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.

9/25/2020

Saturday, September 25, 1920 (TRAVELING MEN'S DAY)

"Senator Harding we are coming 600,000 strong"
"Senator Harding we represent business and we want you to represent us"
"We trust you with our homes and our interests"
"The whole d---- family has agreed on Harding"


Delegations arrive in Marion today for Traveling Men's Day and are arranged in four divisions for a parade to Harding's home:
  • The first division includes the officials who will speak and men from Illinois, New York, Philadelphia, Boston (on Park boulevard)
  • The second division includes a Columbus band and delegations from Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Springfield, and Urbana (on Olney avenue)
  • The third division includes delegations from Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Toledo (on Leader street)
  • The fourth division includes delegations from Akron, Canton, Delaware, Newark, and Zanesville (on Blaine avenue)
Senator Harding greets them in the afternoon:
My Countrymen: Long before money was a dependable means of exchange, long before banks and clearing houses were even thought of the barters of trade were the advance agents expanding civilization. The primitive man produced from the soil for his own sustenance, but when he began turning nature's bounty into surpluses, people undertook their exchanges, and the exchange of products was attended by an exchange of ideas, and the world developed and advanced accordingly. It was in these exchanges that the first traveling men of all civilization became the ambassadors of education and art, the bearers of ideas, and the surveyors of the widened fields of human relationships. The paths of cargoes 
were the highways of exchanging ideas, and the men who bought and sold, the traveling men of old, were the foremost exponents of the world's commerce and its attending civilization. 

The traveling men of today maintain their eminent relationship to the life and progress of our people. Business is the life blood of the nation, and these business agents are unfailing in their reflex of progressive thought and the convictions of the American people. We find them everywhere, always alert, always pushing ahead, always eager to add to the volume of business which is the barometer of our material good fortune and the base of ah our boasted attainments.

Sources:
  • "Franklin County to Send a Delegation." Marion Star. 20 September 1920.
  • "Traveling Men Hear Nominee." Marion Star. 25 September 1920.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)