Warren Gamaliel Harding

The twenty-ninth president of the United States, Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865-1923), highly popular during his lifetime, was later regarded as one of the worst presidents in the country's history.

Warren G. Harding was born on Nov. 2, 1865, on a farm near Blooming Grove, Ohio. He attended local schools and graduated from Ohio Central College in 1882. His father moved the family to Marion that same year. After unsatisfactory attempts to teach, study law, and sell insurance, young Harding got a job on a local newspaper. In 1884 he purchased the struggling Marion Star with two partners (whom he later bought out). The growth of Marion and his own business skill and editorial abilities brought prosperity to the Starand to Harding. On July 8, 1891, he married Florence DeWolfe, a widow with one child; they had no children of their own.

Election to Office

Active in local Republican politics, Harding was elected in 1899 to the Ohio Senate, where he served two terms and became Republican floor leader. In 1903 he was elected lieutenant governor but retired in 1905. Although a born harmonizer who remained personally on good terms with all elements in the faction-ridden Ohio Republican party, he belonged to the Old Guard wing of the party. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1910. But in the Republican comeback in 1914 Harding was elected to the U.S. Senate. As a senator, Harding strongly supported business, pushing for high tariffs, favoring the return of the railroads to private hands, and denouncing radicals. He was a "strong reservationist" on the League of Nations, and he followed Ohio public opinion by voting for the prohibition amendment.

In 1919 Harding announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination; he won the nomination on the tenth ballot. Legend has pictured Harding as a puppet in the hands of his wife or his campaign manager. But Harding was no one's puppet: he was an ambitious and calculating politician. Nor was he the handpicked nominee of a group of Old Guard senators. The convention was unbossed, and Harding, with his reputation as a loyal party man, his amiable personality, and his avoidance of controversial stands, was the second choice of the majority of the rank-and-file delegates. When the two front-runners deadlocked, the convention had swung to the handsome Ohioan.

In the election Harding successfully straddled the explosive League of Nations issue. By capitalizing on the public's yearning for a return to "normalcy" after World War I, Harding won by the largest popular majority yet recorded.

The President

Despite the country's postwar position as a creditor nation, Harding gave his blessing to protective farm tariffs. Devoted to governmental economy, he supported establishment of the Bureau of the Budget, sharply cut government expenditures despite depressed economic conditions, and vetoed the World War I veterans' bonus passed by Congress. He backed Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon's program for repealing the excess-profits tax and lowering the income tax on the wealthy; he gave Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover a free hand in his efforts to promote business cooperation and efficiency; he favored turning over government-owned plants to private enterprise; he packed regulatory commissions and the Supreme Court with conservative appointees; and he strongly favored immigration restriction.

Harding wished to remain neutral in labor disputes and worked behind the scenes for conciliation, but when his hand was forced, he took management's side. Thus, after his attempted mediation in the 1922 railroad shopmen's strike failed, he approved a sweeping injunction against the strikers—this won him the bitter enmity of organized labor.

But Harding was not the archreactionary of later myth. He supported the Sheppard-Towner Act (1921), extending federal aid to the states to reduce infant mortality. He unsuccessfully proposed establishing a department of public welfare to coordinate and expand Federal programs in education, public health, child welfare, and recreation. He was instrumental in ending the 12-hour day in the steel industry. He promoted increased federal spending on highways. He commuted the sentences of most of the wartime political prisoners, including Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs. While balking at government subsidies or price-fixing to assist farmers hard hit by postwar falling prices, he approved legislation for extending credit to farmers, for stricter federal supervision of the meat industry, for regulating speculation on the grain exchanges, and for exempting farm marketing cooperatives from the antitrust laws.

Foreign Policy

In foreign policy Harding was largely guided by his prointernationalist secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes. Although Harding regarded the 1920 election as a popular mandate against American membership in the League of Nations, his administration cooperated with the nonpolitical activities of the League, and in 1923 he came out in favor of American membership on the World Court. Adamant in demanding full repayment of Allied war debts, he was flexible in arranging terms.

Efforts were made to restore good relations with Mexico and Cuba and to terminate military intervention in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Colombia was indemnified for the loss of Panama. The Harding administration's most important diplomatic achievement was the Washington Conference. Meeting in November 1921, the conferees formulated a series of treaties, which secured Senate ratification, fixing ratios of warships for the United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy, guaranteeing the territorial status quo in the Pacific, and reaffirming the independence and territorial integrity of China and the open-door principle of commercial equality.

Scandals in the Administration

By 1923 Harding was increasingly disturbed by the rumors of corruption involving high administration officials and hangers-on. But he failed to act decisively, partly because he believed the attacks were politically motivated, partly because of a misplaced loyalty to old friends. Perhaps his worst mistake was in appointing his senatorial crony Albert B. Fall as secretary of the interior. Fall persuaded Harding to transfer naval oil reserves from the Navy Department to the Department of the Interior. Then, after Fall had corruptly leased the reserves at Elk Hills, Calif., and Teapot Dome, Wyo., to oilmen, he induced Harding to defend these transactions when questions were raised in the Senate.

Although the Republicans had suffered sharp losses in the 1922 congressional elections, Harding personally remained tremendously popular. However, his health was affected by overwork and anxiety over his wife's health and the multiplying evidences of corruption in his administration. He suffered a heart attack followed by bronchopneumonia while on his cross-country tour in the summer of 1923. He died on Aug. 2, 1923, probably from a cerebral hemorrhage. The posthumous exposure of the scandals in Harding's administration—including Fall's conviction for bribery, the attorney general's forced resignation and narrow escape from jail, and prison sentences for the head of two government bureaus—and the charges that Harding had fathered an illegitimate daughter and that he drank excessively all led to his decline in public esteem.

Yet Harding was not the affable, weak, and even stupid figure of popular legend. He was a hardworking, conscientious, well-intentioned, politically skillful chief executive who was not without courage or the capacity for growth. Most contemporaries praised his success in leading the country through the painful transition from the difficulties of the postwar years, and his administration did lay foundations for later prosperity. But he showed indecisiveness and lack of leadership when faced with conflict; his mind was untrained and undisciplined; and most important, the values of small-town America which he embodied were inadequate for dealing with the problems of the postwar world.

Further Reading

There is no satisfactory biography of Harding. Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (1968), emphasizes the scandalous aspects of Harding's private and public life. Andrew Sinclair, The Available Man: The Life behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding (1965), contains shrewd insights but is superficial in its research. Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era (1969), is a well-researched but not wholly convincing attempt to rehabilitate Harding's presidential reputation. See also William Allen White, Masks in a Pageant (1928), and Samuel Hopkins Adams, Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren G. Harding (1939). On the election of 1920 see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 3 (1971). □

HARDING, WARREN GAMALIEL

Warren Gamaliel Harding served as the twenty-ninth president of the United States, from 1921 to 1923. Harding, who also served one term in the U.S. Senate, presided over an administration that achieved little and that was tainted by political corruption.

Harding was born November 2, 1865, on a farm at Caledonia (now Blooming Grove), Morrow County, Ohio, the eldest of eight children. He attended Ohio Central College. Harding then tried teaching, reading the law, selling insurance, and working as a journalist. He became the editor and publisher of the Marion Star, in Ohio, in 1884.

In 1891, Harding married Florence Kling DeWolfe, the daughter of a prominent Marion banker. DeWolfe was a divorcée, five years Hard-ing's senior, with great ambitions for Harding. She helped build the Marion Star into a prosperous newspaper and encouraged Harding to enter republican party politics.

Harding was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1898, and was elected lieutenant governor of the state in 1903. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1910. His national political standing rose over the next decade. At the Republican National Convention in 1912, he was selected to nominate President william howard taft for a second term. (In 1921, he would nominate Taft to serve as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.) In 1914, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Regarded as a fine public speaker, he gave the keynote address at the 1916 Republican National Convention.

As a U.S. senator, Harding was well liked by his colleagues but demonstrated little interest in the legislative process. He introduced no major bills during his six-year term, and was frequently absent. His politics followed the Republican mainstream: favoring high tariffs on imports and opposing the league of nations and the federal regulation of commerce.

At the 1920 Republican National Convention, in Chicago, most of the delegates favored Governor Frank O. Lowden, of Illinois; Major General Leonard Wood, formerly army chief of staff; or Senator Hiram W. Johnson, of California, for president. After four ballots, the convention was deadlocked. Early in the morning, in what Harding campaign manager harry m. daugherty called a smoke-filled room, the party leaders agreed on Harding as a compromise candidate. The convention agreed to the selection and nominated Governor calvin coolidge, of Massachusetts, as Harding's vice presidential running mate.

Harding defeated the democratic party nominee, Governor James M. Cox, of Ohio, in the November 1920 election. Harding campaigned from the front porch of his home in Marion, avoiding any specifics on his domestic political agenda. Instead, he promised the United States a return to "normalcy."

Harding's presidency was marked by the delegation of responsibilities to his cabinet chiefs. Rejecting the strong executive leadership style of Presidents theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson, Harding relied on a distinguished group of men, including Secretary of Commerce herbert hoover, Secretary of State charles evans hughes, and Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace. These and other cabinet heads helped lead the government away from wartime emergency conditions. In 1921, Secretary Hughes convened the Washington Conference on Naval Disarmament. The members of the conference—England, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States—agreed to limit their naval warships in fixed ratios.

In June 1923, Harding began a cross-country speaking tour, in hopes of reviving Republican party fortunes, which had taken a beating in the 1922 congressional election. On the trip, he received a secret telegram that disclosed an impending scandal for his administration concerning a Senate investigation of oil leases. In Seattle, Harding fell ill, presumably of food poisoning. His train stopped in San Francisco, where doctors reported Harding had pneumonia. On August 2, Harding died. No autopsy was made, leaving the exact cause of death unknown. Vice President Coolidge succeeded Harding as president.

"Americans ought ever be asking themselves about their concept of the ideal republic."
—Warren G. Harding

The scandals that stained the Harding administration largely became public after Harding's death. One involved Attorney General Daugherty, who in 1926 was tried twice on

charges he had committed improprieties in administering the Office of the Alien Property Custodian. Both trials ended in a hung jury.

The teapot dome scandal was the most troubling. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, a wealthy New Mexico attorney, had left the U.S. Senate in 1921 to join Harding's cabinet. In 1924, he was indicted for criminal conspiracy and bribery. It was alleged that he accepted a $100,000 bribe from oil producers Harry F. Sinclair and Edward Doheny in exchange for leasing government-owned oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California, to the pair's oil companies at unusually favorable terms. Fall was acquitted of the conspiracy charge in 1926, but was convicted of accepting bribes in 1929. He served two years in prison and paid a fine.

President Harding's short term of office and the scandals that befell his political appointees have left his administration remembered more for its corruption than for its achievements.

further readings

Dean, John W. 2004. Warren G. Harding. New York: Times Books.

Watkins, T.H. 1990. Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold Ickes, 1874–1952. New York: Holt.

HARDING, WARREN GAMALIEL 1865-1923

President of the united states, 1921-1923

A Lovable President

A former journalist and senator from Ohio, Warren G. Harding ushered in a decade of Republican ascendancy with his landslide election to the presidency in 1920. Republican hegemony lasted until 1932, when Americans finally rejected the laissez-faire Republican policies that had thrust them into the Great Depression, Unlike his Democratic predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, Harding was popular, personable, approachable, and loved by the American people. His down-home image was familiar to millions. Harding's popularity persisted despite attempts to arouse racist sentiment against him with accusations that his great-grandmother Elizabeth Madison was black and that his great-grandfather had African American ancestors. While these claims were never definitively verified, they were widely accepted in the South.

Politics of Normalcy

Harding's 1920 presidential campaign popularized the term normalcy. In defining this concept Harding explained, "I don't mean the old order, but a regular steady order of things. I mean normal procedure, the natural way, without excess." Harding wanted to create a partnership between government and business, to make government "business friendly." His administration supported higher tariffs and reduced government spending while overhauling the federal tax structure to reduce the burden on wealthy Americans. Moreover, the Republican president promoted industrial standardization, efficiency, expansion of business, and elimination of waste. Harding appealed to all Americans frustrated with Wilson and the Democrats. The slogan "Let's be done with wiggle and wobble" highlighted Harding's determination to abandon Wilson's policies and tactics.

A Cabinet of Contrasts

To fulfill his campaign promise to make government more like business, Harding brought some of the "best minds" of American business to Washington. Among the new president's most able recruits were Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state, Henry C. Wallace as secretary of agriculture, Herbert Hoover as secretary of commerce, and Andrew W. Mellon as secretary of the treasury. Yet Harding did not confine his selection of policy advisers strictly to accomplished men with respected reputations. The former Ohio senator also appointed several political cronies who later betrayed his trust and tarnished his administration. Harding rewarded his longtime friend and campaign manager Harry M. Daugherty with the post of attorney general. He later resigned in the midst of scandal and was tried but acquitted of charges that he conspired to defraud the federal government. The most notorious corruption scandal involving the Harding administration involved another of the president's friends, Albert B. Fall, who was appointed secretary of the interior. Implicated in the notorious Teapot Dome scandal, Fall resigned, was tried for accepting bribes from private oil companies, and became the first cabinet officer in American history to be sent to prison for committing a felony.

Harding's Death

Elected to the presidency on his fifty-fifth birthday, 2 November 1920, Harding died unexpectedly on 2 August 1923, while in San Francisco during a transcontinental speaking tour. Just before and soon after his death, the scandals involving members of his administration began to erupt, revealing the degree to which Harding had been victimized by his friends. While the preponderance of evidence indicates that Harding was not an accomplice to their illegal activities, he bore the responsibility for appointing the culprits. His reputation was also damaged when Nan Britton published The President's Daughter (1927), in which she told of her affair with the president and the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth Ann, who, Britton insisted, was Harding's child.

Source:

Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969).

Warren Gamaliel Harding , 1865–1923, 29th President of the United States (1921–23), b. Blooming Grove (now Corsica), Ohio. After study (1879–82) at Ohio Central College, he moved with his family to Marion, Ohio, where he devoted himself to journalism. He bought the Marion Star, built up the newspaper, and became a member of the small group that dominated local affairs. He entered Ohio Republican politics and was (1899–1903) a member of the state legislature. Harding served as lieutenant governor (1904–5), but he was defeated (1910) as Republican candidate for governor. His talent for public speaking and his affable personality won Harding the support of the political leaders as well as of the people and enabled him to rise into national politics; he was picked to nominate William Howard Taft at the convention of 1912, and he was elected (1914) to the U.S. Senate. His six-year stay in the Senate was undistinguished, for he followed the party whips on domestic legislation and Henry Cabot Lodge on issues concerning the peace. In 1920, Harding was nominated for the presidency, largely through the efforts of a group of Senators, after successive balloting for Gen. Leonard Wood and Frank O. Lowden had deadlocked the Republican convention. His vague pronouncements on the League of Nations and his noncommittal utterances in the campaign helped him to win the election, defeating the Democratic candidate, James M. Cox , by an impressive majority. The administration that followed was marked by one achievement, the calling of the Washington Conference (see naval conferences ). Harding, conscious of his own limitations, had promised to rely on a cabinet of "best minds," but unfortunately he chose—along with more capable advisers—men who lacked any sense of public responsibility. At the time of the legislative deadlock of 1923 came rumors of scandals in the Veterans' Bureau, in the Office of the Alien Property Custodian, and in the departments of the Interior and Justice. In the midst of these rumors, Harding died suddenly (Aug., 1923) in San Francisco on his return from a journey to Alaska. Thus he was not troubled by the exposure of the Teapot Dome scandal and was spared the humiliation of seeing his appointees Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall and Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty brought to the bar of justice. Lesser scandals were also exposed, and Harding's administration has been stigmatized as one of the most corrupt in American history.

Bibliography: See S. H. Adams, Incredible Era (1939, repr. 1964); F. Russell, Shadow of Blooming Grove (1968); R. C. Downes, The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding (1970); E. P. Trani and D. L. Wilson, The Presidency of Warren G. Harding (1977); L. R. Wade, Warren G. Harding (1989).

Harding, Warren Gamaliel (b. 2 Nov. 1865, d. 2 Aug. 1923). 29th US President 1921–3 Born at Corsica, Ohio, into an established Ohio family, he studied at Ohio Central College (1879–82). He made his name as a publisher and editor of the Marion Star newspaper. Harding held a variety of state offices as a Republican before winning election to the US Senate in 1914. His handsome appearance, conservatism, inoffensiveness, and uplifting speaking style earned him the Republican presidential nomination as a compromise candidate in 1920. One of his critics described Harding's speeches as ‘an army of pompons phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea’ ( William Gibbs McAdoo). Conducting the election campaign from the porch of his home, he won it through his reassuring programme, predicated upon a return to ‘normalcy’ after the upheaval of the Wilson years. In office, he demonstrated a lack of grip which allowed associates from Ohio whom he had appointed without reflection to indulge, without his knowledge, in corrupt practices. One such practice led, after Harding's death, to the Teapot Dome affair. Shortly after his death from a heart attack, revelations of the misdemeanours of his appointees led to a rapid decline in his reputation.

Harding, Warren Gamaliel (1865–1923) Twenty-ninth US president (1921–23). A senator (1915–21), he was a compromise Republican presidential candidate. His campaign for a return to ‘normalcy’ easily won the election. He handed government to his cabinet, and his administration, known as the ‘Ohio Gang’, was one of the most corrupt in US history. The Teapot Dome Scandal forced a Congessional investigation. Harding died before the worst excesses became public knowledge, and his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, succeeded him.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents

Harding, Warren (Gamaliel) (1865–1923) US Republican statesman, 29th President of the USA (1921–23). He died suddenly in office, before the worst revelations of his administration's incompetence and corruption had been made.