A Note on My Harding Research

The information I posted during 2020 mostly covered Warren Harding's front-porch campaign from his home on Mt. Vernon Avenue in Marion, Ohio. The campaign officially started on July 31, 1920, and ended on September 25. The plan was to post daily on events that occurred exactly 100 years ago that day, but I shared other information as well. You'll have to read bottom-to-top if you want to follow the campaign from Day 1.

I used the open web for some of my research but also information accessible by using my library card or my subscription to www.newspapers.com. The most useful resource was the Marion Star, which was owned by the Hardings at the time of the campaign. I also browsed online copies of other newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Star, and the Dayton Daily News, which, in 1920, was owned by Harding's Democratic opponent, Governor James M. Cox. I also posted information from other newspapers that covered Harding's trips away from Marion during the campaign.

Another great resource I used was Dale E. Cottrill's The Conciliator, a 1969 biography of the president that expanded an earlier bibliography of Harding's speeches. An online version is available at the Internet Archive, but I used a hard copy borrowed from the State Library of Ohio.

Readers should not construe anything posted here as a political statement on my part. I just like Harding as a historical topic.

8/15/2020

Men of Marked Contrast

At some point during the summer of 1920, Charles Grant Miller interviewed both candidates for an article in Editor and Publisher, which was reproduced in numerous newspapers, including in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on August 15, 1920. Under the title "'Close Up' of the Next President Shows Two Candidates Men of Marked Contrasts," Miller contended that "Harding is mellow, Cox metallic." Here are some excerpts and a composite photograph "which pointedly illustrate the contrasting personal traits set forth in Mr. Miller's interview" (whatever that means):
The two Ohio editorial candidates for the presidency are men of marked contrasts. In seeking to show some of these contrasts I shall not overstrain; indeed there scarcely could be overstatement...

Harding's headquarters are in a plain, two-story cottage next door to his own home in a quiet shady street of a country town. A lean and sleepy-looking policeman is the only guard...

There is a small front parlor for those who most wait, and the little room in which the senator does his work, receives visitors, holds conferences and issues statements to the men of the press is in the rear. Upstairs are more secretaries...

How different at Columbus!

To get to Cox one enters the grounds of the State House, flanked on either side by great guns and statued [sic] statesmen, mounts broad granite steps, passes between giant pillars into spacious corridors, crosses a vast rotunda walled with famous historical paintings and swings open the massive mahogany door of the offices of the governor... And the governor is still beyond other massive doors, other secretaries, other doorkeepers.

Yet Senator Harding, amid his simple surroundings, is a courtly and commanding figure; Governor Cox, for all his magnificent setting, is dapper and democratic...

Harding is very tall, rather slender and slightly stooped; Cox is short, stodgy and square...

Harding's calm grey eyes look at one frankly; Cox's graze eagerly, inquiringly.

About Harding's mouth is a kind but firm expression; about Cox's an eager inquisitiveness...
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