28. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, April 25, 1918.
29. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, February 10, 1919.
30. The Lasker Story: As He Told It, 51. The exact timing of these various breakdowns and sabbaticals is fuzzy.
31. Albert Lasker letter to H. F. Vorhies, February 5, 1918.
32. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, January 6, 1919.
33. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, February 10, 1920.
34. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, April 16, 1920.
35. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, August 18, 1917.
36. W. G. Irwin letter to Albert Lasker, March 28, 1921.
37. W. G. Irwin to Albert Lasker, December 6, 1919.
38. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, December 8, 1919.
39. W. G. Irwin letter to Albert Lasker, May 13, 1920.
40. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, May 15, 1920.
41. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, January 27, 1922.
42. Sparkes, 293.
43. Sparkes interview with W. G. Irwin, 8.
44. Sparkes, 292.
45. There is very little mention of Mitchell in the various Lasker collections. John Gunther says Lasker lost $1 million in a single year on his Mitchell investment, but this seems unlikely. In a conversation with Boyden Sparkes, Lasker said that he signed the papers to terminate his investment in Mitchell on the day his daughter Francie was born in 1916—a memorable day, because the negotiations were more complicated than he expected, and he didn’t arrive at the hospital until after Flora had delivered Francie. “Though my wife never mentioned it to me,” Lasker told Sparkes, “I think it is one thing I did that she never forgave me.” (Sparkes, 328) To his brother-in-law Arthur Warner, he wrote in 1923 that the Mitchell interlude was “one of the saddest experiences of my business career. I put in a fortune in money I loaned them, in addition to the stock I owned, in an attempt to extend the time, but it was impossible.” See Albert Lasker letter to Arthur Warner, February 15, 1923, Box 29, Shipping Board records.
46. Sparkes, 294.
47. Albert Lasker letter to H. F. Vorhies, February 15, 1918.
48. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, February 5, 1921.
CHAPTER TEN
1. The Cubs did not become the Cubs until early in the twentieth century; before that, the Chicago Nationals were known variously as the Orphans, Spuds, and Colts. We’ll refer to them as the “Cubs.”
2. Reminiscences of Albert Lasker, in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter “Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC”), 69.
3. Peter Golenbock, Wrigleyville: A Magical History Tour of the Chicago Cubs (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 111; and Sparkes, 110.
4. David Pietrusza, Judge and Jury: The Life and Times of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (South Bend, IN: Diamond Communications, Inc., 1998), 157.
5. Ibid, 156.
6. Steven A. Riess, “The Baseball Magnates and Urban Politics in the Progressive Era: 1895–1920,” 41, http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1974/JSH0101/jsh0101d.pdf.
7. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 71. The “year” is an inference based on the date of the out-of-court settlement and Lasker’s recollection of when a desperate Weeghman approached him.
8. Lasker remembered that not only Weeghman attended this meeting, but also seafood wholesaler Walker. Sparkes, 284.
9. As Lasker later told the story to Boyden Sparkes, Weeghman’s option was expiring at ten o’clock the next morning. Given the intervening steps that had yet to occur, either Lasker compressed the timeframe in the retelling of the story, or the option was extended.
10. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 72.
11. Eliot Asinof, Eight Men Out (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 127. This is the best reference on the 1919 World Series; it was made into a successful movie by director John Sayles.
12. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 91. The description applies equally to Lasker himself.
13. Ibid., 74.
14. Ibid., 75.
15. Ibid., 76.
16. According to Jerome Holtzman and George Vass, The Chicago Cubs Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 301, Wrigley invited the Chicago baseball writers to a dinner at his home in Pasadena, California, in the spring of 1918. At that function, he met and was greatly impressed by Veeck, who—writing under the pen name “Bill Bailey”—had regularly criticized the Cubs’ management in ways that struck Wrigley as both thoughtful and fair.
17. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 78. Lasker also told Boyden Sparkes a story about giving Grover Cleveland Alexander a ride home the day after a game that “Alex” had lost in the ninth inning on a hit by a “third-rater.” Alexander admitted that he had made a mistake: “I forgot that any man with a bat in his hand can hit once in a while!” Sparkes, 415.
18. Lasker misremembered many of the details of this story. The authors are indebted to baseball historian Jacob Pomrenke, who directed us toward the Magee story online at www.baseballlibrary .com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/M/Magee_Lee.stm (accessed February 8, 2005).
19. Sparkes, 317.
20. Wrigley, according to Lasker, had not yet “come that far along in baseball” to be involved in these discussions.
21. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 79.
22. Sparkes, 317.
23. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 80–81.
24. From www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/M/Magee_Lee.stm (accessed February 8, 2005).
25. There was an interesting precedent to this episode in August 1919, when Bill Veeck learned that Cub pitcher Claude Hendrix might be involved in a plot to throw a game to the Phillies. Veeck took Hendrix out of the lineup, and went with star Grover Cleveland Alexander instead. (Alexander still lost, despite Veeck’s offer of a $500 bonus if he won.) Hendrix was released at the end of the 1919 season and never played professional ball again. See the Holtzman and Vass, Chicago Cubs Encyclopedia, 302.
26. See, for example, Robert I. Goler, “Black Sox,” Chicago History, 17, no. 3 and 4 (Fall/Winter 1988–189): 42, and http://www.chicagohistory.org/static_media/pdf/historyfair/chm-chicagoblacksox.pdf. The authors are indebted to the Chicago Historical Society for supplying copies of this and other relevant articles.
27. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 81–82. Only a few years later, of course, America would learn that a member of President Harding’s Cabinet had been bribed.
28. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, September 19, 1919.
29. Asinof, Eight Men Out, 199.
30. Ibid., 199.
31. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 83.
32. The authorship of the “Lasker Plan” has been attributed to various people over the years. Stung by these allegations, Lasker maintained (in 1938) that he “thought [it] up single-handed, with nobody else present when I thought it up, and reduced it to paper before I showed it to another soul.” Sparkes, 414.
33. Sparkes, 318.
34. Shortly after Landis handed down his staggering judgment against Standard Oil, Lasker and his good friend Moritz Rosenthal—a member of the oil giant’s defense team—were lunching together at Rector’s, a Chicago restaurant. Landis happened to come into the restaurant. He sat down with Rosenthal and Lasker, introduced himself to Lasker, and then apologized to Rosenthal for having brought in the judgment against Rosenthal’s client. He congratulated Rosenthal for having done a fine job for his clients—Standard Oil directly, and the Rockefellers indirectly—and suggested that even though Rosenthal had lost, he should get at least $25,000 for his efforts. After Landis departed, Lasker later recalled, Rosenthal “laughed hysterically” at Landis’s naïveté: Rosenthal’s actual compensation from Standard Oil ran well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sparkes, 320.
35. Pietrusza, Judge and Jury, 76.
36. Ibid., 153–154.
37. Spar
kes, 318.
38. “Owners of Five Clubs Talk Over Lasker Plan,” New York Times, October 5, 1920.
39. Sparkes, 317.
40. Ibid., 320.
41. “Owners to Discuss Baseball Changes,” New York Times, October 18, 1920.
42. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 86.
43. Sparkes, 317.
44. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 86.
45. Ibid., 88.
46. See, for example, “Reichow, the Original Landis Man, Pays Tribute to His Choice,” Sporting News, November 11, 1920, 1.
47. Austrian’s role in the unraveling of the Black Sox scandal was, like the ballplayers’ trial, murky at best. As attorney for the Chicago White Sox, Austrian elicited the confessions that ultimately got the offending ballplayers banned from baseball. But serving simultaneously as a member of New York gambler Arnold Rothstein’s defense team, Austrian not only got Rothstein off his legal hook, but also indirectly helped bring in a not-guilty verdict for the ballplayers. See Pietrusza, Judge and Jury, 187. See also Leo Katcher, The Big Bankroll: The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein (New York: Harper, 1959), 145.
48. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 91.
49. Sparkes, 319. When he told this story to Columbia, Lasker omitted the expletive.
50. “Baseball Conflict Shifts to Minors,” New York Times, November 10, 1920.
51. “No Backing Down, Says Lasker,” New York Times, November 11, 1920.
52. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 89. The Sparkes interview (p. 419) makes the same point.
53. “Major Moguls Get Together and Cancel Their War Plans,” Sporting News, November 18, 1920, 1.
54. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 95.
55. Pietrusza, Judge and Jury, 170.
56. Another reason the Black Sox were found not guilty is that Alfred Austrian conveniently “lost” their confessions and waivers of immunity, which didn’t turn up again for several years—thereby helping two of his clients at once: Charles Comiskey and Arnold Rothstein. See Riess, “The Baseball Magnates and Urban Politics,” 52.
57. Pietrusza, Judge and Jury, 187.
58. Ibid., 188.
59. Arthur R. Ahrens, “Chicago’s City Series: Cubs vs. White Sox,” Chicago History 5, no. 4 (Winter 1976–1977): 248.
60. There is confusion about the date of this overture. Most sources, including John Gunther (Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960, 123), cite June 1925; but Golenbock cites 1921 (Wrigleyville, 175).
61. Sparkes, 415.
62. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 121.
63. “Jewish Degradation of American Baseball,” Dearborn Independent, September 10, 1921.
64. Sparkes, 321.
65. Sparkes, 318.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1. Reminiscences of Albert Lasker, in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter “Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC”), 117.
2. Sparkes, 71.
3. Sparkes interview with Will H. Hays, 14.
4. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 120.
5. Albert Lasker, The Lasker Story: As He Told It (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1963), 55.
6. “Unofficial but Authoritative,” Time, January 22, 1946.
7. Elmer Schlesinger letter to John C. O’Laughlin, May 26, 1916, “Schlesinger” folder, Box 11, John Callan O’Laughlin papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
8. John C. O’Laughlin letter to W. Murray Crane, July 11, 1916, “Lasker” folder, Box 8, O’Laughlin papers.
9. Elmer Schlesinger letter to John C. O’Laughlin, August 3, 1916, “Schlesinger” folder, Box 11, O’Laughlin papers.
10. Sparkes, 297–298.
11. Sparkes, 299.
12. Albert Lasker letter to John C. O’Laughlin, July 2, 1917, “Lasker” folder, Box 8, O’Laughlin papers.
13. Albert Lasker letter to John C. O’Laughlin, September 27, 1917, “Lasker” folder, Box 8, O’Laughlin papers.
14. Sparkes interview with Hays.
15. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 120.
16. In a 1938 interview with his ghostwriter, Lasker also hinted at another motivation: “I felt if I could get to the Colonel, I could put to him my plight about myself. I had reached the point where I just felt I had to go to war, if for no other way than to enlist.” Sparkes, 301.
17. There is confusion about the date of this meeting. Lasker remembered it clearly as taking place just before his wedding anniversary—June 9—but also remembered discussion at the lunch table about Roosevelt’s son Quentin, who had just been killed in action in Europe, which happened in mid-July.
18. This version is from Lasker, The Lasker Story, 57. It sounds more authentic than the stilted version that Lasker later recounted for Columbia’s oral historians: “In your presence, Colonel, who would have the temerity to claim that distinction?” Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 121.
19. This version is from a September 27, 1918, letter from Lasker to John C. O’Laughlin, “Lasker” folder, Box 8, O’Laughlin papers. It provides the only reliable date for the September meeting, which Lasker later variously placed in June, July, and August. The book Roosevelt shared with the group was William S. Howe’s War and Progress: The Growth of the World Influence of the Anglo-Saxon (Boston: L. Phillips, 1918).
20. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 57.
21. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 132.
22. Sparkes, 305.
23. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 119
24. Sparkes, 309. In Taken at the Flood (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), John Gunther adds that the pamphlet was aimed primarily at swaying opinion within the ranks of Republican operatives (p. 103).
25. According to Warren G. Harding’s biographer, such a deal probably was cut, at least informally. See Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 301.
26. Will H. Hays, The Memoirs of Will H. Hays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1955), 176.
27. Sparkes, 304. Hays makes no mention of this episode in his own memoirs, although he briefly recounts the reconciliation between Taft and Roosevelt in March 1918 (Memoirs, 155).
28. For a description of this speech, which apparently contributed to Roosevelt’s rapid decline and death in January 1919, see Nathan Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1992), 563.
29. “I am not a member of any organized political party,” Rogers once quipped. “I am a Democrat.”
30. This passage, including all quotes, is from Sparkes, 305–307.
31. O’Laughlin, traveling along the Western Front that day, claimed to have heard the last shot fired in World War I. Letter to Albert Lasker, November 19, 1918, “Lasker” folder, Box 8, O’Laughlin papers.
32. Sparkes, 301.
33. Unlike Lasker, Hays was not one to share credit with his subordinates. In addition to nearly leaving Lasker out of his Memoirs, Hays completely omits Sollitt.
34. Sparkes, 303.
35. Lasker, The Lasker Story, 57.
CHAPTER TWELVE
1. He also accepted a place—alongside the ubiquitous John Callan O’Laughlin—on Hays’s platform committee. When Lasker succumbed to an unnamed illness in August 1919—possibly depression—and tried to resign from the committee, O’Laughlin talked him out of it: “Hays and I are agreed that it would be in the interest not only of the party but of the nation for you to serve on the committee, and I sincerely trust that through the shifting of other matters you can give the time to this most important duty . . . Certainly, I shall feel like a ship without a rudder if I haven’t your keen brain to rely upon.” From John C. O’Laughlin letter to Albert Lasker, August 28, 1919, “Lasker” folder, Box 23, John Callan O’Laughlin papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
2. Reminiscences of Albert Lasker, in the Columbia Un
iversity Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter “Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC”), 127. Lasker was nearly forty at the time; Lodge was approaching seventy.
3. Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 323–324.
4. John Gunther, Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 63. The first ad for the pageant appeared in the January 6, 1907, issue of the paper.
5. Richard Coke Lower, A Bloc of One: The Political Career of Hiram W. Johnson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), viii.
6. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 125.
7. The subcommittee is mentioned in a John Callan O’Laughlin letter to Albert Lasker, February 2, 1920, “Lasker” folder, Box 23, O’Laughlin papers.
8. One reason why Hays didn’t accept Lasker’s resignation is that by February 1920, Lasker had agreed to organize the “popular subscription work”—that is, Republican fundraising—for Hays. See Albert Lasker letter to O’Laughlin, February 3, 1920, “Lasker” folder, Box 23, O’Laughlin papers.
9. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 125–126.
10. Sparkes, 311.
11. Lower, A Bloc of One, 147–152.
12. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 129.
13. Sparkes, 312.
14. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 130–131.
15. Ibid.
16. Albert Lasker, The Lasker Story: As He Told It (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1963), 58.
17. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter from Will Hays, June 1920: Ohio Historical Society.
18. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter to John D. Works, 2 July 1920: Ohio Historical Society.
19. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 133.
20. Sparkes, 314.
21. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 133a. Lasker was correct in this belief. Herbert Hoover recalled that Harding “carried water on both shoulders” during the campaign—meaning that he both supported and opposed the League, as political circumstances demanded. When a group of Republican dignitaries signed a statement in support of the League, according to Hoover, they did so “in consequence of personal assurances from Mr. Harding.” See The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 1920–1933 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1952), 13.
The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century Page 51