CHAPTER XVII
THE ADMINISTRATION OF WARREN G.
HARDING
March 4, 1921, to August 2, 1923
INAUGURATION DAY dawned clear and bright for Warren G. Harding, twenty-ninth President. His installation into office was marked by its simplicity.
The Hardings went direct to the Willard Hotel upon their arrival in Washington. On the morning of March 4th, President-elect and Mrs. Harding, Vice President-elect and Mrs. Coolidge, and George B. Christian, Jr., with former Speaker Cannon, went to the White House. As the hour of the inaugural ceremonies drew near, President Wilson appeared leaning on the arm of Mr. Harding and took his seat in the machine that was to take him to the Capitol. Mrs. Wilson was accompanied by Dr. Grayson. She and Mrs. Harding rode together in a car following that of their husbands. Four troops of the Third Cavalry had been assigned to the duty as escort.
This inauguration was not in any respect like previous celebrations; not a strain of music was heard until the party had passed the Peace Monument. There the Harding and Coolidge Band of Washington was playing. The only other music was by the Marine Band on the plaza in front of the reviewing stand. President Wilson spent a few minutes signing belated bills and then decided to take his departure, as he was taxing his strength. He was assisted to his machine, and with Mrs. Wilson, Admiral Grayson, and Mr. Tumulty, he left the scene of so much of his activity to receive a great ovation later at his own home.
In the Senate Chamber, Vice President Marshall inducted Governor Coolidge into office. Miss Alice Robertson attracted much attention as the second woman to be elected to Congress. She was from Oklahoma, and succeeded Miss Rankin as the one woman legislator. The ceremony on the East Portico deviated but little from those of former occasions. Amplifiers were used for the first time to enable the people to hear the address. The oath was administered by Chief Justice White on a Bible of historic interest. It was the one used by George Washington in 1789. It had been borrowed from the Masonic Lodge for the purpose then, and was loaned by the same Lodge for Mr. Harding’s use.
After the address, the new President went back to the Senate chamber, made a brief speech to his former colleagues, and then presented the names of his Cabinet. They were at once confirmed. All precedents were eclipsed in the celerity with which government control was transferred from the Democrats to the Republicans and in the speed with which the new régime was organized and ready for functioning. The new Cabinet consisted of Charles E. Hughes, Secretary of State; John W. Weeks, Secretary of War; Harry M. Daugherty, Attorney General; Will H. Hays, Postmaster General; Edwin Denby, Secretary of the Navy; Albert B. Fall, Secretary of the Interior; Henry Cantwell Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture; Herbert Clark Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, and James J. Davis, Secretary of Labour.
President and Mrs. Harding enjoyed a family luncheon party on their arrival at the White House.
The absence of the usual parade and the review was a real disappointment to the crowds along the way.
When Mr. Harding had been approached by the Inaugural Committee on plans for the biggest celebration ever known and the most brilliant ball of history, he was at first inclined to approve, but pressure was brought upon him and he vetoed the entire plan, asking that the celebrations be made just as simple as consistent with the dignity of the position. Confronted with this ultimatum, decorations and seat building stopped, and those not interested in the Charity Ball of the evening promenaded the brilliantly lighted Avenue.
The first official act of the new President was to order the gates opened and the public admitted to the grounds which had been closed so long. This was done upon his return from the Capitol. The Wilson sheep had been sent back to their home at Bel Air, and dogs were installed, Laddie Boy winning popularity for himself from the time he appeared.
Mrs. Harding set to work at once to banish the gloom and silence of the large rooms. She filled every possible nook with flowers and threw wide the doors to invite the public again to see the interior of the mansion.
From the home on Wyoming Avenue, occupied while Mr. Harding was in the Senate, came all of the household goods, and soon the bareness and cheerlessness that followed upon the exodus of the Wilsons with all of their lovely foreign gifts disappeared. Mrs. Harding was a housekeeper of the most efficient type, and with her husband resumed the custom of holding daily receptions. She kept Miss Harlan as her secretary and was unusually approachable. She had bulbs planted all over the lawns where the Wilson sheep had roamed. She sent away to a factory for bird houses for the trees.
The advent of a new Mistress of the White House is always the signal for the limelight to be turned upon her by the world at large. No detail of her life, family history, characteristics, accomplishments, limitations, or appearance is overlooked, and trying beyond description is the ordeal of the first few weeks of every woman who finds herself elevated to this position.
The price of residence in the White House is the loss of personal liberty and of freedom of speech and action. For every waking minute of the twenty-four hours, the man and the woman who accept this high honour must ever keep before them the rules, restrictions, and customs which tradition has fastened upon the place. To independent folk, much of this is exceedingly irksome.
Mrs. Harding, close to her husband in age, for thirty years his companion, co-worker, partner, sweetheart, wife, and adviser, the one person who believed in him more completely than any other human being, and who inspired him to real achievement, was as distinct among women as her husband was among men.
As in the case of her husband, all the events of her life contributed to equipping her for the discharge of her White House obligations, and not even her most bitter critic will deny that she established a régime that will go down in history as a tribute to her as a citizen and as a charming, gracious hostess.
Mrs. Harding, born Florence Kling, the daughter of Amos and Louisa Bouton Kling, disappointed her wealthy father immeasurably by being born a girl. He bitterly resented that fact. Her mother’s health became so fragile during her little-girlhood that she and her father came to depend upon each other for outdoor companionship which the mother could not share. Being obsessed with disgust over the ignorance of the majority of women in business matters brought to his attention daily in his banking affairs, Mr. Kling decided to take a hand in his daughter’s education and add another study to a programme already filled with the useful and ornamental branches usually planned to fit out a girl. Among these was a study of music that was encouraged and developed to an almost professional degree, and the five hours of daily piano practice carried in its wake much besides the ability to interpret the old masters.
Banker Kling approved of all this and more, so he took his lively little daughter in hand and trained her as he would have trained a first son, in all the details of business and banking. Florence Kling was an apt pupil, and soon she was as familiar with her father’s routine and detail of work as he was. Naturally, the comradeship and understanding between them became very close.
All the joys and sports of her day, the frolics, parties, and good times belonging to girlhood, were also open to this girl, who had a knack of making and keeping her friends. Early in young-ladyhood she became the wife of Mr. De Wolff and the mother of a son. The marriage was not happy, and in the course of time a divorce terminated it. Both Mr. De Wolff and their son died.
As a child, this girl learned to ride horseback, becoming an expert horsewoman, being able to handle any horse she chose to ride. This accomplishment played a prominent part in her friendship with Editor Harding. Gossip declared that they met at a dance and that the mutual interest there created was speedily fanned into love. An ardent courtship followed, much of which was spent by the two riding horseback through the country lanes.
Mr. Kling viewed this budding romance with stern disfavour, for he had little use for the newspaper profession. As the affair progressed, his opposition increased, and he took a high hand in forbidding the marriage. Equally high-spirited, his daughter refused to give up her fiancé just because he was struggling with a one-horse newspaper. She chose her lover in preference to her father, and for seven years Mr. Kling refused to speak to either of them. Later, however, he came to admire his son-in-law and to admit that his daughter’s husband was all that he could desire. Because of the bitter feeling in her family, the young couple were married in the house which Mr. Harding bought and which they occupied as their home during all of their years of life in Marion, and in which the front-porch campaign for the Presidency was conducted.
From the beginning, their domestic life was ideal, that of comrades sharing every problem. In the privacy of their home circle, they were “the Duchess” and “Sonny,” and sometimes these nicknames slipped out more readily than the Florence and Warren. He was always deferential and solicitous to a degree that was a point of pleased observation to the throngs that met them. Mrs. Harding was a notable example of the modern woman whose pride in her husband personally as well as in his career was the outstanding motive of her own life and activities. Apart they were never content.
“I have no ambition for myself. I am content to trail along with Warren Harding. He has the warmest sympathy of any man I know,” she once said, adding, “Even the newsboys were crazy about him, just as crazy as his dogs were.”
In the strenuous pre-election days, Mrs. Harding’s faith in the successful outcome never faltered. She earned her place at his side, for she worked tirelessly night and day in all kinds of weather with all of the energy and more of the astuteness and patience than the average male campaigner. She made countless addresses, wrote reams of campaign literature, and organized numerous clubs of women voters. Furthermore, she kept a check upon every move, and her advice on political matters was the wonder of the old-timers in political wisdom. With it all, she kept out of the fierce limelight.
She stands out among our Presidents’ wives because she was the first woman voter and politician to come to the White House. A trained business woman, possessed of a keen analytical mind, with a gift of executive ability beyond the average, she was also a charming, tactful, gracious hostess. She knew every detail of her housekeeping, and at the White House as well as in her own home, she saw to it that money’s worth was being obtained for money spent.
For thirty years, this woman had studied the political life of her country as well as that of foreign nations. She knew her city, her county, her state, and her country. Great national issues were as familiar to her as to her husband, and the big questions of the day slipped into her conversation as readily as the polite small talk. Frank almost to abruptness, she looked a visitor squarely in the eye and gave him a man’s handshake along with a greeting that matched her friendly smile.
Both President and Mrs. Harding enjoyed their stay in the White House, and they were frank enough to admit it. She loved the historic associations of the mansion and said the thrill of showing people through it and pointing out its treasures never palled upon her.
True to her husband’s policy of economy, she declined to have any of the available money spent upon refurnishing the place to please her taste, as is the privilege of each new First Lady. Downstairs, she revelled in the daily arrival of the flowers, and every nook, corner, vase, or basket that was available had its use in brightening and enhancing the beauty of the main floor.
Scarcely a day passed but that both the Executive and his wife received a number of delegations, as well as hundreds of individuals. Neither of them took any of the applause and attention to themselves. Both insisted that it was but the homage due the highest office, regardless of the man and woman filling it for the time. Both made their endless stream of callers realize that they were human ordinary folk, genuinely glad to see the American people who came to see the head of the nation and admire the home which the nation had provided for him to use.
During his first year, President Harding gave orders to permit as many people as possible in the daily line to be received by him. Some days there were fully three thousand to file by and shake hands, and rarely less than four or five hundred. Some of his associates urged him to discontinue this custom or make it weekly, thinking it too much of a strain.
“Not on your life,” he answered, when the idea was broached to him; “the only big bright spot of my day is seeing those admiring and kindly faces. I love to meet them. They have nothing to ask. They are typical Americans, and it is merely their way of showing reverence for their President. Besides, it is a treat to meet someone at the White House who is not seeking executive favour.”
He often expressed the view that he belonged to the people and it was his duty to grant every wish in reason.
His wife shared his views in this respect, as in most others, and their social régime was planned to give the greatest pleasure and include at the big official functions as many people as the size of the house would safely admit.
Their first New Year’s reception was notable in that for the first time in many years a President’s wife went through the hand-shaking ordeal. Six thousand, five hundred and seventy-six people went through that line in five hours, and to each one the President and his wife gave a cordial greeting and a hearty hand-shake. True, Mrs. Harding’s right hand became so swollen that she had to use her left, and when the hour for the end of the reception came and people were still passing at the rate of about thirty to the minute, with a long shivering line outside, the President decided that every last person should be admitted, and for another hour these two kept up the pace without flagging. Mrs. Harding’s gloves became so discoloured that she changed several times in brief lulls. After that, she quickly developed a little efficient swing that made her right arm and shoulder stand the strain of the daily receptions as well as did her husband’s golf-trained muscles. The ability to perform the prodigious hand-shaking was due to her years of piano practice and the strength of wrists that horsemanship gave.
President and Mrs. Harding endeared themselves to the disabled soldiers, for neither of them ever wearied doing things for them, and none who witnessed the reception which they gave to the wounded men of the Great War will ever wonder why these boys were so devoted to them and mourned their passing so deeply.
They were idolized by the children, and with good reason. At Easter, Mrs. Harding reopened the grounds for the annual egg rolling that had been so long abandoned, and then she and the President called Laddie Boy and walked about, mingling with the youngsters, giving and getting a full measure of fun out of the day. Her love for children was very deep.
Upon another occasion, when five hundred school children gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to sing and leave flowers as their part of the Dedication services, a heavy storm prevented the arrival of speakers, and the children marched over to the White House to sing for the President. Mrs. Harding saw them and gave orders that they all be brought in, dripping and soaked as they were. After they had finished their songs and been thanked as a group, Mrs. Harding greeted each of them most warmly, and as they passed her they put their flowers at her feet. By the time the last wet little one had gone, she was waist deep in a bank of dripping flowers, and drenched to the skin. Her only comment in reply to the remarks about her lovely dress was terse: “What’s a gown amount to compared to a child’s disappointment?”
This is the reason why the soldiers and the children, as well as the general public, prayed for her recovery—some kneeling on the White House steps—and kept a steady stream of inquiry and flowers pouring into the mansion during her critical illness of September, 1922. In the acute stages, her husband kept vigil in a chair outside her door when the physicians would not allow him to remain longer at her bedside. To all letters of sympathy and inquiry about her condition, President Harding placed his signature upon the replies, and there were bushels upon bushels of them.
The first group of any size received by Mrs. Harding after her six months of illness and sickroom seclusion was that of about thirty women writers of the Capital City, most of whom represented large papers and magazines, while the rest were well-known free-lance writers. Next to the pleasure of again seeing Mrs. Harding, for whom each one had a feeling of warm friendship, all appreciated the little personal touch of being received in her own sitting room, the large oval apartment above the Blue Room—the room that was replete with historic associations of the first levees in the mansion under Mrs. John Adams, and that later was made the coziest spot in the building by Mrs. Fillmore and her library. Great, comfortable, chintz-covered chairs, davenports, mahogany bookcases, shaded lamps, and a fire crackling cheerily in the fireplace above which hung Laszlo’s sketch of Mrs. Harding herself, all made the place most homelike and attractive. This atmosphere was emphasized by the winter sunshine streaming through the three south windows that look toward the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the lovely Potomac. Major Baldinger and Lieutenant Taylor, both of whom she proudly introduced as “two of my boys from the Marion Star,” were there as military and naval aides.
Frail, dainty, and courageous, the White House mistress had come back from the Valley of the Shadow, and while now and then she had to think for a word, she was just as merry and full of energy as when she had last talked over the events of her first year in the White House. She told of her desperate struggle against death, solemnly stating that it was only the prayers of the people that had saved her life.
Mrs. Harding also spoke of the pleasure it had been to have her husband with her, and to a special friend she remarked:
“In one way this illness has been a blessing. We have had more time with each other than at any period since the beginning of the campaign. Before I had to go to bed there was not a minute of the day that either of us was free. There was never a meal when we were alone. I can tell you it was a treat to be able to take advantage of my condition and sit upstairs here in the evening and talk to my husband.”
Though a good mixer like her husband, whose friends were her friends, Mrs. Harding was not much of a “joiner.” She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, by her descent from Captain Edmund Richards, of Connecticut; but had been identified with that organization for many years in Ohio and became honorary member of the Mary Washington Chapter of the District of Columbia. Wives of the Presidents are so hedged about with restrictions that they make as few new moves as necessary to avoid the criticism that is always ready to descend upon them.
Mrs. Harding once remarked that she had joined every Animal Rescue League in the land, for that seemed a perfectly safe thing to join. At the time of Mr. Harding’s election, she became an active member of the League of American Pen Women, holding that membership until her death.
When President Harding set out for Alaska, it was to realize a dream he had nurtured from the time he came to the Presidency. Yet there are many who believe that he had a premonition that he would not survive the trip, for he set his house in order, made his will, rearranged his investments, sold certain properties, and left his personal affairs in ship-shape condition. The trip, though interesting and enjoyable, proved a severe strain, although his sixty speeches in thirty-nine days was not an unusual number for Presidents on such long journeys across the continent. But his vitality had been weakened by a sick spell in the early summer. The deaths of the three men, all friends of his and members of his party, whose car plunged over the cliff in Colorado depressed him greatly. Mrs. Harding’s threatened collapse in Alaska, and the accident to the boat that brought them back to Seattle, all added to the weariness. At San Francisco, almost at once came his severe illness, and when the nation watched with anxiety the sickroom bulletins, the relief at the news of his improvement and the assurance of recovery was heartfelt.
No one believed that death was near, certainly not Mrs. Harding or the physicians. Always devoted, she sat at his bedside, happy that he was interested in being entertained. She was reading Sam Blythe’s summary of him and his administration, “A Calm Review of a Calm Man.” Apparently comfortable and free from pain, and enjoying the sound of her loved voice, appreciating, no one knows how deeply, the words of commendation of his efforts from a writer of authority, he murmured when she hesitated:
“That’s good; go on, read some more.” As she picked up the magazine again, he threw up his hand, perhaps to ward off the swift blow of the Grim Reaper he felt coming, and, with a sigh, he was gone—the valiant spirit had flown—the splendid, vigorous body lay limp—but an empty shell.
While Mrs. Harding rushed for help, she knew all too well that it was too late—her husband was dead.
A shocked and grief-stricken group of relatives, Cabinet members, officials, and friends quickly assembled and were rallied to the necessities of the hour by the heart-broken wife, who had never failed Warren Harding in life and would not let herself fail him in death. Upheld by the marvellous will power that had characterized her life, though prostrated by her sorrow, she reassured her pitying friends: “I will not fail—I will not break down.” No one can imagine how she went through the formalities and services in the hotel, calm and controlled; how she endured the long, weary, sorrowful journey to Washington in the car beside the bier of her husband, the return to the White House—there to stand by the casket in the East Room and then calmly and quietly to go through the solemn scenes at the Capitol, with the oversight in the evening that compelled her to ask the hospitality of a friend’s car to take her to the train—the journey to Marion, the scene of her childhood, her romance, her happy wifehood, business life, political triumphs, past the little home where she had been married, to the home of her aged father-in-law. Then she greeted the officials who had journeyed many hours and miles to pay final honours to Marion’s great man, and, still controlled and composed, she participated in the last rites that returned her husband to the dust whence he came.
Even greater courage was required to turn her face to Washington, once more to endure the fatigue of another journey, and to remove their belongings from the White House and make room for their successors. After ten days of heartbreaking residence in the great mansion, where she lived alone, she slipped out of the city in a dismal downpour at dusk with the saddest part of life yet before her. In all this time, never once did she utter a plea for herself. With super-courage she filled her rôle as she felt her husband would expect her to fill it. But the effort was too great.
Mrs. Harding lived but a year and a half after her husband’s death. She died November 21, 1924.
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Warren Gamaliel Harding was born on a farm just outside the little town of Blooming Grove, Morrow County, Ohio, on November 2, 1865. He was the first child of eight, born to a country doctor, George Tryon Harding, and Phœbe Dickerson Harding. To his parents he was, of course, a prodigy; and his mother, deeply religious, supplied his middle name, Gamaliel—which in Hebrew means “God is a reward”—from the Bible, and in her heart settled upon his future in the ministry, in the Baptist faith.
Typically and wholly Colonial, the ancestors of President Harding were Puritans and Pilgrims who came to wrest freedom and livelihood from an unbroken wilderness and played their part through the generations as pioneers, soldiers, and patriots. Dr. George T. Harding, his father, was a Civil War Veteran.
Warren G. Harding’s boyhood was spent upon a forest-bordered farm, and, like most country boys, his time was filled with a routine of work and chores that never failed and seldom varied. He chopped down trees, split rails and firewood, dug post holes, built fences, planted and hoed corn and other crops, and tended stock and painted barns and farmhouses. One season, it is said, he left a crimson trail all through Morrow County in the barns he tinted a vermilion hue. This barn painting was done with extra zeal, as the money was to take him to college. In the strenuous days of his farming, chores, and general utility work, in the school of poverty that has turned out so many of our great men, who in such environment learned the industry and the mastery of detail along with the dignity of labour, that made them grasp opportunity with both hands and braced feet, Warren G. Harding laid the foundation for all later successes.
A little knowledge of the printer’s trade, learned during his college career as editor of the college paper, fired the boy with a desire for more, and soon he handled odd jobs at the town printing office, later becoming a practical pressman and a “make-up” man.
Seventeen found him the dignified teacher of the district school and an energetic member of the town band.
Photo. of Mrs. Harding (upper right corner) by Clinedinst Studio, Washington, D. C.
THE BODY OF WARREN G. HARDING
Lying in State in the East Room of The White House
In 1884, his father, Dr. Harding, pulled up stakes and moved his family and chattels into the little town of Marion, the county seat of the adjoining county, then of about four thousand population. But the eldest son did not join the family for several months. When he came, at the age of nineteen, barefoot and astride an old white mule, his advent into the city that he was destined to put upon the map in later years furnished the material for one of the stories he enjoyed telling upon himself.
“My father moved to Marion, from a farm near Caledonia, the winter before I came,” he used to relate.
“When he moved to Marion, he left behind a mule, because the mule was so well known in the vicinity that it could not be sold at a profit and so valuable that he could not afford to sacrifice it.
“I started out early one afternoon; but this mule had only one gait. You couldn’t put him in second or third, and couldn’t step on the gas or anything. The shades were falling fast as I reached Roberts’ Mill, four miles out of Marion. The situation was looking dark to me, and I stopped to ask an old fellow smoking a pipe how far it was to Marion. Without cracking a smile, he replied, ‘Well, if you are going to ride that mule, it is a further distance than you’ll ever get.’”
But notwithstanding the slow pace of his temperamental mule, he arrived in Marion and set about finding a job. The study of law attracted him for a time, with insurance on the side. He frequently insisted that the first real money he ever earned was when he secured the fire insurance on the Hotel Marion from Amos Kling, who later became his father-in-law. In this transaction, his commission was $150, and his first purchase was a “slip horn,” and then he joined the Marion Silver Cornet Band. This horn is still a treasured possession in the family.
The proudest memory of his life, Mr. Harding once admitted, was when he became the leader of that band. One of the great events of those days was the band contest at Findlay, Ohio, to which competitors came from great distances. Upon the occasion that the Marion Band was to compete, its enthusiastic young leader had managed by dint of great strain upon his resources to procure brand-new uniforms, so that his musical flock would make a fine appearance. He was banking on winning prize money for reimbursement. The rival bands all got ahead of the Marion contingent in getting before the judges, and their efforts were so well appreciated by their followings that the Marion bandsmen lost heart and quietly departed, not wanting to suffer the mortification of public defeat. Finally, when their turn came, only the leader, who blew an alto horn, the bass drummer, and the clarinet player were left to perform. But they did their best with their depleted ability, and their delight and surprise may be imagined when the judges called Harding forward and announced that he had won a prize of $200. This was more than enough to pay for the new uniforms, and no prouder group participated in the review of winners than that little trio.
Neither selling insurance nor the intricacies of law held the appeal of journalism, and young Harding decided to follow the press, securing a job on the Mirror, a Democratic paper. Being an ardent Republican and already a firm party man, he fell out with his employer over the stand the editor took in the James G. Blaine campaign for the Presidency. Being a Blaine supporter, the young man found himself without a job.
Just about this time, the run-down little sheet, the Marion Star, was scheduled to be sold by the sheriff. Dr. Harding bought it in at a bargain and turned it over to his boy, because of his faith in him and because he wanted to help him get a start in the line of work he seemed most anxious to follow. From the moment he took possession of the paper that owned only two hundred pounds of type, he put into it hard work, faith, and enthusiasm. Often he could not pay his helpers in the early days, and sometimes when he did pay them off on Saturday night he would have to borrow back a little to tide himself over the opening of the week. Sometimes he had to coax advances on bills from his advertisers to keep going. He filled every position, from printer’s devil to managing editor, but he was never known to lose his pleasure in being just one of the boys. Later, when the paper began to succeed financially, he saw to it that his employees got more pay, and still later he formed a stock company in which they all held shares.
His paper never had a strike; a strike was never even threatened.
No more illuminating view of his character was ever shown than is contained in a tribute he wrote to his dog long before any high honours came to him. The obituary published in the Marion Star about twenty years before he came to the Presidency is worthy of attention. It reads:
“Jumbo, the Star office dog, died Sunday, not from old age, but from somebody’s cruel poisoning or from extreme heat.
“Jumbo was probably known to more people in Marion than any dog in the city. He had been making acquaintances at the Star office for eight years. He had romped with hundreds of newsboys and found canine joy in their familiar greetings.
“Yet there was a serious side to this playful good-natured dog. He had a watchful eye for the suspicious-looking, and would guard a trust with a faithfulness that men might well imitate.
“He was overzealous, perhaps, in exercising the responsibility he felt in keeping watch at the home which sheltered him, but he never harmed anyone without cause. He was only a dumb brute, but had proved his intelligence, made himself understood with his great tender eyes, and possessed a rare combination of dignity and docility.
“The Star workers, from pressroom to business office, felt Jumbo to be part of the force, and it would be false to the feelings of all to allow his passing without notice and tribute.
“Dear Old Jumbo, your eight years of devotion and faithfulness have emphasized the realization that a good dog’s life is all too short—and you were a good dog! You taught us anew how a fine, noble dog like you can win his way to human hearts and grow attachments most painful to have severed.”
One romance, and only one, entered into the life of editor Harding, and his ardent courtship of Amos Kling’s cherished daughter brought down upon his head the enmity of her father. In 1891, when Mr. Harding was twenty-five, despite all opposition, they were married in the little house that they called home during their lives in Marion. His wife’s influence was the greatest factor in all of his achievements. Her contribution to his paper was of the greatest value.
Soon after their marriage, Mr. Harding became ill and the circulation manager quit. Mrs. Harding had always contended that this end of the business was not properly productive. There was no delivery. Papers were sold over the counter in the business office. So in this crisis she decided to take a hand in matters for a few days to help out. She gathered some boys for carriers, installed a carrier system, started them out, and made them collect regularly. The people who did not pay for their papers received no further service until they did pay. Later, she organized the carriers into a newsboys’ club, got them a meeting place, and helped them in every possible way, even now and then administering a much-needed spanking, a scrubbing, or a patch, in the interest of their moral and physical welfare. She went to the job for a few days, but stayed fourteen years and saw her plans develop the circulation into profitable returns and many of the little carriers into splendid men.
One of these, a little red-headed youngster, claimed the particular interest of the editor and his wife, and when Mr. Harding went to Columbus to the state Senate they took him along, and soon he was serving as a page and receiving five dollars a day during the session. His father was dead, and his mother earning her own way. He sent her his wages, and she saved them for him, and later on, when he was a little older, she sent him to Staunton Military Academy because of his bent for military life. This red-headed carrier boy is Major Baldinger of the Air Service, who has had a wide experience of service and won distinction, and when President Harding came to the White House it happened that Major Baldinger was assigned there as military aide. He accompanied the President and his wife upon their journeys and was assigned to attend Mrs. Harding on her sad journeys to Marion; and after she no longer needed him, he again took up his duties at the White House.
As soon as the Marion Star got upon its financial feet, politics claimed its editor, and his steady rise in the political arena was but natural to a man of his prominence in his community. His profession as a writer, editor, printer, and business man identified with many of the projects that were developing in his state, all brought him into a continually widening circle of community and public interests. Always an active Republican, his service in the state Senate, to which he was elected in 1899 and reëlected in 1901, served to make him stand out as a coming man. His first political speech brought forth the prediction that he would some day be President, and political favour began to stalk his steps.
He was elected Lieutenant Governor of Ohio in 1904, with Governor Myron T. Herrick, but was defeated in his race for the Governorship by Judson Harmon in 1910.
Mr. Harding took all of his public duties seriously and never ceased his efforts to cope with all situations. He travelled extensively, going three times abroad, visiting most of the European countries, not wholly for the sake of the pleasure, but to study for himself the systems of government, of employment, of wages. After his election to the United States Senate, when he defeated Foraker, and before taking his seat, he visited the Hawaiian Islands to get first-hand knowledge of the production and distribution of sugar.
In the course of his public life, he spoke in almost every state in the Union and to groups representing practically every industry.
Always pleasing and forceful as a speaker, his appearance added materially to his popularity upon the rostrum. A deep carrying voice, impressive manner, and the knack of winning his hearers brought him always an appreciative audience.
His presentation of William Howard Taft’s name for renomination at the Chicago Convention of 1912, the most tumultuous convention in the annals of Republican history, his chairmanship of the Republican National Convention four years later, his notable speech, and his poise and parliamentary skill in presiding over that body are all matters of political history.
His campaign as presidential nominee of his party, and his election to the Presidency on his fifty-fifth birthday with a plurality of seven millions, were the expression of the confidence of the American people.
It was just about dinner time on election day that a delegation called at the Marion home to see Senator Harding. This proved to be a group of employees of the Marion Star who called to show their pride and satisfaction in him by presenting him with a printer’s gold make-up rule. He went out on the front porch to thank them and was choked with the emotion the gift aroused. When he got his voice in order, he said:
“I don’t know of any call that has aroused my emotions more than this has. I have worked with you and I have tried to be honest with you, and God knows, if I am called to responsibility, I am going to be honest with everybody in the world. I don’t know if I can meet these responsibilities fully, but I know I can meet them with the same honesty that I have treated you.
“I am just a plain ordinary fellow, but I can be on the square, and that’s all there is to it.”
He had the distinction of being the first Senator elected to the Presidency while serving in that office and also the first active newspaper man to wear the presidential toga.
The outstanding feature of President Harding’s administration was the Conference on Limitation of Armaments which met on November 12, 1921. To it the President invited Great Britain, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Japan, and China to send delegates. Secretary of State Hughes presided. Those who attended were Prince Tokugawa, Ambassador Jusserand, Albert Sarrault, M. Viviani, Premier Briand, Senators G. Pearce Underwood, Elihu Root, Lodge, and Schanzer, Lord Balfour, Ambassador Geddes, Sir Robert Borden, Sir John Salmond, and Srinivasa Castri.
The voice of American womanhood was heard when the President appointed four well-known women as members of America’s advisory council. These women represented ably the various schools of feminine thought of our land. They were Mrs. Thomas G. Winter, of Minneapolis, President of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs; Mrs. Charles Sumner Bird, of Boston, leader of the National League of Women Voters of Massachusetts; Mrs. Kathrine Phillips Edson, of Los Angeles, author of many welfare projects for women, and an active suffragist; and Mrs. Eleanor Franklin Egan, well-known writer and authority on the Far East.
The presence of the women added to the importance of the social functions arranged; not since the war had the city been as festive and the entertaining as general as during the session of the Conference.
Those close to President Harding, who knew how staunchly he believed in the men he picked for positions of honour and trust, believed his illness greatly aggravated by the disclosures of the Senate investigation of the oil scandal, which had already brought dishonour to one of his Cabinet and was threatening to involve others in high places.