So we begin this lecture on the Jazz Age,
and really when I say the Jazz Age, I'm talking about a cultural era,
an era that's given a name
in American history, but we're also talking about the 1920's.
I want to start out with some
political history, in regard to the election of 1920,
and the transition from the Wilson administration and the wartime
administration,
to the peacetime administration of Warren G. Harding,
and then the administration of Calvin Coolidge.
Now, remember that for Wilson,
I think the biggest issue, domestic issues aside in 1920,
when you have the red scare and other things going on-- really the biggest issue
is often seen to be
the peace; the Treaty of Versailles and its approval, and
you may recall that Wilson, for reasons of health
as well as political reasons, really ran into a buzzsaw so to speak; he ran
into--
he ran into a political wall
when he tried to get his peace treaty
approved by the Senate. Wilson saw this 1920 election
as a sort of referendum by the American people on his policies foreign and
domestic--
international and domestic I guess I should say.
But in the end,
Wilson would not be the candidate of his party, the Democratic Party, for 1920.
I think he just carried way too much baggage and the decision was made
for health reasons and other reasons that he just would not be
a competent campaign-- candidate
for 1920. Instead, facing off
against Republican Warren Harding and his vice presidential
nominee Calvin Coolidge who's from Massachusetts,
we have the Democrat James Cox,
who's from Ohio, and his vice presidential
nominee, who will will be
none other than Franklin Roosevelt, whom we'll talk a great deal about
just a little bit later in these lectures.
Well, Harding runs by and large
on a promise, a policy of
a return to a word that he coins:
or normalcy. Right, he's going to return things to normal,
and I think when he talks about normalcy it's not merely the sort of radicalism
that emerged in 1919, it's not the race riots, it's not all
just what's happened with the war, it's not just what's happened in 1919 and
1920 where
society itself seems to be sort of breaking apart,
but I think it's best to think of Harding's
normalcy as more broadly applying to
that whole progressive campaign that's been going on
since the very early 20th Century. If you just stop and think about the reforms
of the progressive era, if you didn't think about the sort of
progressive elements of the war
and what the war changes - for women,
for African-Americans, the role of government,
in so many ways. America the United States has been undergoing this
massive transformation.
I really think it makes the early 20th Century one of the most important
periods in American history. I
think I must say this and people will probably be unhappy but,
you know in some respects you can argue that as much or more really begins the
process of change
in the early 20th Century than it does say with the Civil War and
Reconstruction.
Now again that's a bit of a hyperbolic statement perhaps and
over the top but, I hope you get my meaning here.
There is change that comes with the Civil War and comes with reconstruction.
I,
I think immediately of the amendments that are passed to the
Constitution and the end to slavery and I certainly, certainly do not mean
in anyway to diminish the importance of the United States Civil War,
but at the same time there's just so much that
we see around us today. The way our government functions,
whether we like it or not, the way it functions in our lives
and you can begin to see the increments, the incremental changes coming in
early 20th Century.
Everything from meat inspection to good roads.
The early 20th Century has just got it and it's going to continue to build
from from the early 20th Century on, for those first few decades of the 20th
Century.
World War One will add. In some ways the 20's will add culturally,
the 30's with government response to the New Deal, the 40's with the second
World War, and again government
and it's just going to keep building and building.
And in many ways its going to be the thing or those will be the things that shape the
world
that we live in now in ways we can really see
directly in our everyday lives.
Well anyway, enough sermonizing.
Back to Warren Harding. Harding was not the most brilliant perhaps political
mind or maybe he was playing a really brilliant game,
whatever the case he wasn't known to be a great politician or
a great kind of political mind. He was known to be personable.
He was known to be handsome. He got on well,
and basically within the Republican machinery
he didn't cause waves. Remember that Harding comes from Ohio,
he comes up through machine politics within the Republican Party apparatus,
starting out as a newspaper editor in Marion Ohio
and then he moves to the state, to state government and state legislature
where he doesn't make waves, he doesn't cause trouble, he doesn't stand out,
but he's dependable. You can depend on Harding to do the right thing by the
party.
That gets Harding to the United States Senate.
And then the door opens for someone who wants to restore normalcy, who's not a
do-gooder or a crusader,
and lo and behold the issue or the possibility of the presidency
falls to Warren Harding.
One party official, one Republican Party official,
said once that there were numerous quote 'second-raters'
in the party, but Harding was a good second-rater.
I don't know what kind of a compliment that is, but it was good enough
for Harding to win the presidential nomination in his party.
There are some sources that suggest that Harding himself wasn't comfortable with the idea
of being president. He did not think himself
really even to be worthy of the presidency.
But nonetheless, he wins.
He wins the presidency in the 1920 election
and he will bring with him to office, when he goes to Washington,
a cadre of his cronies and his friends from Ohio who come to be known
as the Ohio Gang.
It's notable that this personable, affable man,
was also a man who enjoyed cards, parties,
he enjoyed being with women,
and he enjoyed alcohol, and so apparently did many of his friends
and so bringing them with him to Washington,
don't know how how good of an idea that really was, but we'll see how that plays
out
just a wee bit later. It didn't take long
for Harding to begin having
some problems.
One of his friends, Charles
Forbes,
had been placed as the head
of the Veterans Bureau and that's a really important position if you think
about the veterans coming out of World War One.
Forbes was jailed, ultimately for accepting bribes and for fraud
while he was overseeing contracts for the Veterans Bureau.
Another of Harding's
cronies (friends) Attorney General Harry Daugherty,
an Ohio party boss,
was charged with accepting bribes and refused to testify against himself,
basically took the fifth to avoid prosecution.
This is the Attorney General of the United States.
He began to see the pattern.
Ultimately, we don't know if Harding was intimately involved in
these scandals or not, certainly I don't know.
But whether you're involved or not, much like Ulysses Grant,
the taint of scandal rubs off on you and your presidency.
The big, big scandal that will rock
Harding and really cause a rift with his Ohio Gang buddies
by 1923 would be Teapot Dome.
The Teapot Dome scandal revolves around
oil reserves and specifically oil reserves that
were controlled by the Secretary of the Interior,
Albert Fall, who got President Harding to transfer
control of these oil reserves from the United States Navy
to the Interior Department.
These reserves were located at Teapot Dome
in Wyoming and Elk Hills in California,
and what Albert Fall proceeds to do is to begin
leasing out these oil reserves to wealthy businessmen in exchange for
access to money.
Nearly half a million dollars in loans.
Ultimately, Fall, Albert Fall, will be convicted
of bribery. So by the summer
of 1923 it's looking pretty bad for Harding.
His Ohio Gang, this bunch of friends and cronies,
of questionable character, have sort of dragged him down
and he knows it. The Senate has begun
investigations. The press is eagerly bringing out these scandals to the public
and I want to quote Harding, the language isn't great, but I think it's
extraordinarily telling,
so here's the quote, 'My God,
this is a hell of a job. I have no trouble with my enemies,
but my friends, my god damn friends,
they're the ones that keep me walking the floors at night.'
August the second 1923, Harding's dead of a second major heart attack
and the presidency goes to a personage, an
individual who's just the almost seemingly diametrically opposed,
at least in terms of personality to Warren Harding Where Harding was warm and
outgoing,
Calvin Coolidge tends to be more dour and reserved.
Most of his photographs when you see him if he is smiling at all it seems
almost a forced
smile. He didn't have much to say
and he did not see that there was a great deal for the president to
accomplish.
He's not an activist, he's not a crusader.
He first comes to the attention of
sort of the National Republican Party when he had been the Governor of
Massachusetts
and in 1919 had dealt with
a massive police strike,
again we'll talk more about that strike a little bit later,
but Coolidge basically believed that government should interfere with
the people as little
as possible. In essence both he and Harding would have agreed
that what was needed in the United States was not more regulation
but less regulation - less government
interference, less government activity.
As a result, according to biographers
Calvin Coolidge could take long naps every afternoon,
he kept his official engagements to a minimum,
he kept conversation to a minimum.
He aspired, wrote one of his contemporaries,
to become the least president the country ever had
and he attained his desire. That's a very telling quote,
but there's another story which I like to tell about Coolidge
and it's about Coolidge at a dinner party
and a woman, who was seated next to Coolidge, had been dared by a friend,
hearing that Coolidge didn't like to talk much and didn't like to talk at dinner
parties,
this woman had been dared by a friend to get the president to say
three words. Could she get him to say three words during dinner.
So at the dinner party sitting next to the president, she tried very hard to engage
President Coolidge
in conversation and finally
getting a bit frustrated she explained that she had been dared
by a friend to get the president
to say three words, to which
the president, Coolidge replied,
'you lose,' - ha ha, right,
two words. 1924 Coolidge
will win Republican nomination in his own right
and will be elected to the presidency in his own right.