IX. Progressive Movement and the 1920s
Learning Objective:
Understand the circumstances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
in America that led to the progressive movement.
Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, the United
States underwent profound social, economic, and political changes.
Mid-nineteenth century America was primarily rural, agricultural,
and populated by the descendants of Northern European Protestants.
The America of 1930 was primarily urban, industrial and increasingly
populated by immigrants from other regions of the globe besides
Northern Europe. This transformation caused significant social
and political unrest in the United States. One manifestation
of this unrest was the progressive movement.
The following factors helped contribute to the progressive
movement:
1) Urbanization. The period between the Civil War and the Great
Depression was the most rapid period of urbanization in the
nation's history. In 1860, four times as many people lived in
rural as in urban areas (25,227,000 v. 6,217,000). By 1930,
the rural population had basically doubled, but urban population
had increased more than tenfold (53,820,000 v. 68,955,000).
In 1860 only nine cities in the U.S. had a population of 100,000
or more, by 1930 the number had grown to 93.
2) Industrialization. Beginning in the 1850s, the United States
began to rapidly industrialize. After the Civil War this process
accelerated. In 1860 about half of all the nation's work force
was engaged in agriculture, by 1930 this number had decreased
to around 22 percent. The gross national product had increased,
in constant 1929 dollars, from $9.11 billion to $104.4 billion.
And, industrial union membership grew from an estimated 300,000
workers to 3,393,000 (down from a 1920 high of 5,048,000).
3) Immigration. Prior to 1890 most immigrants to the United
States came from England, Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia.
During the forty years between 1850 and 1890, about 13,550,000
immigrants came to the United States. During the thirty years
between 1890 and 1920 the number of immigrants coming to the
United States increased to 18,218,761. Beginning in the late
1880s the number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe
coming into the United States dramatically increased. These
Catholic and Jewish immigrants tended to be poorer than previous
immigrants. During the decade of the 1870s immigrants from Southern
and Eastern Europe made up only 7.2 percent of the total (201,889
out of a total of 2,812,191 immigrants). During the decade of
1901-10 their numbers swelled to about 71 percent (6,225,981
out of a total of 8,795,386 immigrants). The volume of immigration
also increased significantly; by 1900 a third of the nation
was either foreign born of the children of foreign born—in
many cities immigrants and their children were a clear majority.
From the late eighteenth century onward, the world experienced
an unprecedented growth in population. Before 1800 the birth
rate averaged in most countries between 35 and 50 per 1,000,
and the death rate between 30 and 40. The slight surplus of
births over deaths was periodically wiped out by war, disease,
or famine. This ceased to hold true in the l9th century. Mortality
rates dropped (in England to as low as 18 per 1,000), while
birth rates either remained constant or rose, so that the gap
between births and deaths kept growing wider. As a result, the
l9th century population of Europe grew from an estimated 193
million in 1800 to 423 million in 1900. In other words, Europe
accumulated more inhabitants in the course of a single century
than in all the centuries of its previous existence.
Advanced industrial nations were able to maintain population
densities that would have proved fatal to purely agrarian ones.
The reasons for this phenomenon are: 1) the railroad and steamship
facilitated the importation of food from distant areas; 2) the
increase in agricultural yields per acre brought about by scientific
farming; and, 3) the use of mechanical power instead of horse
power allowed a reduction in the number of horses and freed
much pasture land for food production. It is estimated that
the steam engines operating in England in 1870 produced the
equivalent power of 6 million horses. The growing population
provided industrial countries with both a labor force and an
expanding market.
But in countries with poorly developed industries the new population
had nowhere to go. While Belgium in l900 could support 589 inhabitants
a square mile, Spain could only handle 97 and Russia 55. In
the non-industrialized, rural countries of Europe the bulk of
the land remained concentrated in the hands of state, church,
and large landowners. In these areas a huge landless proletariate
began to emerge. The peasants in these areas—Ireland, Portugal,
Spain, Italy, Austria-Hungary, eastern Germany, and Russia—were
predominantly tenants, or at best, partial owners. For example,
in central Spain at least 2/3 of the land was in holdings of
more than 25,000 acres; in Ireland 90 percent of the land was
farmed by tenants (1904).
This excess population could migrate to three principal places:
to the cities, to other European countries, and overseas. All
three movements took place (France was particularly receptive
to immigrants, for its own population grew so slowly that there
were well-founded fears that France would no longer be able
to defend itself). But the principal form of migration was overseas,
especially across the Atlantic. This migratory wave constituted
the largest population movement in recorded history.
Prior to 1846 European migration tended to be sporadic and
selective, the majority of the migrants leaving Europe less
for economic than for political or religious reasons. The mass
exodus began in 1846-1847 with the Irish migration caused by
the potato blight. From then on every economic and political
crisis sent from Europe fresh waves of overseas migrants. The
development of cheap steamship transport contributed to this
movement, for ships bringing wheat to Europe, rather than return
empty, took on migrants at low fares. In the second half of
the l9th century an average of 400,000 Europeans migrated annually.
At the height of emigration (1900-1914), this figure exceeded
1 million. Between 1870 and 1914, 34 million Europeans left
for overseas, 27 million of them for the United States. About
30 percent of the 34 million migrants eventually returned to
Europe. The long-term net emigration totaled 25 million persons.
The above factors are all interrelated. Cities grew because
the increased industrial base could support them. Immigrants
came to the United States because there were jobs for them in
the new factories. Increased mechanization allowed fewer and
fewer farmers to support an increasing urban population, and
many rural folk also moved to the cities. With the defeat of
the South in the Civil War, and the failure of the Populist
movement, rural America had lost its political and economic
hold on the nation.
Yet, whether urban or rural, old-stock Americans wanted to
preserve their traditional values. In addition, with the disappearance
of inexpensive western land, and the development of urban industry,
the immigrants tended to settle in the cities. Urban old-stock
Americans did not want to lose political power to the new-comers.
A lack of political power would mean loosing control over social
and economic issues that controlled their everyday lives. Out
of these concerns the progressive movement was born.
Learning Objective:
Understand the outcomes of the progressive movement.
Historians still debate about the personal motivations of the
progressives and whether the outcome of their policy was planned
or accidental. But whatever the motivation of the progressives,
during the Progressive Era (c. 1895-1920), the American political
system grew less democratic.
The progressives tended to be old-stock, upper and upper-middle
class Americans. They tended to want to preserve traditional
American values (e.g. Protestant, Northern European) against
what they believed to be an attack by alien forces. Thus, prohibition,
immigration restriction, racial segregation, super-patriotism,
fundamentalism, an efficient, business-like government, a fear
of communism and socialism, and labor-union busting, are all
characteristics of the progressive era.
The progressives were strongest in the cities because this
is where the conflict took place at the local level. Old-stock
Americans never lost power in the nation's rural areas. In urban
areas, the new immigrants used the Democratic party as a way
to gain decision-making power. The Republican party had traditionally
been hostile to immigrants, and the immigrants naturally gravitated
to the Democratic party. In most cities power was decentralized
and personal. Block, ward, and precinct captains looked out
for their constituents, many of whom could not speak English.
The Democratic party procured jobs, helped people out of minor
scraps with the law, and generally took care of its constituents
in time of trouble. In return for this assistance the party
expected, and received, the votes of the urban masses. This
system was personal, but inefficient. Money that could be better
spent building new sewer lines and streets to an outlying factory
was often spent on social services in order to insure votes.
The old-stock, upper and upper-middle class Americans wanted
to regain political decision-making power. They wanted a centralized,
efficient government that would deliver city services to where
they were needed for economic growth, not to where the votes
were. The fundamental problem the progressives had was how to
gain this decision-making power when they, in many cases, were
in a numerical minority.
The very name "progressive" illustrates one way they
solved this dilemma. Progressive connotes progress — thus,
to be against the progressives was to be against progress. The
progressives claimed to be "reformers." Reform is
usually defined as "making better by removing faults and
defects." Yet, a better definition of reform could be "change
that benefits those advocating it" (an obvious example
of this definition is the abolishment of slavery — to the plantation
owner it was not "reform"). By presenting themselves
as reformers the progressives automatically made the opposition
"anti-reform." A smart political move, but not always
correct.
The Democratic party became the "Machine." A machine
is cold and impersonal, and in this case, supposedly only produced
one item—votes. Yet numerous historians have pointed out that
the "machine" fulfilled specific needs for the urban
masses, and it provided one of the few means of upward mobility
to the immigrant. The progressives also attacked the politicians
of the "machine" as corrupt. There is no doubt that
urban politicians took bribes, used unfair advantage of their
inside knowledge to feather their own nest, and welcomed kickbacks.
But, as Samuel P. Hays has explained, "public corruption
involves political even more than moral considerations."
Because the immigrants had the votes the "Machine"
tended to listen to them; for example, city governments would
often not use the police to suppress labor strikes. Thus, the
cities' business and industrial men used corruption as a way
to get access into the system. Naturally, they would rather
not have to spend this extra money, and they would rather have
had direct, rather than indirect, control over political decisions.
The progressives were not always successful. In several cities
decentralized, "Machine" politics exist down to this
day. Where they were successful they tended to centralize government,
making it more professional and less personal. By the end of
the 1920s, most cities had adopted some form of municipal civil
service. Members of school boards and the city council were
elected city-wide rather than on a district-by-district basis.
This action significantly increased the cost of campaigning,
thereby helping the wealthier elements of society. It also made
it more difficult for specific ethnic groups to elect their
own representatives. Elections were moved from Saturday to Tuesday
in an attempt to reduce the working-class immigrant vote. City
elections became "nonpartisan," so that immigrants
would have a difficult time knowing which candidate represented
the "Machine."
These developments tended to exclude the lower classes from
an active role in municipal politics. Voter participation declined
as people felt farther and farther removed from their government.
Zoning laws, initially established for efficient use of land
and to protect community health, had the effect of segregating
the poor from the wealthy. The recall (the electorate removes
a politician from office), the referendum (elected officials
put an issue on the ballot and the electorate votes on it),
and the initiative (the electorate puts an issue on the ballot),
while seeming to "more democratic," in reality shifted
power away from elected officials to interest groups.
The 17th Amendment (1913) allowing the direct election of senators
was an attempt by the progressives to reduce the power of special
interests, especially "big business," by making it
more difficult for them to control the election of senators.
One reason that women received the right to vote nationally
in the 19th Amendment (1919) was that the progressives believed
that women were more "moral" than men, and womenâs
votes would make it easier for progressive "reformers"
to be elected. Another reason for the womenâs vote was
that women had worked strenuously for the vote during World
War I, and fighting a war to "make the world safe for democracy,"
and not allowing women to vote at home, struck many Americans
as hypocritical.
In northern cities at least, the progressive movement was a
conflict between the new immigrants and the old. In some cases
the progressives won, and in some they lost. The progressive
movement was not a case of good versus evil, of reform versus
nonreform. It was two different power groups, with differing
views of what the role of government should be, fighting it
out in the political arena. That is the American way.
Learning Objective:
Understand the general character of the United States during the
first two decades of the twentieth century.
The increase in the proportion of eastern and southern European
immigrants coming to the U.S. beginning in the 1880s increased
Nativism sentiments. Local communities throughout the country
redoubled their efforts at patriotism. They passed laws making
English the only language of instruction in the schools. Such
laws also prohibited some of the "immoral" practices
associated with immigrants, especially in matters such as gambling
and liquor sales.
In 1882 Congress excluded convicts, idiots, and persons likely
to become public charges from immigrating into the U.S. It also
imposed a head tax of 50 cents for each immigrant admitted.
Between 1854 and 1883 several hundred thousand Chinese came
to the U.S.—many took jobs building railroads in the West.
With the decline in railroad production, in 1882 Congress barred
further immigration of Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act and
other acts of Congress also denied American citizenship to Orientals.
By 1905, about 100,000 Japanese had immigrated to the U.S.,
the great majority of them settling in California. Native Americans
tended to view the Japanese as not being able to assimilate
into American culture. Anti-Oriental prejudices, directed earlier
at the Chinese, now focused on the Japanese. In 1906 the San
Francisco School Board issued an order segregating Japanese
children because they were allegedly over the accepted school
age and they were overcrowding the public schools. Actually,
the order involved only 93 Japanese pupils, of whom 25 had been
born American citizens and the oldest two were only aged 20.
Such blatant racism greatly disturbed the Japanese. Incorrectly
assuming at first the President could easily control the Californians,
the Japanese government lodged a strong diplomatic protest and
requested the revocation of the school segregation order. President
Roosevelt was aware of Japan's great power (Japan had just defeated
Russia in a war, and Roosevelt had won the Nobel Peace Prize
for his role in negotiating the peace), and he was furious at
those "infernal fools" in San Francisco for recklessly
insulting the Japanese and risking a needless war.
After several goodwill gestures to assuage Japan, Roosevelt
summoned the San Francisco mayor and school board to the White
House in early 1907. Roosevelt promised to stop the Japanese
influx, and they agreed to rescind the segregation order. The
so-called Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907-08 resulted. The U.S.
agreed not to bar Japanese immigration by law in exchange for
Japan's promise not to allow its people to emigrate to the U.S.
mainland. This agreement assuaged Japan's national honor and
pride, but the entire affair left an unpleasant aftertaste.
In 1917, Congress, over President Wilson's veto, passed a bill
that required a literacy test for admission into the U.S.. Immigrants
over the age of 16 had to read "not less than 30 nor more
than 80 words in ordinary use" in English or some other
language. In 1921 Congress limited annual immigration to 357,802
and set a quota for each nation. The quota was arrived at by
taking 3 percent of the total number of persons of that nationality
residing in the U.S. in 1910. The quota favored northern and
western Europe. In 1924, the law was toughened. It provided
that after 1927 total immigration in any one year would be limited
to 150,000. A quota was allocated to each country according
to the proportion of its natives in the population of the U.S.
in 1920. The quota allocated to each group had no relationship
to the number of people who actually wanted to come to the U.S.
This law also forbade the immigration of Asians, thus terminating
the Gentlemen's Agreement and insulting the race-sensitive Japanese.
Prejudices against the new immigrants and blacks led to the
founding of the modern Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain Georgia
in 1915. Only "native born, white, gentile [e.g. Protestant]
Americans" could be members. By 1925 membership in the
Klan approached 5 million. The governor and a U.S. Senator from
Colorado were members of the Klan, and it was an important political
power in many states. The Klan used floggings, kidnappings,
cross-burnings, arson, even murder to terrorize whole communities.
The Klan began to fold with the restriction of immigration and
the total segregation of blacks. In addition, scandals rocked
the Klan and many people turned away from an organization that
pretended to guard civic purity but was now exposed as corrupt.
Prohibition was another attack upon the new immigrants and
the city. While fundamental Protestants considered liquor an
instrument of the Devil, to the new immigrants it was part of
their everyday life. In Europe social life revolved around the
pub, bistro, gausthause, and cafe. In addition, the Catholic
Church used wine in celebrating the Eucharist. Prohibition was
an attempt to control the values of the new immigrant and to
insure that they would show up to work on Monday sober and ready
to go.
Twenty-six states had already adopted prohibition laws by 1917.
During World War I, Congress first prohibited the manufacture
or sale of intoxicating liquors. The 18th Amendment, ratified
in 1919, placed this prohibition in the Constitution. The Volstead
Act, which enforced the Amendment, defined alcoholic beverages
as anything with one-half of l percent of alcohol by volume.
The government had to depend on a small force of agents to enforce
the law. Since millions of people continued to drink, the traffic
in illegal liquor (bootlegging) helped organize crime tremendously.
The 21st Amendment, ratified in 1933, ended prohibition.
The rapid change that was taking place during the last years
of the 19th and the first years of the 20th centuries caused
an upsurge in the power of fundamental Protestantism. Several
Southern states passed laws forbidding the teaching of evolution
in the schools. In 1925 Tennessee passed such a law. John Scopes,
a Dayton High School biology teacher, taught evolution and was
brought to trial. Scopes was defended by the American Civil
Liberties Union lawyer Clarence Darrow, the most famous lawyer
of the time and an acknowledged agnostic. William Jennings Bryan
led the prosecution. The all-star cast of the Dayton "monkey
trial" engaged the interest of the press, and therefore
the nation. Scopes was convicted for violating the law, but
the state supreme court reversed the decision on a technicality,
and the constitutionality of the statute could not be tested.
Bryan had testified on the stand as an expert on the Bible and
was generally humiliated. He died a few days after the trial.
Although the Tennessee law was finally repealed in 1967, the
conflict over evolution still exists to this day.
Generally speaking, the first two decades of the 20th century
were marked by full employment and a rising standard of living
for all classes. Adjusted to the cost of living, the total national
income increased from $480 per capita in 1900 to $567 per capita
in 1920. Yet the benefits of prosperity were not evenly distributed.
Census figures reveal that the top 5 percent of the population
in income received 30 percent of the nation's family personal
income in 1929, and the bottom 40 percent of the nation's families
only received 12.5 percent.
During the 1920s most urban dwellings had electricity. Industry,
using "scientific management" and the assembly line,
greatly increased production and reduced prices on products.
Many new products came on to the market. By 1930 there was one
car for every five Americans. Technology and urbanization gave
many Americans something they had never had before÷discretionary
income and leisure time. The automobile, movies, radio, and
mass marketing techniques changed American culture. Values were
no longer determined by the local community÷it was Hollywoodâs
and Madison Avenueâs influence that mattered to many people.
Many young people embraced the new culture. Young women known
as "flappers" bobbed their hair, wore short skirts,
and threw away their corsets. This attitude, of course, shocked
many of their parents.
Jazz made its appearance on a nationwide scale during the 1920s.
With its roots in the African-American community, most whites
had never heard of jazz or the blues prior to the 1920s. The
movement to the North of many blacks during World War I, and
the development of the phonograph and the radio, made jazz mainstream
music. Whites modified it into a style suitable for dancing,
and dances like the Charleston, first seen in a black movie,
swept the nation. Because of housing segregation, blacks were
confined to specific neighborhoods. Harlem, New York City, was
the black cultural center. The outpouring of music, art, and
literature that came out of Harlem during the 1920s is known
as the Harlem Renaissance.
Learning Objective:
Understand the Red Scare of 1919-1920.
The Communist triumph in Russia in 1917 and the subsequent
withdrawal of that country from the Allied effort in World War
I caused many native-born Americans to fear a socialist or communist
take-over in the United States. During the war immigrant workers
were no longer "Hunkies," "Dagos," and "Polocks,"
they were members of the community fighting for democracy. Wages
were high and overtime was common. The immigrant factory workers
expected to benefit from this new attitude after the war. But,
after the war conditions returned to the way they were before
the war and many workers went out on strike. By the end of 1919,
the most strikebound year in U.S. history, about four million
workers had participated in more than 3,000 strikes.
Business leaders used the general fear of Communism to break
the strikes and the workers' desire to organize. Business leaders
claimed that the point at issue was not unionism as such, but
whether the American government would be supported and American
institutions upheld. A typical comment is illustrated by Elbert
Gary, Chairman of the Board of U.S. Steel. In 1919 Gary claimed
that the only outcome of a victory for unionism would be Sovietism
in the U.S. "and a forcible distribution of property."
The total membership in all socialist and Communist organizations
in the U.S. during this time was between 90,000 and 120,0000;
less than half of 1 percent of the population.
In April and June 1919 bombs were mailed to prominent individuals
and several officials had their offices bombed—no one, except
the thrower of one bomb, was killed. The bombings were not part
of a communist plot to overthrow the government; they were the
work of a few dangerous individuals. But most Americans did
not differentiate among radicals. They grew more frightened
every day, and they saw Red on everything they feared or disliked.
Woodrow Wilsonâs Attorney General was A. Mitchell Palmer
and he saw this fear of communists as a method of gaining political
power and fame, and perhaps even getting the 1920 Democratic
presidential nomination. President Wilson's stroke had left
the nation devoid of leadership and Palmer saw an opportunity
to fill the vacuum. Beginning in November 1919 Palmer ordered
the FBI to conduct a series of raids against radical groups.
In December Palmer cooperated with the Labor Department in deporting
249 aliens to Russia, most of whom had committed no offense
and were not communist. A nationwide raid on January 1, 1920,
led to the arrest of about 6,000 people. The raids revealed
no evidence of a communist conspiracy. Nevertheless, few Americans
protested the unconstitutional tactics of Palmer.
Palmer overreached himself when he predicted that a revolution
would take place on May Day, 1920. When the outbreak failed
to materialize the public gradually began to tire of his unfounded
alarms. In addition, unionism had been soundly defeated by 1920
(membership declined by about 1.7 million over the next decade),
and business propaganda against the Reds declined sharply. Immigration
restriction and the Ku Klux Klan took over where the Red Scare
ended.
Learning Objective:
Understand American national politics during the 1920s.
With the election of 1920 the Republicans regained control
of the national government. The Democrat Wilson had only won
election to the Presidency in 1912 because the Republican party
had split its votes between William H. Taft and Theodore Roosevelt
(Wilson only received 41.9 percent of the popular vote). Even
in his reelection victory of 1916, Wilson was a minority President,
receiving only 49.4 percent of the popular vote. In other words,
after the reordering election of 1896, the Republican party
was the majority party in the U.S., and the election of Wilson
was an anomaly. Throughout the 1920s the Democratic party continued
to remain bitterly divided between its urban, eastern, working-class
immigrant wing, and its southern/western rural, agricultural
wing. The nomination of William J. Bryan in 1896 had exacerbated
these conflicts; as long as they continued the Democratic party
would not gain political power. The party split over the cultural
issues of the day—urbanization, modernization, segregation,
immigration, fundamentalism, the Klan, the Red Scare, and prohibition.
It took the 1920 Democratic convention 44 ballots to select
Governor James Cox of Ohio as the Democratic Presidential nominee
and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had been a popular Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, as his running mate. In 1924 the urban-rural
conflict tore the Democrats apart and it took 102 ballots before
they could agree on a dull compromise candidate (John W. Davis).
When the urban wing got its chance in 1928 and nominated Alfred
E. Smith, the Catholic mayor of New York City, the conflict
between urban immigrant America and old stock rural America,
as personified in the Republican candidate Herbert Hoover, an
Iowa Protestant and self-made millionaire, offered Americans
a clear choice. The election was not even close, Hoover received
58.2 percent of the popular vote to Smith's 40.9 percent. It
was not until the 1929 Great Depression subjugated social issues
to economic issues that the Democrats were able to regain control
of the national government.
Warren G. Harding is usually ranked by historians as one of
our worst presidents (it is a close race between Harding, Coolidge,
and Grant). Basically Harding was a hard-working, conscientious
executive, aware of the nation's most pressing problems, and
sometimes willing to take chances to achieve his goals. Harding's
downfall was caused because he was unwilling to make moral judgments
about his associates. Desperately wanting to be liked and constantly
desiring companionship, Harding put friendship above good judgment.
With the exception of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover,
and the Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, many of his
cabinet and other presidential appointees were either servants
of narrow special interests or crooks. Secretary of Treasury
Andrew Mellon pursued tax policies that favored the wealthy
and helped bring on the Great Depression.
Attorney General Harry Daugherty and his intimate friend and
housekeeper, Jesse Smith, presided over the "Ohio Gang."
Daugherty's friends did a flourishing business selling immunity
from prosecution, government appointments, liquor withdrawal
permits, and pardons and paroles for criminals. Charles Forbes,
head of the Veterans Bureau, stole about $200 million. At a
time when disabled World War I veterans on hospital cots lacked
bandages, bedding, and drugs, Forbes condemned carloads of these
supplies and sold them off at a fraction of their cost in return
for a rake-off. When caught in 1923, Forbes was sent to jail
for two years and fined $10,000. His legal advisor committed
suicide. There was a second suicide in May. Threatened with
ruin and exposure, Jesse Smith killed himself in Daugherty's
apartment.
The Teapot Dome scandal also occurred during Harding's administration.
The Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, secretly leased
government naval oil reserve land to the oil companies of Edward
Doheny and Harry Sinclair. Conservationists became upset over
the use of the naval reserve oil and they persuaded the Senate
to instigate a special investigation. The investigation disclosed
that Doheny and Sinclair had received the right to drill for
oil in the Teapot Dome and Elk Hill naval oil reserves without
competitive bidding; that Doheny had "lent" Fall $100,000
and that Sinclair had given him a herd of full-blooded cattle
for his ranch, $85,000 in cash, and $223,000 in bonds.
In the aftermath of the scandal, Fall was convicted of accepting
a bribe and he received a year's jail sentence and a fine of
$100,000 (which he never paid). Fall was the first Cabinet officer
ever to go to prison. Although Sinclair received a nine month
prison sentence for jury tampering, he and Doheny were both
acquitted for giving Fall a bribe.
Harding knew of the exploits of only Forbes and Smith. In June
1923, before setting out on a speaking tour through the West,
the President unburdened himself to a newspaper reporter: "My
God, this is a hell of a job. I have no trouble with my enemies.
. . But my damned friends, my God-damned friends. . .they're
the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!" Late in
July, while in Seattle, the President suffered acute chest pain.
His physician (another Ohio appointment) diagnosed it as indigestion.
It was in fact a heart attack, and on August 2, 1923 President
Harding died.
Calvin Coolidge, Harding's Vice President, quickly rid the
cabinet of the political hacks that he had inherited from Harding.
He then presided over the most business-minded administration
to his time, and, in return, business supported Coolidge to
the hilt. Coolidge worshipped financial success and believed
without reservation that businessmen knew what was best for
the country. "The man who builds a factory builds a temple,"
he said. On another occasion he explained that: "The business
of America is business." The Republicans used the revival
of the postwar economy after 1923 and Coolidge's unblemished
record for honesty to elect Coolidge in his own right in 1924.
Next
Chapter >
Courtesy of George Burson, Aspen School District,
Aspen, Colorado.
