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.

10/01/2020

Friday, October 1, 1920 (SOCIAL JUSTICE DAY)

As reported earlier this week in the Marion Star, "Women from Marion and adjacent counties and from all parts of the country will meet here [today] to express to Senator Harding...their gratitude for the part of the Republican Party, which he represents, played in the battle waged by women during the past fifty years for the ballot... It is understood that a delegation of [Black] women, headed by national workers of that race, will be present; also a delegation of foreign-born women dressed in their national customs and carrying American flags, emblematic of their allegiance to America."

In the speech, according to the Star, Harding called for the "[c]reation of a department of public welfare when the time comes to reorganize the administrative government in Washington":

Americans: Today the people of Marion and their neighbors welcome you. You represent the achievements of the women of America. You represent, indeed, an extension of woman's field of endeavor, which is a benefaction to the world. I believe that this extension of woman's activities has been taken, and must forever be taken, without peril to the fulfilment of that most precious of all American possessions — America's motherhood. 

I have been asked repeatedly to make an especial appeal to the women of this country, but I have not done and I shall not do, such a thing. If there are among women the virtues of stalwart conscience and the finest appreciation of the needs of humanity, as I think there are, then the words that might be in my heart to say to women would be better addressed by me to the men of the United States.

I have refused, and I refuse now, to make an emotional or meretricious appeal to the hearts of the women of America. When we all acknowledge that the time and the conditions of the world call for fuller recognition of human rights, the protection of the life of human beings and the conservation of our human resources, it becomes the duty of the women of America, and it becomes my duty, to deal with these matters of social justice upon a high plane of an idealism which is not too proud to work. More, it is our duty to consider without hypocrisy or high-sounding phrases a program of action. And it is my duty to address not only you who are women, now entering by justice, by the principles of sound democracy, and by the wisdom of a progressive civilization, into citizenship, but also to address, through you, every American who is interested in our common welfare, 

I pledge myself today to support with all that is in me whatever practical policy of social welfare and social justice can be brought forward by the combined wisdom of all Americans. Nothing can concern America, and nothing can concern me as an American, more deeply than the health the happiness and the enlightenment of every fellow American...

After the speech, Harding holds a reception line. A delegation of Ohio women sing a song for Harriet Taylor Upton, who gives a "'side porch' speech on the west side of the Harding home and just at the west end of the famous front porch." Others are invited to meet Theodore Roosevelt's sister and daughter. Alice Roosevelt Longworth has been to Marion three times since the campaign started.

Sources:

  • "Loud in Their Praise of Marion Hospitality." Marion Star. 2 October 1920.
  • "Next Friday to Be Big Day at Front Porch." Marion Star. 27 September 1920. 
  • "Social Justice Day in Marion Friday." Marion Star. 29 September 1920.
  • "Would Create a Department." Marion Star. 1 October 1920.

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