Three Presidents of the 1920's
Warren Harding, from Blooming Grove, Ohio, was the first president elected after the Great War. With promises of a “return to normalcy” and an end to violence and radicalism, an America whose economy stood strong and free of European intrigues, President Harding brought us the Sheppard-Towner Act, providing women and children with federal funding. Eight-hour work days? You can thank him for that too, and the Budget and Accounting Act, which keeps the government from spending too much. Leaving Europe and the League of Nations to keep them from dragging America into their problems, he nevertheless called the Washington Disarmament Conference, which limited the size of military vessels in an attempt to keep the peace. Various administrative scandals took place during his administration, mostly due to his friends in the Ohio Gang, but all but one were discovered after his sudden, unexpected death in 1923.
Originally Warren G. Harding’s Vice President, Calvin Coolidge came into office upon his death in 1923. Being himself elected president in 1924, he maintained many of Harding’s policies, and kept much of his cabinet, despite the corruption scandals surrounding many of them, until they were given fair investigations and trials. Substantial economic growth and unchanged government spending allowed one fourth of the federal debt to be paid by the end of his time in office. A strong supporter of civil rights, Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting all Native Americans citizenship while keeping their land and cultural rights.Despite not being an isolationist, Coolidge was not eager to join foreign alliances, seeing the 1920s Republican victories as a rejection of Wilson’s League of Nations. He did approve the Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed earlier this year, swearing off war as an instrument of foreign policy. He has announced that he will not campaign for a second term in office, leaving doubt as to the political future of the nation.
Secretary of Commerce for both presidents Harding and Coolidge, Republican rising star Herbert Hoover might be remembered from the Great War, when he worked as chairman of the CRB, the Commission for Relief in Belgium, distributing 11.4 billion pounds of food to occupied Belgium. Throughout the rest of the war and for some time after it, Hoover worked in various relief organizations, including the US food administration. Named Secretary of Commerce by President Harding after his appointment, Hoover took many initiatives to regulate various aspects of the country, such as the Radio Act of 1927, giving the government the power to abolish non-useful radio stations. His traffic conferences, held in 1924 and 1926, with others planned for the future, set better laws regarding automobiles to be applied by states and cities. A likely candidate for the 1928-29 elections, Hoover is the figure to watch for.