by Robert Sobel
Lodge was not the only prominent figure of the 1920 convention who either was relegated to minor status or had died since then. As mentioned, Crane had died in October 1920, before the election. Philander Knox died in October 1921, and Penrose on the last day of that year. Frank Brandegee died days before Lodge, and Chauncey De Pew went in April 1928; neither man attended the Cleveland convention. Nor did La Follette, Borah, Pinchot, and former Speaker Joe Cannon, who would die in November 1926. Had they been there, these men would have had only secondary roles.
There were still bosses within the party, but none had the power or influence of Penrose and others in 1920. Regionalism was fading in the 1920s, and, with the arrival of radio, communication between candidates and the public would be far easier and more effective in the future. Indeed, the GOP convention of 1924 was the first to be carried over the airwaves. Back room deals were still struck, but not by the powerful brokers of the past.
Early in the convention Butler attempted to provide women delegates with equal representation on the National Committee, not unusual since both major parties were wooing female voters. After a bitter and acrimonious debate Butler won his point, but in defiance of his wishes, the Old Guard representatives managed to elect Paul Howard, chief counsel for Daugherty during the investigations, as chairman of the Rules Committee. Butler also learned that the progressive Republicans would be watching the vice presidential situation to gauge Coolidge’s attitude toward them, in preparation for a possible bolt. Butler could not quell the opposition felt by some of the Old Guard and those progressive Republicans. Coolidge hoped they would not defect if, as expected, La Follette ran as an independent.
The New York Times suggested a short platform: “Coolidge, that’s all,” but in the end the Platform Committee produced a long document, which the Times thought was “not only verbose but labored,” as are most platforms. It began with a tribute to Warren Harding, and then went on to catalogue the sorry state of the nation in 1921 and compare it with the prosperity America enjoyed in the summer of 1924. As expected, the Republicans took credit for all of this:We believe that the achievement of the Republican administration in reducing taxation by $1,250,000,000 per annum; reducing of the public debt by $2,432,000,000; installing a budget system; reducing the public expenditures from $5,500,000,000 per annum to approximately $3,400,000,000 per annum, thus reducing the ordinary expenditures of the government to substantially a pre-war basis, and the complete restoration of the public credit; the payment or refunding of $7,500,000,000 of public obligations without disturbance of credit or industry—all during the short period of three years—presents a record unsurpassed in the history of public finance.
Much of this, of course, occurred during the Harding years. The Republicans were implying that the way to keep prosperity was to keep Coolidge in the White House.
The rest of the platform was also an echo of 1920. The Republicans came out for a protective tariff and membership in the World Court, and congratulated themselves for improving relations with Mexico. While opposing McNary–Haugen, they favored higher tariffs on agricultural products, lower freight rates, and especially cooperative marketing, which had become Coolidge’s standard response to farmers’ demands for aid. The party also favored an amendment prohibiting child labor, which had been discussed since before World War I. The Republicans defended the immigration laws, and called for improvements in highways and assistance to commercial aviation. There was no mention either of Prohibition or race relations. The closest the GOP came to dealing with the Klan was a bland statement to the effect that “the Republican Party reaffirms its unyielding devotion to the Constitution and to the guarantees of civil, political, and religious liberty contained therein.”
The opening of the convention was front-page news, but the public’s attention was being diverted by the Leopold–Loeb murder case in Chicago. From Washington, La Follette called for railroad and farm legislation, as well as government control of Muscle Shoals—a warm-up for and preview of his near certain presidential bid on a third party ticket.
There were some light moments. On Thursday, June 12, the last survivor of the 1860 convention was presented and cheered, and a quartet from Plymouth sang some songs. Seventy-three-year-old Representative Theodore Burton of Iowa delivered a well-received keynote address containing a tribute to Harding. Former Congressman Frank Mondell of Colorado was named permanent chairman, and Marion Burton, president of the University of Michigan and a Coolidge friend who had been president of Smith College, nominated Coolidge, whom he characterized as “the virile man—the staunch American—the real human being—Calvin Coolidge!” Then came the usual seconding speeches. There were no further nominating speeches, so the roll call began. All the states gave Coolidge their votes except for Wisconsin, which cast twenty-eight for La Follette, and North Dakota, which gave La Follette six votes and Johnson ten. Then a South Dakota delegate moved the vote be made unanimous, and there were protests from the La Follette and Johnson people. The chairman announced, “With the exception of a very few voices the nomination of Calvin Coolidge for president of the United States is made unanimous.” That was it.
Throughout the day rumors regarding the vice presidential choice were hatched and heard regularly. The names ranged from James Harbord, CEO of Radio Corporation of America and a war hero, to Herbert Hoover, Dawes, Borah, Lowden, William Kenyon of Iowa, and many more. Lowden had earlier disavowed any desire for the nomination, and Borah now did the same. It was no secret that Borah and the others considered themselves better qualified than Coolidge for the presidency. (A story holds that Coolidge, through an intermediary, approached Borah to ask him to join the ticket in 1924. “At which end?” Borah wanted to know.)
Then Butler sent out feelers to Kenyon, which became one of the convention’s stranger episodes. Kenyon, a Republican from Iowa, had entered the Senate in 1911, and immediately became identified with the party’s progressive wing. He supported Taft in 1912 and was considered a regular. Kenyon was outspoken in favor of trade unions, and he opposed entry into World War I but supported Wilson after the United States became a belligerent. In 1920 he had led the investigation into Republican campaign spending, and he attended the convention that year pledged to Hiram Johnson. Kenyon was a leading member of the farm bloc and one of its most effective organizers. Harding had offered him a federal judgeship to rid himself of this highly capable opponent. Since he had always wanted a judicial career, Kenyon accepted. One of his earliest decisions was in United States v. Mammoth Oil, in which he canceled the Teapot Dome leases and criticized the Harding administration. In 1924 he supported Coolidge for the nomination and urged Borah to accept the vice presidential designation.
Despite Kenyon’s record, a Coolidge–Kenyon ticket would not have been hypocritical on the part of either man. Kenyon had always been a party loyalist, which would have made him acceptable to Coolidge. Besides, while vice president, Coolidge had become friendly with Kenyon, and later twice invited him to join his cabinet. Republican progressives would have applauded a Kenyon nomination, since it would be a sign to progressive voters that Coolidge was leaning in their direction and would thus be enough to convince them to remain in the party.
Butler might have thought that if Kenyon would accept a judgeship that removed him from a leadership position against Harding, he might accept a vice presidential nomination that would placate progressives. Trouble had already developed. The New York Republicans had split, with Senator James Wadsworth, an Old Guard stalwart who headed the delegation, urging Butler to select a conservative, while the progressives wanted Kenyon. When Butler’s intentions became clear, the word went out that progressives would protest publicly unless Coolidge personally asked them to name Kenyon, which the president refused to do. The Wisconsin delegation then all but announced its intention to walk out and join La Follette. Other midwestern delegations were split on the issue. Butler had to do something to placate this group. In any case, Kenyon was not interested in
the nomination, so Butler looked elsewhere.
Bascom Slemp was at the convention, and he was appalled at Butler’s approach and strategy. Slemp favored a conservative regular, believing that the progressive voters would go for La Follette no matter who was in the second place on the GOP ticket, and that having a progressive on the ticket might lead moderate Republicans to vote for a Democrat or stay home. Butler persisted, and purportedly put out a feeler to the seventy-three-year-old Burton. When that fizzled, Butler considered Hoover, again to please the progressive element, although he should have known that Coolidge would not accept the secretary of commerce.
What did these potential candidates have in common? All had roots in the Midwest. Coolidge, the New Englander, wanted the same combination as the party had in 1920, and that meant going to Harding country for the vice presidency. But at least equally important was Butler’s attempt to keep the party united in the face of the La Follette challenge.
Butler’s maneuvers continued as the vice presidential nominations were being made. Kenyon, Lowden, Senator James Watson of Indiana, Dawes, Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas, and Burton were placed in nomination. Lowden was ahead on the first ballot, and behind him in order were Kenyon and Burton. That Burton received so many votes was an indication of the convention’s desire to honor him but also of an awareness that it was all over anyway. Lowden was the clear favorite.
Lowden was nominated on the second ballot. By then Coolidge had written Lowden a letter of congratulations, which was not sent, since Lowden’s representative immediately announced his intention to decline the honor. With this, Butler recommended Hoover, but the convention turned instead to Dawes, with Hoover running a distant second.
Why Dawes? According to Dawes biographer Bascom Timmons, before Lowden announced his refusal, he spoke with Mark Woods of Lincoln, Nebraska. Woods had approached Dawes and suggested he support General John J. Pershing, only to learn that he favored Lowden. A political amateur, Woods didn’t know what to do next, so he went to see another Dawes friend, the venerable William Jennings Bryan, who was covering the convention for a press syndicate, and who was quite friendly with both Pershing and Dawes. Bryan thought nominating Pershing would be difficult, since even the Nebraska delegation was split, with most for Kenyon. But one of the delegates, A.W. Jefferis, hoped to get the GOP senatorial nomination, and Woods convinced him to nominate Dawes—Jefferis wanted to be heard over the radio in Nebraska and win instant fame.
After Lowden’s nomination, Woods approached some of those who had voted for him and won their support for Dawes in case Lowden declined (no candidate had refused the nomination since well before the Civil War). Then, when the rejection letter was read to the convention, the delegates went for Dawes, who received 682½ third ballot votes to Hoover’s 234½. The candidate swiftly accepted.
Dawes was fifty-nine years old in 1924, seven years older than Coolidge. Throughout his life, Dawes was a maverick, hard to pin down or place in any category. The progressives considered him conservative, the conservatives, progressive. In reality, he was an independent who loved contention and entered many battles he must have known were unwinnable.
Dawes, a talented executive with an ability to get things done, had bounced back after being wiped out financially in the panic of 1893. He served as comptroller of the currency under McKinley, but he resigned in 1901 to run—unsuccessfully, as it turned out—for a Senate seat. From then on he stayed on the political periphery, working in banking and finance. During World War I, Dawes volunteered and served as head of the General Purchasing Board, which made him responsible for provisioning the army—and gave him control of vast amounts of money. Before the war ended, Dawes was promoted to brigadier general, and he became the military member of the United States Liquidation Commission, responsible for disposing of American supplies in France.
Dawes made his mark on the national consciousness in February 1920, when he was called to testify before the House Committee on War Expenditures. Eager to demonstrate Democratic malfeasance, the Republican-led committee probed deeply into matters of waste and corruption, going so far as to question the integrity of some of the witnesses. “Just how much thievery was there under the Democratic administration during the war?” asked Representative Frank Mondell, who became presiding officer at the 1924 convention. By the time he appeared before the committee, Dawes, who had a short fuse anyway, was quite upset. “Is it not true that excessive prices were paid for some articles?” he was asked. Dawes exploded. “When Congress declared war, did it expect us to beat Germany at 20 percent discount?” he wanted to know. “Sure we paid high prices. Men were standing at the front to be shot at. We had to give them food and ammunition. We didn’t stop to dicker. Why, man alive! We had a war to win! It was a man’s job!”
For the next seven hours Dawes answered similar questions with shouts, near insults, and suggestions that the committee members didn’t understand the demands of war and were simpletons. “Is it not true that excessive prices were paid for mules?” “Helen Maria!” Dawes shouted, “I would have paid horse prices for sheep, if the sheep could have pulled artillery to the front!” That day Dawes was not a Republican, but an executive defending his policies and actions by slashing out with scathing wit and righteous indignation at members of his own party.
When it was all over Dawes was front-page news. The “Helen Maria” was supposed to be an exclamation well-known in Nebraska, but the newspapers had it as “Hell and Maria”—from then on he was known as “Hell and Maria Charlie Dawes.” While respected, he was almost immediately seen as a colorful eccentric, capable of making wild statements, down to smoking a strange pipe whose stem came out of the top rather than the bottom of the bowl.
Dawes did not seem like a politician, but rather a man of integrity and principle—qualities the public thought should mark their vice president. And he was certainly a man of many parts. Americans learned Dawes played the piano and flute, and composed music. One of his pieces, written at one sitting in 1911, was called “Melody in A Major.” It became a popular concert piece soon after. Words were added, and the song, “Let Me Dream,” was played often in the early 1920s. Then, in 1951, new lyrics were added, and what resulted was “It’s All in the Game,” one of the most popular songs of that year.
During the 1920 presidential campaign Harding had been attracted by an article Dawes had written entitled “How a President Can Save a Billion Dollars.” After the election the new president-elect asked Dawes to serve as his secretary of the treasury. Dawes was not interested, but he convinced Harding to make him the first director of the budget. His effective work heading the Bureau of the Budget was one of the reasons Harding was able to turn in a surplus, which continued into the Coolidge years. It was the combination of the Harding–Coolidge tax cuts and the Dawes economy programs that enabled the government to show a large surplus in each year of the Harding–Coolidge presidency. Due in large part to the savings Dawes had generated, government spending declined from $5 billion in 1921 to $2.9 billion in 1924, the year he left office to run for the vice presidency.
In 1923 Dawes was asked to join the Committee of Experts of the Allied Reparations Committee, designed to rescue the German economy. Out of his work came the Dawes Plan, which stabilized the German currency on a gold basis, established the Reichsbank, revamped the tax structure, restructured the railroads, and authorized the issuance of railroad and industrial bonds to generate income to pay part of the reparations. Germany was granted a one-year moratorium on reparations payments, a cut of 80 percent in future annual payments, and a $200 million loan from the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. The Dawes Plan was hailed throughout Europe, and earned him additional fame in America, and for this he was to share the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize.
With this background, Dawes joined the Coolidge ticket, and he proved to be the right man for it. Once again, the Coolidge luck prevailed. The Coolidge–Dawes team, campaigning on a platform calling for lower taxes and gov
ernment efficiency, had a good record in both areas. Where Coolidge was reticent and disliked campaigning, Dawes was made for the stump. Coolidge was an accidental president and Dawes an unexpected nominee, but it was a near-perfect ticket for the times. The Republicans had reason to celebrate when the convention adjourned.
On August 14 Coolidge formally accepted the nomination, and unsurprisingly lauded his party’s accomplishments. From the start he spoke not of the Coolidge accomplishments, but of those of the Harding–Coolidge administration. “Perhaps in no peace-time period have there been more remarkable and constructive accomplishments than since March 1921.”
Coolidge outlined what amounted to his personal stance on the issues. He paraphrased many sections of the platform, but added two of his own. “There should be no favorites and no outcasts; no race or religious prejudices in government. America opposes special privileges for any body and favors equal opportunity for every body.” Then, to underline the thought, in another section he said: “As a plain matter of expediency the white man cannot be protected and as a plain matter of right and justice is justice for everybody.” But Coolidge did not follow up with action.
He then stated his own credo in succinct, unmistakable but unremarkable terms:Many principles exist which I have tried to represent and propose to support. I believe in the American Constitution. I favor the American system of individual enterprise, and I am opposed to any general extension of government ownership and control. I believe not only in advocating economy in public expenditure, but in its practical application and actual accomplishment. I believe in a reduction and reform of taxation, and shall continue my efforts in that direction. I am in favor of protection. I favor the Permanent Court and further limitation of armaments. I am opposed to aggressive war. I shall avoid involving ourselves in the political controversies of Europe, but I shall do what I can to encourage American citizens and resources to assist in restoring Europe with the sympathetic support of our government. I want agriculture and industry on a sound basis of prosperity and equality. I shall continue to strive for the economic, moral, and spiritual welfare of my country.