NATIONAL POLITICS: THE 1924 DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION RACE

Trouble for the Democrats

In the early months of the campaign season Democrats eagerly anticipated recapturing the presidency, especially since President Harding, a well-loved Republican, had died and the Teapot Dome scandal promised to taint the Republican Party. The Democrats' hopes waned as Coolidge successfully distanced himself from the scandal, and their leading candidate, William McAdoo—President Wilson's treasury secretary and son-in-law—became more closely associated with the scandal, as well as with the Ku Klux Klan. Democratic success in 1924 depended on party unity, but Democrats could not find a single issue that could bring together the party's disparate constituents. Prohibition loomed as one divisive issue. "Wets" and "dries" each had a candidate who shared their views. The increasingly prominent Ku Klux Klan attracted many Democrats but repelled many others. As was evident in the 1922 election, Democrats were gaining voters in large urban areas. These new urbanités, however, clashed with the party's established rural base.

WOMEN JOIN THE ELECTORATE

Passed by Congress in June 1919 and ratified by the states by August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constition guaranteed, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." In the 1920s, the first decade in which women across the nation could exercise the franchise, women reluctantly used their newfound freedom. Most women did not vote, and those who did generally cast ballots consistent with their husbands' and families' preferences rather than forming independent interest groups as many had expected.

After women won voting rights, Carrie Chapman Catt, a distinguished advocate of women's suffrage, suggested disbanding the National Woman Suffrage Association, which had been instrumental in securing passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In place of that umbrella organization, whose membership included women with a wide spectrum of political goals, two organizations with different political goals came to the forefront. The League of Women Voters, founded in 1920, pursued a moderate course, advocating women's political participation and serving as a conduit for information on issues and candidates. Pursuing a more radical goal, the National Woman's Party, founded in 1913, began in the 1920s to urge adoption of an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution. The controversy over the ERA pitted these two organizations and their members against each other, splintering the women's movement.

Source:

William Henry Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).

The Leading Contender

McAdoo received strong support from labor, primarily because of his administration of the railroad crisis during World War I. As an unequivocal dry, McAdoo had great support in the rural South. His silence on the Klan, when most politicians were openly denouncing the reactionary organization, curried favor among Klan members and sympathizers. Yet McAdoo's willingness to accept Klan support diminished his support among reformers and urban Democrats, especially Catholic voters. The Klan issue merely compounded McAdoo's earlier image problems, which began when his connections with Edward L, Doheny, who was deeply involved in the Teapot Dome scandal, were exposed.

The Urban Candidate

McAdoo's opponents lined up behind a host of favorite sons, but his most serious opposition came from New York governor Alfred E. Smith. Smith, wet, Catholic, and part of the eastern urban political machine, was anathema to the party's dry, Protestant, rural constituents. The stark contrast between McAdoo and Smith further solidified rural/urban divisions within the Democratic Party, and the nomination of either man promised to alienate a substantial core of Democratic supporters. During the primaries McAdoo made a strong showing in the South and West while Smith carried heavily populated states such as Massachusetts, New York, and Illinois, states whose electoral votes could swing the November presidential race.

The Democratic Convention

On 24 June 1924 delegates assembled at Madison Square Garden in New York, a controversial host city given the heightened cultural division displayed during the primaries. Dry delegates never passed up an opportunity to express outrage at New Yorkers' flagrant violation of Prohibition, and the city supplied endless opportunities for criticism.

The Platform and the Ku Klux Klan

The Democrats' platform opened with the lofty statement that the party stood for "equal rights to all, and special privilege to none." Moreover, they pronounced their commitment to "human rights" to be above the Republicans' shallow commitment to "material things." Yet the Democratic platform lacked specific recommendations that would give substance to their rhetoric. William Jennings Bryan managed to slip a bit of radicalism into the otherwise bland political document by adding calls for federal aid to education, "vigorous enforcement of existing laws governing monopoly," government control of natural re-sources, and a public referendum on any declaration of war, The bulk of excitement surrounding the platform, however, came from debate over an excluded plank. Smith's supporters, wanting to embarrass McAdoo for accepting Klan support, proposed a plank denouncing the Klan by name rather than accepting a milder condemnation of efforts "to arouse religious or racial dissension." McAdoo forces argued that Smith's plank would destroy the harmony of the convention, and delegates defeated it by a margin of one vote, the closest in convention history.

THE FIRST RADIO COVERAGE OF POLITICAL CONVENTIONS

When Republicans and Democrats gathered for their 1924 national conventions, Americans nationwide heard the proceedings from gavel to gavel for the first time. Carried live on radio, both conventions were heard by millions. In these first convention broadcasts the new entertainment medium simply eavesdropped on the events, recording them as a bystander. An editor for The Nation noted that convention speakers addressed themselves exclusively to the delegates in the halls, as if they were unaware of their national audience. Conventioneers continued their traditional practice of demonstrating for their candidates even though radio could not effectively convey the excitement of these demonstrations. Lamenting that politicians had not developed a "radio-oratory," the editor hoped this shortcoming would be remedied before the 1928 campaign began. Some observers realized that once the novelty of radio had faded, listeners' patience with forty-seven-minute demonstrations that produced only muffled noise would wane. Thus, political strategists in the future would have to learn to integrate the new technology into their campaign plans and engage radio listeners directly.

Source:

"Radio-Convention Year," Nation, 119 (9 July 1924): 34.

A Nine-Day Stalemate

The vote on the anti-Klan plank foreshadowed the difficulty the divided convention had in selecting a candidate, but still no one seemed prepared for the lengthy stalemate that ensued. The Democrats' procedural rule requiring that a nominee receive two-thirds of the delegates' votes to win the nomination further complicated an already complex situation. McAdoo and Smith had similar strategies. Each planned to understate their support initially and then increase his vote total slowly. The field was not limited to McAdoo and Smith. Delegates nominated and supported fourteen favorite sons and dark-horse candidates. Instead of dropping out as usual, many of the other candidates—each hoping to become a compromise choice in the face of a deadlocked convention—remained in the balloting, which began on Monday, 30 June. By the end of the week there had been seventy-seven rounds of balloting and neither McAdoo nor Smith was close to the 733 votes he needed to win the nomination. Several attempts to break the deadlock with rule changes were all defeated. The candidates' strategies reflected their escalating frustration. Each side began to hold out for his opponent's delegates to leave town. Balloting resumed the next Monday, 7 July. Increasingly, it became clear that delegates would not accept McAdoo or Smith, and they would have to choose a nominee from among the alternate candidates. Finally, on the 103rd ballot, after nine days of voting, the convention nominated John W. Davis, who had been the third-place candidate through most of the balloting. Davis, a cultivated gentleman and corporate lawyer, had served as ambassador to Great Britain in Wilson's administration. While the eleventh-hour decision was hardly a victory for anyone, Davis's nomination represented a strategic win for Smith's forces because Davis had the support of urban politicians.

The Vice-Presidential Candidate

Choosing Davis's running mate from among thirteen candidates, the delegates nominated Gov. Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska, brother of William Jennings Bryan, for the vice presidency with the minimum two-thirds vote. Bryan's nomination seemed to be an attempt to mollify the radical fringe of the party, and many dissatisfied delegates booed and hissed when Bryan's victory was announced.

Sources:

Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris, Convention Decisions and Voting

Records, second edition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1973);

David Burner, "Election of 1924," in History of American Presidential Elections 1789-1968, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., volume 3 (New York: Chelsea House/McGraw-Hill, 1971), pp. 2459-2581;

"The Garden Party," Nation, 119 (9 July 1924): 29-31.

THE TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL

Administration. Late in his presidency Warren G. Harding commented to journalist William Allen White that his enemies were not a problem, "but my damned friends … they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!" During the early 1920s Harding's cronies were involved in one scandal after another. Attorney General Harry Daugherty was caught accepting bribes from former clients to protect them from federal prosecution, and the Veterans' Bureau director, Charles Forbes, was jailed for fraud. The most sensational case of public corruption during the Harding administration was the Teapot Dome scandal, Contemporaries believed that this scandal, which involved public officials making secret deals for personal profit at public expense, epitomized politics of the 1920s. Many historians have blamed the flurry of public corruption in the 1920s on the excessive privileges granted to business by its friends in government.

Conservation Struggle

What eventually mushroomed into a scandal of national proportion began as a conservation policy struggle within the Republican Party. During the prewar Progressive Era, reformers and conservationists, fearing the reduction of domestic oil supplies, tightened federal oil-leasing policies. Republican president William Howard Taft created two naval petroleum reserves in California exclusively for government use, and in 1915 President Woodrow Wilson created a third reserve—Teapot Dome in Wyoming. As soon as these reserves were created, debate began over the possibility of leasing these reserves to private oil companies. Business interests advocated public access to the reserves, while conservationists opposed any private leases.

Albert Fall's Machinations

While businessmen and conservationists both had political allies, Harding tipped the balance with the appointment of Sen. Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, an outspoken anticonservationist, as secretary of the interior. In 1921, with the tacit approval of Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby, Fall maneuvered to have Harding issue an executive order transferring control of the naval oil reserves from the Navy Department to the Interior Department. Fall granted drilling rights in the California reserves to Edward L. Doheny, owner of Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, and that same year Fall leased the Teapot Dome reserve to Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Oil Company. Within weeks Sinclair also had access to Elk Hills, one of the California reserves.

Conservation Retaliation

Although he had no hard evidence, Harry A. Slattery, a staunch conservationist, heard rumors of Fall's covert manipulations and began working to expose him, soliciting the assistance of Sen. Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, a longtime conservationist who launched a Senate investigation. Chaired by Democrat Thomas J. Walsh of Montana, the Senate Committee on Public Lands and Surveys reluctantly "studied" the situation privately for sixteen months before public hearings opened in October 1923. By then Fall had resigned as interior secretary and Harding had died, diminishing the urgency of the investigation.

The Scandal Breaks

For two months the fairly routine Senate investigation attracted little attention. But Fall's conspicuous personal spending led to inquiries that forced him to admit that he had borrowed $100,000 dollars from an unnamed source. This admission attracted national attention to the Teapot Dome investigation. Next Doheny admitted that he was the "source" of the "loan," which he defended as assistance to a longtime friend.

A Media Frenzy

From January to March 1924 the Teapot Dome hearings were a national sensation. At the Senate hearings politicians hurled charges and counter-charges. Since it was an election year, Democrats seldom missed an opportunity to exploit the Republican scandal. Journalists enjoyed the fallout, covering every possible angle and extrapolating broadly. Eventually Attorney General Daugherty and Secretary of the Navy Denby resigned under intense criticism. As the investigation continued into the spring, Democrats cast wider and wider nets to snag more Republicans, attempting with little success to link President Coolidge with the scandal simply on the grounds of guilt by association.

Ironic Consequences

Remarkably, the Teapot Dome scandal had little effect on the Republicans, who managed to taint their fiercest Democratic rival, William McAdoo, one of Doheny's legal advisers, with fallout from the scandal. Revelations of Doheny's role in the scandal tarnished McAdoo by association. Coolidge's image as an honest, frugal New Englander committed to small government helped the Republicans to avoid the worst of the backlash from the scandal, as did the president's willingness to press the investigation. In the 1924 election voters refused to punish Coolidge for corruption in Harding's administration.

Final Fallout

State trials in California and Wyoming between 1924 and 1929 divulged the passing of more money from oil barons to Fall and the Republican National Committee. Fall, who reportedly received at least $409,000 from Sinclair and Doheny, was convicted of accepting bribes in 1929 and became the first cabinet officer in the nation's history to serve a prison sentence. Sinclair and Doheny were acquitted of paying bribes. The Supreme Court eventually overturned Fall's oil-leasing policy and nullified the Sinclair and Doheny leases. In December 1924 Coolidge established a Federal Oil Conservation Board to promote the preservation of the government oil supply, and the next Republican president, Herbert Hoover, announced "complete conservation of government oil in this administration."

Source:

Burl Noggle, Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1962).

The Teapot Dome Scandal, one of the most sensational in American political history, took its name from the site of a naval oil reserve in Wyoming that in 1922 was leased by Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall to the oilman Harry F. Sinclair.This and a similar lease of the Elk Hills, California, reserve to Edward L. Doheny were possible because Fall, an advocate of private development, had recently persuaded President Warren G. Harding to give him jurisdiction over the reserves and had won the navy's agreement by stipulating that oil royalties could be used to expand above‐ground storage facilities. Conservationists objected strongly, and the secrecy surrounding the deal aroused suspicions of favoritism and bribery, especially when Fall began improvements on his New Mexico Ranch. The Senate voted to investigate, and in late 1923, after Harding's death and Fall's departure from the Cabinet, Senator Thomas J. Walsh began an inquiry.

As the story unfolded in subsequent governmental investigations and court cases, Fall had received $409,000 from the two oilmen, partly as unsecured, interest‐free loans and partly through the assignment to him of $233,000 in government bonds. The leases would probably have been made without these incentives, but as the evidence of fraud mounted, they were canceled. Fall, convicted of accepting bribes, was sentenced in 1929 to a year in prison and fined $100,000. Sinclair and Doheny were acquitted of criminal charges, although Sinclair did serve short jail sentences for contempt of Congress and contempt of court.

Teapot Dome entered American political folklore as the symbol and major example of Harding Era corruption, and as late as 1928 revelations about those involved and their connections with Republican party financing continued. Thanks, however, to Harding's death, President Calvin Coolidge's success in winning public trust, and revelations connecting leading Democrats to Doheny, the scandal failed to shake Republican dominance. Teapot Dome's long‐range significance lay less in its political fallout than in its relationship to conservation policy. Its roots were in the fierce conservation battles of the William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson administrations, and conservationists made good use of the scandal to overturn the prodevelopment actions of 1921–1922, secure creation of a Federal Oil Conservation Board, and return the oil reserves to naval control.
See also Conservation Movement; Environmentalism; Petroleum Industry; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

M.R. Werner and and John Starr , Teapot Dome, 1959.
Burl Noggle , Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s, 1962.

Ellis W. Hawley

TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL

The presidential administration of warren g. harding, from 1921 to 1923, was characterized by scandal and corruption, the most controversial of which was the Teapot Dome oil scandal.

Conservation was a popular cause throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century and was encouraged by various presidents. As a result, several oil reserves for the exclusive use of the U.S. Navy were established in Wyoming and California. The oil was kept in storage places called domes, one of which, located near Casper, Wyoming, was christened Teapot Dome due to a rock formation in the area that resembled a teapot.

Although many politicians favored the establishment of the oil reserves, others believed they were superfluous. One opponent of the oil policy was Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, who sought to make the reserves accessible to private industry.

In 1921, Senator Fall was selected as secretary of the interior in the Harding cabinet. Authority over the oil fields was transferred from the Department of the Navy to the interior department, with the consent of Edwin Denby, Secretary of the Navy. Fall was in a position to lease the oil reserves, without public bidding, to private parties. In 1922, Harry F. Sinclair, president of the Mammoth Oil Company, received rights to Teapot Dome, and Edward L. Doheny, a friend of Fall and prominent in the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, leased the Elk Hills fields in California. Fall received approximately four hundred thousand dollars in exchange for his favoritism.

Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana initiated a Senate investigation of the oil reserve lands at the recommendation of Senator robert m. lafollette of Wisconsin. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the leases inoperative, and the oil fields at Teapot Dome and Elk Hills were returned to the U.S. government.

Sinclair served nine months in prison for contempt of court, but both he and Doheny were found not guilty of bribery. Fall, who had left the cabinet in 1923, was found guilty in 1929 of accepting bribes; his punishment was one year in prison and a fine of $100,000. President Harding died in office in 1923, never aware of the notoriety of his administration.

further readings

Stratton, David H. 1998. Tempest over Teapot Dome: The Story of Albert B. Fall. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press.

Teapot Dome in U.S. history, oil reserve scandal that began during the administration of President Harding . In 1921, by executive order of the President, control of naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyo., and at Elk Hills, Calif., was transferred from the Navy Dept. to the Dept. of the Interior. The oil reserves had been set aside for the navy by President Wilson. In 1922, Albert B. Fall , U.S. Secretary of the Interior, leased, without competitive bidding, the Teapot Dome fields to Harry F. Sinclair, an oil operator, and the field at Elk Hills, Calif., to Edward L. Doheny. These transactions became (1922-23) the subject of a Senate investigation conducted by Sen. Thomas J. Walsh . It was found that in 1921, Doheny had lent Fall $100,000, interest-free, and that upon Fall's retirement as Secretary of the Interior (Mar., 1923) Sinclair also "loaned" him a large amount of money. The investigation led to criminal prosecutions. Fall was indicted for conspiracy and for accepting bribes. Convicted of the latter charge, he was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000. In another trial for bribery Doheny and Sinclair were acquitted, although Sinclair was subsequently sentenced to prison for contempt of the Senate and for employing detectives to shadow members of the jury in his case. The oil fields were restored to the U.S. government through a Supreme Court decision in 1927.

Bibliography: See M. R. Werner and J. Starr, Teapot Dome (1959); B. Noggle, Teapot Dome (1962).

Teapot Dome Scandal (USA) When Warren G. Harding was elected US President in 1920, he brought into his administration many of his friends, who became known as the ‘Ohio gang’. Harding transferred the management of the US navy's oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, from the navy to the Interior Department under his old friend Albert B. Fall. Fall allowed the secret exploration of oil reserves at Wyoming by the Mammoth Oil Company, and of other reserves at Elk Hills, California, by the Pan-American Petroleum and Transportation Company. Harding, who was not personally involved, died before the full extent of scandal and the involvement of Fall was exposed by Senator Thomas J. Walsh during 1922–4. Fall was found guilty of accepting a $400,000 bribe and imprisoned in 1929.

Teapot Dome scandal (1922–24) US fraud perpetrated by the “Ohio gang” surrounding President HARDING. It involved the siphoning of oil, intended for the US navy, from the oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to the Mammoth Oil Company. A second diversion allowed oil from Elk Hills, California, to be siphoned to the Pan-American Petroleum and Transportation Company. Harding died before the full extent of the involvement of the Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, was exposed by Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana in the years 1922–24. Fall was found guilty of accepting a $100,000 bribe and imprisoned (1929–32).

Teapot Dome Scandal (1924) Corruption scandal involving the US government during President Harding's administration over the fraudulent leasing of oil reserves. The secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, was convicted of accepting bribes, and served one year in prison.

Teapot Dome the name of a naval oil reserve in Wyoming, irregularly leased by the US government in 1922, and referred to allusively in connection with the resulting political scandal.