2. Three Republican presidents – Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover –
steered the nation on the roller-coaster ride of the 1920’s, a thrilling ascent from the
depths of post-WWI recession to breath-taking heights of prosperity, followed by a
terrifying crash into the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, the U.S. retreated from its brief internationalist fling during WWI and
resumed with a vengeance its traditional foreign policy of military unpreparedness and
isolationism.

3. THE REPUBLICAN “OLD GUARD” RETURNS
Republican Warren Harding defeated Democrat J. Cox in the presidential election of
1920. Harding looked presidential, yet the charming, smiling exterior concealed a weak,
inept interior. With a mediocre mind, Harding was overwhelmed by the his job. How was
Harding like Grant? Harding admitted his shortcomings – what was his political
strategy?

4. GOP REACTION at the THROTTLE
Well-intentioned but weak-willed, Harding was a perfect “front” for enterprising industrialists. How
did the industrialists perceive Harding? The new Old Guard hoped to improve on the old business
doctrine of laissez-faire – what were their pleas?
What was Harding’s impact on the Supreme Court? Describe the decisions in Adkins v. Children’s
Hospital and Muller v. Oregon.

5. THE AFTERMATH of WAR
Wartime govt. controls on the economy were
swiftly dismantled, thus dashing hopes for
more progressive govt. regulation of big
business.
Consider how the Republican leadership
affected policy for the following areas:
* Railroads
* Labor
* Veterans
Vicious race riots also rocked the nation
following WWI. What course of events
contributed to these ugly riots, some of
the worst occurring in Chicago?

6. AMERICA SEEKS BENEFITS WITHOUT BURDENS
Making peace with the WWI combatants was the most pressing problem left on Harding’s
doorstep. The U.S., having rejected the Treaty of Versailles, was still technically at war
with Germany, Austria and Hungary. How was the final peace achieved?
Isolation was enthroned in Washington. The
Harding Admin., with the Senate “irreconcilables”
holding a hatchet over its head, continued to
regard the League of Nations as a thing unclean.
What would be the country’s role with the
League of Nations?
Harding could not completely turn his back on the
outside world – describe U.S. policy in the
Middle East.

7. Disarmament was one international issue on which Harding, after much indecision, finally
seized the initiative. Identify the forces influencing Harding’s actions.
Public agitation brought about the Washington “Disarmament” Conference in 1921-22.
What countries participated? Describe the U.S. proposal. How were the Japanese
placated?
When the agreement was completed, the Harding Admin. boasted about their
disarmament accomplishment. But explain the flaws with the agreement.

8. In 1928 Calvin Coolidge’s secretary of state, Frank Kellogg, signed with the French foreign
minister the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Explain both its purpose and its flaws.
Frank Kellogg

9. HIKING the TARIFF HIGHER
A comparable lack of realism afflicted foreign economic policy in the 1920’s. Businesspeople, short-
sightedly obsessed with a prosperous home market, sought to keep the domestic market to themselves
by building insurmountable tariff walls around the U.S. Subsequently, the Fordney-Mcumber Tariff
was enacted in 1922. What was the rationale behind the tariff? And, what was unique about this
tariff?
The high-tariff course charted by the
Republican regimes set off an ominous chain
reaction – describe this chain reaction.
How did the Europeans react to the higher
American tariffs? What was the
significance of the “tariff wars?”

10. THE STENCH of SCANDAL
The loose morality and get-rich-
quickism of the Harding era
manifested themselves spectacularly
in a series of scandals.
Describe the circumstances
surrounding the scandals involving
the Veterans Bureau, Teapot
Dome, and Attorney General
Daugherty.
Was Harding implicated? What
“spared” him?

11. “SILENT CAL” COOLIDGE
In the midst of scandal, Harding embarked on a speech-making tour across the country.
On the return trip, he died in San Francisco, on Aug. 2, 1923, of pneumonia and
thrombosis.
V.P. Calvin Coolidge, visiting at his
father’s New England farmhouse,
was sworn-in by the local justice
of the peace, using a family bible.

12. Quite unlike Harding, Coolidge embodied the New England virtues of honesty, morality,
industry, and frugality. Identify some of his personal attributes. Describe Coolidge’s
relationship with big business. How did his presence impact the scandalous Harding
era.

13. FRUSTRATED FARMERS
Farmers were caught in a boom-or-bust cycle in the postwar decade. Describe the
circumstances that resulted in dangerously low farm prices. Machines also
threatened to plow the farmers under their own bumper crops. What machine was the
cornerstone of the “second industrial revolution” in agriculture? Identify some of
the schemes intended to help the farmers under siege – did they work?

14. A THREE-WAY RACE for the WHITE HOUSE in 1924
Republicans, chanting “Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge,”
nominated “Silent Cal” for the presidency.
Squabbling Democrats had more difficulty choosing a
candidate – the party was hopelessly split between
“wets” and “drys,” urbanites and farmers,
Fundamentalists and Modernists, northern liberals and
southern conservatives, immigrants and old-stock
Americans. Democrats finally nominated John Davis, a
wealthy corporate lawyer.
John Davis

15. A new Progressive grouping
nominated Senator Robert La
Follette of Wisconsin, thus
threatening to split the
Republican party at election
time.

16. What was its base constituency?
Identify the planks of the party’s
platform.
And explain why the Progressives would
not be a political force in the election, as
they had been in 1912.

17. On election day, Coolidge easily defeated his challengers. La Follette did inject a badly
needed liberal tonic into a decade drugged by prosperity. But times were too good for too
many for his reforming message to carry the day.

18. FOREIGN-POLICY FLOUNDERINGS
Isolation continued to reign in the Coolidge era. A glaring exception to the American
isolationism was the armed interventionism in the Caribbean and Central America.
Overshadowing all other foreign-policy
problems in the 1920’s was the knotty
issue of international debts, a
complicated tangle of private loans,
Allied war debts, and German
reparations payments.
How did WWI reverse the
international financial position of the
U.S.?
What was the “key knot” in the debt
triangle?
Explain how this created bad feelings
between Europe and the U.S.?

19. UNRAVELING the DEBT KNOT
America’s tightfisted insistence on getting its money back helped to harden the hearts of
the Allies against conquered Germany. How did the Allies hope to settle their debts to
the U.S.? Would their strategy work?
Sensible statesmen now urged that war debts and reparations alike be drastically scaled
down or even canceled outright, but to Americans such proposals smacked of “welshing” on
a debt. Coolidge turned aside suggestions of debt cancellation – Washington proved
unrealistic in its insistence that there was no connection between debts and reparations.

21. Reality finally set-in in the Dawes Plan of 1924. Negotiated largely by Charles Dawes, it
rescheduled German reparations payments and opened the way for further American
private loans to Germany. Explain the financial sequence that would encompass this
complicated financial cycle.
The U.S. never did get its money, but it harvested a bumper crop of ill will. The bad
taste left in American mouths by the whole sorry episode contributed powerfully to the
storm-cellar neutrality legislation passed by Congress in the 1930’s.