The USA in the Time of Warren G. Harding
1921-1923
By Mike Donovan
‘He just looks like a president’ - Teapot Dome - Alto sax – The Ohio Gang - Ohio Central College – Prohibitionist - Poker player - Party Harding - The Marion Star - VP Calvin Coolidge - Defeated James Middleton Cox of Ohio in the election of 1920- Fall’s Fall – 8 hr day – 7th President from Ohio
“I have no trouble with my enemies. But my Goddamn friends keep me walking the floors nights.” - WGH
In the election of 1920 Harding beat Dem Cox 404-127. Eugene Debs the Socialist jailbird polled almost a million vote but no votes in the Electoral College.
Popular vote 1920-------------------Harding R) 16, 152,000
Cox D) 9,147,000
Debs S) 919,000
SHORT TAKE
It's one thing to have an administration that is so plagued by corruption that three members are forced to resign. It's another thing to have an administration that it so plagued by corruption that three members of your administration are sent to jail. But it's a special level of corruption when three members of the administration are so corrupt that when they are caught they kill themselves! Warren G. Harding had three members of his staff commit suicide before his term ended (Chuck Kramer, Jack King and Jesse Smith, and we'll get to them later.) Those who resigned and/or went to jail were just gravy on top of the Harding Administration suicides.
WG may be the greatest party animal ever to occupy the White House. Warren and his “Ohio Gang” used to have poker parties all the time at his house on K Street in Washington. There were allegedly a lot of dames there too, and maybe a little whiskey. This Warren G was a regular guy who loved baseball and football and boxing. He was a good friend and most people who knew him said, a good man, but ...
Harding must have read the Sam Grant book on how to be a President. Like Grant, we just have to hope that he was just naïve in the company he kept and the deals that went down in his house.
Harding is another one of our “bad presidents.” Historians bash him to this day as if they knew him personally. But he did preside over a time of peace and prosperity, and a time relatively free of dramatic events. That of course makes it impossible for hi to make the good president list.
It was always said about Harding, “he just looks like a president”. Unfortunately he didn’t seem to act like one. He was cordial and charming but he basically remained passive, a seeming anachronism from before the Progressive Era, a president letting big business run the country while he listened to college football on that new-fangled contraption, the radio..
The corrupt ways of the Ohio Gang finally culminating in the Teapot Dome scandal involving slimy insider transfers of public lands rich in oil. Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was convicted and imprisoned in the Dome scandal. How much did Harding know? It’s one of ‘histories mysteries’ Harding was never charged with anything illegal in the Dome.
Harding's big personal scandal involved an illegitimate child he made with a woman he used to meet at the White House for Clintonesque encounters. Warren didn't point his finger at the camera and say, “I did not have sex with that woman.” In fact, Warren ended up paying a certain lady named Nan Britton child support.
Harding died while on a trip to Alaska in the third year of his term. The book The Strange Death of President Harding suggests in no uncertain terms, that Harding may have been poisoned by his wife Florence.
Harding gets punked endlessly by historians but his life wasn’t exactly a failure. He was by all accounts a charming, and charismatic friendly person. Harding was favorite uncle, a game show host before game shows.
Harding didn’t like to do the rough low-down things that make for political advancement. That’s why he was always the front man for rougher people like Harry Daugherty, the president maker. When Daugherty spotted Harding he knew immediately that he had a special mold of clay before him, one which he could use expertly to advance them both in life. “I met Harding and he was a turtle sunning himself. I pushed him into the water.”
His big crime is that he was the nice-guy and not a dirty fighter. In his 36 years as editor of the Marion Ohio Daily Star he never fired a single employee.
Harding’s cabinet
Sec. of State----------------Charles Evans Hughes 1921-1913
Sec. of War-----------------John W. Weeks--------1921-1923
Sec of Treasury--------------Andrew W. Mellon----1921-1923
The Aluminum magnate
Att. General---------------Harry M. Daugherty---1921-1923
Sec. Of Interior----------------Albert 'Teapot’ Fall
CABNOTES
Harry Daugherty and Al Fall were two of the poor choices. Mellon was pretty good and Charlie Hughes was a great choice.
BIO
Warren G. Harding was born on November 2, 1865 in the town of Blooming Grove, Ohio. He grew up on a farm. When Warren was 8 his father became a doctor. Blooming Grove has since changed its name to Corsica. It is not far from Marion, from where he would later rise in life.
Warren became a printer’s devil when his dad became part owner of the Caledonia Argus, a weekly local newspaper.
At 14 Warren G went off to Ohio Central College which no longer exists but he graduated before it went under (the same with me and Career Academy School of Broadcasting.) Harding edited the school yearbook and was popular fellow, a real ‘joiner.’
Warren even tried show biz, becoming the agent for a band. But after that gig didn’t last. Harding was musically inclined himself and could play several instruments.
Like many other presidents, he tried teaching and didn’t stick with it. Harding didn’t care for the $30 a month salary and called it a very hard job. He tried studying law but that didn’t suit him either.
WG found his calling when he became a cub reporter for the Marion Star at the young age of 19. A few years later, when this old rag was on the verge of bankruptcy, Harding talked to some investors and bought the paper for $300 (and remember this was when two cents could buy a fancy hotel room in New York for a week.)
In 1891 Warren G. found his Maid Marion. Warren G married the daughter of the wealthiest banker in town, Florence Kling De Wolfe. Flo was a a divorcée, and six years older than him. De Wolfe is de fox, easily the best looking first lady of all time. He called her ‘The Duchess.’ Some feel that Florence was a domineering influence over him and pushed him in ways and to degrees he would not have pushed himself. Flo also believed in astrology and may have let the stars play a role in Harding’s decisions (shades of Nancy Reagan.) Some think she poisoned her husband in the summer of 23. Yes, they say that the First Lady assassinated the President with poison.
Both nominees for President in 1920 were former newspaper editors. Harding by now had been running the Marion Star for many years.
The 7th president from the Ohio served as state senator and later Lieutenant Governor, but lost his try for the governors seat in 1909.
Harding gave the nominating speech for President Taft at the 1912 Republican Convention.
He was elected US Senator from Ohio in 1914.
EVENTS
ELECTION OF 1920
REJECTION OF LEAGUE OF NATIONS
TREATY OF BERLIN 1921
TEAPOT DOME
DEBS PARDONED
BUDGETING AND ACCOUNTING ACT 6-21
MITCHELL AIR POWER DEMO
THE WASHINGTON TREATIES 1921-22
RISE OF MUSSOLINI
VETERANS BUREAU CREATED 8 21
FORBES VETERANS BUREAU SCANDAL 200 MIL MISSING
FORDNEY-MCCUMBER TARIFF
FIRST WOMAN SENATOR
HARDING’S PHILANDERING
VETO OF BONUS BILL
REPARATIONS AND ALLIED WAR DEBTS
BIRTH OF RADIO
LABOR UNREST
SUDDEN ILLNESS AND DEATH OF HARDING
ELECTION OF 1920 AND THE WAR AGAINST WAR
There was a confluence of two very powerful and opposite movements. One was right-wing euphoria over the victory of WWI. The other was a left-wing backlash against war, and against capitalism as the cause of the war. In this parallel groundswell of left and right, the isolationists were everywhere, but mostly in the Republican right. There was plenty of isolationism in the Demo left for different reasons.
The election of 1920 was clearly going to be a referendum on the Treaty of Versailles, and the League of Nations, since the two parties were more or less similar on domestic issues.
For Wilson, the winning war wasn’t a winner. Like Churchill, and GHW Bush, Wilson was to learn that winning a war didn't guarantee rewards for the party in power.
WW1 was the first major war in the victors come home with a bad taste in their mouth. The stalemates and the astronomical casualties had at long last given war a bad name. It had taken thousands of years but mankind finally wised up. War is bad. Prior to 1914, it was deadly but glorious, at times even beloved. From 1916 on it was just deadly.
There was a book published in the 1920’s called “War Against War.” It was nothing but photographs of people still alive but with portions of their faces shot off from the war. It is the most horrible book I have ever seen. I only saw it once. It is a rare book and in hard to find anywhere. Its too horrible. But in the 20’s it was mass produced. People were crusading against the horror of war and this book was not in a ‘can’t be shown’ class. It was more of a ‘must be shown’ book.
The public was finally mad about the war, rather that mad for it. The defeat of the Kaiser offered no politician bump. Berlin had never been occupied so it didn’t exactly feel like a clear victory. In fact, not one square mile of Germany proper was ever occupied by a foreign soldier prior to the armistice.
People were even beginning to believe that the war had been manufactured by manufacturers. That was the theory going around. Big business started the war to make money selling armaments. Some people still believe this.
These critics don't seem to realize that big business fears war, for it means more government regulations, possible commandeering of industry, not to mention the disruptions of international markets and currencies.
Throughout the 1920's, professors were writing books about how both sides were equally to blame for the war’s outbreak. Germany was evolving from the evil Hun to being rehabilitated. The verdict suddenly was that Germany was no more guilty for the war than any of the Allies were.
The Democrats had to face the enmity of too much of the Foreign-American vote. The Irish people over here were not exactly gung-ho thankful to America for saving its historic oppressor Great Britain. The German-American and Italian-American voters weren’t wild for Wilson either, Germans for obvious reasons. The Italians were on the winning side but were fuming over a post war settlement that took the city of Fiume from Italy and gave it to the newly created Republic of Yugoslavia. Italian-American voters were not happy with the loss of Fiume.
The immigrant vote was eager for a return to isolationism. Millions had already fled Europe to come and live here, so they voted isolationist. They voted Republican.
The Republican Convention was held in Chicago. The progressives within the Party kept their cool this time. They knew by now the damage they had done in 1912 by bolting the party and running TR as a progressive. The Republicans admitted that they had put Wilson in the White House by splitting up the party vote. This time they behaved.
All of the Republican front runners were for something called ‘normalcy.’ There was Leonard Wood, a Rough Rider war hero, - Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois, and Hiram Johnson of California. Warren G. Harding was rated a distant fourth. William Robert “Bobby” Sprowl (PA Gov.), and Nick Butler were also in the hunt. Butler was from Mayberry, NC.
Johnson might have won but in California Herbert Hoover gave him a dent. The renowned Hoover had refused many pleading requests to run for president in 1920. He wanted no part of it and made it plain that he wasn't posturing.
He did make one exception for the California Republican primary. Hoover was a strong supporter of both the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. He also was an avowed advocate of US membership in the world court. The Lodge, Hiram Johnson crowd of hard-liner isolationist reactionaries were openly against all three.
Hoover allowed him name to be in the California Republican primary as a wind sock to test the feelings of the voters on the League, Court and Versailles issues. While he was at it he could put a dent in the campaign chances of a man Hoover disliked.
Hoover made it plain that he was in favor of these things where Hiram was against it. Hoover won three fourths as many votes as Johnson in California. Johnson won the primary but the results were secondary. The main points were that 1- the Republican voters were not against the Treaty, League, and Court per se. They wanted carefully regarded terms; and 2 - Hiram Johnson took a hit for 1920. A lot of people didn't like Hiram Johnson. My great grand-dad knew him and said he was a good guy, once you really got to know him.
Wood and Lowden were the clear winners of the Republican primaries. Harding only won his favorite son home state of Ohio. The Wood and Lowden campaigns were well financed, possibly too much. Had either man been nominated they would have had scandalous baggage to handle for receiving these extravagant levels of cash. This certainly might have hurt them with the ‘common man’ vote. Wood’s other major negative was his support for the continuation of the military draft.
At the Republican Convention the result of the first ballot was
Wood 287
Lowden 211
Johnson 113
Sprowl 84
Butler 68
Harding 65
Coolidge 28
After several ballots it was clear that neither Wood nor Lowden could gain a majority. A plan was hatched where the two would agree to combine their votes and be on the same ticket. The two men had to agree on the details. To avoid scrutiny the candidates were picked up one at a time in a taxi at two locations and driven around Chicago in the cab trying to work out a deal. But neither man would agree to second billing and the plan came to nothing except for one cabbie who made almost ninety dollars.
The inconclusive balloting continued. Then Harding’s’ name was put forward at just the right time and the Marion man picked up momentum fast. Everyone wanted a solution fast. On the tenth ballot Harding was in.
The delegates then rejected orders from up top when they selected governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts for VP. Lenny Wood was the favorite of the Lodge faction.
Calvin Coolidge had become nationally famous overnight over his handling of the Boston Police Strike of 1919. Calvin actually had some support for President at the start of the convention, but he was quite happy when the party chose him for the number 2 spot. Cal's dad would swear him in as President in August of 1923 by candlelight at three in the morning in a cabin in Vermont.
The Republican platform rejected the Versailles treaty but made vague statements supporting international organizations to preserve the peace.
The Democrats were injured in 1920 by Wilson’s decision to keep himself in the running even though he was a two term president who was physically broken. The strongest Democrat in terms of support and qualifications was probably Bob McAdoo, but since he was a Wilson cabinet member and also the President’s son-in-law, Mac had to stand pat.
The Democrats rejected Wilson and finally settled on James Middleton Cox of Ohio. For his running mate they chose Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York.
Cox ran a vigorous campaign while Harding conducted a “front porch campaign.” He entertained reporters in front of his house and didn’t go anywhere to give his speeches. Harding was a good orator, but the strategy was to deal from strength and don’t rock the boat. James Garfield had invented the front porch campaign in 1880 and Harding was imitating a mentor.
The campaign slogan for Harding-Coolidge was “America First” along with a “Return to Normalcy.” The America First slogan (which would be heard again in the late 30’s in Charles Lindbergh’s ‘US stay out of Europe’ campaign) was a clear rejection of Wilson’s exiting new internationalism. ‘America First’ not too subtly implied a distaste for the League of Nations. It also meant ‘Europe Second.’
James Cox was a self made man who rose from nothing to become the owner and publisher of the leading Democratic newspaper of Dayton Ohio. Cox then went on to become Congressman and then Governor of Ohio.
Cox was a die-hard fan of both the National League and League of Nations. There was no doubt where he stood on the League.
Harding on the other hand was as vague on the League in 1920 as John Kerry was on Iraq the in the presidential campaign of 2004.
The economy helped the challenger. A slight depression took hold in the second half of 1920. Wilson had to defend an unpopular treaty, an unpopular economy, and a popular opponent.
Election of 1920 - Just Say No to the League of Nations
If the election of 1920 were a referendum on US entry into the League of Nations, then apparently the American people were not in favor of US entry into the League of Nations. Harding was elected in a near landslide. Cox took the South and Harding took everything else. The Socialist candidate got 3% of the vote.
Most historians suggest that the Harding position on the League in the 1920 campaign was so equivocal that many voters may have actually voted for Warren G. thinking that he would bring them into this new body. My own opinion is the AMERICA FIRST campaign poster is clear enough. Warren wasn’t a big 'Leaguer.' And in reality if Harding was equivocal by being only conditionally in favor of the league, then he was not disloyal to the true Republican position.
The party did not reject the League until its own reservations about it were rejected. The sabotage of the League of Nations by the Republicans is recognized by history as a mistake, but it was not pre-meditated. Harding had a right to his vagueness. If he had mixed feelings about the League and supported it only with caution, then that was consistent with Republican thinking and not necessarily a deception.
In a highly publicized event, Cox visited Wilson in his convalescent home during the campaign. Some of Cox’s advisors had told him to stay away from Wilson and from making the League the number one issue in the election. Cox would have none of that line of thought and was happy to let Wilson praise the League to reporters during his visit to the sick incumbent President.
This Coxian consistency, sincerity, and loyalty is admirable. Cox should have made more use of Article X (10) of the League Covenant which said that use of military force by the League required the unanimous consent of all key member states. The charge that the League would infringe on American military independence was shaky at best.
Warren G. was in favor of prohibition. Cox was against it. Was Cox just a “degenerate boozehound?” Not at all, but one critic in the Springfield Republican called him that.
The female vote was from now on a player. The ratification in August 1920 of the 19th Amendment gave the vote to the women nationwide for the first time. It was the last great extension of the suffrage The suffragettes had won their fight for the vote just in time for the presidential contest. They became political participants at long last and many of them began to call Harding a ‘hunk’.
Eugene Debs ran for Prez in 1920 as leader of the Socialist party from prison! He was still doing time in Atlanta federal penitentiary for violating the Espionage Act during the First World War. Debs had been given ten years for a speech he gave one time. The Socialists accused the Democrats of suppressing freedom of speech during the war and the Dems had the nerve to be outraged by this charge. The near million votes for Debs in prison was an indication of serious strength for the left in America, a left that was at the moment very angry with the Democratic Party.
The problem for the Socialist party was internal splitting. This is one area where the left always outdoes the right. The Socialists lost most of their momentum because the left and right wings both were chopped off. When the war broke out, the conservative wing fell off because the party came out for direct non-support of the troops. Then when the Russian Revolution led to orders from Moscow to left socialists here to take more extreme actions, the left wing US Socialists left to join the unabashed Communist Parties here. These splits hurt the cause more than the Palmer raids.
In the Congressional elections the Republican won big also, earning a majority of 22 in the Senate and 167 in the House of representatives.
The Democratic response to its defeat in 1920 was to become more conservative itself. The Dems soon began favoring high tariffs. The Democrats coddled big business just like the Reps. This is partly why they nominated a Wall Street lawyer to run for president in ’24. They were trying to keep up with the Dow Jonses.
VERSAILLES TREATY REJECTED
The United States rejected the League of Nations to the surprise of much of the rest of the world. The United States after all, had been the one that had introduced the goal of morality into the First World War and now it was the first to abandon the ida of collective enforcement of it.
Prior to World War One, no nation in Europe really fancied themselves to be morally superior to the other states there. Power was its own reward, and here was no need to justify it with moral pronouncements of high goals. Only the United States was spewing that nonsense from across the ocean and no one outside the United States took it very seriously, even though we certainly did.
The whole game in Europe was 'balance of power' politics, and everyone understood it and accepted it as a fact of life. Many had tried to control Europe by creating a singular empire, from Rome to Napoleon to the British Empire. When 'peace through empire' was finally recognized as a failure, the next step was the balance of power system of alliances.
If a number of relatively equal states were left to their own devices, surely war would break our regularly between these selfish and greedy entities. The only way to prevent war was to have each of these states join one of two greater alliances. These two alliances would each be strong enough to deter any states in the other alliance from starting serious trouble. If you mess with any state, you will have to deal with all its big brothers. Two giant thugs thus emerged from all the states of Europe, and for a while this worked well enough. And no one in either alliance fancied themselves to be in it for some idealistic missionary crusade. “Survival is power without dogma.”
The system worked because every time a crisis arose, one of the quarreling states would back down before the threat of the other guy's big brothers. In the summer of 1914, a crisis arose in which a number of states decided this time they were all not going to back down. So now, instead of preventing the larger war, the system of grand alliances created the largest war in the history of the planet. Talk about a dismal failure. Balance of power politics put 20 million people into an early grave and left 30 million destitute in the aftermath. Nice goin'.
So now enters the United States which had never believed in balance of per politics, had never participated in balance of power politics, and worse, thought that it's armpits didn't stink because it preached that it stood for higher principles than anyone else on the globe.
Of course, the only reason the United States had never participated in balance of power politics was that it was safe and unthreatened in it's hemisphere, surrounded by weak nations and two moats of 3-6 thousand miles each, otherwise known as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. If the same men who ran our country found themselves located in the middle of Europe, we would have dropped the high and mighty rhetoric and joined one of the two systems of alliances in a heartbeat. First you survive.
The Europeans knew (believed) that Wilson and the Americans had been naïve about the difference between rhetoric and reality, and never took the moralist pronouncements of Wilson too seriously. But they needed America's help to win the war so they paid lip service to Wilson's words in order to get their hands on his weapons.
When the Entente won the war the Euros were faced with a new dilemma. They never had any intention of really establishing a new moral world order. They really just wanted to go back to the old playing board and slap the defeated Triple Alliance states around like a rag doll. But how could they do this and still maintain the veneer of moralists adhering to Wilsons vision? They had to make it look good. They needed to drag the United States into their balance of power world, but needed to pretend they were dragging us into an idealist crusade for a new world of peace. If they made it look like what it really was, a restoration of the same might makes right power game, the United States would surely back out of it.
The Entente victors wanted Sam to think he was coming over to help set up an idealistic world order, when they were really trying to hire an “American Gangster” to create an Empire, not even the recent balance of power, and certainly not Wilson's idealism.
The Versailles treaty and the League of Nations preached forgiveness and progressivism but practiced the opposite. The terms given to the defeated powers were no less punitive than those of any other war since the time of Christ. If the European victors had demonstrated by their deeds, that Wilsonian ideals were being respected and applied, then the Election of 1920 might have gone to the Democrats, and if it had not, then the Republicans might well have joined up after all.
But the Republicans of 1921 smelled a rat and made the call.
The obvious view is that the United States failed the cause of humanity when it failed to join the League for the simple reason that if the USA had joined, there never would have been a World War II.
But what was the United States being asked to join in 1921? Was it a cause of greater justice than the world had ever known? If so we should have joined.
But what were the signals coming out of Paris?
The Arab states had been promised independence during the war. They got instead a “mandate,” system of administration from outside and above. In other words, France and England had completely reneged on the promise. They set up puppet states and asked the people there to try and imagine they were independent when they were not. Now the western powers could own these places, yet ask the locals to do the dirty work of running the place in the name of their “independence.” These people would have been better off as colonial property. At least the ruling states would be responsible for picking up the garbage on Mondays.
In Africa, the French and British conquered German colonies and kept them for themselves, new overlords for old.
What kind of new Wilsonian order was being respected in Germany? The place was being robbed of territory, industry, money, and people as if Wilson and his words had never existed. Who wants to join this phony League?
What about Turkey? The western power was taking everything from the Ottoman Empire but the kitchen sink of Anatolia. If this was peace without victors then Wilson played fullback for Princeton.
This pattern of the vicious victors made Wilson's 14 points seem like a practical joke being put over on the world to amuse diplomats in Paris and London. Yet history has judged the decision of the United States to reject
the League solely on the conditions that resulted 25 years down the road, while ignoring completely the perspective of those who just happened to be making decision in Washington in 1921.
The Republicans were always willing to support the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, provided they could add conditions that would make the treaty something else instead. The obstructionists were led by Senator Henry Cabot (Dis-) Lodge of Massachusetts.
Like the “Radicals” and the “carpet-baggers,” the opponents of the League and the Treaty were given a derogatory nickname, the “irreconcilables.” Once one of these epithets is applied, the victims are stigmatized for all time because university historians seldom challenge orthodoxy. People stubbornly in favor of the league could just as easily be labeled “irreconcilable.” The word can be applied to anyone or any group about any position they feel strongly about. In this case the label is used as presentist punishment by the intellectual left because they didn’t get their way at the time (the Democrats won the election) and because it led to another big war.
It is simplistic and easy to blame those who were against the Treaty and the League as villains who ruined the one chance to prevent the coming of World War II. It is easy to condemn them as “isolationists” as though that word always has an entirely negative meaning (George Washington certainly had been an isolationist.)
Whether right or wrong in hindsight, there were logical reasons why the League had opponents here. Many Congressman felt that the United States would surrender too much of its national sovereignty. The idea of US troops under foreign command was unthinkable to some. What if our government decided it didn’t approve the mission and the troops had no heart for it? Under a unified military command, we would still have to fight. Some didn’t like the fact that Great Britain and France were keeping their colonies at the end of a war that had supposedly been fought against colonialism and imperialism. These countries couldn’t repay their loans the USA but they had enough money to keep their empires flourishing all over the globe.
The Senate had already rejected the League when Wilson was our president. Harding and the Congress of 1921-23 did not change our mind. The Republican party had campaigned with its position known. It wanted no part of any world organization that included “the compromise of national independence.”
The US later sat with, but not in, some League committees on issues not related to collective security, such as the international efforts to suppress the opium trade. It was always clear that US participation in sub-groups did not constitute approval or admittance to the larger organization. The presence of Americans at these gatherings was in part an apology of sorts for rejecting the league and treaty.
AFTERSHOCKS OF WWI
With the rejection of the Versailles Treaty by the Senate, the USA found itself still technically at war with Hungary, Germany and Austria. Wilson had vetoed a Congressional peace resolution for these three countries. Harding approved it as an early order of business in his new regime and it passed in July of 1921.
Austria and Hungary settled quickly. In August 1921 the peace with Germany was embodied in a formal treaty. It was a separate peace of there ever was one. The 1921 treaty of Berlin was a line by line examination of the Treaty of Versailles with inclusion of the articles we agreed with and rejection of the articles we didn’t. It was the Treaty with Lodge’s reservations negotiated one on one with Germany. The terms of our peace with Germany were not finalized until October 18, 1921.
The Great War in 1921 was officially over, although Poland and Russia were engaged in full scale war at this time. It wasn’t until this fight between Joe Pilsudski and Lenin ended that the First World War can truly said to have ended.
To review from the last chapter, the Russians had continued on in Civil War long after the guns fell silent on the Western front. This great Russian Civil War was marked by an Allied military intervention to regain lost supplies and to play political overthrow with the Bolos. British and US Army troops had battles with Red Army units in the Murmansk region. Coalition forces of British troops and Royalist Russians attacked the Reds from the Black and Caspian Sea front and failed. In the far East Americans fought side by side with Japanese troops in an invasion of Siberia. The Allied Intervention fizzled out on all fronts and left a legacy of bitterness between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the USA that lasted until the big thaw of 1988-92. The Soviet Union contended that we had tried to strangle it in it’s crib in 1919-1920.
Incidentally, the Japanese had refused to withdraw from eastern Siberia after the Americans left in April of 1920. The USA had no love for (or official recognition of) Soviet Russia but was firmly opposed to Japanese imperialism at the USSR’s expense. The continued presence of Japanese occupiers in the Vladivostok area was a smoldering problem inherited by the Harding team.
Turkey was in revolution in 1922 as well. If these aftershocks are included WWII did not end until at least 1922.
GERMANY
Most important fur the future of the USA was the post-war situation in Germany.
In the immediate turmoil of defeat several Communist revolutions erupted in Eastern Europe. The Russian Revolution was a signal to the radical left over the length of Europe that the time was now. They knew their Marx. When the system collapses, it was time to make the move to revolution from below and from the left. Hungary was under Communist rule for a year. Bavaria in Germany was taken over by Communists and declared an independent state. Communism was serious in Italy. These revolutions were supported by Moscow, but significantly, were not directed or orchestrated in any way from Moscow. They were spontaneous Communist revolutions erupting elsewhere and inspired the Russian Communists more than the Russian Communists inspired them. Lenin and Trostsky were elated with the prophesies of Marx coming true before their eyes. Some of the Soviet leaders never even really believed their own propaganda, but used political creeds to seize raw personal power. They were wide-eyed to see that their rhetoric about world revolution was really going to happen.
But it wasn't going to be so easy and it wouldn't last.
All this produced an extreme reaction from the right. The conservatives in in the west were also familiar with Marx. They read the proclamations of revolution and saw the Communist revolutions as serious threats.
A scattered civil war broke out all over Germany. While the Allies were discussing loans and political strategies to rebuild Europe while demilitarizing it at the same time, the people of Germany were cracking each others skulls in beer halls and on street corners. The situation was perfect for right wing para-military organizations of whom the Nazis were only one of many. The Nazis exploited the reigning fear of rising Communism to rise to power.
Nazi power was not initially built on anti-Semitism. It was built on anti-Communism. The anti-Semitism came later, after significant party growth and after much power had been seized.
Into this mix of fascism versus communism, the Allies had force-fed democracy on a traditionally undemocratic nation. How did the German people respond? The reaction was mixed. The German inter-war democracy lasted until 1933.
REPARATIONS, THE RUHR, AND THE INTER-ALLIED WAR DEBT
The German economy needed to be pumped up with funds, not drained further by reparations. The victors of Versailles had made two irreconcilable demands of Germany. On the one hand Germany had to reduce its industrial might by almost 50%, surrendering key areas to France, Poland, and others. At the same time it had to make giant guilt-of-war payments (reparations)
to the Allies. This would have been an unbearable burden in the best of economic times. In a nation that was in political chaos, and not yet recovered from the devastation of four years of tight naval blockade, the combo of reparations and depravations equaled spiraling inflation. No American has ever dreamed of the kind of inflation that swept Germany in the immediate post-war era.
The German mark became virtually worthless. People could not afford the simplest items because the prices had gone off the scales. A piece of bubble-gum cost ten trillion marks. Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but people were actually heating their homes with paper currency. It had more value as firewood than the amount of firewood it could buy! In July of 1923 an America dollar could be exchanged for 100,000 German dollars (marks). The out of control inflation peaked in the week that Harding died. In the first week of August, 1923 it took five million mark to buy one US dollar. The bubble gum stat was not all that far off.
An Allied Reparations Commission was formed to try and find a way to help Germany pay her reparations bill on time. One step was made by reducing the total bill due (excluding Belgian cost of war penalties) from 56 down to 33 billion dollars. But this 33 was just as impossible to pay for a poor and stripped nation like Germany as was the 56. They might as well raise it to 898 billion as reduce it from 56 to 33. In the end, at the coming of World War II, Germany had paid only five billion out of the original 56, none of it in the 1930’s. Few Americans thought in 1923 that in the end Germany would successfully default on 88% of its war reparations debt, and that’s just the principle. Including interest, Germany never paid about 97% of its contractual war reparations and Belgium debt of Versailles.
One thing the Allied Reparations Commission was always fixed dead center on is the idea that the first place that German Reparations Payments had to go was to pay for operating costs of the Allied Reparations Commission. This frustrated the French who by May of 1921 still hadn’t seen a nickel because all the German money was going to the ARC. Germany was paying the guys who were whipping her and paying for the whips.
France came down hard on Germany for some reparations payments “or else”. German pride was injured by this tone and one day in 1922 Germany defiantly and publicly refused to make it’s reparations pmt. The German chancellor, a Mr. Cuno thought that France would never make good its threat to occupy the small but heavily industrial Ruhr region and that if it did it could not operate the machinery effectively to make good use of the resources there. But he was wrong on both counts. In January of 1923 the French Army entered and occupied the Ruhr valley as punishment for Germany not paying it’s MasterCard bill. Cuno had to resign as Chancellor of Germany.
There was a second war debt of much significance, that between the Allies. This ‘inter-allied debt’ began with moneybags Great-Britian loaning large sums to its combat allies in the early months of the war. By the time of the later months of the war, all of the Entente nations including Great Britain were heavily in debt to the United States. America had loaned heavily early on when we stood off to the side of the war. Once we joined the war in 1917 it was ‘Katy bar the bank vault door.’ When all went quiet on the Western Front, Europe owed us more than ten billion bucks.
Now in Harding’s time we find a full circle of deadbeats and landlord bullies. Germany was begging that it had no money and could not pay its reparations bills to the European Entente allies. The Allies then in turn told the United States that they could not pay back their loans to Sam because Germany was not paying its war debts.
The United States was being asked by many to forgive the loans to the European allies. We had suffered the least in lost lives so we should consider these loans to be our effort in the war. They should be dissolved. Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover all rejected this criticism and felt that the loans should be re-paid and ‘what’s there to talk about?’
They called us “Uncle Shylock” because we wanted our loans paid back. Uncle Sam was the bad guy. Britian and France were telling Germany that they would like to forgive some of the war debt but they had to re-pay their loans to the United States.
Even if Harding or Coolidge had wanted to forgive the war debts of Germany, there was far too much political pressure at home against it. The American people were overwhelmingly against forgiving the loans to Europe.
The solution was for America to prime the pump in Germany and stimulate the economy with loans and investments. Then the flow of cash would flow from Germany to the European Entente Allies, who would keep the river flowing back to the states and the circle could keep flowing. It was a good idea. It didn’t work. But it was a good idea.
HARDING GANG
The left hated Harding in 1922 like the left hated Reagan in 1996. The leftorians (lefty historians) hated Harding 20 years after he was out of office like they hate W. today.
The Harding-haters go into emotional extras about why he was the worst man that ever lived, and rarely stick to the facts. They were just bitter because their guy, the leftist Wilson had lost and his protege Cox was defeated in 1920.
The main charge against Harding is the company he kept. I guess I'm responsible for working with a comic for two weeks in Vegas who got addicted to crack and murdered an elderly man for his $800 Social Security check.
The Harding appointees can be classified into three categories.
First were the bad guys who were convicted of misconduct or were at least indicted or forced to resign under a dark cloud.
Second were the ultra conservatives who are condemned for being rich and insensitive businessmen who had the audacity to act like conservatives after their conservative candidate was elected. Their crime was reversing all the progressivism of the last 20 years, and just being who they were. In the sixties it was ok to call for the murder of millionaire conservatives, because they were part of the “establishment.” It was how Charles Manson convinced his zombies to kill for him. He made sure the victims were bad people who deserved to die because of their oppressive lifestyles.
Third were those deemed liberal enough to get a pass, just barely. As long as they were ex-Democrats, and destined to later on condemn all Republicans and re-join the Democrats, then they were cool. Or if they achieved some kind of greatness in some other way and it wouldn't be profitable to condemn them, like if Babe Ruth contributed $5,000 to Harding's campaign, he would get a pass, or Henry Wallace, the left wing ex-Dem Secretary of Agriculture gets a pass.
So those are the three types, bad guys who got caught, bad guys who didn't get caught, and those who get a pass.
In category two we have the Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. He was so rich he could throw you a ticker tape parade in 50 dollar bills. When Mellon's name was announced for T, he was an unknown millionaire. A few weeks later the public knew how incredibly rich Mr. Mellon really was.
No one ever proved that Mellon did a bad job as Secretary of the Treasury. Historians condemn him because he did not favor progressive policies. That makes him a bad guy of history. Like all of America was supposed to be of the same political opinions then and now. Like diversity doesn't make a country great. The historians have collectively (95% of them) decided that all progressive historical figures are good, and all “reactionary” (read 'Republican” historical figures are bad. Mellon is a bad man because he was a rich Republican who personally was not a friend to labor and suffragettes and lower tariffs. That's his crime. He didn't fit in with the left historical political consensus of 90 years later. There's a thousand other notables in US history under the same villainous umbrella.
Mellon had one bad habit that even Harding and Jess Smith and Harry Daugherty hated. He liked to play poker with the boys on K Street, and he usually managed to win. Apparently the same skills he had used to rise to the top in business, he used to win at poker. The one guy in the room who totally didn't need the money was the guy who always won. Infuriating.
ECONOMICS UNDER WGH
A quick but hard-biting depression hit America just as Election Day 1920 was rolling in. It probably helped him get in, but it didn't help the first year of his presidency. The depression of 1920 didn't end until near the end of 1921.
The Harding-Coolidge years were famous for the government’s laissez faire attitude towards big business. But there are two elements of this image that are misleading. First of all big business was happy to have government actively interfere as long as it was interference designed to help big business. There was more of this to go around than history remembers generally. Business did not like laissez-faire in the realm of government assistance. It was only the other kind of interference, preventing monopoly and abuse where this laissez-faire was desired.
The other irony applies to the ‘controlled economy’ a hot term in these two decades of the 20’s and 30’s. ‘Controlled economy’ implied not only government control over business, ‘controlled economy’ meant socialism. What is ironic is that it was total government control over the economy during World War one that created the fantastic business prosperity during the war and after. It wasn’t the give and take of free enterprise. The USA economy was anemic in 1913 and still had not recovered from the crash of 1907. But with the United States government regulating business rigidly in order to more effectively prosecute the war, things had never been so well integrated and organized. This government control was only gradually relaxed after the war. The Republicans presided over a famous booming laissez-faire era that was successful only because of a foundation of “controlled economy” left over from the war.
The 1920 campaign was conducted during a mini-depression that lasted through 1921. Harding’s first months were not part of the ‘Roaring 20’s.’
There was another downward economic slump in 1922.
INVESTIGATING THE KKK
The State of Race relations in Harding time is best explained by the riot in Tulsa in 1921. A black shoe-shine guy was accused of raping a white woman. Whites went into a black neighborhood and deliberately set fires. Gunfights left 53 people dead, 37 of them black.
The most astonishing thing about the Tulsa riot was the use of white air power. Six bi-planes circled over the black neighborhood and dropped incendiary bombs and sizzling sticks of dynamite onto poor people's homes. This is hard to believe but it really happened. Tulsa's caucasian finest looked the other way. More than a thousand blacks moved out of Tulsa in the weeks that followed. Talk about knowing when you're not wanted. The Ku Klux Klan was not involved in the riot, but after it ended, they moved into Tula in large numbers, thinking this must be racist paradise.
In October of 1921 the House Rules Committee brought Lance Simmons, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan before the Congress for investigation. Simmons was to answer to charges instigated by an investigation of the New York World (a Hearst paper) which insinuated that the Ku Klux Klan was actually doing illegal things, including the use of violence and intimidation to reach its political and ideological goals, especially in the South and Midwest.
Simmons was a harmless looking ordinary little man who looked more like an accountant than the leader of national lynch mob. He denied that the Klan had violated any laws of the nation nor the laws of any state county or town. The Klan was a spiritual organization that honored the memory of the Confederate war dead.
The assistant attorney general of the United States and Representative Tague of Massachusetts led the attacks on Simmons, but he deflected it all effortlessly, blowing smoke rings and smiling all the time at every accusation and charge. Rep Teague challenged Simmons to lead his hooded parade through Massachusetts to see what kind of reception the Klan would get there. Simmons smiled and blew it off with another smoke ring.
A certain Mr. C. Anderson Wright, Joe Velacchi type Klan defector was there to back up the charges against the Klan. The turncoat (turnrobe) was once a Grand Kleagle, something like a Senator to the Klan President, but he had defected when he discovered that the Klan leaders were personally pocketing three fourths of the Klan dues and buying homes with the money. The Klan was a scam by a bunch of greedy liars as far as he was concerned.
Witnesses claimed that the Wiz had been boasting that several Congressmen were secret members of the Ku Klux Klan and at least one Senator was in the gang also. The chief of Police of Norfolk Virginia was also supposedly in the Klan. Rep Teague of Massachusetts was incredulous. “I have been told that members of Congress belong to this organization. I don’t believe it.” He should have. They did.
But the American public was with Teague. They didn’t believe it either. Simmons turned the charges against him and the Klan to his advantage. He accused to the New York World of unjust persecution of a harmless organization just to increase circulation. He Klan broke no laws he insisted while always smiling and smoking. He said that the New York World was planning to have one of its own reporters tarred and feathered and then blame the Klan. The entire Congressional hearing smiled at that one.
But Simmons had won the day. After only week the hearings were dropped for lack of evidence against the Klan.
At the hearings, Simmons downplayed the size of the Klan, claiming a membership of only 100,000. After the hearings Simmons was soon boasting that the hearings had generated a great rise in new memberships. The publicity of Congress had given the Klan tremendous publicity.
What was most impressive about the Klan as it continued to grow in power in the 1920’s was the impact it had in many northers states of the Midwest. It was very powerful in places like Muncie Indiana where Klan parades were common. Rep Teague of Massachusetts couldn’t threaten the Klan to dare march in Muncie of in a thousand other small towns and cities of the northern Midwest.
Later in the 1920’s the Klan became bold enough to March by the thousands down Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC, one or two of them flipping the bird to Teague on the way by the Capitol.
MR HIROHITO TAKES A VACATION – 1921
Taisho Smith was the aged Emperor of Japan. The Crown Prince was the soon to be famous Hirohito.
The young man decided to take a trip around the world to see what he could see. This was a dramatic step. It was like Peter the Great leaving Moscow in 1689 for Holland and England, the revered sacred demi-god visiting the rest of the globe and trying to act like a normal tourist, and not fooling anyone along the way. When Hiro left Yokahama on March 3 1921 he was accompanied by most of the important personages in Japan. Hirohito did not ask the to come along. They wanted to very much.
Hirohito visited Hong Kong on the way to Europe. He took a special trip to the water reservoir and took notes. 20 years later, on Christmas Day 1941 Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese Army after a bitter battle and the rape and massacre of 20,000 civilians there. The deciding factor in the battle was the early seizure of the water reservoir as the primary prize in the early stages. Hong Kong was thirsted into surrender in 41. Hiro had done his homework.
Hirohito then went to Singapore where he took special cruise around the island city. He noted to his intimates that the defenses of Singapore were facing entirely seaward and that the inland access across a small river was relatively undefended. 21 years later, in February 1942 Singapore fell to the Japanese after they wisely attacked from the northern Jahore inland side, not the seaward side.
In Ceylon he got to watch 40 elephants play the trumpet and bow at the same time (I'm not kidding you,) then it was on to England.
On December 7 1941 Japan attacked the British all over Asia. Japan launched an aggressive war against England just as surely as it did against the USA. Britian didn't go to war with Japan in 1941 as a treaty condition with Washington. Britian would probably have declared war on Japan on December 8 even if Pearl harbor and Manila had never been attacked that day.
The future enemy of Britain was in 1921 the gracious host. The King himself knocked on his door and to the shock of Hirohito's retinue, walked in put his arm around him in a slap happy greeting and the two men talked in French as though they were tourists at a bus stop. Mostly they talked about military matters and the First World War. Hirohito impressed the King with his command of military detail.
From London he went on to Paris where he rode to the top of the Eiffel Tower, followed by a visit to Napoleon's Tomb at Invalides.
Hitler made the same rounds in June of 1940. Both Hitler and Hirohito stared at Napoleon's casket for a long time. What was going through their minds? I wonder if Mussolini ever visited the tomb. My wife and I touristed the Tower and Tomb in August of 2000.When I was at Invalides I stared at it for a long time thinking only that Hitler and Hirohito had both stood where I was standing. I was more focused on the two Axis leaders having been there than I was focused on the jerk in the box.
Marshall Petain served as a tour guide for Hirohito on the rest of his trip around Paris. Petain would later run Vichy France for Hitler.
Hirohito then went on to the Low Countries of Holland and Belgium where he visited one WWI battlefield after another, watched military maneuvers, and sent back a description of two of them to his pal the King of England, pursuant to their earlier conversations about the war.
From there is was south to Toulon and then to Naples and Rome. The man whose troops would from 1937-1945 shoot and bayonet a million civilians to death took a quick tour of the Roman Colosseum. The Romans had nothing on the Japanese when it came to insane cruelty inflicted upon unarmed peoples.
On the warship heading home Hirohito invited anyone in his entourage to wrestle with him. Several men took him up on the offer and Hirohito ended up with a couple of nose-bleeds, but he fought well and no one was humiliated.
On August 9 he returned to Ceylon where British observers noted that he had matured noticeably in the four months between his first and second stops there.
The Japanese Prime Minister was named Hara. To kill one-self in the name of honor was called hara-kiri. A man named Nakaoka had been telling people that he was so dishonored by the westernization of Japan that he was going to “cut the hara.” Hara is the belly cord that is cut in the insane suicide custom. Others taunted Nakaoka that plenty of people threaten to commit hara-kiri but few have the courage to really do it. “Don't worry. You'll see if I cut the hara soon enough,” he said. No one realized he was being punny.
On November 4 1921 Kakaoka went to the Tokyo railway station and assassinated Prime Minister Hara.
Prince Konoye, who would become the Prime Minister twice during the war years told Hirohito that he knew in advance of the assassination and did not stop it. The killer got a 12 year sentence and in 1934 was released from prison to a staged welcome suitable for a team that just won the championship yesterday.
On November 21 1921 the palace powers decided that the aging and ill Emperor Taisho should step down in reality if not in fact. Hirohito was made regent of Japan.
WASHINGTON NAVAL CONFERENCE: 1921-1922
This was one of the first attempts in the history of the world at disarmament, or at least, arms reduction.
Today a battleship is a tactical weapon, capable of delivering a strategic weapon, a nuclear missile. In 1920, the battleship was almost the equivalent of the nuclear missile itself. It was the giant symbol and reality of military force, the strategic weapon of the time. Battleship superiority won wars and the USA had proven it in 1898. Peace lovers were alarmed the world over at the increasing destructive firepower of the battleships.
So when Harding called the great naval nations of the world together for the 1921 Washington naval summit in order to limit and even reduce naval warships it was a dramatic event for its time, much like when Gorbachov and Reagan first agreed to reduce, not just limit missiles in December of 1987. But did Harding betray the Republican peace through strength policy with a liberal give-away of our naval strength?
In the end the US Great Britain and Japan agreed to a 5-5-3 ratio of battleships and a limit was set on numbers, tonnage and gun size. This involved reductions. Some ships under construction were cancelled and turned into scrap metal. The same 5-5-3 ration was applied to aircraft carriers but so few were in existence yet that the allowed tonnage figures were in excess of what was afloat and under construction, so there were no reductions in carriers.
It was a glorious day in mankind. It’s too bad the story turned out bad in the end. Japan eventually let the treaty expire and built warships as big and as often as it liked.
The USA probably gave away the candy store at the 21 summit. We gave up more tonnage than any other nation and the designs of our ships scrapped while under construction were superior to those of the other powers.
Britain refused to agree to a reduction in cruisers and destroyers. France refused to agree to a proposed elimination of submarines and in fact would not agree even to a reduction. So the US was the only nation to give up anything at all, our superiority in battleships.
On top of everything else, the legal ability of any nation to simply build a giant fleet of cruisers and submarines rendered the entire Washington Naval Conference a travesty. We needed those modern battleships desperately when the Second Great War came to America and there they weren’t. And we were the moneybags nation that could have built up the biggest and best fleet the world had ever seen. If not for the peace movement of the 1920’s, our naval strength could have (would have) dissuaded the Japanese from ever attacking Pearl Harbor.
Will Rogers mocked the Conference by saying “Did you know that every time we blow up one of our battleships, the Japanese tear up a blueprint? And blueprints are expensive!”
Japan came away from the candy store with one other cupcake. In exchange for agreeing to the 5-5-3 ratio in capital ships with Japan on the short end, all the signatories had to agree to not fortify or upgrade any naval bases in the Far East outside of home islands. So in exchange for giving Japan about the ratio it could have built anyway, we agreed to deliberate negligence of the defensive capability of Guam, the Philippines and the Aleutians. Japan seized them all in WWII.
Another provision of the Naval Treaty covered the construction of aircraft carriers, still a novelty at the time, but a serious weapon of the future. Britain, the USA, and Nippon were permitted to convert two, but no more than two, large cruisers into aircraft carriers. The United States was just about done with its first carrier, the Langley, and Britian already had in operation the HMS Furious, so these didn't count. Japan had a carrier too, the IJS (Imperial Japanese Ship ) Honsho, which carried 27 planes.
The US Navy went to work on the Lexington and the Saratoga, but they wouldn't be commissioned until six years later. Japan went to work on the Kaga and the Akagi, and Britian went ahead with conversion/construction of the Courageous and Glorious. England pressed for permission to also build the HMS Really Mad, but permission was denied. The Kaga and the Akagi would lead the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and sink in the battle of Midway in 1942.
CHINA TREATY
There were other treaties signed in Washington besides the most famous one limiting naval armaments.
Japan had taken over most of the German colonial possessions in the Far East and its preponderant interests in certain parts of China, especially the province of Shantung. By the terms of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of 2-4-1922, Japan agreed to evacuate it’s army from the Shantung, while China agreed (under duress) to let Japan have a dominant economic interest there.
World War I had distracted Europe from it’s old game of exploiting and colonizing the Far East. Japan exploited the vacuum of exploiters. Move over white exploiters of yellow, here come the new yellow on yellow exploiters. Japan pretended to be our Allies in a war but in reality were a different color of wolves stopping by to help the western wolves guard the Chinese hen house. Japan took over the role of European exploiters in China during the First World War and continued in that role with our acquiescence afterwards. The selfish pattern of greedy colonialist exploiter trade-offs created a monster that grew into Godzilla and rose out of the sea to bite us at Pearl Harbor.
When Europe and the USA allowed and even encouraged Japan to help us hold the colonial fort in Asia while we slugged it out in the west, the seeds of World War II in Asia were sown. Japan, without suffering any of the horrors of the stalemated battlefields of Europe, had emerged from World War I with a bigger prize bag than any player in the entire conflict.
How could we have let Japan win the First World War when even the victors in the west had lost it? Part of it was fear of Chinese weakness, the other was fear of Chinese strength. America and western Europe did not want a China so weak that it degenerated into chaos. How could trade and economic exploitation flourish in the midst of rebellion and political turmoil? But the US and it’s European pals also did not want a China that was strong, united and full of vim for true independence. That would mean getting kicked out and watching the famous ‘open door’ to the pot of yen getting shut off altogether. So the perfect spot for China in western eyes was to be just strong enough to maintain order so it could be exploited, but just weak enough so that only a strong outside force could guarantee and operate this moderate strength, while at the same time squashing Chinese nationalism or at least any effective version of it. Sadly, Japan was the right man for the job in 1918 and in the post war period too.
When in the 1930’s Japan went much too far with it’s new role as stabilizer of the Far East we became indignant and morally righteous, but it was America, England and France, the good-guys of World War I that had set up the bad guys of World War II in Asia. If from the beginning, the USA and its allies had taken strong stands against Japanese moves into China it is hard to imagine how the Japanese Empire of 1942 could ever have gotten off the ground.
China was not naïve, even if it was weak. It knew it was being sold up the Yellow River at Versailles and had refused to sign that famous document. The west may have wanted Japan to take over the German role of exploiter in China, but China was not that stupid as to sign on and say ‘great idea!’ Maybe China couldn’t stop the endless strangulation that was happening to it, but it wasn’t going to go smiling to the gallows. Americans at this time were by the way still buying the jive about our eternal friendship for the Chinese which we continued to sell ourselves. When China rejected America in 1949 and then attacked our troops in 1950 people here were hurt and shocked, thinking them ungrateful friends. John and Jane Doe (not to mention a few politicians that should have been smart enough o know better) had not studied the true situation in China in the decades between 1840 and 1940 when we were supposed to be such great pals of the Chinese people, but were really just another breed of jackal. John Yang certainly knew this in Chunking even if John Smith didn’t in Peoria.
BILLY MITCHELL, PROPHET, VICTIM AND FOOL
An irony of the supposed Naval disarmament breakthrough was that the airplane was rapidly becoming an equal or superior strategic weapon, even if few people realized it. No restrictions were being applied to planes.
General Billy Mitchell in 1921 demonstrated the effectiveness of air power against sea power. A target warship, a captured German battleship left over from WWI was attacked at sea from above by several 2,000 pound bombs. The Onsterhaifer sank in just six minutes.
The demonstration of Mitchell did not change long term US military strategic thinking on air power. The top brass still resisted the notion that air power could be decisive in war. The thinking remained that air arms were for support of ground action, but did not constitute strategic action itself. Mitchell did however, change the long term military thinking of Germany and Japan. They would show progressive military thinking in action at the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines in 1941. The age of the battleship was over in 1921. It was a matter of who knew it and who didn’t get it.
It should be stressed that Mitchell only believed in land-based air power for the future. He was dead set against the aircraft carrier. Mitchell did everything he could to retard the progress of aircraft carrier development production and deployment right up to Pearl Harbor when he was proven dead wrong.
RUSSIA - WAR AND REVOLUTION IN EUROPE
The United States did everything in its power to remain isolated from European affairs in the Harding years. For these years the plan pretty much succeeded.
But events were taking place there which would eventually drag the United States back over there in 1941.
The Soviet Union was just beginning to win its Civil War and solidify the home government when in 1921 it was attacked by the newly created nation of Poland. It was a full-scale invasion, not a raid or a probe for some new territory in a moment of Russian weakness.
The Russian Soviet Red Army was sent back on its heels. Polish divisions captured Vilnius and Kiev (map) and seemed ready to march on Moscow. It was sheer aggression on the part of the Poles.
Then under Leon Trotsky the Red Army regrouped, made a stand and then counter attacked. Within a month the Red Army had taken back all the lost territory and was threatening the city of Warsaw. There the Polish Army held on until an armistice was negotiated.
The significance of this for American history is that the Second World War in Europe was fought over Poland. Events in Poland between the wars dragged us into the war via France and England who came to Poland’s defense in 1939 and declared war of Germany.
The Polish attack on Russia must be mentioned because it is one of the great obscure facts of history. For some reason it is irresponsibly ignored by almost every western historian. We are always told of the Red Army on the outskirts of Warsaw trying to exterminate the new and brave little Polish nation. But we are deliberately not told that Poland started it, started it for no good reason, invaded without warning, and at one point was close to taking over the bulk of European Russia.
Later in 1939 Hitler invaded Poland, and the USSR joined in the attack from the east. The two states devoured Poland completely, wiping it off the map. Stalin has deservedly been condemned for this attack, but in fairness it should be remembered that Poland in 21-22 was ready to dance on the Soviet Unions grave.
Stalin in 1939 would probably have been less likely to have co-operated with Hitler in destroying Poland if not for his resentment over the events of 1921. If Pilsudski’s Armies had not humiliated Russia and tried to conquer it the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1339 might never have been signed. Poland drew first blood. I would guess yes. This point is rarely if ever made in the history books. The reason the point hasn’t been made is simple. The western historians pretend the Polish-Soviet War of 1921-22 began with the Red Army on the march and on the outskirts of Warsaw’. Poland went on to suffer unspeakable horrors at the hands of the of the Nazis and the Soviets. This causes historians to overlook and omit the earlier sins of Poland, the worst of which was it’s invasion of Russia in 1921.
In a way the Russian Civil War and Russia’s war with Poland were extensions of the First World War, and it could be easily suggested that WWI really did not end until these two conflicts came to a rest.
REBECCA LATIMER FELTON 1922
The first woman to serve in the United States Senate was not elected. Senator Felton was appointed by Governor Tom Hardwick of Georgia.
On September 26, 1922 the well known Georgia Senator Thomas Q. Watson passed away suddenly. Governor Hardwick sensed an opportunity to take one giant leap for mankind as well as one beneficial to his own political future.
At first it was widely believed that the widow of the late Senator would be appointed for a short time until a special election could be called. Instead he named Rebecca Felton.
Felton had been married to a US Congressman and had been politically active for some time. She helped her husband in such an activist mode, writing letters to newspapers and pruning his speeches that she predated Hillary Clinton in the “two for one” concept. Some Georgia voters resented her for this and others championed her for the same reason.
Hardwick wanted the Senate seat himself and he knew that the newly enfranchised female voters were already mad at him. It seems he had consistently spoken and voted against the passage of the 19th Amendment which gave females the vote in national elections. Now that 19 was law he had on his hands a lot of women who would never vote for him because he never would have let them vote.
Felton was not supposed to go to Washington but she was a famous suffragette in her home state and soon President Harding was besieged with letters and telegrams asking for a special session of Congress so that she could be sworn in officially. Harding outwardly said no but tried to help without appearing to. He found another reason to call a special session which just happened to coincide with the date she wanted to be sworn in. With much national fanfare Rebecca Felton, a real life Jefferson Smith, went to Washington for her career as a Senator.
The appointed woman served for exactly one day. Because a male was sure to win the special election, the appointment was not contested by the Georgia Legislature. Vice President Coolidge swore Felton in at the Capitol on November 21, 1922. The next day a new Senator replaced her.
Becky Felton’s 24 hours is the shortest term ever served. She was also the oldest Congressperson on first day of service at 87.
By contrast, in 1992, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein were elected to the US Senate from the state of California. It marked the first time a state had ever been represented by two women in the Senate and the golden state is still represented by them at this writing in 2005. When they were elected in 1992, it doubled the number of women that had even been in the senate at the same time. Maine also has two female senators today.
BUDGET BUREAU
Prior to Harding, the Government Agencies spent money without concerning themselves whether the money was there or not.
Harding created the Bureau of the Budget within the Treasury Department in June of 1921. From now on all agencies of the government would have to propose to the Director of the Budget any money they wanted to spend on themselves. A Budget plan would then be outlined with all spending considered as part of an overall package. The President received the plan from the Budget Bureau and then sent it on to Congress if he liked it. He could also change some of the estimates up or down if he disagreed with the analysis.
The Harding team inherited the deficit left over from the Great War. The national debt when Harding became the first president to ride to his inauguration in a was 25 billion dollars. The three Republican presidents of the 20’s would pare this down to 16 billion by 1929. The unsolved deficit lingered on and became a major cause of the great Depression at that still dangerously high figure of 16.
The first Director of the Budget was Charles G Dawes. Chuck was a most interesting character. He was rich, smart, short-tempered, and some say (not including me) he was a reactionary scum who symbolized everything wrong with America and Republican ascendancy. This Chicago banker and brigadier general in the First World War had a talent for getting people angry with him.
Dawes went on to become the next Vice President under Coolidge and won the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts to help Germany recover from its post-war depression. Not bad for a man described by one hateful leftist historian (see sources) as “more profane than profound and the first of many neo-fascists who flourished in the era.”
VETERANS BUREAU
There is hardly a person in America today that doesn’t live close to a “VA Hospital”. There are two within 15 minutes drive of this typewriter. Harding created the Veterans Administration, the organization that assists our military veterans. The VA has to be considered one of his better achievements. Congress took the lead in this but Harding went along and helped to pass it. The veterans were millions strong and had special medical, insurance, financial and employment concerns. It was easy to gain support for anything to help the vets. The citizens at home has prospered while the soldiers got the short end on the battlefield. Americans felt grateful and maybe a little bit embarrassed. Taxpayers didn’t mind helping the veterans.
Congress then passed a Bonus Bill that awarded bonuses to all the veterans. Harding vetoed this measure because Congress failed to explain satisfactorily where the money was going to come from. The Bonus issue would come back to bite Hoover in 1932.
HITLER MAKES HIS FIRST APPEARANCE
After the autocratic rule under the Kaiser, Germany was trying to become a democracy with some international guidance and support. But it was caught in a hideous economic depression following its defeat in World War One. Democracy was not faring well against armed bands of rogue militias patrolling the country in city and town. The Nazis were but one of many such Klan-like extra-legal organizations.
Worse, the rumor had become fact in German minds that Germany had not really lost the war but had been betrayed by the corrupt politicians.
The facts were these; the allies had finally achieved the great breakthrough that both sides had been fighting so hard for. The road was open to Berlin. Even if somehow the German armies had doubled back and stiffened up, the long term presence of America in the fight spelled doom. Every wise German knew that the American armies were just getting started going ‘over here.’ It was a hopeless cause. But the ref stopped the fight before the audience could see the knockout. An armistice was agreed to at the end of 1918 long before the formalities of peace were settled. This was no “unconditional surrender.” The German people had never been invaded and it was easy to believe, with their martial pride being what it was, that the home team had not lost the game but rather, ‘Vee Vuz robbed’!
The bad experience of resurgent militarism in the defeated countries after World War One profoundly influenced the thinking of the winning side near the end of World War Two. Unconditional surrender was now the goal, with negotiated peace a less desired option worth considering. This was a reversal of the thinking near the late stages of World War I. To prevent a repeat of the between the wars disaster, the enemy nation must know without doubt that it has lost.
It was against this background, with money so useless in Germany that people were literally heating their homes with paper currency, that Hitler made his entrance on the world stage.
The worst person who ever lived, Adolph Hitler, first made international news in 1922 when he and his Nazis tried to take over the German government. First they were going to take over the City of Munich and then the province of Bavaria. Then the revolution was going to spread. They had a lot of support, enough to dream and hope, but not enough to win. The National Socialist Democratic Party never took over a section of Munich. Hitler was arrested after a short gun battle between rebel Nazis and German state security forces. Adolph hit the dirt and sheltered himself in a gutter when the shooting started, hurting his shoulder. But no one saw him stand up and fight. While other Nazis were dying like Kent State, the future symbol and god of manly German glory hid in fear. “It’s a dangerous mission men and we have to do our duty. I’m sorry I can’t go with ya…. But I have overdue books at the library.” Some fuhrer.
Adolph Hitler was tried in Munich. It was a high profile case and the defendant was given many chances to address the court with long and dramatic political speeches. Hitler received a light sentence and a lot of publicity for trying to overthrow the government by force. This reflected the lack of love the people had for the new democracy (The Weimar Republic).
The judiciary in the Hitler case was being true to its duty to be a mirror of custom. The will of the people was with the guilty. There was a burning undercurrent of desire to return to autocratic militarist rule. Hitler rose to power on forces and movements he did not create. He merely rode them like a skilled surfer on Waikiki beach. They were already permeating every last acre of Germany when he made his first try for power in 1922. Hitler’s speeches to the court made him a hero instead of a goat. Seldom has a convicted criminal won the day as Hitler did when he was sent to Landsburg prison for 11 months (check). While there he dictated his famous book, My Struggle, which became required reading after he came to power. Talk about buying your way on to best seller lists. Mein Kampf should have been read by all the world leaders when Hitler came to power but they all ignored it because it is a lousy read. If they had read it anyway and would have been able to know the enemy better. They should have suffered through a bad book to avoid a bad beating.
MID-TERM ELECTIONS 1922;
The public didn’t refresh the Republican mandate in the elections of 22. The Democrats gained handsomely, reducing their minority from 167 to 18 in the House and down to 8 in the Senate. Some of the newly elected Republicans were not all on board either. These were early ‘rinos’ perhaps– Republican in name only). They weren’t ready to do Harding’s bidding. Harding lost control of the capitol building in the election of 1922. Some key Republican committee members even assisted in exposing and prosecuting the scandals within the administration.
FARM TROUBLES
The roaring 20’s never roared much for the farmers of America. While business boomed, the farmers struggled. There was an after-war drop in food prices, while farmers were paying high interest on their loans and paying high taxes.
Then there was farm flight. At this time new technology like telephones, and electricity had reached the cities pretty thoroughly but had not really blessed the rural areas yet. This made it hard to stop farm flight. The song went, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paris?” The same was true of New York and Chicago. The cities were more fun, and they still are. Sorry, Mayberry. People left in droves but fortunately advances in technique and equipment enabled the farmers to produce as much as ever with less hands.
THE SCANDALS
For such a short time in office, Harding piled up an impressive list of scandals. Most historians cut Harding a break when they say that he had no idea of the corruption going on all around him. A few are more cynical and have their doubts about his total ignorance.
Harding was not a mere figurehead, as he is often portrayed. The man had been a newspaper editor and a senator. He wasn’t without brains or ability, as some historians seem to think. I’m with the group that thinks he had to have known something. In any case he was never personally accused of any scandal while in office. If Harding did anything, he got away with it.
Harding's attorney general was accused of graft and went to trial. Harry Daugherty was acquitted in 1926 by a hung jury. I read his book and disliked him throughout. No wonder Hoover hated him. The best page in the book was the one that said THE END.
The new Veterans Bureau was the scene of a scandal involving the embezzlement of several million dollars by its chief, a rascal named Forbes. He fled the country but was later shipped back for trial.
The big famous scandal was Teapot Dome. The name comes from an oil field in Wyoming that was leased without competition to pals of Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall. Fall got a bribe in return. Another field in Elk Hill, California was involved. The oily recipients of the fraud were Ed Doheny and Harry Sinclair. Doheny gave Fall a “loan” of 100,000 bucks. Sinclair gave Fall 85 grand, $225,000 in bonds and a herd of cattle.
Teapot Dome is associated with Harding, but the exposure and prosecution of the scandal took place after his death. The investigative committee headed by senator Ross Bickford of Montana began its work late in ’23 and finished in ’24. Sinclair, Doheny and Fall were later acquitted of conspiracy, but Sinclair got nailed for jury tampering. Albert took the Fall in 1929. He went to prison for one year on a bribery conviction. He was the first Presidential Cabinet officer to do time.
One of the most hated members of the Ohio Gang, at least by the liberal Democrat type, was Senator Brandegee of Connecticut. He was not from Ohio but “Brandy” Bandegee was one powerful inside member of the Harding Boys.
Bandegee was dependable. You could depend on him to vote against any liberal (progressive) piece of legislation.
Brandegee was President pro tempore of the US Senate.
Two months after Harding died, Brandy committed suicide.
Another Ohio Gang member was Thomas W. Miller, the corrupt director of the Alien Property Custodian, (like I know what that is.)
FOREIGN AFFAIRS - RISE OF MUSSOLINI 1921-22
Entering the international scene now is a bombastic foreign leader and a future enemy of the United States.
With the rise of Mussolini in Italy the seeds of World War II were already planted and sprouting. Harding had led America into an illusionary isolationism. In his short tenure Adolph Hitler had joined the infant National Social Democratic Workers party in Germany, Japan was in open rivalry with the USA in the far east, and in sunny south central Europe we now encounter one of the bad guys of US and all of human history, the new leader of Italy Benito Mussolini.
BM was a charismatic orator and politician who joined the socialists and became an influential editor of a socialist newspaper, Popolo D’Italia. With the entry of Italy into the World War on the side of the Allies, this Socialist became hopelessly split about national participation. Mussolini was an ardent expansionist who believed in Pax-Italia. He dreamed of an Italian empire all over the Mediterranean, marking a return to the good old days of ancient Rome and racial glory for the Italians. So he supported the war. For this the socialists expelled Mussolini from the party. He left exclaiming that no matter what they did or said, he would forever be a socialist.
In reality it was always hard to peg where Mussolini stood in his political philosophy. He was perhaps deluded into believing there was something concrete in those 39 billion pages of socialist mumbo-jumbo floating around the cafes of Europe at the time, and he might have actually believed that he had a grip on some of it. More likely, he was just a clever and ambitious and power hungry man who wanted success for its own sake and was adept at making speeches to different groups that contradicted each other but pleased each group at the time. He changed his positions on every key issue before, during and after the War.
Benny enlisted in the Italian Army and was wounded in a trench in 1917 by friendly fire. A bomb exploded and he took some shrapnel. The splinters were not life threatening and the incident helped him politically over the years with his brave macho image.
Italy had participated in a Great War against a grand alliance but its only true enemies were local rivals Austria and Yugoslavia. Italy felt that the Versailles treaty had treated Austria far less harshly than it did Germany which was offensive since Austria, not Germany had started to the whole bonfire. Italy didn’t like this.
Italy had occupied Albania at the end of the war but there was little national support for this aggression. Many troops resisted reporting for duty, mutinies broke out and the Albanian prize was abandoned.
The most important controversy centered on the city of Fiume at the Northeast end of the Adriatic. Both Italy and the new Republic of Yugoslavia had claims to the city and the victors meeting at Versailles were unable to settle it.
Then an Italian named D’Annunzio launched a fascist revolution there in defiance of Yugoslavia, the Great Powers and his own government. Mussolini came out in support of the Fiume fascist revolution of D’Annunzio.
But Mussolini then allegedly made a secret deal with the Italian government. Mussolini would look the other way when the Italian air force bombed D’Annunzio out of Fiume, and the Government would look the other way when Mussolini’s fascists became violent with the socialists.
The King’s government thought it could use Mussolini like toy. The home government thought it could employ Mussolini for their own ends against the socialists and then discard him when it was convenient. It was a massive mistake. German politicians would later make the same mistake with Hitler.
Fiume was bombed on Christmas Eve, 1920 and D’Annunzio withdrew from the city. The issue was settled by having Fiume become an international free city, belonging to no nation. In the meantime Mussolini had been able to take over the leadership of the Italian fascist movement, replacing the deposed D’Annunzio and now his thugs could smash table lamps over the heads of socialists working at their desks.
Mussolini was extremely impressed with the fascist organization run by D’Annunzio in Fiume. The city dictator had used show business to sell his politics. The D’Annunzio fascists wore black fezzes, gave a special fascist salute, had parades and sang songs with marching bands and spectacular banners. Mussolini admired their style and was determined to copy it. He never was concerned about their substance.
Mussolini would adopt all he learned from D’Annunzio when he took over Italy in 1922. Hitler would adopt all he learned from Mussolini when he took over Germany in 33. The prototype that led to Hitler’s swastika was D’Annunzio at Fiume.
Mussolini was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1921 from both the Bologna and the Milan districts. The socialists were threatening to take over all private property so it was not hard to enlist the police, the landowners, and the capitalists on the side of the fascists. The civil war between the fascists and the left went on throughout 1921 and 22 but the issue was pretty well settled by the middle of 1922.
In the summer of 1922 Fascists in the north took over several major cities making demands on the government if it expected them to withdraw. The government gave in to the fascist demands and from that point on there were essentially two governments in northern Italy. These takeovers were not the work of Mussolini. In fact he was more hoping for a conventional Parliamentary rise to power. He did not want to defy the army or the church, while the fascist rebel wing was willing to defy anyone.
The Italian Prime Minister called on the King and asked him for protection from the fascists. The King was noncommittal as he felt that taking sides might ignite a civil war. The King preferred the fascists to chaos. At this point the threat of the fascist takeover was tantamount to a fascist takeover. Mussolini’s “March on Rome” was not a direct military takeover. When Mussolini went to Rome On October 29, 1922 to form a government headed by the fascists headed by himself, there were no black shirts in Rome. The fascists entered the city after Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister. In fact, the biggest problem after he took power was how to get the fascist paramilitary units out of Rome where they were creating needless alarm. The October Revolution in Italy had been won and their services were not really needed. The takeover had come about as a result of the collapse of the government, not by way of street battles. It was a velvet black shirt revolution
Mussolini openly rejected liberty and democracy. “We must abandon the great phrase, ‘Liberty’,” he wrote. He despised the masses. “When political matters are discussed on the wireless, they listen to a sentence or two and then switch off. Nobody studies politics. The people do not want to rule, but to be ruled and to be left in peace.” He would rule them but he gave them no peace.
In January of 1921 Benito gave an interview where he said that the only politician he admires is Lenin. Mussolini and Hitler both admired the Russo-Soviet model of power.
The word in his defense world wide was how ‘he made the trains run on time.’ The people bragging about train punctuality neglected to mention that the main reason the trains had stopped running on time in the first place was the violence overwhelming the country as a result of fascist activity. When they started to behave the trains began to run on time.
THE BOY IS THE FATHER OF THE FASCIST MAN
Benito Mussolini was born on July 29 1883 at Varano di Costa. Good luck finding it anywhere on any map. It is not far from Forlimpoli which you can find on any good map of Italy.
He was named after the Mexican revolutionary Benito Juarez. Mussolini's father beat him as a child. What a surprise! How many brutal dictators come from happy homes? Allesandro Mussolini owned a tavern and later went on to become the mayor of Mussolini's home town.
Daddy Moose was a left wing socialist. Ok, I'm exaggerating. He was actually a violent radical revolutionary Marxist agitator. Dad believed in world revolution and passed his extremism on to his son. The state arrested his father for sedition more than once. Other left wing radicals frequented the tavern and Mussolini sat around quietly and listened, perhaps a little too well. It was an evil version of a Hubert Humphrey who worked in his dad's pharmacy in Dakota and listened to honest liberal political talk from his politically active dad and friends.
Mussolini was a bad boy. He not only got into fights, he was famous for always pulling a weapon and really hurting the other boy bad. Sometimes he beat on girls too. He often picked on boys much smaller than him and hurt them bad. What a hero. Benito was expelled from more than one school for putting kids who looked at him the wrong way in the hospital with a sharpened rock or a pen-knife. Even compared to most bad boys, Mussolini was a bad boy. Then on top of this you graft this extreme left-wing violent political influence of his violent dad and you get the dictator of Italy who needlessly plunged Italy into World War II, the way he plunged a pen-knife into a schoolmate.
Mussolini's first job in the real world was as a schoolteacher. He taught at several small elementary schools in Northern Italy. He got fired from one school for beating on little kids. What a guy! They called this guy 'El Duce?' Try El Duce-bag.
The police arrested Benito Mussolini in the town of Oneglia in 1908 for political violence. He was in jail for ten days. Too bad it wasn't ten thousand.
Just a few weeks after his release, in the city of Fiorli, Mussolini and his left wing cronies decided the price of milk was too high. So they smashed their way into the Mayor's office and threatened to throw him through the window if he didn't lower the price of milk. The Mayor threatened to have Benito arrested. Mussolini grabbed the mayor and personally through him through the closed window to the street below. The Mayor had “a couple of breaks” but he survived. A week later the price of milk was very inexpensive indeed. This was the fine man who led Italy into the war.
After the Reds expelled Mussolini from the party he turned reactionary. Mussolini's “Black Shirt” fascist party was a direct response to the “Red Shirt” party of the Communists. The color black was also chosen to save on laundry bills. I kid you not. (Why do you think so many stand-up comedians wear black on black all week in Vegas. Again, I kid you not.) In the end, in Milan in 1945, Mussolini put on a red shirt after all.
FORDNEY MCCUMBER TARIFF
Tariff Rates were raised considerably under Harding to near all time rates. Because manufacturing had grown tremendously in the south, that region was no longer a guaranteed opponent of high tariffs, enabling the high Fordney- McCumber tariff to pass.
LABOR DISPUTES
As the president of the party of big business, Harding would not be expected to be very supportive of the rights of labor in its battle with capital. In 1922 there was a serious strike in the bituminous and anthracite coal mines. At first the nation was not alarmed because there was an all time high surplus of the material. But as the strike dragged on and a shortage became imminent, things turned more serious. June saw rioting with fatalities. In Herrin, Illinois a pro-labor mob surrounded and captured a mine being operated by scabs. 19 of these strikebreakers were killed. Harding sent a telegram to all the governors. They were to provide protection for the mine-owners and the mines were to stay open. Ohio and Pennsylvania called out the national guard. The strike was settled with minor concessions to the workers. Harding’s name in labor circles fell lower than it already had been.
In the last days of his life Harding began to feel guilty about his consistent siding against labor. He felt that he owed them one. Harding began to lean heavily on the steel industry big shots to install the eight hour workday. The 12 hour day was a target for criticism in this age of progress for obvious humane reasons. Harding wrote stern letters to the steel leaders and soon the industry accepted that it might have to bend a little because it did not want to lose Harding’s support. On the day before Harding’s death the steel industry put in the 8 hour day. It would not have done so without Harding’s efforts.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S BOYFRIEND ICES HIMSELF
Harry Daugherty felt the walls closing in on his corrupt deeds in 1922. Jess Smith was Daugherty's constant companion. Smith had no official title, he was just always there as Harry's valet or whatever, and they lived together. The DC gossip was that they were having a gay old time in their Georgetown apartment.
One day in May, Harding demanded to see Jess Smith at the White House. Harding let Smitty have it. You are corrupt, the Department of Justice is going to clean it's own house and, you, Mr. Smith are going to jail.
Smith went back to the apartment, burned all his papers, and then, on the night of May 23, 1923 shot himself dead with a German pistol.
Harding had to get away from all the scandals rocking his world. He arranged a trip to Alaska with some of his friends. He would make speeches on conservation and maybe get a little jump start on the campaign of 1924. He invited Commerce Secretary Hoover along with the usual crowd.
The expedition started in Tacoma on July 3, then went up to Fairbanks and back.
Harding was giving a speech in Seattle before 60,000 cheering fans when he began to stammer his lines. His body began to shake and his speech papers fell to the ground. Hoover was sitting behind him and arranged the papers in order while Harding recovered, just barely enough to finish his Seattle speech.
The rest of the speech stops (three speeches a day) were cancelled.
Harding's doctor insisted that it was just food poisoning. Bad crabs in Vancouver caught up with him in Seattle was Dr. Conrad Murry II's diagnosis.
But another doctor looked at him and thought that Dr. Murray was looney. Harding had suffered a heart attack and needed emergency treatment.
One of the Cabinet members on the trip was Hugh Work. He had been a doctor before he went into politics, so his was the deciding vote among the three physicians. Work took a look at Harding and could not believe that Dr. Murray had said it was seafood poisoning. Harding had suffered a heart attack.
Arriving in San Francisco Warren checked in to the Palace Hotel. He never checked out. The maid screamed in horror when she found him dead. The heart attack theorists had been correct. He died on August 2, 1923 of a “coronary thrombosis,” the third president to die in office from natural causes.
The idea that Warren G. may have been poisoned came from a sensational book by Charles Natron Means. The Strange Death of President Harding, a breathtaking read, implies that Florence Harding had the motive and the means to kill her husband the president. He had been cheating on her repeatedly for many years and it was Florence who usually prepared his meals. It was she who ordered that there be no autopsy performed on the presidents body.
The charge is probably absurd but what matters is that a generation of Americans chewed the fat over the theory for many years. It was very much common conversation and we have to feel sorry for poor Flo if she is innocent as she almost certainly is. To have that whispered about you in train stations and house parlors all over the country would have to hurt.
Without the death of Harding in office, Coolidge and Hoover might never have been elected in ’24. The exposure of the scandals which first became headlines in 1924 would have been a major obstacle to Harding’s re-election. But silent Cal was safe, one of the honorable men in Harding’s cabinet. The VP was able to rise above the teapot dome and win the Big House for the Reps again in 24.
OIL
The Harding State Department assisted US oil companies in its overseas ambitions. It arranged a concession for US companies in Columbia and for the first time the UK was persuaded to let up on its monopoly of Middle East oil. Some historians tell this story almost as though Harding should be ashamed of himself for allowing this. The conversion of naval forces worldwide to oil from coal and the explosive rise of the automobile made oil a sudden national necessity for any great power if it wanted to remain great.
SUPREME COURT
On June 30, 1921 Harding made history by naming a former US President, William Howard Taft to the Supreme Court. The vacancy came about with the death of Chief Justice White. For Taft it was a happier time than his years in the White House. He loved the Supreme Court.
In 1922 Harding appointed George Sutherland of the state of Utah to the Court, replacing Justice Clarke who resigned.
RADIO
The saddest event in the Harding era was the birth and widespread use of the radio. 5,000 radios in America announced the news of Harding’s election in 1920. 1.5 million radios announced the news of his death in 1923. Of course most historians will tell you that this was a great and progressive thing. My view is that the radio began the ‘dummying down of America.” The average person in America in 1900 was five times more literate than the average person in 2,000. I’ve read the newspapers on microfilm from 1900 extensively. The average Joe or Jane writing a letter to the editor was twice the writer as the star columnist today.
The radio gave birth to the “commercial.” The bane of my existence on this planet. They grip you in a negative vise. Unlike a newspaper ad you can skip over in a split second, the audio format penetrates deeply and permanently. There is nothing more anti-intellectual than commercials. They don’t inform, they don’t entertain (some would argue this point but for me, no way) and they are less pleasant than the average moment on earth. The whole idea of art is to raise the life experience to better than the average moment of your average day. When theatre works, its because it made that hour of life more pleasant than the average hour of your life. That’s the goal or art, to raise the average to a higher plane, if only for a short time. A commercial takes life below the average. I’d rather be bored for an hour than watch an hour of commercials. I’d rather watch a blank wall.
The parents and grandparents of my generation (I was born in 1955) raved to us endlessly about how wonderful radio was in their day. They universally said that it was better than television! “Because you had to use your imagination.” You can ask anyone from my generation. Anyone. Did your parents and grandparents say this about radio as they watched their own kids glued to television sets? They’ll say yes of course.
So clearly, in always citing the imagination part, they are talking about the great times they had listening to fictional murder mysteries and comedies. They never mentioned all the great political speeches they enjoyed, no one I ever overheard. Radio began immediately to operate on a money motive. The emphasis rapidly focused on fluff and garbage, which made more money than political round table discussions. Overnight the average American who used to spend his spare 90 minutes taking a serious read of his entire newspaper, now spent that time listening to entertainment on the radio. He or she used to find entertainment in engaging intellectually all of the issues of the day. Now they only found entertainment in entertainment. The dummying down of America had begun. Movies were becoming huge too but we won’t even go there until the “talkies” come out.
The money motive overrules all and entertainment as entertainment will always outsell politics as entertainment. Radio turned the whole country into entertainment freaks. At last! Now the man in the street knows every character on that radio sit-com but doesn’t know who the secretary of the treasury is. Eight years ago he knew.
Like a gun in the hand of a cop or a crook, its not the weapon but how its used. Radio dummied down my grandparents and my parents and then passed the stupidity-torch on to movies and then movies ran with it and passed it on to TV. The entertainment culture has reached a point where if one is watching political programs constantly, there is a cute derogatory nickname for it, “political junkie.” Ha ha. There is no playfully negative nickname for one who watches two crime dramas or three sit-coms a night on television. Is there a nickname for someone who goes to movies 6 times a week? “Movie buff” is about it and its not derogatory, not even playfully. But political junkie? Lumping people who watch a lot of political programming in with heroin addicts?
The reason for such a nickname is its now normal to be all wrapped up in entertainment, but its abnormal to be all wrapped up in politics, science, history, medicine or law. People think you’re odd if you’re reading a textbook by the pool (trust me on this one) but if you’re reading a fictional murder mystery you’re cool. Its very sad.
It reminds me of the King in ancient Romania who hated the new invention of music. People could not understand how anyone could hate music. “No one’s getting any work done anymore!,” he screamed.
CONCLUSION
The bad presidents always seem to rule over times of peace. I can’t escape the feeling that I would have loved to have known this guy Harding, even if he had only been only a local politician.
The main event in the Harding era was undoubtedly the America rejection of membership in the League of Nations.. This Harding event has the universal finger-pointing reprimand of all later generations. Presentism and revisionism on the League rejection even went through different editions, one before and one after WWII. Let’s look at Harding from the presentism of 1936 looking back at 1921.
Samuel Flagg Bemis is one of the giants of the science of American diplomatic history. The following page is from his monumental A Diplomatic History of the United States. Sam is (relative to him) emotional about this failure,
“ To many of us who lived through those war years
and who ardently hoped for a better world to follow
the tragedy of the nations, it seemed as though the
partisans of 1919, on both sides, in the great debate
on the League of Nations, joined in folly to defeat
the League … It seemed in short as though the
United States foolishly threw away the victory it
had won at war. Those of us who have lived on
into two decades after must now see things in a
different light. The League of Nations has been a
disappointing failure as a promise to keep the
peace of the world or to make wars less likely. It
has been a failure not because the United States
did not join it; but because the great powers have
been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it
suited their individual national interests to do so,
and because Democracy … has collapsed over
half the world. If the United States had been a
party, these same selfish national interests would
have been at play … Amidst a world studded with
dictators, the European powers, unwilling to join
in sacrifices to enforce peace, would have urged
the United States to do the sanctioning in regions
where, in turn, it had no vital national interests.
Before the great powers can join in sacrifices of
blood and treasure to keep the peace in regions
where they have no real interests, a great
transformation of will must take place among the
peoples of the nations. I am afraid there must be
much more suffering in the world before that
transformation takes place. …
We can see now that the rejection of the League
… was an advantage to the United States by
giving it a period to watch, wait and see how the
experiment would work.. The lesson of the period
1919-1936 is that until the peoples of the world
shall prove generally their willingness to make
the sacrifices for the commonwealth of mankind,
the advice of the Fathers, against foreign
entanglements in regions where the United States
has no vital interest, holds as strong today as it
did in the days of George Washington.”
Bemis pg 651-2
Bemis believes in 1936 that Europe was headed for another war and would have to go it alone. Bemis feels that if the USA had voted yes on the League, it would now be headed straight for the middle of that war war. In a way this internationalist historian was an isolationist. Not of the Lindbergh ilk, but an isolationist nevertheless. As far as Flagg was concerned in 1932, the failure of the USA to agree to join the League of Nations was not a mark of failure.
AFTER OFFICE
After office Harding went to heaven.
His last words in the old world were “Good-buy Florence, my darling.”
His first words in the new world were “I hope she didn't get away with it.”
SOURCES
A Time for Angels, The Tragicomic History of the League of Nations – This is a first-rater.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford -c) 1961 D.C. Heath
Big thick well-written high school textbook that opens wide and flat so can read and eat at the same time, a true test of a good physical book. D.C. Heath must have been real proud of this one, especially since the work is still being revised and reprinted long after Bailey's death.
The Battle of the Atlantic, by Samuel Eliot Morison, c)1951 – Volume one of 13 volume History of US Naval Operations in World War II – Intro by Commodore Knox USN is a good short history of the U.S. Navy between the wars - with a conservative slant, of course.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, Farnam Professor of History in Yale University – c) 1934 Henry Holt
Bemis taught at Yale for 24 years. I played at the New Haven Restaurant 24 years ago. This is one of my favorite all-time books.
From Versailles to the New Deal, by Harold U. Faulkner, Yale Press c)1951,
A good book, but Faulkner is so imbued with orthodox liberalism that he does not even see the silliness of his criticisms of the Harding appointments. He goes on and on about how this guy is a conservative, that one is not progressive and how there isn’t a single left leaning person in the cabinet. As though this is some sort of an outrage, some wrong of history that should have been righted at the time. Since when does the conservative candidate of the conservative party, running on a conservative platform have a moral duty to appoint a cabinet balanced with liberals and progressives?
Example,
“The only [cabinet] member with any progressive background
was Hughes, but his career in the Supreme Court, followed
by four years of close association with big business
ended that phase of his interests. …
The rest were untroubled by any stirrings of progressivism.
… Coolidge … contributed nothing to swing that body
towards the left.”
Faulkner pg 64
So?
President Harding's Supreme Court nominees are not to Faulkner’s liking either. They are not liberal enough. Apparently someone forgot to tell Mr. Faulkner that this is a two party system and when the conservative party gets in they are allowed to call the shots in line with the party’s general tenor.
Faulkner complains that the new SC appointee Sutherland had not “revealed any progressive tendencies” in his years in the senate. Then;
“Pierce Butler of Minnesota, chosen the same year to
succeed Justice Day, was a reactionary railroad
lawyer. With a conservative majority … only Holmes
and Brandies were left to hold the liberal defenses.”
This book by Faulkner should have openly admitted its biases.
Harding probably was less than a great president. The scandals are indefensible. But even if Harding had been a fine president and a fine man with fine policies he still would have been bashed by most historians because of the anti-Republican bias of University professors.
The Growth of the American Republic – by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager – c) 1940 (4th ed.)
Growth provided the point about government control creating the boom economy that rolled into the roaring 20’s. This is a Harvard Columbia collaboration that does a disservice to the reputation of these schools. They are two over-the-top white supremacists, period.
History of a Free People, by Henry W. Bragdon of Phillips Exeter Academy and Samuel P. McCutchen of NYU – c) 1954 MacMillan
Standard high school American History textbook for the poor forsaken student of 1954. If you took out the 90 quiz and essay tasks at the end of every nine pages, this would be a fine book. As is, it is all that is bad about being in high school. They aren't very nice to WGH, but then again, who is?
The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy, by Harry M. Daugherty and Dixon. Daugherty was tried for corruption.
Harry seems to be writing under the impression that his hung jury acquittal equaled complete exoneration. His hands were not clean. Dirty Harry's book is cooked up as if he had been a completely heroic and intrepid member of our Washington government. He’s really quite happy with himself and it annoying.
HD's his book is probably the best general expert look at the Harding era, in spite of its lousy egoism. Harry is almost as fond of Harding as he is of Harry Daugherty. He sincerely wants to tell us how good and kindly a person that Harding was. There's no doubt that he really thought the world of Warren. Daugherty admired and envied Harding’s heart while exploiting him.
The March of Democracy: Vol II, From Civil War to World Power, by James Truslow Adams – c) 1933 Scribner
This is a fun book. Its fun to get riled up by a writer to the point where you want to raise him from the dead and box him.
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 1920-1933, The Cabinet and the Presidency, by Herbert Hoover – c) 1951
This is volume two of Hoover's turgid writing about an interesting life. He had a very enlightening chapter on his days in the Harding Administration as Commerce Secretary. Hoover saw Harding saw it up close and his judgements are important, more than any Ivy League professor today who studied some unpublished letters.
The National Experience, by Blum, Morgan, Rose, Schlesinger, Stampp and Woodward calls Harding an “ignorant, naïve, confused man” with “intellectual deficiencies.” This book (like the Faulkner book) seems to be saying that all administrations have a moral obligation to adhere to the liberal historians preference in policies, not the policies of the politicians in place at the time who were elected on their platforms by the voting public;
“Wherever they could, Harding and his associates
rolled back the accomplishments of the progressive
movement.”
The duplicitous audacity of these conservatives! Imagine installing conservative policies after running as a conservative. Imagine the nerve to “roll-back” the policies of the opposition party that you just defeated. Why you ....
This c)1981 textbook is a superstar lineup of American historians of their era.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – This is the Bible of PC outrageous liberal pseudo-history, and it makes Harding out to be about eight times worse than he really was.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
Harvard man Sam had Harding dart boards and cupie dolls in his living room.
Mr. Morison has some strong opinions about everything including the 1920's version of what today are called 'culture wars.' This from page 909,
“Advocates of the new morals claim that the lifting of nineteenth-century repressions, inhibitions, ect., 'freed' the rising generation, made them more natural, wholesome, and the like. Probably some oversexed persons were injured by their efforts to be faithful to the Christian ethic. But, how many of the 'pure in heart' have been ruined by the present stimuli striking at them every day and from every direction, urging them to surrender to the cruder demands of the flesh? Freud supposedly 'demolished the ideals of the hypocritical Victorian age and turned a glaring light on the underworld by revealing the filth that had been repressed into the unconscious.'
Possibly that would have been the best place to have left it.”
Thanks for the admonition, Father Flotsky. The 'off the main subject' waste paper basket would have been the best place to have left this. I guess SEM never waited in line to see La Cage aux Folles.
Presidential Campaigns, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. of Texas Christian University - c) 1984 – Oxford University Press.
Boller specializes in short anecdotal books. This is a ‘tweener.’ It is in between that type and a full treatment of Presidential campaigns. This is an excellent book but I think it would have been better if he made a definite call on what it is. Each chapter is about three pages of an political story, followed by six or eight little anecdotal side bars. It would have been better of the space for the side bars were given up and that space used for a fuller treatment of the core story.
Presidents of the United States, by Cornel Adam Lengyel
Rise of the American Nation, Lewis Paul Todd and Merle Curti, c)1960 -My high school history book in 1972 is relatively kind to Harding stressing his achievements in founding the Veterans and the Budget Bureaus
The Shadow of Blooming Grove, by Frances Russell – c) 1968 is the giant biography of Harding. I've only read the first 75 pages, so I've got work to do on Frank's book. It's brutally boring so far. The extensive early bio stuff isn't easy to get through. I really don't care what his maternal great-grandmother cooked when Warren participated in family outings. And I don't care about the weather that day either.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Columbia – c) 1966, 1974, 1977 Harper & Row
Garraty describes Harding as “dumber than a bag of hammers.” I'd say that JAG has a pro-Democratic bias in describing this era.
The Strange Death of Warren G. Harding, by Gaston B. Means, c)1930 –
Gaston was a Department of Justice investigator. He's a mean man. He lives up to his name.
Strange Death was a big seller and it promoted the theory that Florence Harding assassinated her husband. I was very convinced when I finished it. But then this killjoy author had to appear recently on C-SPAN with a new book out based on years of research debunking the famous book mentioned here. The guy spoiled a good story.
Read this old one first for fun and remember that the American public took it quite seriously. The nation by and large thought that there was a chance that the first lady had murdered the President.
Harding with his better half
This Was Normalcy, by Karl Scriftgeisser -c) 1948 – This is is a non-stop hatchet job extraordinaire on the three administrations between the war presidents.
I don't want to give short shrift to this old geezer, but this is abnormally hostile work. This is not normalcy in a history book. Karl hated the Republicans and probably was writing the book in the fever hatreds of the campaign of 1948. It is “long on rhetoric and short on substance. More a book of emotional tirades than fact arguments.
A Time for Angels, The Tragicomic History of the League of Nations – This is a first-rater.
The United States: The History of a Republic, by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia, Willie Miller co-author of The Age of Enterprise, and Daniel Aaron of Smith - c) 1957
Aaron was appointed roving U.S. ambassador to several small countries in his mature years, the reward for being a good historian.
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