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.

8/03/2020

Tuesday, August 3, 1920

Today's slogan entries in the New York Evening World are a mixed bag:
  • Harding the Wise, Harding the Efficient, Just to Know Him Is Sufficient.
  • Hard Facts Need Hard Heads; Hard Headed Americans Will Elect Harding President.
  • Harding, When Elected, Will Teach the Last Sentence in Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech.*
  • Watch November's Hard(ing) Winds and Cool(idge) Breezes Blow Wilson's League to Pieces.
In Marion, in addition to the usual meetings with callers from across the country, Senator Harding spends time at the Marion Star: "Today he threw aside his coat, rolled up his sleeves and 'made up' the first page of his paper will motion picture machines recorded his actions. All the work at the newspaper plant suspended while the pictures were being made and employees gathered about to see their boss working while they loafed. The senator kept up a rapid fire of conversation with his foreman while he worked."





Here Harding is standing next to Senator Harry S. New of Indiana:


And here's a screenshot of the front page that is shown just above Senator New's head; it is from the August 2 edition:


And here is some of the newreel footage:


Sources:
  • "New Says Harding May Deviate Some from Porch Plan." Washington Star. 3 August 1920.
  • "Slogans for Nominees Represent Talent of Competing Thousands." New York Evening World. 3 August 1920.
Images:
  • Harding at the Marion Star photos are from Ohio History Connection and from digital versions of various newspaper microfilm.

* Lincoln: "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
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