President Harding was reported to have a slight improvement in his lung condition.
The Press took the report and ran with it.
A Ku Klux Klan rally drew 100,000 people in Lima, Ohio.
Another racist, Adolph Hitler, delivered a speech, in which he stated that the German people comprised 1/3d heroes, 1/3d cowards and 1/3 traitors, in a surprising admission that his support was thin, at that time.
Little Old New York was released.
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President Harding's physician reported his condition had worsened and that the rest of the Voyage of Understanding was cancelled. He was checked into a hospital in San Francisco.
The press was still reporting the incident as an instance of food poisoning.
Benito Mussolini received thousands of letters congratulating him on his 40th birthday.
A German Communist called Red Sunday failed to bring out much of a turnout.
President Harding cancelled visits to Oregon and Yosemite National Park as he was ill with what was believed to be ptomaine poisoning. He remained in bed in a special locomotive car.
Secretary of the Interior Herbert Work did address a crowed at Grants Pass, Oregon, stating:
It comes about that during our last day at sea many of us were attacked by a temporary indisposition, not due to seasickness but to food put up in a can. I will not say what the item of food was, for thereby I might depress the value of the canned product.
The Tribune noted that Harding was on board the train, but as this was likely a morning edition, it didn't report his illness. This was not the case everywhere.
The analogy wasn't as wacky as it might seem.
I've been to Tulsa, FWIW, and I don't dislike it. A typical Midwestern city.
Or perhaps more accurately an Oklahoma, north Texas city.
I would not care to live there, mind you, but Tulsa is not a bad city.
Courthouses of the West: Tulsa Municipal Building, Tulsa Oklahoma:
President Harding arrived in Seattle and gave a speech at the University of Washington's Husky Stadium.
It would be his last.
FWIW, I have not been to Seattle, save for McChord AFB, and only briefly.
The Republican Party, anticipating another speech, announced that Hardin's speech from San Francisco, scheduled for July 31, would be broadcast nationwide on the radio.
The Federal Archives list these photos of a Martin MS-1 that the Navy was experimenting with. The concept was to carry the biplane on a submarine, something that proved viable, and while the U.S. Navy gave up on it by World War Two the Japanese did not.
President Harding disembarked at Vancouver, becoming the first U.S. President to visit Canada. While there, he delivered this speech:
Citizens of Canada: I may as well confess to you at the outset a certain perplexity as to how I should address you. The truth of the matter is that this is the first time I have ever spoken as President in any country other than my own.
Indeed, so far as I can recall, I am, with the single exception of my immediate predecessor (Woodrow Wilson), the first President in office even to set foot on a politically-foreign soil. True, there is no definite inhibition upon one doing so, such as prevents any but a natural born citizen from becoming President, but an early prepossession soon developed into a tradition and for more than a hundred years held the effect of unwritten law. I am not prepared to say that the custom was not desirable, perhaps even needful, in the early days, when time was the chief requisite of travel. Assuredly, too, at present, the Chief Magistrate of a great Republic ought not to cultivate the habit or make a hobby of wandering over all the continents of the earth.
But exceptions are required to prove rules. And Canada is an exception, a most notable exception, from every viewpoint of the United States. You are not only our neighbour, but a very good neighbour, and we rejoice in your advancement.
I need not depict the points of similarity that make this attitude of the one toward the other irresistible. We think the same thoughts, live the same lives and cherish the same aspirations of service to each other in times of need. Thousands of your brave lads perished in gallant and generous action for the preservation of our Union.
Many of our young men followed Canadian colours to the battlefields of France before we entered the war and left their proportion of killed to share the graves of your intrepid sons. This statement is brought very intimately home to me, for one of the brave lads in my own newspaper office (Harding owned the Marion, Ohio Star) felt the call of service to the colours of the sons of Canada. He went to the front, and gave his life with your boys for the preservation of the American and Canadian concept of civilization.
When my mind reverts and my heart beats low to recollection of those faithful and noble companionships, I may not address you, to be sure, as “fellow citizens,” as I am accustomed to designate assemblages at home, but I may and do, with respect and pride, salute you as ”fellow men,” in mutual striving for common good.
What an object lesson of peace is shown today by our two countries to all the world! [Applause.] No grim-faced fortifications mark our frontiers, no huge battleships patrol our dividing waters, no stealthy spies lurk in our tranquil border hamlets. Only a scrap of paper, recording hardly more than a simple understanding, safeguards lives and properties on the Great Lakes, and only humble mile-posts mark the inviolable boundary line for thousands of miles through farm and forest.
Our protection is in our fraternity, our armor is our faith; the tie that binds more firmly year by year is ever-increasing acquaintance and comradeship through interchange of citizens; and the compact is not of perishable parchment, but of fair and honourable dealing which, God grant, shall continue for all time.
An interesting and significant symptom of our growing mutuality appears in the fact that the voluntary inter-change of residents to which I have referred, is wholly free from restrictions. Our National and industrial exigencies have made it necessary for us, greatly to our regret, to fix limits to immigration from foreign countries. But there is no quota for Canada. [Applause.] We gladly welcome all of your sturdy, steady stock who care to come, as a strengthening ingredient and influence. We none the less bid Godspeed and happy days to the thousands of our own folk, who are swarming constantly over your land and participating in its remarkable development.
Wherever in either of our countries any inhabitant of the one or the other can best serve the interests of himself and his family is the place for him to be. [Applause.] A further evidence of our increasing interdependence appears in the shifting of capital. Since the armistice, I am informed, approximately $2,500,000,000 has found its way from the United States into Canada for investment.
That is a huge sum of money, and I have no doubt is employed safely for us and helpfully for you. Most gratifying to you, moreover, should be the circumstance that one-half of that great sum has gone for purchase of your state and municipal bonds, — a tribute, indeed, to the scrupulous maintenance of your credit, to a degree equalled only by your mother country across the sea and your sister country across the hardly visible border.
These are simple facts which quickly resolve into history for guidance of mankind in the seeking of human happiness. “History, history!” ejaculated Lord Overton to his old friend, Lindsay, himself an historian; “what is the use of history? It only keeps people apart by reviving recollections of enmity.”
As we look forth today upon the nations of Europe, with their armed camps of nearly a million more men in 1923 than in 1913, we cannot deny the grain of truth in this observation. But not so here! A hundred years of tranquil relationships, throughout vicissitudes which elsewhere would have evoked armed conflict rather than arbitration, affords, truly declared James Bryce, “the finest example ever seen in history of an undefended frontier, whose very absence of armaments itself helped to prevent hostile demonstrations;” thus proving beyond question that “peace can always be kept, whatever be the grounds of controversy, between peoples that wish to keep it.”
There is a great and highly pertinent truth, my friends, in that simple assertion. It is public will, not public force, that makes for enduring peace. And is it not a gratifying circumstance that it has fallen to the lot of us North Americans, living amicably for more than a century, under different flags, to present the most striking example yet produced of that basic fact?
If only European countries would heed the lesson conveyed by Canada and the United States, they would strike at the root of their own continuing disagreements and, in their own prosperity, forget to inveigh constantly at ours.
Not that we would reproach them for resentment or envy, which after all is but a manifestation of human nature. Rather should we sympathize with their seeming inability to break the shackles of age-long methods, and rejoice in our own relative freedom from the stultifying effect of Old World customs and practices.
Our natural advantages are manifold and obvious. We are not palsied by the habits of a thousand years. We live in the power and glory of youth. Others derive justifiable satisfaction from contemplation of their resplendent pasts. We have relatively only our present to regard, and that, with eager eyes fixed chiefly and confidently upon our future.
Therein lies our best estate. We profit both mentally and materially from the fact that we have no “departed greatness” to recover, no “lost provinces” to regain, no new territory to covet, no ancient grudges to gnaw eternally at the heart of our National consciousness. Not only are we happily exempt from these handicaps of vengeance and prejudice, but we are animated correspondingly and most helpfully by our better knowledge, derived from longer experience, of the blessings of liberty.
These advantages we may not appreciate to the full at all times, but we know that we possess them, and the day is far distant when, if ever, we shall fail to cherish and defend them against any conceivable assault from without or from within our borders.
I find that, quite unconsciously, I am speaking of our two countries almost in the singular when perhaps I should be more painstaking to keep them where they belong, in the plural. But I feel no need to apologize. You understand as well as I that I speak in no political sense. The ancient bugaboo of the United States scheming to annex Canada disappeared from all our minds years and years ago. [Applause.] Heaven knows we have all we can manage now, and room enough to spare for another hundred millions, before approaching the intensive stage of existence of many European states.
And if I might be so bold as to offer a word of advice to you, it would be this: Do not encourage any enterprise looking to Canada’s annexation of the United States. [Laughter.] You are one of the most capable governing peoples in the world, but I entreat you, for your own sakes, to think twice before undertaking management of the territory which lies between the Great Lakes and the Rio Grande.
No, let us go our own gaits along parallel roads, you helping us and we helping you. So long as each country maintains its independence, and both recognize their interdependence, those paths cannot fail to be highways of progress and prosperity. Nationality continues to be a supreme factor in modern existence; make no mistake about that; but the day of the Chinese wall, inclosing a hermit nation, has passed forever. Even though space itself were not in process of annihilation by airplane, submarine, wireless and broadcasting, our very propinquity enjoins that most effective cooperation which comes only from clasping of hands in true faith and good fellowship.
It is in precisely that spirit, men and women of Canada, that I have stopped on my way home from a visit to our pioneers in Alaska to make a passing call upon my very good neighbor of the fascinating Iroquois name, ”Kanada,” to whom, glorious in her youth and strength and beauty, on behalf of my own beloved country, I stretch forth both my arms in the most cordial fraternal greeting, with gratefulness for your splendid welcome in my heart, and from my lips the whispered prayer of our famed Rip Van Winkle: “May you all live long and prosper!”
He gave the speech at Stanley Park, and attended a state dinner at 7:00. After that, he reembarked on the USS Henderson and must have remained hungry, as he dined on some crab while the ship steamed to Seattle and shortly thereafter became very ill.
High waters brought disaster near Shoshoni.
The Tribune also reported that the French had lifted the blockade of the Ruhr, and they updated the curious case of Father Grace, who apparently objected to prohibition to some extent. He had apparently forged an order for ten barrels of whiskey for the J. H. Mullen Home for the Aged in Arvada, Colorado. He was turned over by another Priest. Fr. Grace was the pastor at St. Anne's in Arvada, having been installed at the newly built church on July 4, 1920.
Catholic theology would hold that under some circumstances there's no obligation to comply with an unjust law and Fr. Mullen did not seem to be, at least at first, sorry for his act. Maybe there's more to this story than it might at first seem. This story isn't one that's easy to follow, however, so what became of him and what he later thought, we don't know.
President Harding went fishing at the Campbell River in British Columbia.
President Harding departed Sitka, Alaska, bound to a Canadian port on his Voyage of Understanding.
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Herbert Hoover was part of the Harding party. In Sitka, he stated:
We came to Alaska in the hope that by a better understanding of the problems of Alaska we might give better service from the Government to the people of Alaska; that by personal contact we would come to know you and we would come to know your vision of Alaska, your future and your ideals,” Herbert Hoover, Sitka Alaska, July 22, 1923.
The tanker SS Swiftstar exploded and sank after being hit by lightening. Only one of its 32 man crew survived.
Walter "Big Train" Johnson of the Washington Senators became the first Major League pitcher to record 3,000 career strikeouts. He'd ultimately record 3,508, a record that held until 1978.
Johnson was a great picture, and he may have had the fastest fast ball in baseball history. He died of a brain tumor in 1946 at age 59.
Bob Dole, long time Kansas Senator, war hero, and Presidential contender, was born in Russell, Kansas.
Dole was badly wounded while serving in the 10th Mountain Division during World War Two.
Harding drove in a golden spike on the Alaska Railroad at Nenana, a town near Fairbanks.
Harding was really putting in the miles, and saw a great deal of Alaska during his trip, at a point in time at which it was fairly difficult to do so.
The most dangerous major airline in the world, Aeroflot, saw its birth when its predecessor, Dobrolet, began operations with a flight from Moscow to Nizhny.
Egypt banned its citizens from making the Hajj in reaction to the King of Hejaz barring an Egyptian medical mission which was part of it. The latter was done as an assertion of sovereignty by the Kingdom, which was not long to remain.
President Harding visited Anchorage, where he and Mrs. Harding painted their names on a section house.
The Ku Klux Klan holds its first "Konvention" in Washington state.
The Paraguayan Civil War ended former President Manuel Gondra and his supporters, the Gondraists, entering the capital. It was the second Paraguayan civil war in a decade, with the leaders of opposite sides in the 1922-23 conflict having been on the same side in the 1911 conflict. A Third Paraguayan Civil War would be fought in 1947.
The Paraguayan military had been split by the conflict, with various units on either side.
The Curia Julia, the seat of the Roman Senate, was purchased by the Italian government.
Marguerite Ailibert, originally a prostitute and later a French courtesan, who had a wartime affair with Prince Edward, Prince of Wales and later king, shot and killed her husband Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey. They were vacationing in London. They'd been married six months. It was her second marriage.
Defended by Edward Marshall Hall she was found innocent of murder. She died in Paris in 1971 at age 80.
There are probably a pile of lessons in Ailibert's story, one of which is that the fame of lawyers, and Hall was famous, doesn't survive their own era as a rule. Ailibert was an attrative woman, and skilled in her craft obviously, which serves as a warning in and of itself.
President Harding visited Juneau. Based on a photo of his visit, it was rainy.
It had been rainy the day before in Natrona County, Wyoming, causing disastrous flooding.
The USS Henderson arrived at Metakatla, Alaska, and President Harding disembarked, becoming the first President to visit the then territory.
The small panhandle settlement has tripled in size since that time, to about 1500 residents, most of whom are natives.
The White House announced that President Harding's Voyage of Understanding was being extended by two days. The new itinerary provided that Harding would visit Santa Catalina at Mrs. Harding's request and then travel down the Central American coast, through the Panama Canal, and back to D.C.
France ratified the Washington Naval Treaty.
President Harding boarded the USS Henderson for Alaska, departing from Tacoma.
The Henderson was a troop ship.
A killing that stemmed from headlights on bright was not being ignored, even though it was committed by a sheriff's deputy. Things had taken quite a turn.
President Harding gave a speech commemorating the 1843 initiation of travel on the Oregon Trail in a celebration in honor of the same in Meacham, Oregon.
President Harding, continuing his Voyage of Understanding, was allowed to take the controls of a locomotive, fulfilling a boyhood ambition. It was an early electric locomotive.
The trip took Harding to Spokane, where he addressed a crowd on public lands. In his address, acknowledging the growing conservation movement that had received a large boost during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, he argued that use of public resources from public lands, rather than locking them up, preserved them. He also more or less correctly anticipated the size of the US population in 2023.
And the French seized a Krupp plant.
Pope Pius XI sent a letter to the papal nuncio in Berlin appealing to the Weimar German Republic to try to make its reparations payments and to cease resisting the French. Basically, an appeal to try to restore the evaporating peace.
On reparations, Allied delegates at the Conference of Lausanne made their final offer to Turkey.
Replying to the Pope's letter of earlier that week, but not naming him by name, French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré stated in a speech in the French Senate "the only screw that we have on Germany is her desire to recover the Ruhr. We have no thought of annexation, and we energetically refute all accusations of imperialism. France does not wish to confiscate the Ruhr. We will keep it, however, until Germany has paid her debt."
The Tribune finally got around to reporting on recent events in Glenrock.
Preisdent Harding visited Butte and Helena Montana, delivering this speech in Helena:
My Countrymen:
One of the greatest lessons which the World War taught to society was a realization of its stupendous producing capacity under modern organization. When the war started many of us, probably most of us, believed it could not last very long because we could not conceive that it could be economically and industrially supported for a long time. We had been taught to believe that as a whole the community annually consumed pretty nearly all that it produced, and that in order to maintain this ratio it was necessary to keep all the producers steadily at work. We were convinced that when the most efficient producers were taken by millions away from the fields, the shops, the mines, and the offices, and set at the business of armed destruction, they would very presently pull down upon themselves the whole fabric of our complex industrial system, and that the war would be smothered in the ruins. This view was the basis of what became almost an obsession with many people, indeed with most of the best informed people, during the early stages of the war. It was commonly and freely said that economic exhaustion would compel an end to the struggle before a year, and a much more popular limitation was six months.
The event showed how very little we understood either the tremendous producing capacity of the community as a whole or the strength and solidity of our industrial structure. When the first year of the war had passed, the world was just beginning to realize that in all probability the struggle was only in its larger beginning. Millions of men had been called from the fields, and yet still other men were being trained for it. At the end of two years the war was greater than ever, and after three years it had still further expanded until it actually involved, whether as combatants or as the sources of supply for the combatants, the whole world. The industrial, the agricultural, the financial, the social, and spiritual forces of the world were mobilized at last for the great final test of strength. In the end that test was both military and economic. Victory rested upon the banners which were borne by the side that represented the greatest number of soldiers, of ships, of guns; which represented the greatest capacity to bring together, control, and fabricate the necessaries of war and to maintain great civil populations behind the lines.
It became very early a war of conscription. Governments conscripted their men for service in the field; patriotism and public opinion conscripted everybody else for work at home. A new system of division and dilution of labor was introduced through which men and women, boys and girls, old men and old women—millions of people who under the old order of peace days had been rejected from the realm of skilled production—were quickly trained to the most intricate and technical tasks. So, in the midst of the most destructive storm that mankind had ever invoked upon itself, there was presented the marvelous phenomenon of a world producing at a greater rate than it had ever done before.
How was this gigantic industrial phenomenon wrought? By putting everybody at work. By inducing everybody to work to the limit of strength and capacity. By paying the workers at rates which enlisted their utmost eagerness to produce to the limit. Yes, if you please, by letting labor and capital and management all engage more or less in profiteering at the expense of society as a whole. Unheard-of wages were paid to people who in other times would have been considered quite incapable of earning them, but who, under the stimulus of the emergency, became effective and absolutely necessary factors in the industrial organization. Particularly was this true of the women, young and old, who took up tasks in the shop, the field, the transportation systems, and behind the lines of combatants, such as had never before been assigned to them. And the women made good so emphatically, so impressively, that as to-day we look over the whole field of the world mobilization and the world conflict we realize that something very much like a revolution was effected in the varied relationships of the industrial community.
Viewed in the retrospect we see more clearly than ever the sordid side, of war. I have said before, and I choose to repeat it very deliberately now, that if war must come again—God grant that it shall not!—then we must draft all of the nation in carrying on. It is not enough to draft the young manhood. It is not enough to accept the voluntary service of both women and men whose patriotic devotion impels their enlistment. It will be righteous and just, it will be more effective in war and marked by less regret in the aftermath, if we draft all of capital, all of industry, all of agriculture, all of commerce, all of talent and capacity and energy of every description to make the supreme and united and unselfish fight for the national triumph. When we do that there will be less of war. When we do that the contest will be aglow with unsullied patriotism, untouched by profiteering in any service.
Of course, we are striving to make conditions of foreign relations and so fashion our policies that we may never be involved in war again. If we are committed to universal service—that is, the universal commitment of every American resource and activity—without compensation except the consciousness of service and the exaltations in victory, we will be slower to make war and more swift in bringing it to a triumphant dose. Let us never again make draft on our manhood without as exacting a draft on all we possess in the making of the industrial, financial, commercial, and spiritual life of the republic.
If we had been in a state of mind to philosophize about it all, I think we might have recognized that women have been for a long time preparing themselves for this tremendous incursion into the field of industrial production. For a long time before the war began there had been evidence of a reaction among the women against the old ideals of the Victorian period. For three or four decades, the more venturesome women had been timidly breaking away from the old-fashioned home and its old-fashioned ideals. Even those who viewed the new-woman movement with greatest misgiving and least approval had already been compelled to recognize that a new and revolutionary idea was taking possession of them. We might iterate and reiterate, and theorize and dogmatize, upon the old thesis that the place for woman was in the home; but we will have to admit that despite all our preachments, all our urgings, all our misgivings, woman wasn't staying there. She was teaching in the schools, she was accounting for perhaps a majority of the graduates from the high schools, and a big and increasing minority of the student community in the colleges and universities. She was practicing law and medicine, preaching sermons, working in the shops, the offices, the factories; she was, in short, becoming a competitor with her brother in almost all the departments of productive effort and activity.
Then came the war, and all at once even the most dubious among us realized that the women, everywhere, constituted the first line of industrial reserves upon which society must fall back in its great crisis. They volunteered for every service in which they could be useful, and at once established their right to a new and more important industrial status. They built ships, they operated munition factories, they learned to perform the heaviest and most difficult tasks; they tilled the fields, filled the offices, largely conducted the hospitals, and even served as most useful auxiliaries to forces on the battlefield. Not as a boon, but as a duty, full partnership in the conduct of political affairs was conferred upon them.
All this has inevitably worked a profound change in the relation of woman to the social and political organization. We may approve it or disapprove it, we may view it with satisfaction or with misgiving, but the fact is before us that woman has taken a new place in the community. And just as her participation in the industrial sphere expands, so her relations to the home and its interest is necessarily contracted. Whether we account it wise or otherwise, we must recognize that the tendency is to take the modern mother more and more away from the control, the training, the intellectual guidance and spiritual direction of her children. The day nursery, and after that the kindergarten begins to care for her children in the earliest years; after that come the public school, the high school, the college and the university, taking over from her more and more of the responsibility and influence over the children. We may entertain the old-fashioned prejudices against this development; but we are compelled to recognize that under modem conditions a large and increasing proportion of women are bound to be at the same time mothers in the home and industrial producers or professional workers outside the home, or else they must be denied the service and responsibility of motherhood.
Frankly, I am one of those old-fashioned people who would be glad if the way could be found to maintain the traditional relations of father, mother, children, and home. But very plainly these relations are in process of a great modification. The most we can do, to the utmost possible extent, is to readapt our conditions of industry and of living so as to enable the mothers to make the utmost of their lessened opportunity for shaping the lives and minds of their children. We must hope, and we must make it possible, that mothers will not assume, when their babes of yesterday become the schoolboys and schoolgirls of to-day, that the responsibility of the mother is ended, and that the teacher, the school authorities, the college, the state, will henceforth assume it. Rather, we must recognize that no other influence can possibly be substituted for that of motherhood; and we must make it possible for the mothers to cooperate with these social institutions of the new order, to give the children so far as possible the privileges of a home atmosphere which will supplement the advantages of mere education and training. It must be made possible for the mothers to familiarize themselves with the problems of the people, the school superintendents, the college authorities, the health and sanitation officials. In short, the mothers must be placed in such position that despite their obligations outside the home they shall not have to surrender their domestic responsibility. Rather, means must be found to enable them, through the varied instrumentalities which, society affords, to equip themselves for the better discharge of their responsibility toward the children of the land.
Through such effort as this there will be opportunity for a great service. Those mothers who have the advantage of the best material and intellectual opportunities will, if they make the most of these advantages, help greatly to improve the conditions of children that come from families and homes less fortunately situated. They will be able to help in lifting up the poorer, the less fortunate children, to a higher level. The mother who tirelessly seeks rightly to train her own children, to instill into them that indefinable essence which we know as good breeding, will be performing this service not alone for her own children, but in only less measure for the children who come from homes less blessed with the finer things of life. Herein is the supreme advantage of the public-school system. I have never been able to find much satisfaction in die good fortune of families who, when they are able to do it, prefer to take their children out of the public schools and give them the doubtful advantage of more exclusive educational methods. I think we should cling to the democracy of the public schools.
The teacher, and the authorities back of her, must be equally ready to cooperate with the home and the mother. In the home must still be performed the duty of instilling into the child those fundamental concepts of religion and of faith which are essential to rightly shaping the character of citizens, and therefore of the nation. It would be an irreparable mistake if in surrendering to society a larger responsibility for the child's intellectual and physical well being, we should forget the necessity for proper religious training. That duty must be performed in the home; it will always be peculiarly the duly of a mother.
Mankind never has stood more in need than it does now of the consolations and reassurances which derive from a firm religious faith. We are living in a time of many uncertainties, of weakened faith in the efficiency of institutions, of industrial systems, of economic hypotheses, of dictum and dogma in whatever sphere. Yet we all know that there are certain fundamental truths of life and duty and destiny which will stand eternal, through the evolution and the revolution of systems and societies founded by mankind. There must be no mistake whereby we shall confuse the things which are of eternity with those which are of time. We must not let our engrossment with the things of matter and of mind distract us from a proper concern for those which are of the spirit and the soul.
It must be kept ever in mind that the higher and finer attributes of humanity will rarely be developed from a human seedling planted in a soil adapted chiefly to the production of that which is selfish and sordid, in which it will be forced by special circumstances to struggle unduly for the bare continuance of existence. We will not grow strong minds in unsound bodies, nor may we hope that illuminated souls will often seek habitation in human frames weakened and tortured by disease and malnutrition. To an astounding and alarming certainty it has been demonstrated that a large proportion of school children, and even of adults, suffer from undernourishment. I may congratulate you that there is little of it in the West. Perhaps it is true that as to most of the adults the fault is of the individual rather than society. Whether that be true or not we can at least agree that the children are not to be blamed for their share in such misfortunes. If society has permitted the development of a system under which the citizens, of to-morrow suffer these deprivations to-day, then the obligation is surely upon society to right the wrong and to insure justice to the children who are not responsible for being here.
But we can not expect to bring full justice, full equality of circumstances and opportunity to the children, unless we shall make it possible for the parents. We are all too much given, I suspect, to a rather unthinking admiration for our highly mechanized social system under which we have so abundantly produced wealth and the possibilities of comfort and culture. We have not thought enough about the evils attendant upon the great inequities which mark the distribution of our stupendous product. But we are coming into a time when more and more we are giving thought to these things. Our satisfaction in the material achievements of our industrial age is being qualified as it never was before by our questionings along these lines. We are thinking of the weaker links in the social chain. We believe the equality of opportunity must be attended by a fitness to embrace it.
Here, again, the war was responsible for a great broadening of our social vision. It made its demand upon the highest and the lowest, the proudest and the humblest. It demanded a sacrifice that was just as great in the case of the poor man as the rich man. What was more, it brought a realization of the fact that men and women were of real service to the community just in proportion as they were capable of producing the things that were needed. So the workers, the builders, the producers attained a new sense of their dignity and importance. Contemplating its supreme crisis, the community was willing to render to those who were capable of serving it effectively in this juncture a greater share of their product than they had formerly been accustomed to receive. Wages, the world over, went to new high levels, salaries and fixed incomes shrank to lower levels of actual exchange value. There was a leveling up from the lower strata and downward from the higher. On the whole, despite many instances of injustice and of maladjustment in this process, its results marked a long advance on the road to equity and justice as among all elements of the community. A few years of civilization's desperate grapple with destiny brought to the working masses of the world an aggregate betterment of conditions, a general improvement of circumstances and opportunity, which otherwise would, have been possible only through the slow processes of generations.
We know now that the advances which were thus effected in the direction of social justice and economic equality will not be relinquished without determined opposition. There were those who, regarding the injustices of the old order as inevitable, mistakenly assumed that by a simple process which they called the "deflation of labor" the old relationships would presently be restored. They insisted that "wages must come down"; some of them went so far as to sound the slogan that "organized labor must be crushed." These have forgotten the lesson in organization, in cooperation, in community of sacrifice, by which civilization had been able to rescue itself. They had forgotten that the right of organization, and of cooperative dealings, is not any longer the special prerogative of management and of capital. The right of men, and brains, and skill, and brawn, to organize, to bargain through organizations, to select their own leaders and spokesmen, is no wit less absolute than is the right of management and of capital to form and work through those great concentrations of interests which we call corporations.
Labor, indeed, is fast becoming one of the great builders of capital. Whether it concentrates its savings by depositing them in its own banks, of which the number is rapidly increasing, or pools them with the general savings of society by making its deposits in other banks, the result is the same. Labor is more and more coming to be the financier and backer of its own employment. We shall not go back to the time when considerable elements in the community were wont to assume that a sharp line of demarcation should be drawn between labor and capital. Labor is becoming more and more a capitalist on its own account, and capital is more and more discovering that it must work, must contribute, must give us, through some superiority of method and management, a justification for its existence as a sort of separate estate. Those to whom the management and investment of capital is intrusted must recognize, as I know most of them already do, that the right of organization, and the title to those special efficiencies which come to organization, is not the exclusive prerogative of capital. It is equally the prerogative of labor.
I am quite aware that there were some who imagined, before the present administration was voted into responsibility, that it was going at least to acquiesce if not definitely sympathize with projects for the deflation of labor and the overthrow of labor organizations. Before this time these have come to realize their error. Nothing has been farther from the purpose of the present administration than any thought of destroying the right of either labor or capital to organize, and each to deal in its organized capacity.
We have recognized that there are evils and abuses on both sides of the almost imaginary line which now is presumed to separate labor and capital. We have wished and sought to minimize these abuses, through better organizations and better understanding, without destroying organizations or the right to form them. We have not wished to compel men to work when they did not want to work; we have not wished to compel employers to keep men at work under conditions which were impossible; but we have earnestly sought to lessen the occasions for conflict between the two parties. We have tried to bring to both of them a realization that both owed in this connection an obligation to the great public interest which is always the great sufferer by reason of their conflict.
In this connection let me say quite frankly that I know there were some elements which hoped for a great and decisive conflict between organized employment and organized labor, and that those elements were not all on either side of the imaginary dividing line. On the capital side of the line were those who hoped that the administration would lend itself to their program of breaking down organized labor and sending it back to the era of individual bargaining for the individual job. On the labor side of the line were those who hoped, by exorbitant demands and an attitude of uncompromising insistence, to force the nationalization of some of our most important industries and services. Between these two extreme groups, confident we had behind us the overwhelming public opinion of the nation, we have tried to hold the scales even; to prevent on the one side the destruction of organized labor, and on the other side to frustrate those programs which looked to the ultimate destruction of private capital and the nationalization of all the instrumentalities of production.
How well have we succeeded? At least, we have saved the nation from the extremists of both sides. Those who were sure that our salvation lay in the destruction of organized labor and the precipitated reduction of wages have found -that the national administration was not disposed to Acquiesce in their program. For many months past they have noted that the demand for labor was greater than the supply; that instead of millions of men out of jobs, there were tens of thousands of jobs without workers; that instead of a sharp and progressive reduction of labor's wage, there has been now for a long time a steady; continuing, persistent increase in that wage. On the other side, those who would have been glad to drive the country into an industrial crisis through the stoppage of production, arid to force the nationalization or communization of industry, have been equally disappointed in the outcome.
I believe our policy, and its results, have reflected the sound judgment of the overwhelming majority of the American people. I believe this people is firmly and finally committed to the ideal of preserving the fullest rights of private initiative and private enterprise, together with the right of organization on both sides of the line between capital and labor, and always consistent with the right of the public to be served efficiently and at a reasonable cost.
We have come thus far, and thus fortunately, through the most difficult period of reconstruction that we have ever known. We have been sheltered against the world storm of tendency to social revolution. The best test of policy is by results. By that test, we ask no more than a fair and reasoned verdict on our program; We ask that its results be compared with the showing, in these after-war years, that can be presented by any other country on the face of the earth. We ask that you examine the contrast, thoughtfully and seriously, between the general state of the public weal in this country and in others. For our vindication, we point to a great nation, its credit preserved, its industries crowded to the point of capacity production, its people employed, its wage scales high beyond all comparison with any other in the world, its banking system standing as the final bulwark of sound money and the gold standard, and its average level of comfort and prosperity unexampled among the races of men.
If I could make the fortunate picture stand out by offering contrast, I would speak of Russia and the colossal failure of its mad experiment. The dissatisfied working forces of America, where there are such, and the parlor theorists who have yet to create a single, thing useful to aspiring human kind, will find there less of freedom, much less of reward, and little of hope in much proclaimed emancipation. Royal absolutism has been destroyed, only to be superseded by what appears to be despotism in the name of democracy. To a limited few of democracy's advocates has come vast power. Perhaps wealth attends. Undoubtedly a new Russia is in the making, and there is no doubt the present sponsorship will survive.
Apart from the tragedy of it all, I am glad Russia is making the experiment. If twenty centuries of the Christian era and its great story of human progress and the countless centuries before the light of Christianity flamed have been lived and recorded upon mistaken theories of a righteous social order, then everything is wrong, Christianity a failure, and all of civilization a failure. I think Russia is going to rivet anew our belief in established social order. Meanwhile we know ours is the best the world has revealed, and I preach the gospel of holding fast to that which has proven good, ever trying in good conscience to make it better, and consider and treat as an enemy every man who chooses our land as a haven in which to assail the very institutions which shelter him.
There are two phases of the commitment of the great human family.
It is of little use to advance unless we hold to the advanced position. It is useless to construct unless we preserve. In the recognized test which our civilization is now undergoing America's supreme task is one of preservation. I call upon America to protect and preserve.
His rail route took him through Idaho from Utah the prior day, so this was an example, really of extensive backtracking.
The first air-to-air refueling occurred between two DH 4s of the U.S. Army Air Service.
The event took place at Rockwell Field in San Diego. While the refueling was a success, an intended four day long duration did not occur.
President Harding was in Zion National Park, seeing some of the park by horseback.
Pope Pius XI condemned the French and Belgium occupation of the Ruhr, warning that it could lead to the "final ruin of Europe".
This followed PM Stanley Baldwin's announcement that:
British Air Power must include a Home Defence Air Force of sufficient strength adequately to protect us against air attack by the strongest air force within striking distance of this country…. In the first instance the Home Defence Force should consist of 52 squadrons to be created with as little delay as possible.
35 of the squadrons were to be bomber squadrons, 17, fighters, showing an appreciation of strategic airspace well before World War Two.
The Tribune reported that President Harding's stop in Cheyenne had been a big success.
He was on to Salt Lake City, Utah.
My Fellow Countrymen:There is a suggestion of personal tribute in choosing my topic for an address in Salt Lake City. I have so long associated Senator Smoot with great problems of taxation, and have witnessed so much of his able and faithful endeavor to enforce economy and thereby lift the burdens of taxation, that I find myself involuntarily thinking, when I come to your state, of the menace of mounting taxes # and growing public indebtedness. The removal of this menace is not alone a federal problem, for we are recording gratifying progress so far as the nation is concerned, but the larger menace to-day is to be faced by municipality, county, and state. The federal Government is diligently seeking to prove itself a helpful example, but the improved order must come in the units of government into which federal Government never intrudes. There is no particular reason why I should speak of it, except that we are all concerned about general public welfare, and I have thought that possibly a recital of federal accomplishment would serve to encourage in a state and local work which must be done.A short time before I became President, a trusted but cynical old friend said to me one day that he understood I intended to make a specialty of economy in administration. I admitted my aspirations in that direction, and he replied:"Well, that's the right idea, but don't tell anybody about it. You may think it will be appreciated, but it will not. Every time you lop somebody -off the government pay roll or keep him out of a profitable piece of government business, you make him and all his friends and associates your enemies; and, on the other side, not a soul in the country will ever thank you for it. Everybody grumbles about taxes, and nobody ever demonstrates any appreciation of the man that tries to save them from taxes."A short time before we left Washington on the present trip another friend said to me: "The Administration has saved the country a good deal by reducing its expenses and cutting down the tax burden. But take my advice, and don't talk to any of your audiences about it. People always grumble about taxes, but they don't want to hear anybody talk to them on that subject."To which I replied that I believed, in the present state of affairs, all such rules were suspended, and any public man who had anything cheerful to say on the subject of taxes and Government expenses, would find plenty of audiences altogether willing to listen to him. I believe the American people are so profoundly interested in the subject of taxation and Government costs nowadays that an audience like this will even be willing to let me talk to them a few minutes on the subject.One of the financial incidents to our participation in the war was to loan a vast sum of money to our allies. I wonder how many of you ever stop to think that the $10,000,000,000 which we advanced to our allies, after our entrance into the war, was just about the same as the total cost of the Civil War to North and South together. The Civil War lasted four years and strained every nerve and resource of the nation. Yet its actual cost to the Governments of both sides was considerably less than the amount we advanced to the Allied Governments during the World War.And that was only a mild beginning of our financial transactions in war. For every dollar we loaned to our allies, we spent about three more on our own account. In a little more than three years, between the day war was declared and peace was signed, we spent twice as much money out of the public treasury as had been spent by the national Government in all of its previous history. I am not going to talk to you to-day about whether the money was all wisely spent. Whether it was or not, the results were worth all they cost, and a good deal more. What I propose to present to you now is some consideration of the fact that no matter how willing we were to make the sacrifice, no matter how cheerfully we incurred the obligations, we had to face at the end the big and very practical reality that these obligations must be paid.You have inferred from what I said a moment ago that we spent roundly $40,000,000,000 on the World War. How many of us ever stopped to think that that was rather more than the total wealth of the nation at the time of the Civil War? We paid out of our current taxes, while the war was going on, more than 25 per cent of its cost; that is, as much as the entire national wealth so late as the year 1820. At the beginning of August, 1919, the public debt reached the highest point in its history, $27,500,000,000. That was just about ten times the amount of the national debt at the close of the Civil War.We are still too close to the events of the Great War to be able to realize the enormous burdens placed on our country. Quite aside from the large operations of public finance which it necessitated, private finance has been tailed upon from the very beginning in 1914 to make special arrangements for financing the huge foreign trade that resulted from Europe's extraordinary demands. Long before we were in the war our financial machinery had been compelled to shoulder the financing of an enormously exaggerated export trade to the warring Powers. For a time Europe withdrew gold from us in great quantities, but presently it returned in yet greater, bringing to us and to the European countries the difficult problem of maintaining the exchanges and supporting the gold standard. Costs of everything rose to an artificially high basis, and in every direction expenditure was stimulated.Altogether, the war was not only the greatest horror the world has ever known, but the greatest orgy of spending. This was inevitable, but that fact does not make the results any easier to deal with. The cost of government, of business, of every domestic establishment went up enormously. Every business man, and every householder, knows how it affected his personal concern. I want to suggest some of the ways in which it affected the whole business of government; government of the states, the cities, the nation, the expenses of every revenue-raising and spending division throughout the nation.Recently I have been furnished with some specific figures on this subject of the cost of government by the Bureau of the Census. I am not proposing to impose upon your patience with an elaborate presentation of figures, but I want to suggest a few that will point my observations about the enormously increased cost of government everywhere. Take the cost of state governments. I am informed that the revenues of the states in 1913 aggregated $368,000,000, and that in 1921 they had increased to $959,000,000; that is, they had increased 161 per cent, and every dollar of that increase had to come in some way or other from the public. The expenditures of the states in 1913 aggregated $383,000,000, and in 1921 they were $1,005,000,000; an increase of 163 per cent. The indebtedness of the states in 1913 amounted to $423,000,000, and in 1921 to $1,012,000,000; an increase of 139 per cent.Turn now to the cost of city government. The Census Bureau has compiled data on the governments of 227 of the large cities. It is shown that these cities in 1913 collected $890,000,000 in all revenues, and in 1921 they collected $1,567,000,000; that is, they were compelled to take 76 per cent more in taxes in 1921 than they had taken in 1913. The same group of cities expended in 1913, $1,010,000,000, and in 1921, $1,726,000,000— an increase of 71 per cent. The total debt of this group of cities in 1913 was $2,901,000,000, which by 1921 had risen to $4,334,000,000—an increase of 49 per cent.County administration appears, from the rather limited information which at this time the census authorities have been able to produce, to have shown a much larger proportionate increase in cost and tax collections than did the government of cities. It is stated that for 381 counties, distributed among 38 states, and regarded as fairly typical, the increase in receipts from principal sources of revenue increased 127 per cent from 1913 to 1922; that is, for every hundred dollars of revenue collected in 1913, $227 was collected in 1922. And that is not all of it. The total indebtedness of these same 381 counties increased 195 per cent in the same period; that is, for every hundred dollars of debt in 1913 they had $295 of indebtedness in 1922. Statistics were not available dealing with cities and towns of less than 30,000 population; nor with townships, school districts, drainage districts, irrigation districts, road districts, and other subdivisions which exercised the power to raise revenues and incur debts. It is well known, however, that substantially similar increases have affected all these taxing subdivisions.The figures of both the Treasury and the Census Bureau, in short, make it perfectly plain that whereas the cost of the federal Government is being steadily reduced, the cost of state and local governments is being just as steadily increased year by year. In nearly all of the states the cost of state and local governments increased from 1919 to 1922. The Treasury made up statistics on this point for one group of 10 states— Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin. For this representative group it is shown that while federal taxes paid by these 10 states declined from over a billion dollars in 1920 to $650,000,000 in 1922, their state and local taxes rose from $728,000,000 to $965,000,000 in the same period. In another tabulation, covering 28 states, which was the entire number for which the statistics were available, it was shown that from 1919 to 1921 there were increases in local taxes in 23 states and reductions in only 5. In spite of the enormous burden of paying for the war and paying interest on the war debt, state and local taxes in 1922 represented 60 per cent of all taxes paid.Let me present another aspect of the same matter. We hear much about the grievous burden of the income tax, and everyone of us who pays it is able fully to sympathize with everyone else who pays it. But it is fair to consider what our income taxes would be if we lived in some of the other debt-burdened countries of the world. A married citizen of the United States, with two children and an income of $5,000, paid $68 tax on that income in 1922. If he had been a citizen of Canada he would have paid $156. If the German tax rate had been applied to his income, it would have cost him $292. If he had been a Frenchman the French rate would have required him to pay $96, and if he had been a British citizen, instead of giving up the $68 which he paid to Uncle Sam, he would have drawn his check for $320.76. The same man, with an income of $10,000, would have paid $456 income tax in the United States and $1,128.32 in England.The great burden of the war was, of course, imposed on the national Government. The Department of the Treasury states that in 1917 the federal Government's revenues were $1,044,000,000; in 1918 they were $3,925,000,000; in 1919 they were $4,103,000,000; in 1920 they were $5,737,000,000; and in 1921 they were $4,902,000,000. For 1922 the total dropped to $3,565,000,000, and for 1923 it is estimated at $3,753,000,000. Assuming continuation of the present basis of federal taxation, the receipts for 1924 are calculated at $3,638,000,000, and for 1925 at $3,486,000,000.Not all of this revenue is raised by direct taxation. The Treasury estimates indicate that in 1923 only $2,925,000,000 and in 1924 $2,850,000,000 will be produced by direct taxation; the remainder will come from various miscellaneous receipts of the Government. You will, I am sure, be interested in the Treasury's statement that whereas in 1914 the per capita cost to all the people of the federal Government was $6.97, in 1918 it reached $36.64 and in 1919, $37.91. It might reasonably have been presumed that with the war now long past taxes would have begun to fall off, but the statistics show the contrary. Instead of a reduction, taxes for the fiscal year 1920 rose to $53.78 per capita, which was the peak of the war burden. Even for 1921 they only fell to $45.22. But in 1923 they will be $26.29, or considerably less « than half as much as in 1920. Figures, especially the figures which represent such an authority as the Treasury Department, are conclusive arguments. These figures show that for two years after the war ended federal taxes continued much higher than at the height of the struggle. They show that in the first two years of peace the cost of Government was still continuing above the 1918 level, but that since the high point of 1920 they have been reduced more than one-half. It is a record of business administration to which the party now in control of the administration feels justified in referring with no small measure of satisfaction.I have observed that the cost of the war to our Government was around $40,000,000,000. After paying a generous share, about 25 per cent, from current revenues collected while the war was in progress, we still had to borrow enormously. At its highest point, on August 31, 1919, the national debt was $26,596,000,000. I know you will be interested to be told that from that day, August 31, 1919, to June 30, 1923, we have reduced it to $22,400,000,000—a reduction of considerably more than a billion dollars a year. Moreover, we are now working under a program which involves extinguishing a half billion of the debt each year. No other country in the world has been able to make such a record.In addition to all this, we have within the past year settled the British war debt to our Government, arranged for its funding and its gradual extinction over a long period of years. In recognition of the notable service of Secretary Mellon, his associates at the Treasury, and the members of the Debt Funding Commission and the American ambassador to Great Britain, I wish to say that this settlement of the British debt has been acclaimed all over the world as one of the most notable and successful fiscal accomplishments ever recorded. Not only does it insure that the regular quarterly payments which the British Government will make to our Treasury will correspondingly relieve the burden upon American taxpayers, but the more important fact, in a time of widespread uncertainty and misgiving throughout the world of business everywhere, that these two great Governments could get together and arrange such a settlement has been one of the most reassuring events since the armistice.There had been too much talk of possible cancellations or repudiations of the war debt. Such a program would have wrecked the entire structure of business faith and of confidence in the obligations of Governments throughout the world. There was need, pressing and urgent need, for such a sign of confidence, assurance, and faith in the future as this settlement furnished. When the British and American Governments united in this pledge that their obligations would be met to the last shilling and the last dollar, there was renewed financial confidence in the world. I undertake to say that no event since the conclusion of hostilities has contributed so much to putting the world back on its way to stabilization, to confidence in its Governments, and to the established conviction that our social institutions are yet secure.No consideration of public finances can omit the fact that the single item of interest on the public debt exceeds $1,000,000,000 annually. For the fiscal year 1923, this item, will be $1,100,000,000. Beyond this, we will reduce the public debt this year by $330,000,000, and next year by approximately $500,000,000. That is, over 35 per cent of the national revenue will this year go to paying interest or extinguishing the principal of the public debt.I have not been able to gather conclusive statistics as to the accomplishments of states, cities, and counties, to compare with this showing of the federal Government. But with some general knowledge of the fiscal positions of states and cities in general, I feel quite safe in proffering my congratulations to any state, any city, any foreign country, which has made a better showing in the matter of reducing its public debt within the period since the war. I most earnestly regret that all have not been able to make a similar showing.On this latter point I wish to say a word further. Taxation decidedly is a local as well as a national question. Prior to the war, federal taxation was an unimportant item; so small that in 1917 state and local taxes, in a group of 10 representative states, in all parts of the country, constituted 73 per cent of the entire tax burden.The federal tax was indirect and unfelt. Then came the enormous cost of the war, which the federal Government had to bear, and in 1918 state and local taxes constituted only 42 per cent of the entire tax burden. In 1919 they represented 44 per cent of the whole; in 1920, 41 per cent. But in 1922, the last year for which figures are available, state and local taxes were again in excess and represented 60 per cent of the entire tax burden. The states represented in this calculation are Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin.The world, its Governments, its quasi-public corporations, its people, acquired the spending habit during the war to an extent not merely unprecedented, but absolutely alarming. There is but one way for the community finally to get back on its feet, and that is to go seriously about paying its debts and reducing its expenses. That is what the world must face. The greatest and richest Government must face it, and so must the humblest citizen. No habit is so easy to form, none so hard to break, as that of reckless spending. And on the other side, none is more certain to contribute to security and happiness, than the habit of thrift, of savings, of careful management in all business concerns, of balanced budgets and living within incomes. If I could urge upon the American people a single rule applicable to every one of them as individuals, and to every political or corporate unit among them, it would be to learn to spend somewhat less than your income all the time. If you have debts, reduce them as rapidly as you can; if you are one of the fortunate few who have no debts, make it a rule to save something every year. Keep your eye everlastingly on those who administer your governmental units for you: your t6wn, your county, your state, your national Government. Make them understand that you are applying the rule of thrift and savings in your personal affairs, and require them to apply it in their management of your public affairs. If they fail, find other public servants who will succeed. If they succeed, give them such encouragement and inspiration as will be represented by a full measure of hearty appreciation for their efforts.This brings me to a brief reference to what has proven so helpful to the federal Government in effecting the approach to the expenditures of normal times. For the first time in our history we have the national budget, under which there is an effective scrutiny of estimates for public expenditure. More, we have coordinated Government activities in making the expenditures which Congress authorizes.It seems now unbelievable that we should have been willing to go for a century and a third without this helpful agency of business administration. But we did, and only now have we come to an appraisal of the cost of this great neglect.It has been no easy task to establish the budget and make sure of its acceptance. Out of long time practices the varied and many Government departments felt themselves independent institutions, instead of factors in the great machinery of Government administration. They often got all they could from Congress, and made it a point to expend all they got.Under the budget plan we were able to reverse the policy and awaken a sprit of economy and efficiency in the public service. We not only insisted that requests for appropriations should stand the minutest inquiry, but after reduced appropriations were granted, we insisted on expending less than the appropriations. There was no proposal to diminish Government activities required by law or demanded by public need, but there was first the commitment to efficiency and then commendable strife for economy.We effaced the inexcusable and very costly impression that Government departments must expend all their appropriations, that no available cash should return to the Treasury. And we sought to inspire as well as exact in the practices of economy.One illustration will not be amiss. On June 8, 1921, before the budget was in operation, word came to me that the business head of one of our institutions, far from Washington, was puzzling how to expend $42,000 which he had in excess of actual needs. Ordinarily such a matter would never reach the chief executive. But this one did, and I wired a warning, and followed it with a letter reciting the need of retrenchment everywhere, and expressed the hope that every Government official with spending authority would aid in reducing the Government outlay. The appeal was effective, and this one Government agent not only saved most of his available $42,000 for that fiscal year, but in 1922 he saved $81,000 more. He proved what could be done, and we are seeking to do it everywhere.Do not imagine it has all been easy. It is very popular to expend, and there are ruffled feelings in every case of denial. But there are gratifying results in firm resolution and the insistent application of business methods.The Budget Director is the agent of the President, and he speaks on the authority of the Government's chief executive. One day last winter the director came to me in great anxiety, telling me that a department chief would not sanction an $8,000,000 cut in his estimates. At that time we were seeking to prevent a threatened excess of expenditures over receipts amounting to $800,000,000 for the next fiscal year.I sent for the department head, and he was still insistent in his opposition to the reduced estimate. I called for a conference of the department experts and the budget experts, and told them that if they could not agree, I would decide. They conferred, and instead of returning to me for decision, the estimate was cut more than $12,000,000. The point is that we have introduced business methods in government, and instead of operating blindly and to suit individual departments which had never visualized the Government as a whole, and felt no concern about the raising Of funds, we are scrutinizing, justifying, coordinating, and not only halting mounting cost, but making long strides in reducing the cost of Government activities.Perhaps the budget system would not accomplish so much for taxing and spending divisions smaller than the state, but a resolute commitment to strike at all extravagance and expend public funds as one would for himself in his personal and business affairs will accomplish wonders.It is largely unmindfulness that piles up the burden. Able and honorable men often press for a federal expenditure to be made in their own community or in other ways helpful to their own interests which they would strongly oppose if they were not directly concerned. This is true of federal appropriation as well as municipal, county, and state expenditure, and I know of no remedy unless public officials are brought to understand the menace in excessive tax burdens and indebtedness, beyond extinguishment except in drastic action, and resolve to employ practicable business methods in government everywhere, and resist the assault of the spenders.It is too early to know whether there is a republic of ancient times with which appropriately to parallel our own. We know of their rise and fall, and we may learn the lessons in their failures. A simple-living, thrifty people, with simple, honest, and just government never failed to grow in influence and power. The coming of extravagance and profligacy in private life, and wastefulness and excesses in public life ever proclaimed the failures which history has recorded.I would not urge the stingy, skimpy, hoarding life of individuals, or an inadequate program of government. The latter must always rise to deliberate public demand. But private life and public practices are inseparably associated.I would have our Government adequate in every locality and in every activity, and public sentiment will demand it and secure it, and require no more, if we have the simple and thrifty life which make the healthful nation.These reflections, my countrymen, are not conceived in doubt or pessimism. We have so nobly begun, we are so boundless in resources, we have wrought so notably in our short national existence, that I wish these United States to go on securely. I would like developing dangers noted and appraised and intelligently and patriotically guarded against. A nation of inconsiderate spenders is never secure. We wish our United States everlastingly secure.War brought us the lesson that we had not been so American in spirit as we had honestly pretended. Some of our adopted citizenship wore the habiliments of America, but were not consecrated in soul. Some to whom we have given all the advantages of American citizenship would destroy the very institutions under which they have accepted our hospitality. Hence our commitment to the necessary Americanization which we too long neglected. The American Legion, baptized anew in the supreme test on foreign battlefields, is playing its splendid part.Those who bore war's burdens at home have joined, and all America must fully participate. It is not enough to enlist the sincere allegiance of those who come to accept our citizenship; we must make sure for ourselves, for all of us, that we cling to the fundamentals, to the practices which enabled us to build so successfully, and avoid the errors which tend to impair our vigor and becloud our future.
The Tribune also reminded people that starting on July 1, they needed to have licenses for automobiles.
Edith Smith, age 46, the UK's first fully powered police officer, killed herself with an overdose of morphine. She had been retired from police work for five years, but was working in nursing. She had been heavily overworked for years, working seven days out of seven, and was low on funds.
