July 18, 1920. Candidates Cox and Roosevelt in Washington D.C.

Nobody campaigning a century later is going to look this spiffy.

July 5, 1920 Delegations.

James M. Cox was chosen by the delegates to the Democratic Party to be that party's nominee for President for the 1920 race.  His running mate was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Cox was the Governor of Ohio at the time, but he's best remembered today for being a newspaperman who founded Cox Enterprises.  He lived until 1957.

On the same day, the Spa Conference in Spa, Belgium, commenced. The conference was between the victorious Allied powers of the Great War and Weimar Germany.

Allied delegates to the Spa Conference.

The topics were principally those associated with implementing the details of the Versailles Treaty.

June 13, 1920. Silent Cal chosen for VP.

The morning news was reporting what the evening news had the prior day, Harding was the GOP nominee.

And people were learning that Calvin Coolidge would be his running mate.

Coolidge was a New Englander who at the time was the Governor of Massachusetts.  He had come to prominence the prior year during the Boston police strike and unlike his running mate, he had no hidden bones, or mistresses, in the closet.

June 12, 1920. Warren G. Harding Nominated

On his day in 1920, Warren G. Harding, nobody's favorite President, was nominated for that position by the Republican Party.  The nomination would propel him to the Oval Office, which he'd occupy only briefly, dying of a heart attack in 1923.

Harding had started off as a newspaper owner and writer who entered politics contemporaneously with purchasing a newspaper.  He had done well as an Ohio politician and had a slow start in the 1920 campaign until his return to normalcy speech in May.  The Republican "Old Guard" supported him as he wasn't one of the more radical Republicans who were running that year.

Harding was ably supported in his political aspirations by his wife, Florence, but his personal life was complicated and had already become an issue for the Republican Party, which was being taken care of in back rooms with the application of cash.  A long running affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips had just ended when she blackmailed him during his run for the Presidency.  The blackmail attempt, in fact, is the second one she'd attempted.

The Hardings and the Phillips had been close and had traveled to Europe together prior to World War One while the affair was ongoing.  It broke there and Florence Harding was furious, and claimed it wasn't the first time Warren had so strayed.  The Hardings returned to the US but Carrie remained in Germany with her children and threatened to blackmail Warren the first time when he was set to vote on a declaration of war against Germany.  She had returned to the US prior to the war and the affair had recommenced.

In 1920 the affair ended and she threatened to expose it. The GOP paid her off by paying for an extended Asian tour and annual stipend.  This was occuring just at this point in the campaign.

That wouldn't stop Harding from commencing an affair with the much younger Nan Britton, who like Carrie was from Marion, Ohio.  In fact, not only had it commenced, he already had an unacknowledged child by Britton.

Britton would become pregnant by Harding in 1919, something kept secret during his lifetime and only proved through DNA in much later years.  The affair with Britton ran until Harding's untimely 1923 death, although he was much more careful about his instructions with Britton regarding their correspondence than he had been with Phillips.  He also was providing child support to Britton during his lifetime, but his widow Florence cut it off after his death.

The President and the First Lady, who was protective of his legacy, in 1922.

Britton attempted to reveal the affair and the child through the publican of a book upon Harding's death, but the claim was contested and capable of being contested at that time given the state of science at the time and the fact that Harding, who had mumps as a child, had not produced any children with Florence.  Britton never wavered in her claim and DNA testing revealed in the 1990s that Elizabeth Ann Harding Blaesing wsa in fact the daughter of the late President.

Britton never married.

The grade school I went to as a kid had originally been named in honor of President Harding, who had only recently died at the time it was built.  The School District originally ran "Harding School" as a school for mentally disabled children and the stigma associated caused the district to rename it when it was converted in the 50s into a much larger conventional grade school which was named after James Garfield, another President that isn't usually subject to huge admiration. The old name remained on the concrete entryway of the old part of the school, however.

Launch of concrete ship, Cuyamaca, which had a home port of San Diego.  June 12, 1922.

June 8, 1920. Republican Convention, White House visitors, Churchill on uniforms.

Prominent woman Republican, Helen V. Boswell, at Republican Convention.

The Republican National Convention opened in Chicago on this day in 1920. There were six possible nominees for the position of Republican candidate going into the convention, including one surprising name in the list.  The candidates were:

Warreng G. Harding.
Leonard Wood.
Frank Lowden
Hiram Johnson
William Sproul
Nicholas Butler
Calvin Coolidge
Robert LaFollette

How LaFollette, the famed "Wisconsin Bolshevik" made that list is a mystery.

The convention was wide open so any of those running could have been chosen going into the convention.

On the same day Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks visited the White House.

Pickford and Fairbanks.

Fairbanks and Pickford had only recently been the subjects of a potential scandal when it was debated whether a prior divorce by one of them (I forget which one) had been finalized prior to their marriage.  Apparently it was worked out by now.  It was the second marriage for both, and it wouldn't be the last one as they'd divorce in 1936 and each would remarry again one final time.

Winston Churchill addressed parliament on the subject of British military uniforms, which was part of an overall debate on the subject.  He stated:

I propose to deal with the general aspect of this matter in a general statement. Although it may not completely answer all the points raised, I think it will be better if hon. Members have the opportunity of having this statement in their minds, and then they can see whether it is necessary to put down further questions next week. 

The only expenditure which will fall upon this year's Estimates in regard to full dress for the Army is that in respect of the Foot Guards, which are to be immediately supplied with full dress during the current year. The Household Cavalry have had full dress throughout the War, and it is only a question of maintaining this. The troops, of course, have a free issue. 

As regards the officers, new entrants will receive a grant of £150 towards the cost of uniform, and those who joined during the War will get £150, less the amount of outfit grant already received, which in most cases is £42 10s. The re-issue to the Guards and Household Cavalry troops of full dress stands in a special position on account of the ceremonial duties which these troops discharge in the capital of the Empire. 

The extension of full dress to the other branches and units of the Service, which my military advisers also consider desirable, will be spread over the next four or five years, unless it should be decided, when the Estimates are reviewed next year, that this programme should be abandoned. Ample notice will be given to all units, and no existing stock, either of khaki or khaki uniforms, will be wasted. Khaki with the cap or steel helmet will remain permanently the working service dress of the whole Army. There is not, nor ever has been, any question of its abolition. 

The only question which is now before us is the issue of full dress uniform to the Guards, and the retention of full dress uniform by the Household Cavalry. This involves an expenditure, not of £3,000,000, as one would suppose by reading a certain class of public criticism, but of £140,000 for other ranks and £20,000 for officers. This expenditure has been included in the Estimates of the present year. If we had decided against re-clothing the Guards in full dress and maintaining the full dress of the Household Cavalry, we should have to supply them with another complete new outfit of khaki at a cost of £30,000. 

The total avoidable expense is, therefore, not £160,000 but £130,000, and £130,000 and not £3,000,000 is the figure to which the Government is at present committed.

The abolition of full dress for the Household Cavalry and the Guards would mean that the Household Cavalry uniforms and the uniforms of the Household Cavalry and Guards bands, and approximately 7,000 bearskins now in stock, would become useless, and this would involve a waste of fully £80,000. The total net expense involved in re-clothing the Guards and retaining the Household Cavalry in scarlet is thus £130,000, while the total waste involved in discarding the existing stocks of full dress would be approximately £80,000. The transaction would therefore appear to be not unjustified, even from a purely financial standpoint.

June 3, 1920. Matters military.

The USS Tennessee.

On this day in 1920, the USS Tennessee was launched.  She was at Pearl Harbor in 1941 but was not sunk as the bombs that hit her failed to perform correctly.  She was damaged and pinned in her moring, but was released from being pinned on December 9 when repairs and updating commenced. She served through the war and was decommissioned in 1947.

The Navy was receiving a fair number of new ships, which wasn't surprising given that ships started during World War One were still being completed. But it was the situation south of the border that was drawing attention of the type that would involve the Army, if something was to really occur.  There was in effort in that vein to place Mexico's conduct towards foreign nationals in the Republican platform for 1920, an act that would require military intervention as part of a political platform if the perception of Mexican recalcitrance remained.  

I'm not a Harding fan. . .

and we'll inevitably get to some of his more problematic aspects as the century delayed day by day rolls on, but we thought we'd note that this speech, which we noted just today on this thread: Lex Anteinternet: May 14, 1920. Flights, would probably sell really well, with some slight adjustments, today:

Warren G. Harding.

Warren G. Harding, Presidential candidate for 1920, urged a return to normalcy in a speech at the Home Market Club in Boston.:

My countrymen, there isn’t anything the matter with world civilization, except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational; sometimes there have been draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity, and men have wandered far from safe paths, but the human procession still marches in the right direction.  

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It is one thing to battle successfully against world domination by military autocracy, because the infinite God never intended such a program, but it is quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all of life’s acquirement. 

This republic has its ample task. If we put an end to false economics which lure humanity to utter chaos, ours will be the commanding example of world leadership today. If we can prove a representative popular government under which a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government rather than what the government may do for individuals, we shall do more to make democracy safe for the world than all armed conflict ever recorded. 

The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship. The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government, and no eminent page in history was ever drafted by the standards of mediocrity. More, no government is worthy of the name which is directed by influence on the one hand, or moved by intimidation on the other. 

My best judgment of America’s need is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let’s get out of the fevered delirium of war, with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be made in the madness of war and the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad, and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people. We want to go on, secure and unafraid, holding fast to the American inheritance, and confident of the supreme American fulfillment.

May 14, 1920. Flights

 "General William Mitchell, Chief of the Air Service today formally opened the big air tournament at Boling [ie. Bolling] field, the first of its kind to be held. Congressman P. P. Campbell accompanied General Mitchell on the opening flight."  May 14, 1920.

On this day Mexican revolutionaries captured the Carranza cabinet, but not Carranza himself who managed to elude capture, taking with him a body of seemingly loyal troops and coins from the treasury.

The rebels were offering Carranza safe passage into exile, but he was having none of it.

The rebels also on this day called the Mexican congress into session to solve the problem of leadership in advance of an election.

Warren G. Harding.

Warren G. Harding, Presidential candidate for 1920, urged a return to normalcy in a speech at the Home Market Club in Boston.:

My countrymen, there isn’t anything the matter with world civilization, except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational; sometimes there have been draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity, and men have wandered far from safe paths, but the human procession still marches in the right direction.  

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It is one thing to battle successfully against world domination by military autocracy, because the infinite God never intended such a program, but it is quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all of life’s acquirement. 

This republic has its ample task. If we put an end to false economics which lure humanity to utter chaos, ours will be the commanding example of world leadership today. If we can prove a representative popular government under which a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government rather than what the government may do for individuals, we shall do more to make democracy safe for the world than all armed conflict ever recorded. 

The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship. The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government, and no eminent page in history was ever drafted by the standards of mediocrity. More, no government is worthy of the name which is directed by influence on the one hand, or moved by intimidation on the other. 

My best judgment of America’s need is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let’s get out of the fevered delirium of war, with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be made in the madness of war and the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad, and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people. We want to go on, secure and unafraid, holding fast to the American inheritance, and confident of the supreme American fulfillment.

Harding had entered the race some time earlier, but he was not doing well in it.

Harding campaigning in 1920.

The speech changed that, and its primary tag line, "a return to normalcy", became the theme of his campaign.  

The Republican nominee would have been Theodore Roosevelt, who by that time really didn't want it, but for his death in January 1919.  Suffice it to say, a return to normalcy would not have been the theme of Roosevelt's campaign, had there been one.

On the same day, Bulgaria ceded Western Thrace to Greece.

May 4, 1920. Best laid plans. . .

Winners of the Army Essay Contest tour Congress, May 4, 1920.

Carranza's attempt to dictate who his successor would be were going badly.

And Californians were determining who would line up for the Oval Office in the Fall.

Female secretaries of Congressmen, then a new innovation, and Congressional Gym physical fitness instructor, May 4, 1920.

April 22, 1920. Storms

Vice President Thomas Marshall throwing out the first ball in the opening game in Washington D.C. between the Nationals and Red Sox.  Marshall, famous for his wit, coined the famous "What this country needs is a good five cent cigar" quip.

It was the first day of the 1920 baseball season in Washington D. C.  Vice President Marshall threw out the first ball.

In the West, people were trying to dig out from a titanic snow storm.

In Butte there had been labor strife, which was hitting the local papers, and the renewed Mexican Revolution was turning quickly against Carranza, who seemed firmly in control only a few weeks prior.

April 10, 1920. Palmer campaigns, others golf.

Attorney General Palmer, campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President, was campaigning on this Saturday in April, 1920.

Other officials in the government were golfing.

April 6, 1920. Contests.

"At Walter Reed Hospital today the American Forestry Assn planted a memorial tree for the American Legion Post 21. Photo shows Mrs Walter Reed widow of the famous Physician for whom the hospital is named planting the tree which is the first of its kind to be enrolled on the honor roll".  April 6, 1920.

An event that started off as a deluded monarchist plot against the Germans Socialist democracy ended up brining, on this day, a French occupation of portions of the Ruhr while, as the same time, the Reichswehr was fighting in some Ruhr cities.

Anyone should have been able to see that a monarchist coup would bring a Communist revolution, but the plotters hadn't.  Now, not only had they brought regions of Germany back into civil war, they'd brought on a treaty entitled invasion of Germany's most industrial region.

On the same day, the Soviets agreed to the creation of a Far Eastern Republic, a rump state on the Russian Pacific Coast that was seen as a buffer state, with no real independence, between the Soviet Union and Japan, and hence a means of bringing to an end the ongoing strife with the Japanese who remained in the region as part of what had been the Allied mission to Russia.

The republic would last about two years before being absorbed into the Soviet Union.

In the American primary elections, Herbert Hoover, who had announced as a Republican candidate for the Presidency, took fourth place in the GOP contest in Michigan but first place in the Democratic contest there.  Hiram Johnson of California took the state for the GOP.  Johnson had been Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party Vice Presidential running mate.

March 31, 1920. Hoover reluctantly tosses hat in ring.

Herbert Hoover, on this day in 1920, reluctantly indicated that he'd take the GOP nomination, if it was offered.

In Washington, Congress was continuing on with its investigation into nearly everything concerning the U.S. military and the late war.

On this occasion, Gen. W. W. Harts, currently serving as Chief of Staff of the American occupation forces in Germany, was recalled to Washington to testify concerning charges that military prisons in Paris were cruel during the war.  They had been in his wartime district.

The testimony must have gone okay, as Harts continued on, and to rise, in the Army, retiring in 1930.  He died at age 94 in 1961.

Elsewhere in Washington, government officials were photographed out on the sidewalk in what appeared to be a clear, if perhaps cool, day.

March 27, 1920. Germany's Treaty Violations noted, Borah says something about Wood, maybe.

On this day in 1920 the German civil war in regions left inside the Versailles Treaties prohibition on German military power continued on in rebellion. Both the Ruhr and Westphalia had seen armed worker revolts as a result of the Kapp Putsch and now neither region's labor fighters were willing to stand down and instead were trying to take German in a more leftward direction.  The Allies, however, wouldn't agree to let the German Army in.

On the same day, Germany was found to have violated the Treaty, which in fact was pretty obvious.  Germany had been limited to 204 artillery pieces and was prohibited to have aircraft, but in fact, through the help of the quasi official but technically civilian Freikorps, it had 12,000 artillery pieces and 6,000 aircraft.

The size limitations placed on the German military were never realistic, no matter what a person otherwise thinks of the Versailles Treaty. Indeed, the Weimar Republic had no choice but to violate them.  Realistically, the only alternative the Allies had to allowing Germany to have a fairly sizable military would have been to actually occupy the country, as it did following World War Two.  As it was, Germany was left a functioning, albeit barely, republican state that had to contend with internal revolution as well as a very unstable situation in the immediate post war world to its east.  Those concerns practically necessitated the retention of artillery and aircraft.

Their prohibition and the very early incentive to avoid that prohibition, which in part was done through the reliance on right wing monarchical militias help fuel a sense of resentment in the military which would later help bring about the Second World War.  It was certainly not solely responsible for it by any means, but it was an element of that.

On the same day the Cheyenne State Leader opted for a nearly nonsensical primary election headline.

Apparently that meant that highly respected Senator Borah of Idaho was taking some swipes at leading GOP Presidential contender, General Leonard Wood.

Elsewhere, on this Saturday, people went shopping.

March 10, 1920. Border Trouble. Harding runs.

It read like papers a decade prior, trouble on the border.

And, while we haven't been covering it much, there was plenty of ongoing trouble in Mexico.  Woodrow Wilson may have declared Carranza the legitimate head of state, but there were still armed contestants on that claim and they were pretty active.  For that matter, Carranza's regime was shaky internally.  Mexico remained troubling and in trouble.

And Senator Harding  of Ohio was entering the fray. . .

He actually already had, but after New Hampshire, where Gen. Leonard Wood had taken the first victory of the season, Harding was in the west, in Denver specifically, drawing attention to his campaign.

March 9, 1920. Primaries, Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Anarchists and Smoking.

On this day in 1920 the New Hampshire Primaries were held.  It was the first time that New Hampshire's primary had the "first in the nation" status and only the second time it had been held, having been established in 1916.

The top Republican vote getter was Gen. Leonard Wood, where as the top Democrat was Herbert Hoover.

Wood was a physician and career Army officer who was a close associate of Theodore Roosevelt. That was part of the reason that Wood had been bypassed for the senior command of the U.S. Army in France during World War One, but only part of the reason.  That same association, however, made him a very serious contender for the 1920 Republican nomination.

Hoover, a mining engineer by trade, had come into the public eye due to his leadership of relief efforts in Europe following World War One.  During the war and following it he'd urged that taxes be raised and he'd been a critic of the Palmer raids.  He ran on Progressive policies such as the establishment of a minimum wage, the elimination of child labor, and a forty-eight hour work week.  While he did well in the New Hampshire primary as a Democrat, that very month he switched parties and in 1928 he ran, successfully, as a Republican.

Regarding politics, elsewhere Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman met with Lenin. They were among those who had been deported several weeks prior.  Both had been born in Imperial Russia and their radicalism resulted in their being rounded up and sent back there just prior to the Palmer Raids.

In meeting with Lenin they complained about Communists treatment of anarchists and lack of freedom of the press.  Lenin told them to pound sand.  Both would later write books about their delusionment with Soviet Russia.

In some ways its hard not to regard both of them as completely delusional.

In Cheyenne, the paper noted an effort to wipe out smoking by 1925.

The New Hampshire's first in the nation status wasn't a big deal at the time and it didn't make the front page of any Wyoming newspaper on this day.

The troubles over the ratification of the Versailles Treaty, however, did.

With all this news, it's no wonder some folks felt they needed a drink.

February 9, 1920. Knowles and Spiker Say Yes, Hoover Says No, Senate Reconsiders, Riots In Kentucky and Treaties On the Far North

Monday February 9, 1920 saw Guy Spiker marry Emily Knowles, seemingly resolving the drama over the illicit, and as the paper notes illegal, relationship between Pearly Spiker and Miss Knowles and the fate of their son.  Time would prove that settlement less certain.

Another settlement that would prove to be uncertain was that reflected in the Treaty of Versailles, which the U.S. Senate was agreeing to take a second look at.

Railroaders were threatening to go on strike again in the U.S. and the National Guard stopped an attempted lynch mob in Kentucky through the use of violent force, showing that the events of the Red Summer of 1919 weren't quite fully behind the country yet, and wouldn't be for some time.

Herbert Hoover, whose name had been circulated as a potential Republican candidate for President in the 1920 race declined to run.  A person has to wonder if he later wished he had run in 1920, instead of eight years later when he did.

Elsewhere, the landmark treaty regarding the joint use of the Arctic island of Svalbard, a Norwegian territorial possession but used by several nations for hunting and economic activities, was signed by those principally interested in the island.

January 8, 1920. Snippets.

Anna Manson, a Russian woman who was arrested in the offices of a Russian publication in New York City and sent to Ellis Island to be deported. The New York Herald, January 8, 1920.

William Jennings Bryan, photographed at Democratic National Headquarters in Washington.  January 8, 1920.

Wilbur W. Marsh, Treas. of the Democratic National Committee and S.W. Fordyce of Saint Louis, photographed at Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. January 8, 1920.

January 2, 1920. The peak of the Palmer Raids . . .

came today, although the news was reporting on the raids of yesterday.   Technically, the raid of January 1 was a Chicago Police Department raid, although in coordination with the Federal government.  Chicago was complaining today about the lack of help from yesterday.

By the end of the raids about 10,000 people would be arrested.

A lot of the warrants were soon cancelled as illegal.  556 resident aliens were deported.  Originally the government reported having found a couple of bombs but later the news on that stopped, so whatever the truth of it is, it's vague.  Only two pistols were seized.  Public opinion turned against Palmer quickly and he went from being a probable contender for the Presidency to not being one.