
If we can prove a representative popular government
under which the citizenship seeks
what it may do for the government and country,
rather than what the country may do for individuals,
we shall do more to make democracy safe
for the world than all armed conflict ever recorded.
The world needs to be reminded that
all human ills are not curable by legislation,
and that quantity of statutory enactments and excess
of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship.
The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved
by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship
to government, and no eminent page in history
was ever drafted to the standards of mediocrity.
Nor, no government worthy of the name
which is directed by influence on the one hand
or moved by intimidation on the other.
My best judgement of America’s need is to steady down,
to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path.
Let’s get out of the fevered delirium of war
with the hallucination that all the money in the world
is to be made in the madness of war
and the wildness of its aftermath.
Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is
more precious than peace abroad and that
both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent
on the normal forward stride of all the American people.
We want to go on, secure and unafraid,
holding fast to the American inheritance,
and confident of the supreme American fulfillment.18
Harding’s secretary George Christian sent personal letters
to every delegate the senator knew.
After the primaries were done, General Wood had 124 instructed delegates,
California’s Senator Hiram Johnson 112, Gov. Frank Lowden of Illinois 72,
and Harding 39.
His campaign manager Daugherty predicted that when the convention became deadlocked,
the Republicans would turn to Ohio and choose Harding.
At Chicago in early June the 984 delegates gathered, and 529 had no instructions.
A Senate investigation led by W. S. Kenyon of Iowa found that Wood was using mone
to buy support, and the subcommittee also criticized Gov. Lowden.
Senator Hiram Johnson was believed to have instigated the investigation,
and he and Harding were not harmed.
The Republican National Committee chairman Will Hays formed advisory committees.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge became the chairman of the convention,
and he opposed the most controversial issue, the League of Nations.
He got the skilled lawyer Elihu Root to write platform policies on the League.
President Wilson’s foreign policy was severely criticized from Armenia to Mexico.
Major candidates were attending the convention,
and Florence persuaded her husband Harding to be there.
Florence with three senators’ wives visited in Washington
the clairvoyant Madame Marcia in February.
Later Florence went back alone and asked about
someone born on 2 November 1865 at 2 p.m.
Marcia described that person as “sympathetic and kindly, intuitive, free of promises
and trusting to friends, enthusiastic, impulsive, perplexed over financial affairs,”
and she said he had “many clandestine love affairs”
and was “inclined to recurrent moods of melancholia.”19
Marcia predicted that if he ran for President, he would be nominated and elected
and would have a sudden and peculiar death while in office.
There were 22 candidates who received at least one vote in the ten ballots.
On the first ballot Wood had 287.5, Lowden 211.5, Hiram Johnson 133.5,
Gov. Sproul of
Pennsylvania 84, the educator Nicholas Butler 69.5, Harding 65.5,
Gov. Coolidge of Massachusetts 34, and Senator La Follette 24.
Harding said he would not be Vice President,
and he did not begin gaining votes until the fifth ballot.
By the eighth he had 133.5 while Lowden had 307 and Wood 299.
Senator Smoot of Utah argued that Harding was the strongest
because he would defeat Ohio’s Governor James M. Cox.
Lowden released his delegates, and on the next ballots
Harding got 374.5 and then 692.
The convention made it unanimous for Harding,
and they chose Coolidge on the first ballot as his running mate.
Delegates had finished their business on Saturday June 12
so that they would not have to stay over until Monday.
The convention re-elected Will Hays as chairman of the
Republican National Committee, and Harding made him his campaign manager.
Daugherty continued as his key advisor.
The Democratic National Convention began in San Francisco on June 28.
President Woodrow Wilson was an invalid from the stroke he suffered
in September 1919 and would not be nominated for a third term.
Wilson wanted it, and he prevented from winning his son-in-law William Gibbs McAdoo,
who had been Treasury Secretary until 15 December 1918.
On the first ballot the leading candidates were McAdoo with 266 votes,
U. S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer 256,
Ohio Gov. James M. Cox 134, and New York Gov. Al Smith 109.
On the 12th vote Cox got 404 votes, McAdoo 375.5, and Palmer 201.
McAdoo regained the lead on the 31st vote with 415.5 to Cox’s 391.5
until the 39th ballot when Cox received 468.5 to McAdoo’s 440.
Palmer reached his peak at 241, and no one else got more than 76 votes.
On the 43rd ballot Cox led McAdoo 568 to 412,
and delegates nominated Cox on the 44th ballot on July 6.
He selected Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York as his running mate,
and he resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy on August 26.
Cox had been an editor and publisher of the Dayton Daily News,
and he was in the U. S. House of Representatives 1909-13.
The young Roosevelt boasted that he had something to do with the running
of little republics and that he had written Haiti’s constitution.
Harding responded,
If I should be elected president …
I will not empower an Assistant Secretary of the Navy
to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors
in the West Indies and jam it down their throats
at the point of bayonets borne by the United States marines,
nor will I misuse the power of the executive to cover
with a veil of secrecy repeated acts
of unwarranted interference in the domestic affairs
of little republics of the western hemisphere,
such as in the last few years have not only made enemies
of those who should be our friends but have rightfully
discredited our country as their trusted neighbor.20
Harding decided to emulate McKinley’s campaign,
and he received at his home in Marion large crowds.
The Republican Executive Committee approved transferring the flagpole
from McKinley’s front yard in Canton, Ohio to Harding’s yard in Marion.
Hays and Harding hired Albert D. Lasker
who was skilled at advertising and public relations.
He used radio, newspapers, magazines, movie news, audio recordings,
and billboards to sell Harding to American voters.
On July 22 about 90,000 people crowded into Marion to see Senator Lodge
notify Harding that the Republicans had nominated him.
On that day the Republican nominee Harding gave five speeches.
In the first one he promised party government cooperating with the Congress,
and he said, “No one man is big enough to run this great Republic.”21
In a very long speech accepting the nomination near the end he said,
I believe the budget system
will effect a necessary, helpful reformation,
and reveal business methods to government business.
I believe Federal departments should be made
more business-like and send back to productive effort
thousands of Federal employees,
who are either duplicating work or not essential at all.
I believe in the protective tariff policy and know
we will be calling for its saving Americanism again.
I believe in a great merchant marine—I would have
this Republic the leading maritime nation of the world.
I believe in a navy ample to protect it,
and able to assure us dependable defense.
I believe in a small army, but best in the world,
with a mindfulness for preparedness which
will avoid the unutterable cost of our previous neglect.
I believe in our eminence in trade abroad,
which the Government should aid in expanding,
both in revealing markets and speeding cargoes.
I believe in established standards for immigration, which
are concerned with the future citizenship of the republic,
not with mere manpower in industry.
I believe that every man who dons the garb
of American citizenship and walks in the light of American
opportunity, must become American in heart and soul.
I believe in holding fast to every forward step
in unshackling child-labor
and elevating conditions of woman’s employment.
I believe the Federal Government should stamp out lynching
and remove that stain from the fair name of America.
I believe the Federal Government should give
its effective aid in solving the problem
of ample and becoming housing of its citizenship.
I believe this Government should make its
Liberty and Victory bonds worth all
that its patriotic citizens paid in purchasing them.
I believe the tax burdens imposed for the war emergency
must be revised to the needs of peace,
and in the interest of equity in distribution of the burden.
I believe the Negro citizens of America should be
guaranteed the enjoyment of all their rights,
that they have earned the full measure
of citizenship bestowed, that their sacrifices
in blood on the battlefields of the Republic
have entitled them to all of freedom and opportunity,
all of sympathy and aid that the American spirit
of fairness and justice demands.
I believe there is an easy and open path
to righteous relationship with Mexico.
It has seemed to me that our undeveloped, uncertain
and infirm policy has made us a culpable party
to the governmental misfortunes in that land.
Our relations ought to be both friendly and sympathetic;
we would like to acclaim a stable government there,
and offer a neighborly hand
in pointing the way to greater progress.
It will be simple to have a plain
and neighborly understanding,
merely an understanding about respecting our borders,
about protecting the lives and possessions
of Americans citizens lawfully within the Mexican dominions.
There must be that understanding,
else there can be no recognition,
and then the understanding must be faithfully kept….
The womanhood of America, always its glory,
its inspiration, and the potent uplifting force in its social
and spiritual development, is about to be enfranchised.
Insofar as Congress can go,
the fact is already accomplished.
By party edict, by my recorded vote, by personal conviction,
I am committed to this measure of justice.
It is my earnest hope, my sincere desire that
the one needed State vote be quickly recorded
in the affirmation of the right of equal suffrage
and that the vote of every citizen shall be cast
and counted in the approaching election.
He concluded by saying,
Mindful of the vast responsibilities,
I must be frankly humble, but I have that confidence
in the consideration and support of all true Americans
which makes me wholly unafraid.
With an unalterable faith and in a hopeful spirit,
with a hymn of service in my heart,
I pledge fidelity to our country and to God,
and accept the nominations of the Republican Party
for the Presidency of the United States.22
In his next address on that day he explained his foreign policy and his reluctance
to let an international government control the United States military.
This is that entire speech:
My countrymen, we believe the unspeakable sorrows,
the immeasurable sacrifices, the awakened convictions,
and the aspiring conscience of humankind must commit
the nations of the earth to a new and better relationship.
It need not be discussed now
what motives plunged the world into war.
It need not be inquired whether we asked
the sons of this republic to defend our national rights,
as I believe we did, or to purge the Old World
of the accumulated ills of rivalry and greed.
The sacrifices will be in vain
if we cannot acclaim a new order
with added security to civilization and peace maintained.
One may readily sense the conscience of our America.
I am sure I understand the purpose
of the dominant group of the Senate.
We were not seeking to defeat a world aspiration.
We were resolved to safeguard America.
We were resolved then even as we are today,
and will be tomorrow,
to preserve this free and independent republic.
Let those now responsible or seeking responsibility
propose the surrender—whether with interpretations,
apologies, or reluctant reservations—
from which our rights are to be omitted.
We welcome the referendum to the American people
on the preservation of America,
and the Republican party pledges its defense
of the preserved inheritance of national freedom.
In the call of the conscience of America is peace.
Peace that closes the gaping wound of world war
and silences the impassioned voices
of international envy and distrust.
Heeding this call, and knowing as I do
the disposition of Congress, I promise you
formal and effective peace so quickly
as the Republican Congress can pass its declaration
for a Republican executive to sign.
Then we may turn to our readjustment at home
and proceed deliberately and reflectively
to that hoped for world relationship
which shall satisfy both conscience and aspirations,
and still hold us free from menacing involvement.
I can hear in the call of conscience an insistent voice
for the largely reduced armaments throughout the world,
with attending reduction of burdens
upon peace-loving humanity.
We wish to give of American influence and example.
We must give of American leadership
to that invaluable accomplishment.
I can speak unreservedly of the American aspirations
and the Republican committal for an association of nations
cooperating in sublime accord to attain and preserve peace
through justice rather than force,
determined to add to security through international law,
so clarified that no misconstruction can be possible
without affronting world honor.
It is better to be the free and disinterested agents
of international justice and advancing civilization
with the covenant of conscience, than to be shackled
by a written compact which surrenders
our freedom of action and gives the military alliance
the right to proclaim America’s duty to the world.
No surrender of rights to a world council
or its military alliance, no assumed mandatory,
however appealing, ever shall summon
the sons of this republic to war.
Their supreme sacrifice shall be only asked
for America and its call of honor.
There is sanctity in that right which
we will not surrender to any other power on earth.23
In his third address that day Harding discussed
post-war conflicts between labor and management.
My countrymen, the chief trouble today
is that the World War wrought the destruction
of healthful competition, left our storehouses empty,
and there is a minimum production
when our need is maximal.
Maximum, not minimum, is the call of America.
War never fails to leave depleted storehouses,
and always impairs the efficiency of production.
War also establishes its higher standards
for wages and they abide.
I wish the higher wage to abide on one explicit condition—
that the wage earner will give full return
for the wage received.
It is the best assurance we can have
for a reduced cost of living.
I am ready to acclaim the highest standard of pay,
but I would be blind to the responsibilities that mark
this fateful hour if I did not caution
the wage earners of America that mounting wages
and decreased production
can lead only to industrial and economic ruin.
I want somehow to appeal to the sons and daughters
of the Republic, to every producer, to join hand and brain
in production, honest production, patriotic production.
Profiteering is a crime of commission.
Underproduction is a crime of omission.
We must work our most and best,
else the inevitable reaction will bring
its train of suffering, disappointment, and reversals.
We want to forestall such reactions.
We want to hold all advanced ground,
and fortify it with general good fortune.
Let us return to the necessity for understanding,
particularly that understanding
that concerns ourselves at home.
I decline to recognize any conflict of interest
among the participants in industry.
The destruction of one is the ruin of the other.
The suspicion or rebellion of one
unavoidably involves the other.
In conflict is disaster, in understanding there is triumph.
There is no issue relating to the foundation on which
industry is built because industry
is bigger than any element in its modern making.
The insistent call is for labor,
management, and capital to reach understanding.
The human element comes first.
I want the employers in industry to understand
the aspirations, the convictions,
the yearnings of the millions of American wage earners.
I want the wage earners to understand the problems,
the anxieties, the obligations of management and capital,
and all of them must understand their relationship
to the people and their obligation to the Republic.
Out of this understanding will come
the unanimous committal to economic justice;
and in economic justice lies that social justice
which is the highest essential to human happiness.
I am speaking as one who has counted the contents
of the pay envelope from the viewpoint of the earner,
as well as the employer.
No one pretends to deny the inequalities
which are manifest in modern industrial life.
They are less, in fact, than they were before organization
and grouping on either side revealed the inequality;
and conscience has brought more justice
than statutes have compelled.
But the ferment of the world rivets our thoughts
on the necessity of progressive solutions—
else our generation will suffer the experiments,
which means chaos for our day—
to reestablish God’s plan for the great tomorrow.24
Harding’s next speech in reaction to the Communist revolution in Russia
emphasized American liberty and equal rights, saying,
My countrymen, the menacing tendency
of the present day is not chargeable wholly
to the unsettled and fevered conditions caused by the war.
The manifest weakness in popular government
lies in the temptation
to appeal to group citizenship for political advantage.
There is no greater peril.
The Constitution contemplates no class
and recognizes no group.
It broadly includes all the people
with specific recognition for none,
and the highest consecration we can make today
is a committal of the Republican party to that
saving constitutionalism which contemplates all America
as one people and holds just government free
from influence on the one hand,
and unmoved by intimidation on the other.
It would be the blindness of folly to ignore the activities
in our own country which are aimed to destroy
our economic system and to commit us
to the colossal tragedy which has both
destroyed all freedom and made Russia impotent.
This movement is not to be halted in throttled liberties.
We must not abridge the freedom of speech,
the freedom of press, or the freedom of assembly,
because there is no promise in repression.
These liberties are as sacred
as the freedom of religious beliefs, as inviolable
as the rights of life and the pursuit of happiness.
We do hold to the right to crush sedition,
to stifle a menacing contempt for law,
to stamp out a peril to the safety of the Republic
or its people when emergency calls,
because security and the majesty of the law
are the first essentials of liberty.
He who threatens destruction of the government by force,
or flaunts his contempt for lawful authority,
ceases to be a loyal citizen
and forfeits his right to the freedom of the Republic.
Let it be said to all of America that our plan
of popular government contemplates such orderly changes
as the crystallized intelligence
of the majority of our people think best.
There can be no modification of this underlying rule,
but no majority shall abridge the rights of a minority.
Men have a right to question our system in fullest freedom.
But they must always remember that the rights of freedom
impose the obligations which maintain it.
Our policy is not of repression.
But we make appeal today to American intelligence
and patriotism, when the Republic is menaced from within,
just as we trusted American patriotism
when our rights were threatened from without.
We call on all America for steadiness,
so that we may proceed deliberately
with the readjustment which concerns all the people.
Our party platform fairly expresses
the conscience of Republicans on industrial relations.
No party is indifferent to the welfare of the wage earner.
To us, his good fortune is of deepest concern,
and we seek to make that good fortune permanent.
We do not oppose, but approve, collective bargaining,
because that is an outstanding right,
but we are unalterably insistent that its exercise
must not destroy the equally sacred right of the individual
in his necessary pursuit of a livelihood.
Any American has the right to quit his employment,
so has every American the right to seek employment.
The group must not endanger the individual,
and we must discourage groups preying upon one another.
And none shall be allowed to forget that
Government’s obligations are alike to all the people.25
On August 7 the Democrats began their campaign with a parade in Dayton, Ohio
led by James Cox and Franklin Roosevelt.
They had met with President Wilson at the White House
and were committed to campaigning on the League of Nations.
From July 22 to the end of September about 600,000 people
came to hear Harding in Marion.
Then Harding began traveling, and he made 20 speeches in Indiana
and 20 in Iowa, 16 in West Virginia, 11 in Missouri, 8 in Kentucky, 7 in Illinois,
6 in Oklahoma, 5 in New York and 5 in Tennessee, 4 in Minnesota, 3 in Kansas
and 3 in Pennsylvania, 2 in Nebraska, and one in Wisconsin and in Maryland.
Campaign chairman Hays ran the office in New York City,
and they had regional offices in San Francisco and Chicago.
Harding also had a headquarters built next to his home in Marion,
and Judson C. Welliver helped write his speeches.
He gave special attention to newspapermen, and one time Harding missed a train
because he wanted to shake the hands of a hundred journalists.
He declined to talk about the poor health of Wilson, though he criticized his policies.
He also refused to talk about Cox having divorced and remarried.
The Wooster College professor William E. Chancellor wrote many books,
and he claimed that Harding had negro ancestors.
On August 28 Harding from his porch spoke to the Harding and Coolidge Club
of Indianapolis in which he said that Wilson’s League was
“an unworkable device to which we must not delegate our national conscience.”
Then he said,
I believe humanity would welcome the creation
of an international association for conference
and a world court whose verdicts upon justifiable questions
this country in common with all other nations
would be both willing and able to uphold.
The decision of such a court or the recommendation
of such a conference would be accepted
without sacrificing on our part or asking any other power
to sacrifice one iota of nationality.26
In a month Cox traveled 22,000 miles and made 394 speeches.
He complained that Republicans were raising $15 million
which he called a “corruption fund.”
VP candidate Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor
traveled and also gave many speeches.
The state of Maine voted on September 13, and Harding won easily.
On October 2 an endorsement of Harding written by Elihu Root concluded,
The question between the candidates is not
whether our country shall join in such an association.
It is whether we shall join under an agreement containing
the exact provisions negotiated by President Wilson at Paris
or under an agreement which omits or modifies
some of those provisions.27
This was signed by presidents of Harvard University, Columbia University,
Stanford University, Henry W. Taft, Herbert Hoover, Charles Evans Hughes,
William Allen White, and 24 other famous pro-League Republicans.
Just before the election Harding’s article on “Less Government in Business
and More Business in Government” was published in World’s Work.
In the election on November 2 Harding received 16,152,200 votes,
and Cox got 9,147,353.
The Socialist Eugene Debs was still in prison for opposing the war,
and 919,799 people voted for him.
Harding won with 404 electoral votes, and Cox had 127 electoral votes.
Cox won only 11 southern states,
and Harding won the other 37 states that included Tennessee.
The Republican Party acquired its largest majority in the
House of Representatives with a 303-131 advantage.
Republicans also took ten seats away from Democrats in the Senate
giving them a 59-37 majority.
Senator Kenyon reported that the Republicans had outspent
the Democrats with $8,100,739 to $2,237,770.
Another study found that national Republicans spent $4,022,580
to the Democrats’ $1,318,274.
Warren Harding was relatively free to choose the men he wanted for his Cabinet.
He advised journalists not to speculate, and he said
he would not make any decisions until his return to Marion.
He went to Texas to fish and play golf and poker with his friend Frank Scobey.
Then he went on a cruise to Panama.
He returned to Washington for the last session of the Congress on December 6.
Since he was the first sitting senator to become President,
Lodge asked if he could speak from the chair.
Harding said,
When my responsibilities begin in the executive capacity
I shall be as mindful of the Senate’s responsibilities
as I have been jealous for them as a Member,
but I mean at the same time to be
just as insistent about the responsibilities of the Executive.
Our governmental good fortune does not lie
in any surrender at either end of the Avenue….
Something has been said about the senatorial oligarchy.
Of course, everyone here knows that
to be a bit of highly imaginative and harmless fiction.27
First Lady Edith Wilson invited Harding and his wife for a tour of the White House.
Harding consulted Vice President Calvin Coolidge only occasionally and said,
Three things are to be considered
in the selection of the cabinet.
First, there is the man’s qualification for public service.
That is the most important consideration of all.
Second, there is the attitude of the public
concerning the man under consideration.
Third, there is the political consideration.
As to that—well, this is going to be a Republican cabinet.28
After his dark-horse campaign Harding felt he did not owe anyone special favors
except for Harry Daugherty whose strategy helped him get the nomination.
Harding persuaded Charles Evans Hughes to be Secretary of State,
and Henry P. Fletcher, who had been ambassador to Mexico, became his undersecretary.
On February 21 Harding told reporters that Mr. Hughes will be
speaking for the State Department in his Administration.
Henry C. Wallace was a professor of Agriculture at Iowa State University
and editor of Wallace’s Farmer, and he became Secretary of Agriculture.
Charles G. Dawes had been the executive of the Central Union Trust Company
and was the general purchasing agent of the American Expeditionary Forces in France.
During the campaign Harding had read an article by Dawes on
“How a President Can Save a Billion Dollars.”
Harding asked him to head the budget work after the budget legislation was passed.
Herbert Hoover ran the Food Administration during the Great War,
and some had criticized him for helping relieve
the famine in Russia after the Communist Revolution.
Harding let Hoover choose the Commerce Department.
Senators Boies Penrose and Lodge urged Harding to select
the wealthy financier Andrew Mellon for the Treasury, and Harding considered him.
John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world,
and Mellon was the second richest.
Harry Daugherty told senators Penrose and Lodge that they should accept Hoover
if they wanted Mellon, and they agreed to that.
Mellon would be Treasury Secretary for 12 years.
General Leonard Wood seemed an obvious choice for Secretary of War;
but Harding did not want him in his Cabinet,
and he chose Senator John Weeks of Massachusetts.
Harding offered to make Wood the Governor of the Philippine Islands,
and Wood refused that.
For Labor Secretary Harding selected Jim Davis who had immigrated from Wales
and became a member of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers.
Harding made Will Hays the Postmaster General, and after a year
Hays became the head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
for a salary of $150,000.
The Hays Code that would begin censoring movies in 1934 was named after him.
The westerner Albert Fall had been involved in mining, ranching, and oil
and Harding selected him to be Interior Secretary.
Harding’s choice of Harry Daugherty as Attorney General was very controversial.
Edwin Denby volunteered to be a marine in the war at the age of 47,
and he became a major.
He was also a lawyer and became wealthy in the automobile industry,
and Harding appointed him Secretary of the Navy.
Harding resigned his Senate seat on 6 January 1921
so that the new senator former Gov. Frank Willis would have better seniority.
After his inaugural address President Harding went to the Senate,
and they confirmed the ten members of his Cabinet in ten minutes.
The age of the ten Cabinet members ranged from Hays at 41 to Mellon at 65.
On 4 March 1921 Warren Gamaliel Harding became President of the United States.
At that time there were only two radio stations in the United States,
and by 1922 there would be more than 500.
His inaugural address was the first to be broadcast on radio
and amplified so that many people could hear it.
This is his entire address:
My Countrymen:
When one surveys the world about him after the great
storm, noting the marks of destruction and yet rejoicing
in the ruggedness of the things which withstood it, if he is
an American he breathes the clarified atmosphere
with a strange mingling of regret and new hope.
We have seen a world passion spend its fury,
but we contemplate our Republic unshaken,
and hold our civilization secure.
Liberty--liberty within the law--and civilization are
inseparable, and though both were threatened we find
them now secure; and there comes to Americans the
profound assurance that our representative government
is the highest expression and surest guaranty of both.
Standing in this presence, mindful of the solemnity
of this occasion, feeling the emotions which no one
may know until he senses the great weight of
responsibility for himself, I must utter my belief
in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers.
Surely there must have been God's intent in
the making of this new-world Republic.
Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity,
and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice
and blood, with union maintained, the Nation
supreme, and its concord inspiring.
We have seen the world rivet its hopeful gaze on
the great truths on which the founders wrought.
We have seen civil, human, and religious
liberty verified and glorified.
In the beginning the Old World scoffed at our experiment;
today our foundations of political and social belief stand
unshaken, a precious inheritance to ourselves, an inspiring
example of freedom and civilization to all mankind.
Let us express renewed and strengthened devotion,
in grateful reverence for the immortal beginning,
and utter our confidence in the supreme fulfillment.
The recorded progress of our Republic, materially
and spiritually, in itself proves the wisdom of the
inherited policy of noninvolvement in Old World affairs.
Confident of our ability to work out our own destiny,
and jealously guarding our right to do so, we seek
no part in directing the destinies of the Old World.
We do not mean to be entangled.
We will accept no responsibility except as our own
conscience and judgment, in each instance, may determine.
Our eyes never will be blind to a developing menace,
our ears never deaf to the call of civilization.
We recognize the new order in the world,
with the closer contacts which progress has wrought.
We sense the call of the human heart
for fellowship, fraternity, and cooperation.
We crave friendship and harbor no hate.
But America, our America, the America built
on the foundation laid by the inspired fathers,
can be a party to no permanent military alliance.
It can enter into no political commitments, nor
assume any economic obligations which will subject
our decisions to any other than our own authority.
I am sure our own people will not
misunderstand, nor will the world misconstrue.
We have no thought to impede the
paths to closer relationship.
We wish to promote understanding.
We want to do our part in making offensive warfare
so hateful that Governments and peoples who resort
to it must prove the righteousness of their cause
or stand as outlaws before the bar of civilization.
We are ready to associate ourselves with the nations
of the world, great and small, for conference, for counsel;
to seek the expressed views of world opinion;
to recommend a way to approximate disarmament
and relieve the crushing burdens
of military and naval establishments.
We elect to participate in suggesting plans
for mediation, conciliation, and arbitration,
and would gladly join in that expressed conscience
of progress, which seeks to clarify and write the laws
of international relationship, and establish a world court
for the disposition of such justiciable questions
as nations are agreed to submit thereto.
In expressing aspirations, in seeking practical plans,
in translating humanity’s new concept of righteousness
and justice and its hatred of war into recommended
action we are ready most heartily to unite,
but every commitment must be made
in the exercise of our national sovereignty.
Since freedom impelled, and independence
inspired, and nationality exalted, a world super
government is contrary to everything we cherish
and can have no sanction by our Republic.
This is not selfishness, it is sanctity.
It is not aloofness, it is security.
It is not suspicion of others, it is patriotic adherence
to the things which made us what we are.
Today, better than ever before, we know the
aspirations of humankind, and share them.
We have come to a new realization of our place in the
world and a new appraisal of our Nation by the world.
The unselfishness of these United States is a thing proven;
our devotion to peace for ourselves and for the world is
well established; our concern for preserved civilization
has had its impassioned and heroic expression.
There was no American failure to resist
the attempted reversion of civilization;
there will be no failure today or tomorrow.
The success of our popular government rests wholly
upon the correct interpretation of the deliberate,
intelligent, dependable popular will of America.
In a deliberate questioning of a suggested change of national
policy, where internationality was to supersede nationality,
we turned to a referendum, to the American people.
There was ample discussion, and there is a
public mandate in manifest understanding.
America is ready to encourage, eager to initiate,
anxious to participate in any seemly program
likely to lessen the probability of war, and promote
that brotherhood of mankind which must be God’s
highest conception of human relationship.
Because we cherish ideals of justice and peace,
because we appraise international comity and helpful
relationship no less highly than any people of the world,
we aspire to a high place in the moral leadership of
civilization, and we hold a maintained America, the
proven Republic, the unshaken temple of representative
democracy, to be not only an inspiration and example,
but the highest agency of strengthening good will
and promoting accord on both continents.
Mankind needs a world-wide benediction of understanding.
It is needed among individuals, among peoples,
among governments, and it will inaugurate an era
of good feeling to make the birth of a new order.
In such understanding men will strive confidently
for the promotion of their better relationships and
nations will promote the comities so essential to peace.
We must understand that ties of trade bind nations in
closest intimacy, and none may receive except as he gives.
We have not strengthened ours in accordance with our
resources or our genius, notably on our own continent,
where a galaxy of Republics reflects the glory of
new-world democracy, but in the new order of
finance and trade we mean to promote enlarged
activities and seek expanded confidence.
Perhaps we can make no more helpful contribution
by example than prove a Republic’s capacity
to emerge from the wreckage of war.
While the world’s embittered travail did not leave
us devastated lands nor desolated cities, left no
gaping wounds, no breast with hate, it did involve
us in the delirium of expenditure, in expanded
currency and credits, in unbalanced industry, in
unspeakable waste, and disturbed relationships.
While it uncovered our portion of hateful selfishness
at home, it also revealed the heart of America as sound
and fearless, and beating in confidence unfailing.
Amid it all we have riveted the gaze of all civilization to
the unselfishness and the righteousness of representative
democracy, where our freedom never has made offensive
warfare, never has sought territorial aggrandizement
through force, never has turned to the arbitrament
of arms until reason has been exhausted.
When the Governments of the earth shall have established
a freedom like our own and shall have sanctioned the pursuit
of peace as we have practiced it, I believe the last sorrow and
the final sacrifice of international warfare will have been written.
Let me speak to the maimed and wounded soldiers who are
present today, and through them convey to their comrades the
gratitude of the Republic for their sacrifices in its defense.
A generous country will never forget the services you
rendered, and you may hope for a policy under Government
that will relieve any maimed successors from taking
your places on another such occasion as this.
Our supreme task is the resumption of our onward, normal way.
Reconstruction, readjustment, restoration all these must follow.
I would like to hasten them.
If it will lighten the spirit and add to the
resolution with which we take up the task,
let me repeat for our Nation, we shall give
no people just cause to make war upon us;
we hold no national prejudices;
we entertain no spirit of revenge;
we do not hate; we do not covet;
we dream of no conquest, nor boast of armed prowess.
If, despite this attitude, war is again forced upon us,
I earnestly hope a way may be found which will unify
our individual and collective strength and consecrate
all America, materially and spiritually, body and soul,
to national defense.
I can vision the ideal republic, where everyman and woman
is called under the flag for assignment to duty for whatever
service, military or civic, the individual is best fitted;
where we may call to universal service every plant, agency,
or facility, all in the sublime sacrifice for country, and not
one penny of war profit shall inure to the benefit of private
individual, corporation, or combination, but all above the
normal shall flow into the defense chest of the Nation.
There is something inherently wrong, something out of
accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when
one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private
gain amid defensive war while another is fighting,
sacrificing, or dying for national preservation.
Out of such universal service will come a new unity of spirit
and purpose, a new confidence and consecration, which would
make our defense impregnable, our triumph assured.
Then we should have little or no disorganization of our
economic, industrial, and commercial systems at home,
no staggering war debts, no swollen fortunes to flout the
sacrifices of our soldiers, no excuse for sedition,
no pitiable slackerism, no outrage of treason.
Envy and jealousy would have no soil for their
menacing development, and revolution would
be without the passion which engenders it.
A regret for the mistakes of yesterday must not,
however, blind us to the tasks of today.
War never left such an aftermath.
There has been staggering loss of life
and measureless wastage of materials.
Nations are still groping for return to stable ways.
Discouraging indebtedness confronts us like all the
war-torn nations, and these obligations must be provided for.
No civilization can survive repudiation.
We can reduce the abnormal expenditures, and we will.
We can strike at war taxation, and we must.
We must face the grim necessity, with full knowledge
that the task is to be solved, and we must proceed
with a full realization that no statute enacted by man
can repeal the inexorable laws of nature.
Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of
government,and at the same time do for it too little.
We contemplate the immediatet ask of
putting our public household in order.
We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined
with fiscal justice, and it must be attended by
individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential
to this trying hour and reassuring for the future.
The business world reflects the disturbance of war's reaction.
Herein flows the lifeblood of material existence.
The economic mechanism is intricate and its
parts interdependent, and has suffered the
shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands,
credit inflations, and price upheavals.
The normal balances have been impaired, the
channels of distribution have been clogged, the relations
of labor and management have been strained.
We must seek the readjustment with care and courage.
Our people must give and take.
Prices must reflect the receding fever of war activities.
Perhaps we never shall know the old levels of wages again,
because war invariably readjusts compensations, and
the necessaries of life will show their inseparable relationship,
but we must strive for normalcy to reach stability.
All the penalties will not be light, nor evenly distributed.
There is no way of making them so.
There is no instant step from disorder to order.
We must face a condition of grim reality,
charge off our losses and start afresh.
It is the oldest lesson of civilization.
I would like government to do all it can to mitigate;
then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest,
in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.
No altered system will work a miracle.
Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion.
Our best assurance lies in efficient
administration of our proven system.
The forward course of the business cycle is unmistakable.
Peoples are turning from destruction to production.
Industry has sensed the changed order, and our own
people are turning to resume their normal, onward way.
The call is for productive America to go on.
I know that Congress and the Administration
will favor every wise Government policy to aid
the resumption and encourage continued progress.
I speak for administrative efficiency, for lightened
tax burdens, for sound commercial practices, for
adequate credit facilities, for sympathetic concern
for all agricultural problems, for the omission of
unnecessary interference of Government with business,
for an end to Government's experiment in business, and
for more efficient business in Government administration.
With all of this must attend a mindfulness of
the human side of all activities, so that social,
industrial, and economic justice will be squared
with the purposes of a righteous people.
With the nation-wide induction of womanhood
into our political life, we may count upon
her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence,
and her influence to exalt the social order.
We count upon her exercise of the full privileges
and the performance of the duties of citizenship
to speed the attainment of the highest state.
I wish for an America no less alert in guarding
against dangers from within than it is watchful
against enemies from without.
Our fundamental law recognizes no class,
no group, no section; there must be none
in legislation or administration.
The supreme inspiration is the common weal.
Humanity hungers for international peace,
and we crave it with all mankind.
My most reverent prayer for America is for industrial
peace, with its rewards, widely and generally distributed,
amid the inspirations of equal opportunity.
No one justly may deny the equality of
opportunity which made us what we are.
We have mistaken unpreparedness to
embrace it to be a challenge of the reality,
and due concern for making all citizens fit for
participation will give added strength of
citizenship and magnify our achievement.
If revolution insists upon overturning established order,
let other peoples make the tragic experiment.
There is no place for it in America.
When World War threatened civilization we pledged our
resources and our lives to its preservation, and when
revolution threatens we unfurl the flag of law and order
and renew our consecration.
Ours is a constitutional freedom where the popular will
is the law supreme and minorities are sacredly protected.
Our revisions, reformations, and evolutions
reflect a deliberate judgment and an orderly
progress, and we mean to cure our ills,
but never destroy or permit destruction by force.
I had rather submit our industrial controversies
to the conference table in advance
than to a settlement table after conflict and suffering.
The earth is thirsting for the cup of good will,
understanding is its fountain source.
I would like to acclaim an era of good feeling amid
dependable prosperity and all the blessings which attend.
It has been proved again and again that we cannot,
while throwing our markets open to the world, maintain
American standards of living and opportunity, and hold
our industrial eminence in such unequal competition.
There is a luring fallacy in the theory of banished barriers
of trade, but preserved American standards require our higher
production costs to be reflected in our tariffs on imports.
Today, as never before, when peoples are seeking
trade restoration and expansion, we must
adjust our tariffs to the new order.
We seek participation in the world's exchanges,
because therein lies our way to widened influence
and the triumphs of peace.
We know full well we cannot sell where we do not buy,
and we cannot sell successfully where we do not carry.
Opportunity is calling not alone for the restoration,
but for a new era in production, transportation and trade.
We shall answer it best by meeting the demand of a
surpassing home market, by promoting self- reliance
in production, and by bidding enterprise, genius, and
efficiency to carry our cargoes in American bottoms
to the marts of the world.
We would not have an America living within and
for herself alone, but we would have her self-reliant,
independent, and ever nobler, stronger, and richer.
Believing in our higher standards, reared through
constitutional liberty and maintained opportunity,
we invite the world to the same heights.
But pride in things wrought is no reflex of a completed task.
Common welfare is the goal of our national endeavor.
Wealth is not inimical to welfare;
it ought to be its friendliest agency.
There never can be equality of rewards or possessions
so long as the human plan contains varied talents
and differing degrees of industry and thrift,
but ours ought to be a country
free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.
We ought to find a way to guard against
the perils and penalties of unemployment.
We want an America of homes, illumined with hope and
happiness, where mothers, freed from the necessity for
long hours of toil beyond their own doors, may preside
as befits the hearthstone of American citizenship.
We want the cradle of American childhood
rocked under conditions so wholesome and
so hopeful that no blight may touch it in its
development, and we want to provide that
no selfish interest, no material necessity,
no lack of opportunity shall prevent thegaining
of that education so essential to best citizenship.
There is no short cut to the making
of these ideals into glad realities.
The world has witnessed again and again the
futility and the mischief of ill-considered
remedies for social and economic disorders.
But we are mindful today as never before
of the friction of modern industrialism, and
we must learn its causes and reduce its evil
consequences by sober and tested methods.
Where genius has made for great possibilities,
justice and happiness must be reflected
in a greater common welfare.
Service is the supreme commitment of life.
I would rejoice to acclaim the era of the Golden Rule
and crown it with the autocracy of service.
I pledge an administration wherein all the agencies
of Government are called to serve,
and ever promote an understanding of Government
purely as an expression of the popular will.
One cannot stand in this presenceand be
unmindful of the tremendous responsibility.
The world upheaval has added heavily to our tasks.
But with the realization comes the surge of
high resolve, and there is reassurance in belief
in the God-given destiny of our Republic.
If I felt that there is to be sole responsibility
in the Executive for the America of tomorrow
I should shrink from the burden.
But here are a hundred millions, with common concern
and shared responsibility, answerable to God and country.
The Republic summons them to their duty,
and I invite co-operation.
I accept my part with single-mindedness
of purpose and humility of spirit, and implore
the favor and guidance of God in His Heaven.
With these I am unafraid, and confidently face the future.
I have taken the solemn oath of office
on that passage of Holy Writ wherein it is asked:
“What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
This I plight to God and country.29
After giving his inaugural address on 4 March 1921
Harding walked over to the Senate which approved
his ten cabinet members in ten minutes.
Senator A. B. Fall as Interior Secretary was the first ever to be confirmed
without having been referred by a committee.
Harding briefly reviewed the inaugural parade, and he and his wife Florence
welcomed the honored guests for the “Friendship” inaugural ball.
After the White House had been barred by gates for two years,
they were thrown open.
Mrs. Harding had the blinds opened so that the crowd could see in.
She reinstated teas and held garden parties.
As a former newspaperman Harding was very friendly with the press,
and he revived regular press conferences in the White House.
He usually retired before midnight and began working in his office at 8 a.m.
He believed his limited abilities required him to work harder.
Harding had two men from Ohio serving as his political secretaries—
Charles Hard and his speechwriter Judson Welliver.
George B. Christian was his personal secretary.
Harding enjoyed playing poker in the evening twice a week, and the regular
members included Christian, Doc Sawyer, Daugherty, War Secretary Weeks,
Interior Secretary Fall, and Henry Fletcher.
He usually smoked two cigars a day and a pipe and cigarettes.
He liked to have one drink occasionally even though
the Prohibition amendment made it illegal.
Cabinet members who Harding most respected were Secretary of State Hughes,
Treasury Secretary Mellon, and Commerce Secretary Hoover.
Hughes worked to have good relations with public opinion,
and he called the State Department the “Department of Peace.”
For four months he did not reply to communications from the League of Nations.
Harding’s closest advisor was Attorney General Daugherty,
and they talked several times a day on a private telephone line.
Daugherty told the journalist Mark Sullivan, “I know Harding, and I know
who the crooks are, and I want to stand between Harding and them.”30
The growing national debt of the United States passed $3 billion in 1914,
and it accelerated after the U. S. joined the European War in April 1917
and reached nearly $24 billion in 1921.
Inflation raised prices and wages, and the peak was in November 1920.
The Federal Reserve Bank tried to deflate the currency.
On March 7 President Harding met with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
and House Speaker Frederick H. Gillette of Massachusetts and two other
Congressional leaders for four hours, and they agreed that
the most urgent issues were reforming taxes and tariffs.
The first Cabinet meeting was the next day,
and Vice President Calvin Coolidge attended as a member.
In Cabinet meetings Harding would begin by discussing what seemed most important,
and then each secretary would give a report on their department.
The Cabinet met on Tuesdays and Fridays.
No secretaries took notes, and votes were not recorded.
Harding requested that the Cabinet officers accommodate newsmen
in their departments, and he met with newsmen after their meetings.
He asked reporters not to quote him directly unless he gave permission.
In his first presidential press conference on March 21
he shook hands with about fifty reporters.
In November he asked reporters to put their written questions in a box.
He did not answer all questions, and this way
reporters of rejected questions were not embarrassed.
On March 14 Harding and the senators Lodge, Smoot, and Underwood
agreed to summon a special session of Congress to begin on April 11.
On March 21 committees began planning hearings.
In his first year as President Harding found that responsibility helped him
develop a perspective that made him less partisan.
On March 31 Harding made a speech in which he said,
My countrymen, the pioneers to whom I have
[oftentimes] alluded, these stalwart makers of America,
could have no conception of our present day attainment.
Hamilton, who conceived, and Washington,
who sponsored, little dreamed of either a
development or a solution like ours of today.
But they were right in fundamentals.
They knew what was safe and preached security.
One may doubt if either of them, if any of the founders,
would wish America to hold aloof from the world.
But there has come to us lately a new realization
of the menace to our America in European entanglements
which emphasizes the prudence of Washington,
though he could little have dreamed
the thought which is in my mind.
When I sat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
and listened to American delegations appealing
in behalf of kinsman or old home folks across the seas,
I caught the aspirations of nationality, and the perfectly
natural sympathy among kindred in this republic.
But I little realized then how we might
rend the concord of American citizenship
in our seeking to solve Old World problems.
There have come to me, not at all unbecomingly,
the expressed anxieties of Americans foreign born
who are asking our country’s future attitude
on territorial awards in the adjustment of peace.
They are Americans all,
but they have a proper and a natural interest
in the fortunes of kinsfolk and native lands.
One cannot blame them.
If our land is to settle the envies, rivalries,
jealousies, and hatreds of all civilization,
these adopted sons of the Republic want the
settlement favorable to the land from which they came.
The misfortune is not alone
that it rends the concord of nations.
The greater pity is that
it rends the concord of our citizenship at home.
It’s folly to think of blending Greek and Bulgar,
Italian and Slovak, or making any of them
rejoicingly American, when the land of adoption
sits in judgement on the land from which he came.
We need to be rescued from divisionary and fruitless
pursuit of peace through super-government.
I do not want Americans of foreign birth
making their party alignments on what
we mean to do for some nation in the old world.
We want them to be Republican because of
what we mean to do for the United States of America.
Our call is for unison, not rivaling sympathies.
Our need is concord, not the antipathies of long inheritance.
Surely no one stopped to think
where the great world experiment was leading.
Frankly, no one could know.
We’re only learning now.
It would be a sorry day for this republic
if we allowed our activities in seeking for peace
in the Old World to blind us
to the essentials of peace at home.
We want a free America again.
We want America free at home, and free in the world.
We want to silence the outcry of nation against nation,
in the fullness of understanding.
And we wish to silence the cry of class against class,
and stifle the party appeal to class,
so that we may ensure tranquility in our own freedom.
If I could choose but one,
I had rather have industrial and social peace at home,
than command the international peace of all the world.31
Early in his presidency Harding met several times with James Weldon Johnson
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Harding appointed blacks to high positions in the Departments of Labor and Interior
and about 140 blacks in lesser posts.
Harding hoped to get blacks to join the Republican Party
so that southern states would have two parties instead of one.
He also urged the education of colored people.
Harding in early April had sent the former Philippine Governor
General W. Cameron Forbes with General Leonard Wood
to study and report on the Philippine Islands.
In the late fall they would advise that the Filipinos were not ready
for the Americans to withdraw.
On April 20 the United States finally ratified the Thompson-Urrutia treaty
that compensated Colombia with $25 million for the loss of Panama.
Although many of Harding’s speeches expressed moral force,
his speechwriter Welliver told William Allen White that Harding
“never appreciated the extent or the effectiveness
of the moral force he might have wielded.”32
Civil service was intended to reign in the patronage in the selection of postmasters,
and Harding loosened the regulations on 13,000 postmasters.
Postmaster General Hays came to believe that the spoils system
changed patronage from a party asset into a party liability.
The Congress rejected Harding’s proposals for a Department of Public Welfare
and for expanding the merchant marine.
On May 9 an American Farm Bureau Federation lobbyist and
Senator Kenyon of Iowa met with eleven other senators
including La Follette and Norris.
They advised the Harding Administration to readjust freight rates,
improve commodity financing, extend farm credits, broaden laws for cooperatives,
regulate meat packers, increase tariffs, and amend
the Farm Loan Act and the Federal Reserve Act.
By June the Farm Bureau surpassed the Grange with a million members.
On August 24 the Emergency Agricultural Credits Act began loans
for farmers’ cooperatives and foreign buyers.
Harding in May appointed Major Roy A. Hughes,
an Anti-Saloon Leaguer from Ohio, to head the Prohibition Unit.
In 1922 the campaign claimed that
17,500,000 Americans had stopped drinking alcohol.
On May 19 President Harding signed into law the Emergency Quota Act
(aka the Per Centum Law) that restricted immigration from
Northern and Western Europe to 3% of the residents
from a nation living in the United States based on the 1910 Census.
In the year ending on 30 June 1921 the United States
accepted 805,228 immigrants, and 1.5 million were expected in the next year.
The Quota Act reduced the number of aliens entering the country in the next year to 309,556.
On May 23 a freighter unloaded at Hoboken, New Jersey the boxed bodies
of 5,212 American soldiers, sailors, marines, and nurses who died in the World War.
Harding honored them with a speech at the dock, and he said,
I find a hundred thousand sorrows touching my heart,
and there is ringing in my ears, like an admonition eternal,
an insistent call, “It must not be again!
It must not be again!”
God grant that it will not be,
and let a practical people join
in co-operation with God to the end that it shall not be.33
On April 12 President Harding gave a long speech
to a joint session of the United States Congress.
This is some of what he said:
First in mind must be the solution of our problems
at home, even though some phases of them
are inseparably linked with our foreign relations.
The surest procedure in every government
is to put its own house in order.
I know of no more pressing problem at home
than to restrict our national expenditures
within the limits of our national income,
and at the same time measurably lift the burdens of war
taxation from the shoulders of the American people….
The staggering load of war debt must be cared for
in orderly funding and gradual liquidation.
We shall hasten the solution and aid effectively in lifting
the tax burdens if we strike resolutely at expenditure….
Our current expenditures are running at the rate
of approximately five billions a year,
and the burden is unbearable.
There are two agencies to be employed in correction:
One is rigid resistance in appropriation
and the other is the utmost economy in administration.
Let us have both.
I have already charged department heads
with this necessity.
I am sure Congress will agree;
and both Congress and the Administration may safely
count on the support of all right-minded citizens,
because the burden is theirs.
The pressure for expenditure, swelling the flow
in one locality while draining another,
is sure to defeat the imposition of just burdens,
and the effect of our citizenship protesting outlay
will be wholesome and helpful.
I wish it might find its reflex in economy and thrift
among the people themselves, because therein
lies quicker recovery and added security for the future….
The urgency for an instant tariff enactment,
emergency in character and understood by our people
that it is for the emergency only,
cannot be too much emphasized.
I believe in the protection of American industry,
and it is our purpose to prosper America first.
The privileges of the American market
to the foreign producer are offered too cheaply today,
and the effect on much of our own productivity
is the destruction of our self-reliance
which is the foundation of the independence
and good fortune of our people.
Moreover, imports should pay their fair share
of our cost of government….
Today American agriculture is menaced,
and its products are down to prewar normals,
yet we are endangering our fundamental industry
through the high cost of transportation from farm to
market and through the influx of foreign farm products,
because we offer, essentially unprotected,
the best market in the world.
It would be better to err in protecting our basic foo
industry than paralyze our farm activities
in the world struggle for restored exchanges….
A very important matter is the establishment
of the Government’s business on a business basis.
There was toleration of the easy-going,
unsystematic method of handling our fiscal affairs,
when indirect taxation held the public
unmindful of the Federal burden.
But there is knowledge of the high cost of government
today, and high cost of living
is inseparably linked with high cost of government.
There can be no complete correction of the high living cost
until government’s cost is notably reduced.
Let me most heartily commend the enactment of legislation
providing for the national budget system.
Congress has already recorded its belief in the budget.
It will be a very great satisfaction to know
of its early enactment, so that it may be employed
in establishing the economies and business methods
so essential to the minimum of expenditure….
Congress may well investigate and let the public
understand wherein our system and the federal regulations
are lacking in helpfulness or hindering in restrictions.
The remaining obstacles which are the heritance
of capitalistic exploitation must be removed,
and labor must join management in understanding
that the public which pays is the public to be served,
and simple justice is the right
and will continue to be the right of all the people….
The whole program requires
the most thoughtful attention of Congress,
for we are embarking on the performance
of a sacred obligation which involves
the expenditure of billions in the half century before us.
Congress must perfect the policy of generous gratitude,
and conscientious administration
must stamp out abuses in the very beginning.
We must strengthen rather than weaken the moral fiber
of the beneficiaries, and humanize all efforts so that
rehabilitation shall be attended by respiritualization.
During the recent political canvass the proposal was made
that a department of public welfare should be created.
It was endorsed and commended so strongly
that I venture to call it to your attention
and to suggest favorable legislative consideration.
Government’s obligation affirmatively to encourage
development of the highest and most efficient type
of citizenship is modernly accepted, almost universally.
Government rests upon the body of citizenship;
it cannot maintain itself on a level that keeps it out of touch
and understanding with the community it serves.
Enlightened governments everywhere recognize this and
are giving their recognition effect in policies and programs.
Certainly no government is more desirous than
our own to reflect the human attitude,
the purpose of making better citizens—
physically, intellectually, spiritually.
To this end I am convinced that such a department
in the government would be of real value.
It could be made to crystallize much of rather vague
generalization about social justice into solid accomplishment.
Events of recent years have profoundly impressed
thinking people with the need to recognize
new social forces and evolutions, to equip our citizens
for dealing rightly with problems of life and social order.
In the realms of education, public health, sanitation,
conditions of workers in industry, child welfare,
proper amusement and recreation,
the elimination of social vice, and many other subjects,
the government has already undertaken
a considerable range of activities.
I assume the maternity bill, already strongly approved,
will be enacted promptly,
thus adding to our manifestation of human interest.
But these undertakings have been scattered
through many departments and bureaus
without coordination and with much overlapping of functions
which fritters energies and magnifies the cost.
Many subjects of the greatest importance are handled
by bureaus within government departments
which logically have no apparent relation to them.
Other subjects which might well have the earnest
consideration of federal authority have been neglected
or inadequately provided for.
To bring these various activities together
in a single department,
where the whole field could be surveyed,
and where their interrelationships could be properly
appraised, would make for increased effectiveness,
economy, and intelligence of direction.
In creating such a department it should be made plain
that there is no purpose to invade fields
which the states have occupied,
in respect of education, for example,
control and administration have rested with the states,
yet the federal government has always aided them.
National appropriations in aid of educational purposes
the last fiscal year were no less than $65,000,000.
There need be no fear of undue centralization
or of creating a federal bureaucracy
to dominate affairs better to be left in state control.
We must, of course, avoid overlapping the activities
by the several states, and we must ever resist
the growing demand on the federal Treasury
for the performance of service
for which the state is obligated to its citizenship.
Somewhat related to the foregoing human problems
is the race question.
Congress ought to wipe the stain of barbaric lynching
from the banners of a free
and orderly, representative democracy.
We face the fact that many millions of people
of African descent are numbered among our population,
and that in a number of states they constitute
a very large proportion of the total population.
It is unnecessary to recount the difficulties incident
to this condition, nor to emphasize the fact that
it is a condition which cannot be removed.
There has been suggestion, however, that
some of its difficulties might be ameliorated
by a humane and enlightened consideration of it,
a study of its many aspects, and an effort to formulate,
if not a policy, at least a national attitude of mind
calculated to bring about the most satisfactory possible
adjustment of relations between the races,
and of each race to the national life.
One proposal is the creation of a commission
embracing representatives of both races,
to study and report on the entire subject.
The proposal has real merit.
I am convinced that in mutual tolerance, understanding,
charity, recognition of the interdependence of the races,
and the maintenance of the rights of citizenship
lies the road to righteous adjustment….
Neither branch of the government can be unmindful
of the call for reduced expenditure
for these departments of our national defense.
The government is in accord with the wish
to eliminate the burdens of heavy armament.
The United States ever will be in harmony with such
a movement toward the higher attainments of peace.
But we shall not entirely discard our agencies for defense
until there is removed the need to defend.
We are ready to cooperate with other nations
to approximate disarmament,
but merest prudence forbids that we disarm alone….
The American aspiration, indeed, the world aspiration,
was an association of nations, based upon the application
of justice and right, binding us in conference
and cooperation for the prevention of war
and pointing the way to a higher civilization
and international fraternity
in which all the world might share.
In rejecting the League covenant and uttering that rejection
to our own people, and to the world,
we make no surrender of our hope and aim
for an association to promote peace
in which we would most heartily join.
We wish it to be conceived in peace and dedicated to peace,
and will relinquish no effort to bring the nations of the world
into such fellowship,
not in the surrender of national sovereignty
but rejoicing in a nobler exercise of it
in the advancement of human activities,
amid the compensations of peaceful achievement.
In the national referendum to which I have adverted
we pledged our efforts toward such association,
and the pledge will be faithfully kept.
In the plight of policy and performance,
we told the American people
we meant to seek an early establishment of peace.
The United States alone among the Allied
and associated powers continues in a technical state of war
against the Central Powers of Europe.
This anomalous condition
ought not to be permitted to continue.
To establish the state of technical peace
without further delay, I should approve
a declaratory resolution by Congress to that effect,
with the qualifications essential to protect all our rights.
Such action would be the simplest
keeping of faith with ourselves, and could in no sense
be construed as a desertion of those
with whom we shared our sacrifices in war,
for these Powers are already at peace.
Such a resolution should undertake
to do no more than thus to declare the state of peace,
which all America craves.
It must add no difficulty in effecting, with just reparations,
the restoration for which all Europe yearns,
and upon which the world’s recovery must be founded.
Neither former enemy nor ally can mistake
America’s position, because our attitude as to responsibility
for the war and the necessity for just reparations
already has had formal and very earnest expression.
It would be unwise to undertake to make a statement
of future policy with respect to European affairs
in such a declaration of a state of peace.
In correcting the failure of the Executive,
in negotiating the most important treaty
in the history of the Nation,
to recognize the constitutional powers of the Senate
we would go to the other extreme, equally objectionable,
if Congress or the Senate
should assume the function of the executive.
Our highest duty is
the preservation of the constituted powers of each,
and the promotion of the spirit of cooperation
so essential to our common welfare.
It would be idle to declare for separate treaties of peace
with the Central Powers on the assumption
that these alone would be adequate,
because the situation is so involved that
our peace engagements cannot ignore
the Old World relationship
and the settlements already effected,
nor is it desirable to do so in preserving our own rights
and contracting our future relationships.
The wiser course would seem to be the acceptance
of the confirmation of our rights and interests
as already provided and to engage under the existing treaty,
assuming of course, that this can be satisfactorily
accomplished by such explicit reservations and modifications
as will secure our absolute freedom from inadvisable
commitments and safeguard all our essential interests.
Neither Congress nor the people needs my assurance
that a request to negotiate needed treaties of peace
would be as superfluous and unnecessary
as it is technically ineffective,
and I know in my own heart there is none who would wish
to embarrass the Executive in the performance of his duty
when we are all so eager to turn disappointment and delay
into gratifying accomplishment.
Problems relating to our foreign relations
bear upon the present and the future,
and are of such a nature that the all-important future
must be deliberately considered, with greater concern
than mere immediate relief from unhappy conditions.
We have witnessed, yea, we have participated
in the supremely tragic episode of war,
but our deeper concern is in the continuing life of nations
and the development of civilization.
We must not allow our vision to be impaired
by the conflict among ourselves.
The weariness at home and the disappointment to the world
have been compensated in the proof that this republic
will surrender none of the heritage of nationality,
but our rights in international relationship
have to be asserted;
they require establishment in compacts of amity;
our part in readjustment and restoration cannot be ignored,
and must be defined.
With the super-governing league definitely rejected
and with the world so informed,
and with the status of peace proclaimed at home,
we may proceed to negotiate the covenanted relationship
so essential to the recognition of all the rights everywhere
of our own nation and play our full part in joining
the peoples of the world in the pursuits of peace once more.
Our obligations in effecting European tranquility,
because of war’s involvements,
are not less impelling than our part in the war itself.
This restoration must be wrought
before the human procession can go onward again.
We can be helpful because
we are moved by no hatreds and harbor no fears.
Helpfulness does not mean entanglement,
and participation in economic adjustments
does not mean sponsorship for treaty commitments
which do not concern us, and in which we will have no part.
In an all-impelling wish to do the most and best
for our own republic and maintain its high place
among nations and at the same time make,
the fullest offering of justice to them,
I shall invite in the most practical way
the advice of the Senate, after acquainting it with all
the conditions to be met and obligations to be discharged,
along with our own rights to be safeguarded.
Prudence in making the program and confident cooperation
in making it effective cannot lead us far astray.
We can render no effective service to humanity until
we prove anew our own capacity for cooperation in
the coordination of powers contemplated in the Constitution,
and no covenants which ignore our associations in the war
can be made for the future.
More, no helpful society of nations can be founded on justice
and committed to peace until the covenants reestablishing
peace are sealed by the nations which were at war.
To such accomplishment—to the complete reestablishment
of peace and its contracted relationships,
to the realization of our aspirations for nations associated
for world helpfulness without world government,
for world stability on which humanity’s hope are founded,
we shall address ourselves, fully mindful
of the high privilege and the paramount duty
of the United States in this critical period of the world.34
On May 27 the United States presented a Draft Treaty of Amity and Commerce
to Mexico’s newly elected president Obregón who promised that
with the election of Harding all the difficulties
between the two nations could be adjudicated easily.
Also on the 27th Harding signed the Emergency Tariff that
protected American farmers by raising the tariffs on imported agricultural products
such as corn, wheat, sugar, beans, peanuts, potatoes, onions, rice, lemons,
cottonseed, coconut, olive oil, wool, and meat of various kinds.
This would also increase federal revenues.
During the Wilson Administration and the Great War the United States
paid off its national debt and became a creditor nation for a while.
American exports were worth $9.5 billion in 1919,
and in 1921 they were only $5.2 billion.
Yet the United States was still doing better than other countries.
Wilson had appointed William S. Culbertson, who had a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale,
to the Federal Tariff Commission,
and he became Harding’s advisor on tariffs.
In his annual message to Congress on December 6
Harding called for flexibility on tariffs.
The U. S. Senate did not begin working on the tariff bill until April 1922,
and it became law when Harding signed it on September 21.
On June 7 the Joint Commission on Agriculture Inquiry was approved,
and President Harding was to appoint the members from the Senate and the House.
The commission was to last for 90 days.
The budget, which Wilson had vetoed, passed 344-9 on May 25,
and President Harding signed the Budget and Accounting Act on June 10.
The new Bureau of the Budget was put in the Treasury Department,
though the Budget Director was made responsible to the President,
not the Treasury Secretary.
Charles E. Dawes had been Comptroller of the Currency for President McKinley.
Harding hired him to help cut government expenditures as the first
Director of the Bureau of the Budget, and he met with the Cabinet on June 28.
Dawes gathered bureau chiefs from all departments in an auditorium
and instructed them on thrift, economy, and efficiency.
They began working on the budgets for the fiscal years
ending on June 30 in 1922 and 1923.
Harding asked Dawes to reduce federal spending by $1 billion,
and Dawes surpassed that and served for only one year.
He was assisted by twelve wealthy men who worked for a dollar a year.
Harding replaced Dawes with General Herbert M. Lord.
By August 1 they had a schedule for savings in fiscal 1922,
and on October 12 the budget request for 1923 was submitted to Congress.
The budget for 1922 was $3,967,922,366, and the one for 1923 was $3,505,754,727
which was $1.5 billion less than U. S. expenditures in 1921.
In the 1922 budget the Navy was forced to give back $100 million.
The Agriculture Department lost $25 million, and Secretary Wallace
argued that relief for farmers was more important than lowering taxes.
Treasury Secretary Mellon and Commerce Secretary Hoover proposed
cutting the wartime excess profits tax by reducing the highest rates
from 71%, 72% and 73% to 58% in 1922,
and that only helped those with the highest incomes.
They also increased the 10% corporate tax rate in 1921 to 12.5% in 1922.
Those paying 4% on incomes under $4,000
and 8% between that and $6,000 got no benefit.
The married couple exemption was reduced from $2,500 to $2,000
for net income over $5,000.
The Revenue Act of 1921 became law on November 23.
On June 30 Harding’s nomination of the former President William Howard Taft
made him Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
On July 2 Harding signed the Congressional resolution ending the war against Germany.
Issues over reparations would continue to be discussed.
General Leonard Wood went on a mission to investigate the Philippine Islands
and write a report, and in July he changed his mind
and agreed to be the Governor General of the Philippines.
The soldiers’ bonus bill, which was called the Soldiers’ Adjusted Compensation Bill,
was popular and supported by the American Legion,
and by 1921 bonuses were being granted by 38 states.
The U. S. Senate had a bill to pay $1.25 per day for each day overseas
during the Great War paid quarterly or converted to life insurance.
This would increase the national debt, and on July 6
Treasury Secretary Mellon wrote to the Senate asking them to defer the reduction.
On July 12 Harding told the Senate that he opposed the bonus bill.
He explained that 813,442 compensation and insurance claims for veterans
were pending and that $500,000 had already been paid for claims.
Vocational training and rehabilitation programs for 107,824 men
were costing $65 million a year, and another $500,000 would be needed.
On July 15 the Russian writer Maxim Gorky wrote to Herbert Hoover
asking for American aid to relieve starving Russians.
American and Soviet governments signed a document at Riga on August 19,
and American relief workers began arriving in Moscow ten days later.
In December the U. S. Congress appropriated $20 million for Russian relief.
By August 1922 about 200 Americans were supervising
18,000 relief stations to feed about ten million people.
On 9 August 1921 Harding signed the Sweet Act
that established the Veterans Bureau.
Many in the press praised his courage and intelligence,
and the Senate put aside the bonus bill.
On August 24 the Futures Trading Act put a 20-cent per bushel tax
on grain sold for future delivery.
This was challenged, and the Supreme Court overturned it nine months later.
Also on August 24 Harding signed the Emergency Agricultural Credits Ac
that divided the farm bloc while providing some relief.
Agriculture Secretary Wallace asked for lower railway freight rates for farm products,
and Commerce Secretary Hoover complained that would harm business.
Wallace and Hoover agreed that science could make farming more efficient.
The United States signed a treaty with Austria on August 24
and another at the German Office in Berlin on August 25.
The treaty with Hungary was signed at Budapest on August 29.
Congress reconvened on September 22.
Interior Secretary Fall wrote an executive order to transfer the Forest Service
and national forests in the United States and the Alaska Territory
to the Interior Department, and he presented it to Harding.
Agriculture Secretary Wallace denounced Fall in an Agriculture Department bulletin,
and a fierce debate took place at a Cabinet meeting.
Wallace said that if the transfer took place,
he would resign and criticize Fall in public meetings in the West.
Harding tried to find a compromise and then agreed not to approve the transfer.
When Harding appointed Commerce Secretary Hoover to supervise
a Colorado irrigation project because he was a “great engineer,”
Fall complained and threatened to resign.
Harding offered Fall the next Supreme Court vacancy, and Fall remained.
As unemployment in the United States reached 5.7 million,
on September 26 Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover organized
the Conference on Unemployment in Washington DC.
In his speech to 300 delegates Harding noted that
the industrial depression was being felt throughout the world.
Storehouses were depleted, and finances were unbalanced.
He concluded,
Fundamentally sound, financially strong,
industrially unimpaired, commercially consistent,
and politically unafraid, there ought to be work
for everybody in the United States who chooses to work,
and our condition at home and our place in the world
depends on everybody going to work and pursuing it
with that patriotism and devotion
which makes for a fortunate and happy people.35
On October 3 the White House released this “Statement on the Conference:”
The conference which I recently summoned
to Washington to advise as to the unemployment situation
has demonstrated that an unusual volume
of unemployment exists, and that pending
the recuperation of trade the situation cannot be met,
in due regard to our obligations and necessities,
without a much more than usual organization
throughout those states and municipalities where
unemployment has reached considerable proportions.
The conference has recommended a plan of organization
which has had the support of commercial, manufacturing,
professional and labor representatives of the country.
It is highly necessary that more accurate knowledge
should be had through such organization
of the volume and necessities of the unemployed.
It is essential that the cooperation of all sections
of each community should be brought into action
behind such organization to provide work and assistance
that we may pass through the coming winter
without great suffering and distress.
It is of national importance that every community
should at once undertake such organization in order that
the nation may be protected as a whole.
Moreover, the thorough commitment to such,
a task is sure to start a thousand activities
which will add to our common welfare.
I therefore appeal to the Governors
and Mayors of the nation that they should
take the steps recommended by the conference.
In order that there may be unity of action
by all the forces which may be brought to bear,
whether governmental or private,
the unemployment conference is establishing
an agency in Washington through which
appropriate cooperation can be promoted
and through which reports on progress and suggestions
may be given general circulation and cooperation.
I trust this agency will be supported in this endeavor.36
Senator William Borah of Idaho on 14 December 1920 had persuaded
the Senate to approve an international conference with Britain and Japan
to reduce the building of more navy ships.
The lame-duck Congress in January 1921 held three hearings on disarmament.
Those testifying included Acting Secretary of State Norman Davis,
Navy Secretary Daniels, and General John J. Pershing.
On March 1 the U. S. Senate passed 58 to 0 the Borah resolution
as amended by Senator Walter E. Edge;
and Borah defeated that when the Naval Appropriation Bill was not passed.
The Harding Administration did not oppose the Borah resolution.
The new Congress passed the Naval Appropriation with it in May
with the Senate approving 74 to 0.
Congress learned that Harding was getting information
on disarmament and foreign nations, and the House passed the Naval bill 332-4.
The Senate’s passage gave Harding the naval program with arms limitation on July 11.
On that day the world learned that the conference
on naval disarmament would be meeting in Washington.
On August 11 Secretary of State Hughes sent out formal invitations to four great powers.
The Japanese would be allowed to raise questions,
and they accepted the agenda on October 17.
The Americans formed a General Board to investigate, and they estimated that
by 1928 Britain and the United States would have about one million tons of capital ships,
and Japan would have 600,000 tons.
This was the basis for a 5-5-3 ratio.
On October 26 Harding gave a rather long speech
for the semi-centennial celebration in Birmingham, Alabama.
He reviewed the history of the region and was concerned that the South was making
“its colored population a vast reservoir of ignorance,
to be drained away by the processes of migration into all other sections.”
He noted that the issue of races was no longer in only one section of the country.
He hoped,
that we shall find an adjustment of relations between
the two races, in which both can enjoy full citizenship,
the full measure of usefulness to the country
and of opportunity for themselves,
and in which recognition and reward
shall at last be distributed in proportion
to individual deserts, regardless of race or color.37
He suggested,
Just as I do not wish the South
to be politically entirely of one party;
just as I believe that is bad for the South,
and for the rest of the country as well,
so I do not want the colored people
to be entirely of one party.
I wish that both the tradition of a solidly Democratic South
and the tradition of a solidly Republican black race
might be broken up.
Neither political sectionalism nor any system
of rigid groupings of the people
will in the long run prosper our country.I want to see the time come when black men
will regard themselves as full participants
in the benefits and duties of American citizenship;
when they will vote for Democratic candidates,
if they prefer the Democratic policy on tariff or taxation,
or foreign relations, or what-not; and when they will vote
the Republican ticket only for like reasons.
We cannot go on, as we have gone
for more than a half century,
with one great section of our population,
numbering as many people as the entire population
of some significant countries of Europe,
set off from real contribution to solving our national issues,
because of a division on race lines.38
President Harding convened the arms limitation conference in Washington,
and other nations sending delegates included Belgium, China, Britain,
Italy, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Japan.
Harding delegated Secretary of State Hughes to negotiate,
and he with Elihu Root and senators Henry Cabot Lodge and Oscar Underwood
would lead an Advisory Committee that included four women.
On November 11 Harding began the conference with this speech
that was broadcast on radio:
Mr. Secretary and Members of the
Conference, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great and happy privilege to bid the delegates
to this Conference a cordial welcome to the Capital
of the United States of America.
It is not only a satisfaction to greet you because we were
lately participants in a common cause, in which shared
sacrifices and sorrows and triumphs brought our nations
more closely together, but it is gratifying to address you
as the spokesmen for nations whose convictions and attending
actions have so much to do with the weal or woe of all mankind.
It is not possible to over appraise the
importance of such a conference.
It is no unseemly boast, no disparagement of other nations
which, though not represented, are held in highest respect,
to declare that the conclusions of this body will have a signal
influence on all human progress—on the fortunes of the world.
Here is a meeting, I can well believe, which is an earnest
of the awakened conscience of twentieth century civilization.
It is not a convention of remorse, nor a session of sorrow.
It is not the conference of victors to define terms of settlement.
Nor is it a council of nations seeking to remake humankind.
It is rather a coming together, from all parts of the earth,
to apply the better attributes of mankind to minimize the
faults in our international relationships.
Speaking as official sponsor for the invitation, I think
I may say the call is not of the United States of America alone,
it is rather the spoken word of a war-wearied world, struggling
for restoration, hungering and thirsting for better relationship;
of humanity crying for relief and craving assurances of lasting peace.
It is easy to understand this world-wide aspiration.
The glory of triumph, the rejoicing in achievement, the love of liberty,
the devotion to country, the pangs of sorrow, the burdens of debt,
the desolation of ruin—all these are appraised alike in all lands.
Here in the United States we are but freshly turned from the burial
of an unknown American soldier, when a nation sorrowed
while paying him tribute.
Whether it was spoken or not, a hundred millions of our peopl
were summarizing the inexcusable causes, the incalculable cost,
the unspeakable sacrifices, and the unutterable sorrows,
and there was the ever impelling question:
How can humanity justify or God forgive?
Human hate demands no such toll;
ambition and greed must be denied it.
If misunderstanding must take the blame,
then let us banish it, and let understanding rule
and make good will regnant everywhere.
All of us demand liberty and justice.
There can not be one without the other, and they must
be held the unquestioned possession of all peoples.
Inherent rights are of God, and the tragedies of the world
originate in their attempted denial.
The world to-day is infringing their enjoyment
by arming to defend or deny, when simple sanity calls for
their recognition through common understanding.
Out of the cataclysm of the World War came new fellowships,
new convictions, new aspirations.
It is ours to make the most of them.
A world staggering with debt needs its burden lifted.
Humanity which has been shocked by wanton destruction
would minimize the agencies of that destruction.
Contemplating the measureless cost of war and the
continuing burden of armament, all thoughtful peoples
wish for real limitation of armament and would like war outlawed.
In soberest reflection the world's hundreds of millions who
pay in peace and die in war wish their statesmen to turn
the expenditures for destruction into means of construction,
aimed at a higher state for those who live and follow after.
It is not alone that the world can not readjust itself and cast
aside the excess burdens without relief from the leaders of men.
War has grown progressively cruel and more destructive from the first
recorded conflict to this pregnant day, and the reverse order would more become our boasted civilization.
Gentlemen of the Conference,
the United States welcomes you with unselfish hands.
We harbor no fears; we have no sordid ends to serve;
we suspect no enemy; we contemplate or apprehend no conquest.
Content with what we have, we seek nothing which is another’s.
We only wish to do with you that finer, nobler thing
which no nation can do alone.
We wish to sit with you at the table
of international understanding and good will.
In good conscience we are eager to meet you frankly,
and invite and offer cooperation.
The world demands a sober contemplation
of the existing order and the realization that
there can be no cure without sacrifice,
not by one of us, but by all of us.
I do not mean surrendered rights, or narrowed freedom,
or denied aspirations, or ignored national necessities.
Our republic would no more ask for these than it would give.
No pride need be humbled, no nationality submerged,
but I would have a mergence of minds
committing all of us to less preparation for war
and more enjoyment of fortunate peace.
The higher hopes come of the spirit of our coming together.
It is but just to recognize varying needs and peculiar positions.
Nothing can be accomplished in disregard of national apprehensions.
Rather, we should act together to remove the causes of apprehensions.
This is not to be done in intrigue.
Greater assurance is found in the exchange
of simple honesty and directness among men
resolved to accomplish as becomes leaders among nations,
when civilization itself has come to its crucial test.
It is not to be challenged that government fails
when the excess of its cost robs the people
of the way to happiness and the opportunity to achieve.
If the finer sentiments were not urging, the cold, hard facts
of excessive cost and the eloquence of economics
would urge us to reduce our armaments.
If the concept of a better order does not appeal,
then let us ponder the burden and the blight of continued competition.
It is not to be denied that the world has swung along
throughout the ages without heeding
this call from the kindlier hearts of men.
But the same world never before was so tragically brought
to realization of the utter futility of passion’s sway when
reason and conscience and fellowship point a nobler way.
I can speak officially only for our United States.
Our hundred millions frankly want less of armament and none of war.
Wholly free from guile, sure in our own minds
that we harbor no unworthy designs,
we accredit the world with the same good intent.
So I welcome you, not alone in good will and high purpose,
but with high faith.
We are met for a service to mankind.
In all simplicity, in all honesty and all honor,
there may be written here the avowals of world conscience
refined by the consuming fires of war,
and made more sensitive by the anxious aftermath.
I hope for that understanding
which will emphasize the guarantees of peace,
and for commitments to less burdens
and a better order which will tranquilize the world.
In such an accomplishment there will be added glory
to your flags and ours, and the rejoicing of mankind
will make the transcending music of all succeeding time.39
Al Jolson offered to sing Harding’s message and wrote,
Take ‘way the gun
From ev’ry mother’s son,’
We’re taught by God above
To forgive, forget and love.
The weary world is waiting for
Peace forevermore.
So take away the gun
From ev’ry mother’s son,
And put an end to War.40
U. S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes was chairman of the conference,
and he boldly declared that the way to disarm is to disarm.
Because Japan, England, and the United States were engaged in naval construction
in a waste of resources, he boldly proposed that
they should build no more warships of any kind for ten years.
Hughes proposed that the United States would scrap 15 capital ships
being constructed and 15 old battleships with a total of 845,740 tons
if England got rid of 19 and Japan 17.
The Americans would be destroying warships worth $330 million.
Hughes challenged the British to stop building their four new Hood dreadnoughts.
The three powers of the United States, Britain, and Japan
agreed that the tonnage of their ships would be the ratio of 5-5-3.
The Americans scrapped ships with 845,000 tons,
the British with 583,000, and Japan with 480,000.
Women had gained the right to vote in 1920,
and in 1921 reports showed that about 80% of pregnant women
did not receive adequate prenatal care.
On 23 November 1921, President Harding signed the
Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act that
provided federal matching funds for maternal and child health care.
Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover hired the Harvard professor Julius Klein
as the Director of the United States Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce,
and they established trade offices in major American cities and abroad.
In 1921-24 the Commerce Department organized about 900 conferences,
and they had 229 committees working on efficiency and
standardization in industry and commerce.
In his first annual message to Congress on December 5 President Harding
reviewed the accomplishments and efforts of his government.
The value of some of these such as the protective tariffs and reducing taxes
for the wealthy are dubious as the future would show.
In the last part of his message he took up other issues and suggested solutions.
The right of labor to organize is just as fundamental
and necessary as is the right of capital to organize.
The right of labor to negotiate, to deal with and solve
its particular problems in an organized way,
through its chosen agents, is just as essential as is
the right of capital to organize, to maintain corporations,
to limit the liabilities of stockholders.
Indeed, we have come to recognize that the limited liability
of the citizen as a member of a labor organization
closely parallels the limitation of liability of the citizen
as a stockholder in a corporation for profit.
Along this line of reasoning we shall make
the greatest progress toward solution
of our problem of capital and labor….
There is yet unreserved approximately 200,000,000 acres
in the public domain, 20,000,000 acres of which
are known to be susceptible of reclamation
and made fit for homes by provision for irrigation.
The Government has been assisting in the development
of its remaining lands, until the estimated increase
in land values in the irrigated sections is full $500,000,000
and the crops of 1920 alone on these lands
are estimated to exceed $100,000,000.
Under the law authorization these expenditures
for development the advances are to be returned
and it would be good business for the Government
to provide for the reclamation
of the remaining 20,000,000 acres, in addition
to expediting the completion of projects long under way.
Under what is known as the coal and gas lease law,
applicable also to deposits of phosphates
and other minerals on the public domain,
leases are now being made on the royalty basis,
and are producing large revenues to the Government.
Under this legislation, 10 per centum of all royalties
is to be paid directly to the Federal Treasury,
and of the remainder 50 per centum is to be used
for reclamation of arid lands by irrigation,
and 40 per centum is to be paid to the States,
in which the operations are located,
to be used by them for school and road purposes.
These resources are so vast, and the development
is affording so reliable a basis of estimate,
that the Interior Department expresses the belief that
ultimately the present law will add in royalties and payments
to the treasuries of the Federal Government and the States
containing these public lands a total of $12,000,000,000.
This means, of course, an added wealth
of many times that sum.
These prospects seem to afford every justification
of Government advances in reclamation and irrigation.
Contemplating the inevitable and desirable increase
of population, there is another phase of reclamation
full worthy of consideration.
There are 79,000,000 acres of swamp and cut-over lands
which may be reclaimed and made as valuable
as any farm lands we possess.
These acres are largely located in Southern States,
and the greater proportion is owned
by the States or by private citizens.
Congress has a report of the survey of this field
for reclamation, and the feasibility is established.
I gladly commend Federal aid, by way of advances,
where State and private participation is assured.
Home making is one of the greater benefits
which government can bestow.
Measures are pending embodying this sound policy
to which we may well adhere.
It is easily possible to make available permanent homes
which will provide, in turn,
for prosperous American families,
without injurious competition with established activities,
or imposition on wealth already acquired.
While we are thinking of promoting the fortunes
of our own people, I am sure there is room
in the sympathetic thought of America
for fellow human beings
who are suffering and dying of starvation in Russia.
A severe drought in the Valley of the Volga
has plunged 15,000,000 people into grievous famine.
Our voluntary agencies are exerting themselves
to the utmost to save the lives of children in this area,
but it is now evident that unless relief is afforded
the loss of life will extend into many millions.
America cannot be deaf to such a call as that.
We do not recognize the government of Russia,
nor tolerate the propaganda which emanates therefrom,
but we do not forget the traditions of Russian friendship.
We may put aside our consideration of all international
politics and fundamental differences in government.
The big thing is the call of the suffering and the dying.
Unreservedly I recommend the appropriation necessary
to supply the American Relief Administration
with 10,000,000 bushels of corn
and 1,000,000 bushels of seed grains,
not alone to halt the wave of death through starvation,
but to enable spring planting in areas where the seed grains
have been exhausted temporarily to stem starvation.
The American Relief Administration is directed in Russia
by former officers of our own armies,
and has fully demonstrated its ability to transport
and distribute relief through American hands
without hindrance or loss.
The time has come to add the Government’s support
to the wonderful relief already wrought
out of the generosity of the American private purse….
He concluded,
Agreeable to your expressed desire and in complete accord
with the purposes of the executive branch
of the Government, there is in Washington,
as you happily know, an International Conference
now most earnestly at work on plans
for the limitation of armament, a naval holiday,
and the just settlement of problems which might develop
into causes of international disagreement.
It is easy to believe a world-hope
is centered on this Capital City.
A most gratifying world-accomplishment
is not improbable.41
During the war many people had been convicted under the Espionage Act.
On July 4 Harding had Attorney General Daugherty bring the prisoner Eugene Debs
to the White House, and Harding promised to release him.
On December 23 President Harding pardoned 24 including the Socialist Eugene Debs
who had been sentenced to ten years and whom
Harding had defeated in the 1920 election.
After Debs was released, he visited Harding in the White House.
He promised Harding that he would not reveal what occurred and kept his word.
He did say, “Mr. Harding appears to me to be a kind gentleman.
We understand each other perfectly.”42
At the end of the year Harding expressed his frustration with Congress, saying,
Nothing so disheartens me as to have an extended
conference with men in responsible places,
hear them admit of the correctness of a policy or a position,
and then frankly say it is impossible to go through with the policy
or maintain the position and be assured of re-election.43
Commerce Secretary Hoover organized the American Relief Administration (ARA)
with 200 Americans who established 18,000 stations in Russia
that fed about 10 million people by the mid-1923 at a cost of $78 million.
During the winter of 1921-22 the post-war depression
continued with unemployment at 11.9%.
About ten percent of farmers had lost their land.
Unions would react to wage-cuts and unemployment with strikes in the summer.
On 30 December 1921 President Harding approved Wallace’s Agricultural Conference
and they met on 23 January 1922 for four days with 336 delegates from 37 states.
On February 18 the Capper-Volstead law protected cooperatives
and exempted them from antitrust laws.
During the 12 weeks between the conferences the United States and Japan
agreed to maintain the 5-5-3 ratio for 15 years
and not replace any for 10 years after that.
French and Italian navies would be half of Japan’s.
Hughes proposed ten years without construction and a final fixed limit
on tonnage of 500,000 for Britain and the United States, 300,000 for Japan,
and 175,000 for France and Italy.
The Americans, British, Japanese, and French agreed to a Four-Power Treaty.
On February 6 all the nations attending signed the
Nine-Power Open Door Pact related to treating China fairly.
Japan promised to withdraw from Shantung province
and finally did so in September 1927.
Elihu Root suggested a resolution to prohibit the use of poison gas
and acceptance of that as binding international law,
and it was approved unanimously.
After that negotiations ended.
They failed to include auxiliary ships and submarines as the Americans had proposed.
This allowed a naval race for those ships.
When the conference on arms limits was completed
on 6 February 1922 President Harding said,
This conference has wrought a truly great achievement.
It is hazardous sometimes to speak in superlatives,
and I will be restrained.
But I will say, with every confidence,
that the faith plighted here today,
kept in national honor, will mark the beginning
of a new and better epoch of human progress.44
On February 10 Harding asked the Senate to ratify the conference treaties.
After passing 90-2 Senator Brandegee’s amendment which stated,
“The United States understands that under the statement in the preamble
or under the terms of this treaty there is no commitment to armed force,
no alliance, no obligation to join in any defense,”45
they voted 67-27 for the Four-Power Treaty.
The Senate approved by a vote of 67 to 22 the Yap Treaty with Japan on March 11.
Harding declined to reduce the U. S. Navy below the treaty strength
of 86,000 men, and he supported developing the United States Fleet
later in 1922 with its Battle Fleet on the Pacific Coast.
Harding’s suggestion in November to have an “association of nations”
was quickly challenged by threats from Senators Borah and Johnson.
Congress had failed to pass a shipping bill in 1922, and on February 28
Harding in a special message to Congress
submitted another plan to subsidize shipping.
He said,
We have voiced our concern for the good fortunes
of agriculture, and it is right that we should.
We have long proclaimed our interest in manufacturing,
which is thoroughly sound,
and helped to make us what we are.
In the evolution of railway transportation we have revealed
the vital relationship of our rail transportation
to both agriculture and commerce.
We have been expending for many years large sums
for deepened channels and better harbors
and improved inland waterways, and much of it
has found abundant return in enlarged commerce.
But we have ignored our merchant marine.
The World War revealed our weakness,
our unpreparedness for defense in war,
our unreadiness for self-reliance in peace.46
Commerce Secretary Hoover supported it while
Agriculture Secretary Wallace argued over the details
with advertising expert Albert D. Lasker.
The House of Representatives passed the bill 208-184 on November 27.
The Senate did not pass the shipping bill in the special session,
and after a 5-day filibuster in the Senate in February 1923 Harding gave up.
On 1 July 1922 the Agricultural Appropriations Act transformed the
Office of Farm Management and the Bureau of Crop and Livestock
to form the Bureau of Agricultural Economics.
On April 11 the Senate Finance Committee led by Penrose’s successor
Porter McCumber of North Dakota introduced a tariff bill
that had over 2,000 amendments mostly providing more protection.
The Senate passed the bill 48-25 on August 19.
Harding signed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff on September 21,
and it allowed him to raise or lower tariffs by as much as 50%.
In April a Wyoming oil operator wrote a letter to his Senator John B. Kendrick
complaining that Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Oil got a secret deal on an oil contract
at Teapot Dome, and the Wall Street Journal exposed this story on April 14.
The next day Kendrick called for an investigation,
but a committee would not begin working on that until October 1923.
Increased wages for mine workers during the war
expired on 1 April 1922, and operators refused to negotiate.
The United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis
called for a strike by coal workers on that day.
About 400,000 bituminous-coal miners began a strike,
and they demanded a 5-day work week with 6-hour days.
Harding invited the leaders of the managers and of the unions
including Lewis of the United Mine Workers.
Harding urged operators to resume production for the coming winter,
and he warned the two sides of government intervention.
He directed the Department Secretaries Hoover, Davis, and Fall
o supervise negotiations.
On June 5 the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that
the striking miners were liable for damage of company property.
In two years from 1 June 1921 the Conciliation Service of the Labor Department
facilitated peaceful settlements in 87% of 1,129 strikes or threatened strikes.
On June 7 the Interior Secretary Fall gave Harding his 75-page report on oil leases.
Harding did not read it before he turned it over to the Senate.
William J. Lester owned the Southern Illinois Coal Company,
and he hoped to make a profit during the strike.
He brought in strikebreakers, and on June 22 in Herrin, Illinois
the miners killed 18 of them while two striking miners also died.
Commerce Secretary Hoover tried to negotiate a settlement,
and he suggested forming a coal commission.
Lacking agreement in July the President presented a plan for work to be resumed
on existing schedules while a committee was appointed to investigate
and advise fair recommendations.
Lewis and Mine Workers rejected that.
On July 15 the United Mine Workers Policy Committee accepted
the presidential fact-finding commission while rejecting the proposal.
On July 18 Harding telegraphed 28 governors of coal-producing states
asking operators to recognize the miners’ right to work.
On July 24 Harding released to a correspondent this statement:
The President does not share your views
about government ownership.
He does believe that every man in America
has the unquestioned right to work
or to decline to work as he himself believes.
The man who declines to work
is entitled to protection from lawless oppression,
and the man who chooses to work has the right
to be protected in his lawful employment.
On these definite policies the government is willing
to risk the solution of the pending dispute.47
In June the Railway Labor Board was considering another wage reduction.
Four big unions in the AFL made a deal with carriers
and did not join the striking craft workers.
The Railroad Labor Board called on labor leaders and railroad executives on June 29,
and on July 1 they reduced wages by about 12%.
On that day about 400,000 shop-men began
the first national railway strike since 1894.
On July 3 the Railroad Labor Board warned men
they would lose their rights if they did not return to work by July 10.
A proposed solution offered on July 31 was refused by the railroad executives.
President Harding admitted that in July and August 1922
he spent 90% of his time working on the labor problem.
On August 10 he made his last mediation effort.
He believed that his function was not to take sides but to bring peace and resolve turmoil.
He wrote to a friend that he would “go a long ways to avoid civil conflict.”
Although capital and labor might fight again, he would work for peaceful methods.
The Packers and Stockyards Act signed on August 15
allowed the Agriculture Secretary to supervise packers.
Treasury Secretary Mellon had done business with the Pittsburgh coal company
for 15 years, and he pressured their operators to find a settlement with the miners.
On August 15 the union and representatives from the coal fields met in Cleveland,
and they agreed that wages and working conditions on March 31
would be continued until 1 April 1923.
They asked President Harding to form a commission to investigate
how to conduct future negotiations on wages.
On August 18 Harding spoke to a joint session of the Congress,
and in that long speech he concluded with this:
In the weeks of patient conference
and attempts at settlement I have come to appraise
another element in the engrossing industrial dispute
of which it is only fair to take cognizance.
It is in some degree responsible for the strikes
and has hindered attempts at adjustments.
I refer to the warfare on the unions of labor.
The Government has no sympathy or approval
for this element of discord in the ranks of industry.
Any legislation in the future must be as free
from this element of trouble making as it is
from labor extremists who strive for class domination.
We recognize these organizations in the law,
and we must accredit them
with incalculable contribution to labor’s uplift.
It is of public interest to preserve them
and profit by the good that is in them,
but we must check the abuses and the excesses
which conflict with public interest,
precisely as we have been progressively legislating
to prevent capitalistic, corporate, or managerial domination
which is contrary to public welfare.
We also recognize the right of employers
and employees alike within the law,
to establish their methods of conducting business,
to choose their employment
and to determine their relations with each other.
We must reassert the doctrine that in this republic
the first obligation and the first allegiance of every citizen,
high or low, is to his Government, and to hold that
Government to be the just and unchallenged sponsor
for public welfare, and the liberty,
security, and rights of all its citizens.
No matter what clouds may gather,
no matter what storms may ensue,
no matter what hardships may attend
or what sacrifice may be necessary,
government by law must and will be sustained.
Wherefore I am resolved to use all the power
of the Government to maintain transportation,
and sustain the right of men to work.48
On August 21 the Congress began debating a Coal Inquiry Bill,
and it authorized the President to appoint a commission of impartial
representatives to study the coal industry and report.
On August 30 the House of Representatives voted 214-61
for the administration’s Coal Distribution and Control Bill.
The Senate changed it a little, and Harding signed the Cummins-Winslow Act
which established the Fuel Administration to regulate pricing, control,
and distribution of coal during strikes.
After three days on the presidential yacht with Harding, three senators,
Rep. Winslow, and secretaries Hoover and Fall, the U. S. Attorney General Daugherty
went to a U. S. District Court in Chicago and asked for an injunction.
Judge Wilkerson granted the injunction and ended the strike on September 1.
Labor resented this.
The House of Representatives impeached Daugherty,
and the Senate did not convict him.
Harding vetoed the bonus bill for veterans on 19 September 1922
only six weeks before the election.
Harding and Mellon worked together on the Soldiers’ Adjusted Compensation
Message of the President of the United States, writing,
With the avowed purpose of the bill to give expression
of a nation’s gratitude to those who served
in its defense in the World War, I am in accord.
[But] it is worth remembering that public credit is founded
on the popular belief in the defensibility of the public
expenditure as well as the government’s ability to pay.
Our heavy tax burdens reach, directly or indirectly,
every element in our citizenship.
To add one-sixth of the total sum of our public debt for a
distribution among less than 5,000,000 out of 110,000,000,
whether inspired by grateful sentiment
or political expediency, would undermine the confidence
on which our credit is built and establish the precedent
of distributing public funds whenever the proposal
and the numbers affected
make it seem politically appealing to do so.49
The U. S. Congress established the Coal Commission on September 22.
On that day the Married Women’s Citizenship Act became law so that
a woman marrying a foreign national would not lose her citizenship.
Florence Harding was very ill in September and nearly died.
On the 13th she described her near-death experience in which she saw her father
and other dead relatives and walked through the valley of death
until she decided to go back to her body.
On September 14 the House of Representatives passed the bonus bill
for veterans in 25 minutes, and the next day the Senate did so 37-17.
Harding said the bill would increase the national debt,
and he vetoed it on September 19.
The Senate voted 44-28 that day, four votes short of the two-thirds needed.
Defeat of this popular measure would hurt Republicans
in the midterm elections six weeks later.
On October 24 Secretary of State Hughes advised Harding that
Americans needed to be at the Lausanne Conference that was to begin
on November 20 not to negotiate but to learn, promote freedom,
and protect American interests and minorities.
In the elections on November 7 the Republicans lost 77 seats
in the House of Representatives while the Democrats gain 76.
Republicans still had a 225-207 advantage,
and Minnesota elected two men from the Farm-Labor Party.
In the U. S. Senate the Republicans lost seven seats, and the Democrats gained six.
Republicans still had control by 53-42.
Frank Shipstead of Farm-Labor defeated Republican Frank Kellogg.
Most Republicans blamed high tariffs for their losses.
On December 1 in Washington 13 senators led by La Follette and Norris
met and endorsed a program to abolish the electoral college,
have direct primaries for all elective offices,
prompt convening of newly elected Congresses,
and eliminate “special privilege” from government.
During the speeches the lawyer Samuel Untermyer
severely criticized Attorney General Daugherty.
In his second annual message to Congress on 8 December 1922
Harding spent nearly half his message on transportation and how to make it better.
He also said,
The civilization which measured its strength of genius
and the power of science and the resources of industries,
in addition to testing the limits of man power
and the endurance and heroism of men and women—
that same civilization is brought to its severest test
in restoring a tranquil order and committing humanity
to the stable ways of peace….
The railway strike accentuated
the difficulty of the American farmer.
The first distress of readjustment came to the farmer,
and it will not lie a readjustment fit to abide
until he is relieved.
The distress brought to the farmer
does not affect him alone.
Agricultural ill fortune is a national ill fortune.
That one-fourth of our population which produces the food
of the Republic and adds so largely to our export commerce
must participate in the good fortunes of the Nation,
else there is none worth retaining….
We are so vast and so varied in our national interests
that scores of problems are pressing for attention.
I must not risk the wearying of your patience
with detailed reference.
Reclamation and irrigation projects,
where waste land may be made available
for settlement and productivity,
are worthy of your favorable consideration.
When it is realized that we are consuming our timber
four times as rapidly as we are growing it,
we must encourage the greatest possible cooperation
between the Federal Government, the various States,
and the owners of forest lands, to the end
that protection from fire shall be made
more effective and replanting encouraged….
A superpower survey of the eastern industrial region
has recently been completed, looking to unification
of steam, water, and electric powers,
and to a unified scheme of power distribution.
The survey proved that vast economies in tonnage
movement of freights, and in the efficiency of the railroads,
would be effected if the superpower program were adopted.
I am convinced that constructive measures
calculated to promote such an industrial development—
I am tempted to say, such an industrial revolution—
would be well worthy the careful attention
and fostering interest of the National Government….
Whether all nations signatory ratify
all the treaties growing out of the Washington Conference
on Limitation of Armament or some withhold approval,
the underlying policy of limiting naval armament
has the sanction of the larger naval powers,
and naval competition is suspended.
Of course, unanimous ratification is much to be desired.
The four-power pact,
which abolishes every probability of war on the Pacific,
has brought new confidence in a maintained peace,
and I can well believe it might be made a model
for like assurances wherever in the world
any common interests are concerned….
Treaties of armed alliance
can have no likelihood of American sanction,
but we believe in respecting the rights of nations,
in the value of conference and consultation,
in the effectiveness of leaders of nations
looking each other in the face
before resorting to the arbitrament of arms.
It has been our fortune
both to preach and promote international understanding.
The influence of the United States in bringing near
the settlement of an ancient dispute
between South American nations is added proof
of the glow of peace in ample understanding.
In Washington to-day are met
the delegates of the Central American nations,
gathered at the table of international understanding,
to stabilize their Republics
and remove every vestige of disagreement.
They are met here by our invitation, not in our aloofness,
and they accept our hospitality because they have faith
in our unselfishness and believe in our helpfulness.
Perhaps we are selfish
in craving their confidence and friendship,
but such a selfishness we proclaim to the world,
regardless of hemisphere, or seas dividing.
I would like the Congress and the people of the Nation
to believe that in a firm and considerate way
we are insistent on American rights
wherever they may be questioned,
and deny no rights of others in the assertion of our own.
Moreover we are cognizant of the world’s struggles
for full readjustment and rehabilitation,
and we have shirked no duty which comes of sympathy,
or fraternity, or highest fellowship among nations.
Every obligation consonant with American ideals
and sanctioned under our form of government
is willingly met.
When we cannot support, we do not demand.
Our constitutional limitations do not forbid
the exercise of a moral influence,
the measure of which is not less than
the high purposes we have sought to serve.50
On 4 January 1923 the Chancellor of the Exchequer Stanley Baldwin
led the British Debt Commission that arrived in Washington.
In February the U. S. Congress approved the British Debt Agreement,
and the Debt Commission made agreements with 15 other countries.
Harding and Hughes worked on supporting some League of Nations activities
without becoming a member.
They both favored an international court of justice.
Some isolationists hoped to replace Harding in 1924.
In January 1923 President Harding replaced
the incompetent E. Mont Reily who had resigned.
Harding sent to Puerto Rico the U. S. Rep. Horace M. Towner of Iowa
who was chairman of the Insular Affairs committee.
Towner was very successful at improving American relations with Puerto Ricans.
Harding’s old friend Walter F. Brown suggested reorganizing the
federal government by changing the Post Office to Communications and War
and Navy to Defense with a new department for Education and Welfare.
This triggered many arguments that seemed to confuse Harding.
Coolidge would reject reorganization.
The decorated soldier Charles Forbes was in charge of the Veterans Bureau.
Dr. Sawyer learned that Forbes was abusing his office.
Florence Harding worked to help veterans, and she supported Forbes.
The Surgeon General H. S. Cummings told Sawyer that
Forbes was selling hospital supplies from warehouses.
This news was passed on to Daugherty and Harding.
He confronted Forbes who lied to him.
Forbes claimed he was innocent, and he wired his
resignation from France on February 15.
The Senate began investigating Forbes on March 2.
Forbes also took the wife from Elias H. Mortimer who managed to get
Forbes sent to jail for taking kickbacks from sold land.
His legal advisor Charles F. Cramer had conspired with Forbes.
Cramer resigned on March 7 and killed himself one week later.
Harding appointed a new director for the Veterans Bureau.
Forbes was eventually convicted of stealing loot worth $2 million
and was sentenced to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Interior Secretary Albert Fall had financial problems,
and his resignation on 2 January 1923 became effective on March 4.
On that day the 67th United States Congress adjourned.
Fall before leaving Washington secretly gave Harry Sinclair a 5-year
renewable contract for all the “royalty oil” from the Teapot Dome fields.
In early 1923 President Warren Harding and others suffered from a virulent influenza.
He had a heart condition since 1919.
Harding seemed tired and could not complete a round of golf.
Dr. Sawyer persuaded him to go to Florida to rest,
and after ten days he returned to Washington.
He was having trouble sleeping, and he had to be propped up in bed
so that he could breathe.
His blood pressure was over 175.
Harding’s salary as President was $73,000 a year.
He had been hoping to return to his newspaper work after his presidency,
and shortly before leaving for the Alaska trip he sold the Marion Star
to Louis H. Brush, the newspaperman and top Republican fundraiser from Ohio,
for $500,000 in Liberty bonds that paid 4.25% interest.
Harding then told Sam Ungerleider to buy $500,000 in stocks on margin for him
and that he would pay him when he returned from Alaska.
He also made a new will.
He said that he was only going to serve for one term
and that he and Florence were going to travel on a large yacht and go around the world.
Hoover worked on persuading United States Steel to change their
12-hour work-day by replacing two 12-hour shifts with three 8-hour shifts.
Even in May 1923 U. S. Steel President Elbert H. Gary was still clinging
to the 12-hour day complaining that he would have to hire 60,000 more workers.
Harding wrote a letter to steel executives urging the reform.
Unions had reached a peak with over 5 million members in 1920,
and by 1923 membership had fallen to about 3,440,000.
Under Harding the U. S. Army was reduced from 230,725 in 1921 to 133,243 in 1923
and the Navy from 132,827 to 94,094.
When the journalist William Allen White was in Washington,
Harding asked to see him.
They discussed the newspaper business
and how they made money on stock distribution.
Then Harding said,
And that’s the hell of it.
Right now, at the moment, there is a bunch
down at the Willard Hotel coming up to see me
this afternoon good friends of mine from Ohio,
decent fellows that I have worked with thirty years.
Some of them have supported me through thick and thin.
Well, there is an energetic young district attorney
down East here—maybe New York, or Boston or
Philadelphia, it don’t make any difference where—
and he has gone and indicted those fellows;
is going to put them in jail for violating the antitrust law
or some conspiracy law for doing exactly in crockery
what I have done in printing for twenty years.
And they know all about my method,
and they are going to ask me to dismiss the indictment.
I can’t do that.
The law is the law, and it is probably all right,
a good law and ought to be enforced.
And yet I sit here in the White House
and have got to see those fellows this afternoon, and explain
why I can’t lift a hand to keep them from going to jail.
My God, this is a hell of a job!
I have no trouble with my enemies;
I can take care of my enemies all right.
But my damn friends ...
they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!”51
Harry Daugherty’s close friend and unpaid assistant
at the Justice Department Jeff Smith was also suspected of wrong-doing with bootleggers.
On May 30 Smith was found dead at his apartment from a probable suicide.
The journalist William H. Crawford estimated that
Harding was working 84 hours per week.
On June 2 Harding commended Secretary of State Hughes for the plan
to remove the US military from the Dominican Republic.
The evacuation was proceeding and was expected to be completed in the spring of 1924.
In June 1923 on the day before Harding left for his Alaska trip,
he commuted the sentences of 27 Wobblies from the IWW
(Industrial Workers of the World) so that there were
no more wartime prisoners in American jails.
The IWW reached its peak that year with 58,300 dues-paying members.
The President’s train left Washington on June 20.
Harding traveled by railroad to the Pacific Coast
and then on the USS Henderson to Alaska.
He enjoyed the sights and being the first U. S. President to visit Alaska
which he predicted was destined for statehood.
He was cheered up by a warm reception at a speech he gave in Seattle
at the University of Washington.
Afterward he complained of abdominal pain.
Doctors Sawyer and Boone found his pulse was 120
and his respiration 40 breaths per minute.
They suspected cardiac malfunction.
Harding traveled to San Francisco, and blood samples showed that
he had bronchopneumonia.
The President could not give his foreign policy address on July 31,
and Commerce Secretary Hoover released the speech to newspapers.
Harding died at the Palace Hotel on August 2,
and four doctors agreed that the cause of death was announced as an “apoplexy stroke.”
The rumor that his wife Florence may have poisoned Harding gained credibility
after about a year later Dr. Sawyer died suddenly while she was visiting him.
After she returned to Washington, the Coolidges allowed her
to stay in the White House for about a week.
During that time she apparently burned Harding’s papers
in a fire place during the August heat.
Harding was a very popular President, and an estimated 9 million people
came to railroad tracks to see the train carrying his body back to Washington.
Many sang his favorite hymn, “Nearer My God to Thee.”
A few months later the Teapot Dome scandal exploded in the news,
and Harding’s reputation gradually deteriorated.
On 31 May 1921 Navy Secretary Edwin Denby had transferred the
Navy’s oil reserves in California and Wyoming to
the Department of the Interior under Secretary Albert B. Fall.
Navy Secretary Denby and Interior Secretary Albert Fall advised Harding
to let the Interior Department administer the oil reserves.
The President issued the executive order on May 31,
and by Spring 1922 rumors spread that the oil reserves
were being leased to commercial interests.
Conservationists felt outrage, and they urged their friends to contact Congress
which passed a resolution on April 15 directing Denby and Fall
to report on the oil reserves.
The Senate authorized an investigation on April 29.
Harding admitted that Denby and Fall had gotten his approval.
Fall secretly leased oil from Teapot Dome in Wyoming to Harry Sinclair
of the Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation and
Elk Hills to Edward Doheny of the Pan-American Oil Company in California.
In commercial operations oil was lost by drainage.
Harding approved Albert Fall going to Russia in May.
Senator Walsh learned that Fall was suddenly prospering financially,
and his hearings exposed the scandal.
After Harding’s death Walsh asked President Coolidge to appoint a special counsel
to investigate and prosecute the crimes,
and he appointed two on 27 January 1924.
Daugherty was investigated, and two trials
resulted in a hung jury and an acquittal.
The oil tycoons Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair were also prosecuted.
In 1929 Fall was convicted of taking bribes from Doheny,
and Fall was the first cabinet member to go to prison.
In 1930 Doheny was acquitted on the bribing charge.
Sinclair spent six months in jail for jury tampering.
Many years after Harding’s death evidence revealed that
he had extra-marital affairs with Carrie Phillips before and while he was a senator
and an affair with Nan Britt who bore his child while he was President.
1. The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times
by Francis Russell, p. 68.
2. Ibid., p. 134.
3. Ibid., p. 230.
4. Ibid., p. 236.
5. Warren G. Harding: The American Presidents Series by John Dean, p. 35.
6. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 257.
7. Warren G. Harding: The American Presidents Series by John Dean, p. 41.
8. The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times
by Francis Russell, p. 283-284.
9. Online see UVA Miller Center Presidential Speeches.
10. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 308.
11. Ibid., p. 315.
12. Warren G. Harding by John Dean, p. 46.
13. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 368.
14. Ibid., p. 49.
15. Online see UVA Miller Center Presidential Speeches.
16. Warren G. Harding by John Dean, p. 51.
17. Ibid., p. 55.
18. Online see UVA Miller Center Presidential Speeches.
19. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 353.
21. The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration
by Robert K. Murray, p. 332-333.
22. Address Accepting the Republican Presidential Nomination in Marion, Ohio
See Online at UVA Miller Center Presidential Speeches.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 408.
27. The Harding Era by Robert K. Murray, p. 60.
28. Ibid., p. 64.
29. March 4, 1921: Inaugural Address: Online see UVA Miller Center.
30. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 449.
31. Online see UVA Miller Center Presidential Speeches.
32. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 457.
33. Ibid., p. 454.
34. Online see presidency.ucsb.edu/people/president.
35. Online see presidency.ucsb.edu/documents.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 471-472.
39. Address Opening the Washington Conference:
Online see The American Presidency Project.
40. The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times
by Francis Russell, p. 475.
41. Online see UVA Miller Center Presidential Speeches.
42. The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times
by Francis Russell, p. 487.
43. Ibid., p. 459.
44. Warren G. Harding by John Dean, p. 134.
45. The Harding Era by Robert K. Murray, p. 159.
46. Ibid., p. 286-287.
47. Ibid., p. 247.
48. Online see presidency.ucsb.edu/documents.
49. The Harding Era by Robert K. Murray, p. 313.
50. Online see UVA Miller Center Presidential Speeches.
51. The Shadow of Blooming Grove by Francis Russell, p. 559-560.
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