Her letter contained another sentence which hurt me but at the same time aroused in me more resentment than I had known during the whole course of my appeal to the Hardings. She wrote, “I heard of a case the other day, where a woman of means thought she could defy the conventions, but she is realizing now what it means to her son....” To quote to me an example of what a “woman of means” was realizing through her indulgence in unconventionality was highly grotesque when at that very minute I was staggering under the weight of bills long overdue, even to being unable to send my sister any money toward my child’s fall clothes. The utter incongruity of a situation where there existed an amplitude of funds, as was evident with the “woman of means,” and my own situation, where I was unable to meet the rent for the apartment which was sheltering the child of Warren G. Harding, is apparent without any comment from me.
Nor had I, up to that time, even attempted to “defy the conventions” openly! In what way could I more meekly have conducted myself, both in the expenditure of nervous energy required to protect the great-hearted man I loved, and, in the later days after his death, in my efforts to carry on alone and practically unaided, that I might not be obliged to go to the Hardings and request to have the situation righted. This would have been justified, even while my daughter’s father lived, had mere money been my paramount consideration. Open defiance of conventions could have yielded me no greater suffering than had the growing realization of the hypocrisy which calls itself Justice and marks out its path according to its own narrow-minded limitations.
Daisy Harding, I am sure, did not believe to be true certain things which she wrote—unconscious imputations of past wrong-doing on my part—for she herself had spoken her true feeling when, upon my first revelations to her, she had said, “Why, Nan, I’ll bet that was brother Warren’s greatest joy!” That was the real Daisy Harding speaking. And this sentiment so early and frankly expressed by her would be the sentiment of all who dare to speak truthfully.
The signature of this letter was merely “Lewis,” written in a somewhat different hand and with paler ink. When I came to look at it closely and realized anew how terrified people become who are afraid to face situations and refuse to stand for Right, the bitter resentment I felt because of her insinuations gave place to pity.
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What a sorry state of affairs for the greatest country on earth! The Harding attitude was but the universal social attitude toward all unwedded mothers: that they have sinned against society and must suffer the penalty. Indeed, do not ministers all over the country preach this to a public willing to accept it, because, in most individual instances, either temptation has not been experienced or else, being experienced and indulged, has not resulted in actual childbirth? And so this attitude is generally accepted as Right.
My own situation, which differed and was distinguished only because it concerned the child of a man who had been placed in the highest position the greatest republic in the world can offer, led me to the conclusion that it was high time it was righted, and that little children should be recognized, not for their parental origin, but for themselves and as having every right to legitimacy, and to every opportunity that would be theirs if they had been born under the yoke of legal marriage.
In the chapter entitled “Social Justice,” in Warren G. Harding’s book, “Our Common Country,” he says: “It will not be the America we love which will neglect the American mother and the American child.”
The author in 1926