22. “The only thing that worries me,” Wrigley wrote to Ralph Sollitt on August 24, “is that we don’t appear to have any money to advertise this wonderful man to the voters. We received about as much so far as I spend every week advertising a penny stick of [c]hewing gum.” From Box 6, Folder 5, Will H. Hays Collection, Manuscript Section, Indiana State Library.
23. Will H. Hays letter to John T. Adams, September 3, 1920, Box 7, Folder 1, Hays Collection.
24. “Will Boom Harding by Big Advertising,” New York Times, July 28, 1920.
25. The rumor had dogged previous generations of Hardings. See Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove, 26.
26. Ibid., 40. Francis Russell notes that even in the later years of the 1960s, Harding’s Ohio-based descendents remained sensitive about allegations of black ancestry.
27. Ibid., 405.
28. This story is derived from ibid., 402–403. Lasker did not mention this episode in any of his oral histories, and it was omitted from his authorized biography.
29. See, for example, Stephen Vaughan, “The Devil’s Advocate: Will H. Hays and the Campaign to Make Movies Respectable,” Indiana Magazine of History 101 (June 2005): 131–132.
30. John A. Morello, Selling the President, 1920: Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 56. According to an Albert Lasker letter to George Christian, August 30, 1920, the filmmaking impresario was a New Yorker named Grant.
31. The results from a Syracuse, New York, theater are described in “Will Boom Harding by Big Advertising.”
32. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter from Albert D. Lasker to George B. Christian, 28 July 1920: Ohio Historical Society.
33. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter from Albert D. Lasker to George B. Christian, August 7, 1920: Ohio Historical Society.
34. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter from Albert D. Lasker to Walter Friedlander, August 7, 1920: Ohio Historical Society.
35. Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove, 156.
36. But there is evidence that Lasker learned to drive in his twenties. According to the August 15, 1908, edition of the Chicago Tribune, he was caught in a speed trap in Glencoe, Illinois, and fined $10 for exceeding the twenty-mile-per-hour speed limit. Lasker refused to drive the police officer who wrote the ticket to the station, “as is the usual custom,” so the officer had to drive himself. “While he was gone to be fined,” the Tribune noted, “three young women of his party took positions at each end of the course and warned autoists of the existence of the trap.”
37. Sparkes, 316.
38. Sparkes, 316.
39. Albert Lasker letter to J. Wellover, August 20, 1920, Hays Collection.
40. Harding evidently felt that the phrase wasn’t appropriate as a closing note for the speech, and added his own favorites—“Steady, America!”, and “Let’s assure good fortune to all”—after “wiggle and wobble.” Albert Lasker letter to Scott Bone, August 18, 1920, Hays Collection.
41. Ibid.
42. Albert Lasker letter to Will H. Hays, September 3, 1920, Hays Collection.
43. Will H. Hays, The Memoirs of Will H. Hays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1955), 265. John Morello notes that fully two thousand of these Republican speakers were women. See Selling the President, 1920, 65.
44. Albert Lasker letter to Arthur Brisbane, August 18, 1920, Box 6, Folder 10, Hays Collection.
45. Richard M. Fried, The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 120.
46. In Selling the President, 1920, John Morello gives Lasker credit for the work of the “Harding-Coolidge Theatrical League,” which put some of the most famous stars of the silver screen in harness for the Harding campaign. This credit may be misplaced. Lasker seems to have been at least partly responsible for bringing circus master John Ringling, tenor Enrico Caruso, and others to the front porch, and for securing testimonials from World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker and others. But Lord & Thomas and Lasker didn’t embrace the testimonial approach to advertising until the later 1920s, so this was not part of the agency’s stock-in-trade. See, for example, Albert Lasker letter to Will Hays, August 21, 1920, Box 6, Folder 11, Hays Collection.
47. Albert Lasker letter to Will Hays, August 18, 1920, Box 6, Folder 10, Hays Collection.
48. Collier’s, October 30, 1920, 25.
49. Sparkes, 316–317.
50. Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove, 418–419.
51. Ibid., 409.
52. Sparkes interview with Hays, 22.
53. “Had Harding’s Good Wishes,” New York Times, November 13, 1920, 16.
54. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 135–136.
55. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 113–114.
56. Sparkes, 315.
57. Ibid.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1. “Picks Ship Board Headed by Lasker,” New York Times, June 9, 1921, 13.
2. Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), 92. This is the trip that Lasker declined to take with the Hardings and a small group of friends, as described in the previous chapter; had he gone, he might well have secured the Commerce position for himself.
3. Will Hays letter to Warren G. Harding, January 29, 1921, Box 8, Folder 13, Will H. Hays Collection, Manuscript Section, Indiana State Library.
4. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter to Will Hays, 14 February 1921: Ohio Historical Society.
5. Mahan, an officer at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, was the author of the classic The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1890).
6. Murray, The Harding Era, 280.
7. Andrew Gibson and Arthur Donovan, The Abandoned Ocean: A History of United States Maritime Policy (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), 110.
8. Ibid., 113.
9. Murray, The Harding Era, 280.
10. Gibson and Donovan, The Abandoned Ocean, 114. “We built extravagantly,” Albert Lasker later wrote, “but war is the mother of extravagance.” MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter from Albert D. Lasker to Henry W. Elliott, August 2, 1921: Ohio Historical Society.
11. This meeting was presumably colored by an episode in mid-March when Harding—at the behest of Hays—sent a telegram to Lasker offering him one of four Assistant Postmaster Generalships “while other things are developing.” Lasker turned down the job. See Albert Lasker letter to John Callan O’Laughlin, March 25, 1921, from “Lasker” folder, Box 23, John Callan O’Laughlin Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
12. Under the pressures of wartime, the board was expanded from five to seven members.
13. Reminiscences of Albert Lasker, in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter “Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC”), 138.
14. John Callan O’Laughlin letter to Albert Lasker, December 27, 1920, from “Lasker” folder, Box 23, O’Laughlin papers.
15. Unless otherwise noted, this whole account comes from the Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 138–144. The details, most of which can’t be corroborated, should be taken with a grain of salt.
16. Lasker told this story to Boyden Sparkes. An audiotape of this interview was provided to the author by the Lasker Foundation.
17. “Schwab Wants Piez Ship Board’s Head,” New York Times, May 27, 1921, 8.
18. Sparkes, 352.
19. By this time, Lasker’s name was being bandied about publicly for the Shipping Board post. See “A. D. Lasker Is Mentioned,” New York Times, June 4, 1921, 3.
20. Bedford, then only in his mid-fifties, recovered from this attack, but died of heart disease in 1925. When Lasker finally met Bedford at a White House function in 1922—a year into his tenure at the Shipping Board—Lasker joked that Be
dford had done him “more hurt than any living man.” Albert Lasker letter to W. C. Teagle, June 17, 1922, Box 27, Shipping Board (USSB) records.
21. This is from the actual text of Harding’s telegram. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], telegram to Albert D. Lasker, June 2, 1921: Ohio Historical Society. The telegram makes no mention of the heart attack, but otherwise conforms to Lasker’s account.
22. Teagle refers to this telegram in a June 6, 1921, letter to Harding. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter from Walter Teagle, June 6, 1921: Ohio Historical Society. Harding evidently encouraged Teagle to pressure Lasker to accept.
23. The date comes from “Lasker Sees President,” New York Times, June 8, 1921, 3. The conditions come from the Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 149.
24. “New Shipping Board Confirmed,” New York Times, June 10, 1921, 3.
25. Unnamed sources presented the course of action agreed privately by Harding and Lasker. Since Harding certainly didn’t speak to the Times on this subject, Lasker must have been the source.
26. “Board to Wipe Off $2,000,000 Loss on Merchant Ships,” New York Times, June 11, 1921, 1.
27. Albert Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, June 16, 1921.
28. “Ship Strike at End; Sign Peace Today,” New York Times, June 14, 1921, 19.
29. “Ship Board Faces ‘Colossal Wreck,’” New York Times, June 25, 1921, 1.
30. James True, “The Shipping Board—A Selling Problem as Lasker Sees It,” Printers’ Ink, June 21, 1926. Note that in the previous five months, the Shipping Board’s inventory of vessels had gone up by almost 350.
31. Ibid.
32. “President Confers with Shipping Board,” New York Times, June 17, 1921, 18.
33. “Picks Ship Board Headed by Lasker,” New York Times, June 9, 1921, 13.
34. Sparkes, 424. According to an August 19, 1921, article in the New York Times, O’Laughlin resigned in mid-August 1921.
35. “Ship Board Gets Counsel,” New York Times, June 24, 1921, 3; “Ship Board Faces ‘Colossal Wreck. ’”
36. Murray, The Harding Era, 284.
37. “Ship Board Faces ‘Colossal Wreck. ’”
38. “The Shipping Board Job,” New York Times, August 15, 1921, 10.
39. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 151.
40. Ibid., 152. Again, these accounting-related assertions and the related numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
41. “Lasker Finds Fleet Squandering Money in Morass of Debt,” New York Times, July 19, 1921, 1.
42. Albert Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 146.
43. Sparkes, 354.
44. “Ship Policy Fails, Lasker Declares,” New York Times, April 5, 1922, 11.
45. Albert Lasker letter to Jacob Ruppert, June 13, 1922, Box 27, USSB records.
46. Readers interested in the unabridged story of the Leviathan should start with Frank O. Braynard’s astounding six-volume set: World’s Greatest Ship: The Story of the Leviathan (New York: South Street Seaport Museum, 1974). Volume 1 details the birth, launching, and brief pre-war career of the ship; Volume 2 spans the years relevant to our story.
47. Much of the expense grew out of the need to keep a fifty-seven-man fire guard on duty at all times to protect the uninsured vessel against accidental fires and vandalism.
48. “The Shipping Board—A Selling Problem as Lasker Sees It,” 26.
49. One of those exceptions is alluded to in a cryptic letter from Harding to Albert Lasker. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter to Albert D. Lasker, 14 June 1921: Ohio Historical Society.
50. The USSB records are full of such requests. See, for example, the Coolidge correspondence (May, 4, 1922), Box 5; the correspondence with Representative George Scott Graham (October 18, 1922), Box 26; and the correspondence with Senators James W. Wadsworth Jr. (November 21, 1922) and Charles Curtis (December 2, 1922), Box 24.
51. The proposed legislation was also known as the “Ship Subsidy Bill,” after its most controversial feature. We use “Merchant Marine” throughout.
52. “Harding Presents His Plan to Help American Shipping,” New York Times, March 1, 1922, 1.
53. Lasker’s fifty-nine-page opening statement is a masterful summary of the highly complex situation facing his Board, Congress, and the nation, touching on many subtleties omitted from this chapter owing to space constraints. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], Merchant Marine Act of 1922, testimony of Albert D. Lasker, April 1922: Ohio Historical Society.
54. “Ship Policy Fails, Lasker Declares.”
55. See, for example, the tally sent to George B. Christian. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter from Albert D. Lasker to George B. Christian, 13 June 1922: Ohio Historical Society.
56. See the Anheuser-Busch Web site at www.anheuser-busch.com/press_room/73rdAnn_Repeal_040606.html, accessed January 4, 2007.
57. “Busch Protest to Harding,” New York Times, June 14, 1922, 18.
58. Ibid.
59. “Pokes Fun at ‘Wet’ Regime on Liners,” New York Times, June 14, 1922, 18.
60. Busch shot back at Lasker in a letter dated June 14, 1922: “The temperature in my office is well above 90, and the law prohibits me from making here in America a glass of wholesome beer such as my grandfather, Adolphus Busch, made famous over the world as an American product. Yet as I write, I contemplate the Shipping Board approving vouchers for the disbursement of American government money from the Treasury in payment for German and British beers and wines to be sold by our government at a profit. The prospect does not, I assure you, tend to lower the temperature.” Box 4, USSB records.
61. “Harding Prohibits Liquor on Our Ships and on Foreign Craft in American Ports; Backs Sweeping Ruling by Daugherty,” New York Times, October 7, 1922, 1.
62. Albert Lasker letter to R. P. Crane, October 14, 1922, Box 28, USSB records.
63. MIC 3 Warren G. Harding Papers [microform], letter from Albert D. Lasker, October 9, 1922: Ohio Historical Society.
64. Lasker was right in this regard. Foreign governments immediately began talking about reprisals against American interests, and a myriad of knotty legal problems began to present themselves. If Spanish ships carrying liquor were prevented from stopping in Puerto Rico, for example, Puerto Rican coffee exports to Spain most likely would be destroyed.
65. “Lasker Sees Blow to Our Shipping,” New York Times, October 7, 1922, 2. Lasker immediately began casting about for ways to make U. S. liners competitive without alcohol. “I want to put fine jazz bands, and generally arrange to give entertainment on our ships such as was never given before,” he wrote to a friend several weeks after Daugherty’s opinion came down. See Albert Lasker letter to Paul Block, November 4, 1922, Box 28, USSB records. See also Lasker’s speech to a gathering of Chicago publishers two weeks after Daugherty’s action. “Until two weeks ago last Friday,” Lasker said straight-faced, “Moses was thought to be the greatest law-giver of all times. Oh no, it is Daugherty, for Moses only made the Red Sea dry.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1. “The Presidency: The Kitchen Cabinet,” Time, May 12, 1923.
2. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: Volume VI, The Twenties (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935, 100). The date is from “Harding’s Florida Trip to Be a Golfing Cruise; Gillett and Lasker Among Houseboat Guests,” New York Times, February 28, 1923, 1.
3. Sparkes, 323.
4. Sparkes, 325.
5. Sparkes, 326.
6. “President Host to Chief Justice Taft,” New York Times, February 3, 1922, 14.
7. Albert Lasker letter to Dr. Julius Y. Cohen, April 10, 1922, Box 26, Shipping Board (USSB) records.
8. Sparkes, 324.
9. Sparkes, 328.
10. Sparkes, 327.
11. Sparkes, 327.
12. Albert Lasker letter to John R. Warner, February 24, 1923, Box 29, USSB records.
13. Sparkes, 323.
14. Albert Lasker letter to Mary Lasker, May, 11,
1923, Box 30, USSB records.
15. Albert Lasker letter to Mary Lasker, October 17, 1922, Box 28, USSB records.
16. Albert Lasker letter to Mary Lasker, May 7, 1923, Box 30, USSB records.
17. Albert Lasker letter to Mary Lasker, April 27, 1923, Box 29, USSB records.
18. Authors’ interview with Frances Lasker Brody, March 22, 2004.
19. Albert Lasker letter to (son) Edward Lasker, September 11, 1922, Box 27, USSB records.
20. Albert Lasker letter to Frances Lasker, September 20, 1922, Box 27, USSB records.
21. Albert Lasker letter to Mary Lasker, October 21, 1922, Box 28, USSB records.
22. W. G. Irwin letter to Albert Lasker, December 16, 1922, W. G. Irwin Collection.
23. Albert Lasker letter to Elsa Cohen, February 15, 1923, Box 29, USSB records.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1. See, for example, Albert Lasker’s November 16, 1922, letter to Harding regarding the influential Kansas Representative Jasper N. Tincher, Box 28, Shipping Board (USSB) records.
2. Although La Follette gave few details about the proposed deal, this apparently referred to the Merchant Marine reserve, which Harding and Lasker eliminated in April 1922 in an effort to placate organized labor.
3. “La Follette Opens Subsidy Fight with Warning to Harding,” New York Times, December 16, 1922, 1.
4. Albert Lasker letter to Douglas Smith, December 7, 1922, Box 28, USSB records.
5. W. G. Irwin letter to Albert Lasker, February 24, 1923.
6. Transcript of an interview with the Journal of Commerce, April 18, 1923, Box 10, USSB records.
7. Albert Lasker letter to Robert Crane and Don Francisco, January 29, 1923, Box 29, USSB records.
8. Telegram, Albert Lasker to Schlesinger, February 20, 1923, Box 29, USSB records.
9. In February, Fleishhacker asked Lasker if he wanted to keep doing business with the raisin company. “I told him no,” Lasker wrote in a telegram to Schlesinger. “They had deceived me once, and I would not want to take another risk.” See Albert Lasker letter to Herbert P. Cohn, February 14, 1923, Box 29, USSB records.
The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century Page 52