Harding recognized the mandate the country had given him and used words and symbols on inauguration day to usher in the new era. Under a brilliant sky, a Marine Band, “gay in scarlet coats and bright blue trousers,” sat in front of the inaugural kiosk, while the steps of the Capitol were guarded with color guards of “regulars and sailors …” noted the New York Times. “Viewed from an upper window of the Capitol … (were) the reds, greens, and browns of women’s hats,” women whose participation in the inaugural, for the first time in American history, was more than ceremonial, and whom Harding rewarded for their support by providing hundreds with prime seating locations at the inaugural.
During his thirty-seven-minute inaugural address, Harding, the country’s twenty-ninth president, spoke first on the topic closest to the hearts of most Americans: the sovereignty of the United States. He justified the country’s decision not to participate in the League of Nations that had become so closely associated with his predecessor, and which finally came into being without U.S. support on January 20, 1920. “We recognize the new order in the world, with the closer contacts which progress has wrought. We crave friendship and harbor no hate,” Harding said. “But America, our America … can be a party to no permanent military alliance. It can enter into no political commitments, nor assume any economic obligations which will subject our decisions to any other than our own authority.”
But it was Harding’s secondary inaugural theme that was the subject of greater interest to America’s business leaders: the need to fuel the country’s economic progress by freeing Big Business from the regulatory shackles that Wilson and Congress had imposed during the war. The message played like sweet music in boardrooms and factories across America—to the emerging automobile, aviation, and rubber magnates; to the burgeoning steel, chemical, and construction industries; to the Wall Street financiers and investment bankers; and indeed, to industrial corporations like United States Industrial Alcohol. Though many of these companies, USIA included, had benefited enormously from war-related contracts, they were now hobbled by excessive regulations in a peacetime economy.
Harding outlined the remedy: “I speak for administrative efficiency, for lightened tax burdens, for sound commercial practices, for adequate credit facilities, for the omission of unnecessary interference of Government with business, for an end to Government’s experiment in business, and for more efficient business in Government administration.”
Harding had called for freeing America from international entanglements that could weaken her and freeing American business from regulations that he believed could weaken the economy. As if to symbolize this new freedom, his first executive order was to reopen the gates to the White House grounds to the general public for the first time since Wilson had ordered them shut when the United States had entered the war on April 6, 1917. The New York Times reported: “Crowds poured through all the entrances like water through a broken dam … The crowds streamed across the lawns from all four sides and some pressed their faces against the White House windows.” Noted the Boston Herald: “Immediately after the gates swung open, the crowd … thronged in … [then] news of the issuance of the order spread about the city and inaugural visitors and Washingtonians added a visit to the White House ground to the list of history-making events they had witnessed during the day.”
Harding’s hope for a richer, stronger America would be dampened briefly by a severe, though short, depression in the latter part of 1921 and early 1922. But the vision of his inaugural was realized shortly thereafter when the economy recovered and began an eight-year era of prosperity that would become known as the Roaring Twenties. Harding, his administration wracked by scandal, his life cut short while in office by high blood pressure and heart disease, received little credit for the boom; much of that went to Calvin Coolidge, who assumed the presidency in 1923 upon Harding’s death, and was elected in his own right in 1924.
Still, Harding’s 1921 inaugural marked the beginning of a new stage in America’s economic growth. Men like Henry Ford and Alfred F. Sloan of General Motors, and Harvey Firestone and Frank M. Seiberling of Goodyear Rubber, helped the country’s auto production jump from 1.5 million cars in 1919 to nearly 5 million in 1929, and spawned the first “auto sections” in American newspapers. America built roads, schools, and factories. Electrification of those factories and modern assembly-line methods created a boom in manufacturing production. Capital became plentiful as banks loosened the reins on credit to keep up with the growth. The stock market shot up.
New money in the marketplace, coupled with a white-hot economy, spurred innovation and consumer spending. Wages of working Americans grew, and the onset of installment buying allowed them to purchase more for their families. The 1920s marked a consumer goods revolution—electric toasters, irons, phonographs, radios, plumbing fixtures, and automobiles. While immigrants and black Americans still faced discrimination and tough economic prospects, most of the country prospered.
In November 1920, KDKA in Pittsburgh would begin service, marking the birth of regular American radio broadcasting. Two years later, there would be five hundred stations on the air. The movie business also grew during the 1920s, as the American public flocked to theaters to see Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin.
American business was at the pinnacle of its influence. About two hundred corporations controlled more than 20 percent of the nation’s wealth. The large corporations thrived, both financially and in the public’s eyes; companies like International Harvester, H. J. Heinz, Singer Sewing, Ford, General Motors, U.S. Steel, AT&T, and du Pont saw themselves not only as leaders in their industries, not only as job-creation machines, but as leading institutions in society. As wages grew and labor opportunities abounded in the 1920s, Big Business saw itself as a benefactor that bestowed both financial rewards and a sense of self-worth to those whom it employed. By developing new, often revolutionary products, by moving the country forward, Big Business believed it was doing more than making money; it was doing something virtuous. “The man who builds a factory builds a temple—the man who works there worships there,” Calvin Coolidge said.
It is hard to overestimate the symbolic impact of Warren Harding’s inauguration, the overwhelming sense of excitement and promise it created among America’s entrepreneurial and corporate elite. The power and influence of Big Business had been curtailed during Wilson’s eight-year tenure, profitable war years notwithstanding; corporate leaders believed that a Republican administration offered virtually limitless prospects, new hope at the start of a new decade.
USIA and its lead attorney, Charles Choate, must have felt some of that hope. Choate’s case had absorbed a series of body blows by Damon Hall’s relentless procession of witnesses; perhaps the country’s changing mood toward business, exemplified by Harding’s resounding victory, would induce Hugh Ogden to look more favorably on USIA’s version of events.
Many of Boston’s finest private men’s clubs, several of which Ogden belonged to, had celebrated the GOP victory in November, most holding receptions for former governor Calvin Coolidge for becoming vice president-elect. Choate believed that Coolidge and Harding, without doubt, were Ogden’s kind of men. If the new president, elected by an electoral and popular landslide, was calling for the “omission of unnecessary interference of Government with business,” then certainly Ogden would have to consider whether a decision against USIA fell into the category of “unnecessary interference.” Certainly, he would have to think long and hard about the ramifications of such a decision. Would it stifle the expansion of plants and factories if they were required to attain unattainable levels of safety? Would it introduce a whole new layer of government regulations and restrictions even while a popular new president had clearly called for the opposite?
For the first time in years, warm winds, favorable to Big Business, were now blowing steadily from Washington. Warren G. Harding’s inauguration, and all that it bespoke, must have buoyed Charles C
hoate’s spirits and instilled cautious optimism in the defense. How long that optimism would prevail would depend on how well Arthur P. Jell stood up to questioning three weeks hence in New York City.
Hugh Ogden’s feelings about President Harding’s nomination are not part of the historical record, but Ogden’s writings and speeches indicate strongly that he would have cast a wary eye toward America’s economic prosperity, lest it cloud her vision on bedrock issues of fairness and justice for all citizens.
In a Memorial Day speech in the near future, Ogden would observe: “We have prospered. We have sold goods at high prices. We have accumulated the largest stock of gold any nation ever possessed, but have we done anymore than that? Have we in our blindness gained the whole world and lost our own soul? It was not to ensure material prosperity that our soldiers fought and died … that the relations of capital and labor might be still further embittered … We must administer our government upon the broadest and most humanitarian lines so that each citizen shall receive his full inheritance in good roads, good schools, adequate opportunities for higher education, hospital facilities, libraries … and other institutions that are a public charge for the public good.”
Ogden most likely voted for Warren Harding and was no doubt generally inclined to agree with the president’s attitudes about government and big business. But the auditor’s strength of character, forged on the battlefields of France, and his sense of fair play, made it unlikely that Charles Choate would get his wish, unlikely that Ogden would be influenced by the prevailing economic prosperity or long-term ramifications. Hugh Ogden would consider and decide the molasses case on its merits alone.
Manhattan, Friday, March 25, 1921
The temperature hovered around the mid-80s, the highest ever in Manhattan for the end of March, when Damon Hall, Charles Choate, Henry F. Dolan, and a court stenographer arrived at the elegant Hotel Belmont to question Jell.
Damon Hall was miffed that he had to travel to New York at all. When the plaintiffs had added Jell to the witness list, Choate had tried desperately to prevent the USIA executive from taking the stand by arguing to the Superior Court that Jell’s testimony was not directly relevant to the case. The court disagreed and ordered Choate to make Jell available to Hall and the plaintiffs. Choate then pleaded with the court not to compel Jell to testify before Ogden, that traveling from New York to Boston would be an “immense inconvenience” for Jell, and requested instead that Jell be deposed by attorneys from both sides in New York City. The judge agreed, over Hall’s vociferous objections; Hall wanted Ogden to be able to look Jell directly in the eye, to watch his comportment under tough questioning.
Hall was not surprised that Choate had chosen the opulent Hotel Belmont as a way to establish Jell’s importance and stamp USIA’s corporate imprimatur on the proceedings. Far from the neutral surroundings of Hugh Ogden’s modest Boston courtroom, the Belmont dripped with haughty pretension. Built at the corner of 42nd Street and Park Avenue in 1906, the twenty-story building, shaped like a tall wedge of cheese, boasted a spacious two-story lobby, grand staircases, floors and walls treated in red marble, mirrored elevator doors, and a dining room and massive sitting room with richly carpeted floors, and great red columns supporting arched ceilings. “New York has added another splendid hostelry to its already rich store,” one writer noted when the hotel opened fifteen years earlier. “To this monster hotel, one might aptly apply the expression for large New York enterprises: A city in itself.”
Hall believed Choate had chosen the Belmont to gain an edge, perhaps as a means to intimidate, but more likely with the hope that the civility and elegance of the hotel would lessen the tenacity of Hall’s questioning. Hall knew the tactic well; it was based on the same theory that said it was perfectly acceptable to criticize a government or corporate leader in private conversation, but impolite to confront him on the same topic face to face. Hall thought Choate was operating on a simple premise: plush surroundings equaled cushy questions.
But for Hall, who was not easily awed amidst resplendence, the trip to New York and the Belmont had just the opposite effect. He was angry at Choate for trying to prevent Jell from testifying in the first place, angrier still that Choate had protested Jell’s traveling to Boston to appear before Ogden. To him, that tactic had violated the basic premise of fairness. He viewed Choate as a worthy adversary and, while they were not friends, he had respected the defense counsel for his integrity and love for the law; Choate’s successful maneuvering to shelter Jell from Ogden’s scrutiny twisted the rules of law in a way Hall found distasteful and disappointing.
Since Ogden would not get to see Jell, it meant Hall’s direct examination needed to be more pointed than ever. Jell’s answers needed to jump from the page when Ogden read the deposition transcript.
The Belmont’s cut-glass chandeliers and frescoed walls notwithstanding, Damon Hall planned to tear into Arthur P. Jell like he was in a street fight.
Hall wasted little time with preliminaries. He quickly established that the forty-two-year-old Jell had spent his entire professional career as a financial administrator, that he had no technical or engineering training, and that he could not read building plans or specifications.
Jell then acknowledged that he had ordered Hammond Iron Works to construct the steel plates for the tank’s walls with a “factor of safety” of 3, which led Hall to this line of questioning:
Hall: Was the factor of safety of 3 that you determined the result of any investigation or advice from technically trained engineers, builders, or architects?
Jell: No.
Hall: No?
Jell: No.
Hall: Did you, prior to making that recommendation of a factor of safety of 3, make any investigation whatever as to the factor of safety which the ordinary engineering practice called for?
Jell: No.
Hall: Did you consult anyone before making that suggestion as to a factor of safety of 3.
Jell: I don’t remember having done so.
Hall: Is it fair to say, then, that you arrived at that in your own mind?
Jell: Not entirely. I had been told in the past by tank manufacturers that they built tanks with a factor of safety of 2. So I figured 3 would be sufficient.
Hall: Do you know what manufacturers told you that?
Jell: I do not.
Hall: Or the size of the tanks to which they referred?
Jell: I do not.
For Hall, it was not enough to show that Jell’s “factor of safety” specification was based on no credible knowledge or advice. It was also important that he get Jell to admit what had happened when Hammond Iron Works delivered plans and drawings based on those specifications:
Hall: When Mr. Shellhammer [of Hammond Iron Works] showed you the plans in January of 1915, did you have any talk with him about the factor of safety in the specifications?
Jell: I cannot remember.
Hall: Do you remember that you did?
Jell: No, I do not.
Hall: With such experience as you had, were you able, by looking at the plans and specifications, to determine from them what factor of safety had been provided in them?
Jell: No.
Hall: Did you submit the plans or specifications to any architect or engineer?
Jell: No.
Hall: Did you submit them to the New York office of U.S. Industrial Alcohol? Did you show them to any officer of USIA?
Jell: No.
Hall: Did anyone ask to see them, to inspect them?
Jell: No.
Hall: I want to ask one more time, before I go on with the next line of inquiry, whether … the factor of safety as determined upon was the result of any investigation or advice from technically trained engineers, builders, or architects?
Jell: No.
Hall: Your answer is “no”?
Jell: No.
And then, once Hammond had finished the steel plates and delivered them:
Hall: Upon the delivery of the metal fo
r this tank in Boston, did you have any engineer or builder examine the material [to ensure it conformed to] specifications?
Jell: No.
Hall: Or any metallurgist?
Jell: No.
Hall: Did you seek the advice or consult with any person outside of the employees of Hammond Iron Works, as to the quality and fitness of the steel which was delivered, or the method of construction?
Jell: No.
Hall: Did you at any time have or ask for any test to be made of the steel being fabricated on your behalf?
Jell: No.
Jell then acknowledged that he had been frustrated by delays as he attempted to secure the waterfront site for the tank from Boston Elevated, and that the delay was “causing us embarrassment … without a tank of our own, we were compelled to purchase from a dealer in molasses, who charged us a higher price than we could have it delivered at our own tank.” Later, after the steel arrived and the sale of the property had been completed, Jell testified that he ordered Hammond to hire additional crews to finish the work before the Miliero arrived on December 31, 1915. Work continued right up until the day the molasses ship steamed into Boston Harbor.
Hall: Did you at any time after the tank was erected, and before the steamer arrived, have any investigation made of the tank by any architect, engineer, or man who was familiar with steel construction, as to the sufficiency of the tank as erected?
Jell: No.
Hall: Referring to the contract for the erection of the tank, do you recall that it provided for a water test after the tank was created? That the tank be filled with water to test for leaks?
Jell: Yes.
Hall: Was any water test made of the tank—except by putting in six inches of water, as you have already testified—before it was put into service?
Jell: No.
Hall: Why not?
Jell: Well, for one reason, there was not time … It would have been impossible to empty the water again before the arrival of the steamer. It would have been impossible to fill the tank. There was not a supply of water at that point sufficient to fill the tank within a reasonable time. We had only a very small water connection and it would have taken many days, possibly have run into weeks, to have filled the tank with water.
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