Tag: Politics
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The League and the Washington Conference
As the first multinational arms control conference in history approached in fall 1921, this preview article asked: Will the spirit that defeated the work of Mr. Wilson [the U.S. Senate’s failure to ratify the country’s entry into the nascent League of Nations] also defeat the plans of Mr. Harding? After the disillusionment and reaction that…
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Next in Power to Harding
Ironically, this 1921 New York Times Magazine profile called Charles G. Dawes “the most powerful man, excepting the president, in Washington today” four years before he actually became vice president. At the time, Dawes was the first director of the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Budget, now known as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).…
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Thirty Years of International Copyright
The Chace Act of 1891 gave copyright to non-U.S. works in return for international copyright protections for American authors. On the law’s 30th anniversray, Brander Matthews wrote that he considered the law a smashing success. It remains the least adequate [such law] now in force of any of the civilized nations; but, improvable as it…
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Enjoying the Presidency
A few months into office in 1921, Warren Harding had returned fun to the White House, resurrecting the Easter Egg Roll, the presidential tradition of throwing the baseball season’s opening pitch, and corresponding with letter writers on apolitical topics. The Easter Egg Roll had been cancelled in 1918 due to wartime egg shortages, but President…
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Martin Van Buren’s Autobiography
Martin van Buren’s autobiography wasn’t published until 1920: 60 years after his death and 80 years after he was last president. That’s like if FDR’s or Herbert Hoover’s memoirs were only published now. 80 years ago in 1941, FDR was president. Excluding JFK, the president who died closest to 60 years ago (of natural causes)…
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Woodrow Wilson’s Administration: Eight Years of the World’s Greatest History
During Wilson’s last week as president, his reputation was already trending upward, due to blunders by President-elect Harding. As this March 1921 New York Times Magazine article noted: The President’s unpopularity had been so violently expressed by the election of Nov. 2 that it was bound to be mitigated soon after, and this natural reaction was…
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False Splendor of Past Inaugurals
Ah, the days before microphones. This 1921 article described how “not a dozen men have ever heard a Presidential inaugural address.” That same year, Warren Harding became the first president with loudspeakers at his inauguration. The people around him do not hear him. The newspaper men have seats nearer than the other invited guests on the…
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Our Japanese Question
In 1921, a Harvard government professor warned that “There has never been a time of such uneasy and hostile feeling between the two nations” of the U.S. and Japan. 20 years later came Pearl Harbor. Albert Bushnell Hart noted that the animosity was a relatively recent development: Can two countries be found with a longer…
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New Forest Chief on Saving Our Forests
In 1921, the U.S. Forest Service director said he wanted to protect America’s forests. He succeeded. The 1920s were the first decade in American history where total forest acres increased (slightly). The number has remained roughly steady ever since. This graph from ThoughtCo., using data from the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program,…
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Cox or Harding?: Each Answers the Question for the New York Times
The Sunday before Election Day 1920, the New York Times asked both presidential candidates for a short essay explaining why they deserved the White House. Here’s what they each wrote, and how their promises stack up in 2020. Democratic candidate and Ohio Gov. James M. Cox: There has been no time in the history of the…
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