Thursday, September 23, 1920

Employees of the Ohio Mutual Plate Glass Insurance Company join delegations from the Ohio Dental Association and Crawford County to hear Senator Harding speak on his front porch. Harding tells the crowd from Crawford County:

...you ought to vote for me because your county is named for a distant kinsman of mine. Those of my particular branch of the Hardings are of kind of Colonel Crawford, who was burned at the stake when fighting in behalf of advancing the cause of American civilization.

His newspaper describes the point of his speech as "awakening the conscience of the ignorant and the misguided to the fact that the best social welfare worker in the world is the man or woman who does an honest day's work":

The conservation of human resource is even more important than the conservation of material resource; but I desire to call your attention to the fact that one depends a great deal on the other, and that the two form a benevolent circle. This fact is forgotten by many persons. On the one hand, there are those with a strong sentiment to improve the conditions of the less fortunate or by a policy, even more wise, to prevent the development of unjust social conditions or low standards of health and education, and to maintain our position as a land of equal opportunity. So fixed do some of their eyes become on the human resources of America and on occasional misery and suffering, that they even become impatient with those who are working to build up by industry, wholesome business enterprise and productivity, the material resources, and consequently, the standards of living of our people. 

On the other hand, there are other persons who, in the main, I believe are not heartless or selfish but who are so intent on their tasks of manufacturing and commerce, driven perhaps by that impulse for creation which is so often misinterpreted as mere money-hunger, that they forget that the men, women and children about them, sometimes in their employ, are not mere commodities and are not even mere machines to be consumed, worn out, treated without love and tossed aside, but are human beings whose welfare in the end is so intertwined with that of every other human being that the imperfections, the poor health, the neglected old age, the abused childhood, the failure of motherhood in any one of them becomes an injury and a menace to us all.

Before his speech, after a men's glee club from Bucyrus sings "America," Harding offers this:

There was a deep bass somewhere in the glee club that touched me just a little more deeply than usual, and as the members of the club sang this grand song, and as this vast audience joined so earnestly and enthusiastically in the singing of the last verse, I wonder how any American could catch the soul and spirit of the song and prefer a conglomerate flag of the league of nations to the Stars and Stripes.

Sources:

• "Honest Day's Work Big Thing." Marion Star. 23 September 1920.
• "No League Flag for Old Glory." Marion Star. 24 September 1920.