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.

9/11/2020

Saturday, September 11, 1920 (MIDWESTERN BUSINESS MEN)

Senator Harding speaks to delegations of business men from Chicago, northern Indiana, and Michigan and, according to the Indianapolis Star, calls for "an end of governmental meddling and bungling in the financial world ad a return to an era of 'sober business'":

Americans: Most of you are business men, and through you I would like to send a message to all those Americans whose interest is American business. We are the great business nation of the world. We shall be able to save that business and prosper it by a fair measure of common sense, and we ought and must do it. We will consult the able and honest men whose counsel may be summoned by the Republican Party. We will restore representative government, and replace the distended executive powers and extreme centralization which nearly eight years of misnamed democracy has brought us. We will preserve a willingness to listen to the will of the people, and will construe the desire for a common good fortune to mean the necessary good fortune of business, which is the life-blood of material existence...

Seven hundred from Illinois arrive in the morning. Another 500 men from Indiana arrive in the mid-afternoon and wait until 400 men from Michigan arrive two hours later.

Harding receives another cornet, this one made in South Bend:

One has to blow his own horn in the world but I don't like the man who blows his horn too blatantly. When I was a member of the band we always had to stick to the tune. In the campaign I want to stick to the tune...


From the South Bend Tribune: "This photograph shows the head of the Indiana processing passing through the [court of honor] on the way to listen to Senator Harding."
 

Here's an editorial cartoon from today's New York Evening World:

 

Sources:

  • "Chicago Business Men Hear the Republican Nominee Today. Delegation Is Large One." Marion Star. 11 September 1920.
  • "Gift From South Bend Will Enable Harding to Blow His Own Horn." Indianapolis Star. 12 September 1920.
  • "Harding Calls for Return to Sober Business." Indianapolis Star. 12 September 1920.
  • "Harding Talks to Business Men." New York Times. 12 September 1920. 

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