AIM: What policies did President Harding and Coolidge follow in business and foreign affairs?
I. The Harding Presidency
A. In 1920 the Republican Party nominated Warren G. Harding to run for the presidency. After years of war and progressive activism, Harding thought Americans wanted a time to heal. He promised a return to normalcy. This was attractive to many Americans who through Harding would bring an end to foreign involvement and domestic unrest.
B. Harding won the 1920 election in a landslide. The Republicans also won control of Congress.
C. Harding held personal doubt about his qualifications to run the country, so he tried to appoint talented people to his cabinet. He also gave many important jobs to friends and political supporters. Many of this latter group proved to be incompetent or corrupt. By 1922 Washington was full of rumors about the corruption in the Harding administration.
1. Charles Forbes, a personal friend of Harding who had been appointed head of the Veterans Bureau, was convicted of stealing funds from the bureau. Forbes fled to avoid imprisonment.
2. Harry Daugherty, Harding’s attorney general, was accused of receiving bribes.
3. Teapot Dome was the biggest scandal of the Harding presidency. Albert Fall, Harding’s secretary of the interior, secretly leased government oil reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to the owners of two oil companies in 1922. In exchange Fall received more than $400,000. When the scandal became public, Fall was convicted of bribery and imprisoned. He was the first cabinet officer ever to go to jail. Although Harding was not personally involved in any of the scandals, the Teapot Dome scandal became a symbol of corruption in his administration.
D. The scandals weighed on Harding. In the summer of 1923, he took a trip to the West to relax. During the trip, he had a heart attack and died. Harding’s vice president, Calvin Coolidge became president.
E. Coolidge brought honesty back to the executive branch of government. He allowed the investigation of officials in the Harding administration to go forward without interference. He replaced the corrupt officeholders who had been appointed by Harding with honest officials.
F. Although Harding and Coolidge were different in style, they had many of the same policies. Both believed that government should do as little as possible. Still, the Coolidge administration did take an active role in supporting business and the rich. The government lowered income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans and on corporate profits. Coolidge also cut government spending. His administration raised tariffs to protect American businesses and overturned laws regulating child labor and wages for women.
G. Coolidge easily won reelection in 1924.
II. Foreign Policy
A. Coolidge favored a limited role for the United States in world affairs and led the nation in a policy of isolationism. As part of this policy, Coolidge kept the United States out of the League of Nations.
B. The United States signed important arms-control treaties in both the Harding and Coolidge administrations. In 1922 the United States, France, Japan, and Great Britain signed the Five-Power Treaty, which limited the size of each nation’s navy. It was the first time in modern history that world powers agreed to disarm. In 1928 the United States joined 14 other nations in signing the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which called for outlawing war. Within a few years, 48 other nations also signed. However, there was no real way to enforce such a treaty.
C. During the 1920s, relations with Latin America became less tense, and tensions with Mexico also eased.
1. American troops were stationed in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua when Harding took office. The troops had intervened in these countries to support American businesses interests. After the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua held elections in the mid-1920s, the United States withdrew its troops.
2. Relations with Mexico improved when Coolidge negotiated a settlement with Mexico instead of sending in troops – as business interests urged – after Mexico threatened to take over foreign-owned mining and oil companies.