Warren Gamaliel Harding, President of the United States

Front matter

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CHAPTER I Introduction CHAPTER H

. William Estabrook Chancellor

CHAPTER HI

The Issues of This Book

CHAPTER IV The Negro Question

CHAPTER V He Looks Like a President

CHAPTER VI The Plutocracy

CHAPTER VII

The American Government and Plutocracy

CHAPTER VIII Fake Biographies of Harding

CHAPTER IX Races of Mankind

CHAPTER X

What Is a Cabinet?

CHAPTER XI

Ohio Political History

CHAPTER XII Presidential History

CHAPTER XIII Hamon and Harding

CHAPTER XIV

The Election Made to Order

CHAPTER XV Letters to Divers People On Pertinent Subjects

CHAPTER XVI The Constitution and the President

CHAPTER XVII

The Genealogy as Approved by the Family of Warren Gamaliel Harding

CHAPTER XVIII Prof. Chancellor and the People

CHAPTER XIX

The League of Nations and the Coming Wars

CHAPTER XX

The Government of the District of Columbia

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

The administration of President Warren Harding has now proceeded several months, and we can see, and according to our lights understand, what the policies are to be, for there are no principles anywhere in it.

Already Harding has done several things that ultimate history will regret.

FIRST, he has broken the heart of the world by setting aside the League of Nations and the machinery for permanent world peace. In doing this, he has broken his promises to millions of persons who in good faith believed in him. It is true that he could not keep faith both with Johnson and with Taft; he has chosen rather to go with Johnson, Borah and Knox than with Lodge, Taft and Root. It is a melancholy decision, based entirely on immediate expediency. He needs the irreconcilable bitter-enders and is more afraid of them than the reservationists. He has failed to understand the dream of Dante, Rousseau and Wilson, not to say of Isaiah and Jesus Christ.

SECOND, he has broken the hearts of the colored people of America, who were told explicitly by the Republicans that Harding has negro blood and would remember the negroes in his appointments. He has been ashamed of this element in his blood, ashamed of his own great-grandmother, Elizabeth Madison, so-called, and of the negroes that contributed their blood to his great-grandfather, George Tyrone (or Tyron) Harding.

There are at least fifteen million negroes in this country and it is a safe guess that, hereafter, some of them will be Democrats. He has appointed so far but one person to any office of importance who has any discoverable negro blood ; which is no better than other Republicans have done before him.

THIRD, he has shown by his messages and his letters to societies and to individuals that the Presidency has fallen into ignorant hands, that he cannot write English that is understandable, that the American political system is so rotten as to permit the election by an enormous majority of a person not competent to speak authoritatively upon public questions. His mental furniture, too, is that of a school boy. Europe and Asia now have us in contempt.

FOURTH, his Cabinet is shown already to be a clutter of unrelated and discordant minds, such as cannot be brought together into any system of statesmanship. Habitually all things to all men, his cabinet mirrors hmself. Not one man yet in the Cabinet, which was supposed to be the acme of all in American history, a Cabinet of multimillionaires, has disclosed the leadership necessary to help our domestic situation. Except as Daugherty or Mellon deal with Penrose and Smoot the Cabinet will have no influence whatever upon the processes of the Senate or of the House because the President himself carries no weight there and never did carry weight, and because the same is true of A. B. Fall, which is fortunate because Fall is committed to the policy of armed intervention in Mexico. Hughes carries no weight because he is disliked and because he lost the Presidential campaign of 1916 through blundering. This involved permanent alienation from Senator Johnson. Most of the Senators are indifferent to Cabinet Secretaries; it is a strange man who would not prefer a Senatorship to a Cabinet position. To the Senate, even Hoover is of no importance; a Cabinet Secretary lives in the sunshine or dies in the shadow of his Master, the President. Any elective office where there is no recall is better than almost any appointive office ; among the few exceptions being Federal Judgeships.

FIFTH, he has continued to pose as a common man, anxious to please the common people by a variety of poses. But even the common people do not care for that sort of thing. The common people like to think that the President is a superior man ; they like to feel that he has leisure and sport and wealth enough and lives above the common life. The common people do not like a man who tries to please them. Egg-rolling on the White House lawn, playing golf on the Potomac flat public course, opening the White House front lawn to the run of everyone, professing to wish to keep open house and see anyone who wishes an interview, writing letters to every society that sends an invitation and saying how sorry he is that he cannot attend, and all such doings and sayings, Harmless enough in themselves, in the end contrary to the Harding fancy, do not "get" him anywhere; they are all of no importance. What the common people want is prosperity; they desire a propitious President, one who brings to them an era of plenty of work for good wages or fair profits from farm or trade. This alone counts with them. And when they see him trying to make himself popular otherwise, they laugh at him.

SIXTH, he has started to make appointments to foreign lands that show him, expose him as a dealer in offices, a political debt payer, not a single-minded patriot thinking first, last and only of America.

Already Harvey in his speech before the Pilgrim Club has offended the patriotic sense of his own party associates.

He does not understand the morality of a man like Rutherford B. Hayes, who upon becoming President said : "Now I have no friends. I will appoint only the best men available." Instead of taking this, the only patriotic and honorable position, Warren Harding is paying his political debts at the expense of Arr-^rica, which is corruption at its worst. Open bribery, the direct sale of offices, is less dangerous than the course now being pursued. Daugherty has made him what he is, and, therefore, he names this low-grade man Attorney General of the United States, to occupy a place of very great personal power. The Department of Justice ought to be sacred from the presence of any such man, who is not fit to be even a clerk in it, or janitor of the rooms at K and loth Streets, N. W. Harvey goes to England in payment for his services, for his bertayal of Wilson, for his leaving the Democratic party, and for revenge in becoming a Republican — a vile course. Harvey is the man who printed in his WEEKLY a sacrilegious cartoon against the League of Nations. He also is a man of low-grade mind and obviously low-grade character. Herrick, who is mentally a better man, is morally lower than Harvey; he is in politics for the same reason that he is in banking and journalism, to make money and to get power. Herrick goes to France whether the French really like him or not. D. R. Crissinger, who sold out also, as did Harvey, is already Controller of the Currency, in a position that should be filled by a high-grade financial and economic expert. He has recently relieved the National Banks from serious responsibilities. They now can report general figures — to fool the people. Father Dennison has gone to Rome to be consul. This is an insult to the Italian Government which is constantly in war with the alleged right of the Roman Catholic Church to temporal power. Now the Pope has a right-hand man in the American consulate. To the Catholics, this is one of the most important positions in our Government.

Yet Harding attacked Cox for having a Catholic son-in-law.

These are the worst cases ; others might be cited — like that of George W. Aldridge, made collector of the Port of New York, one of the lowest New York State politcians and a shameless corruptionist. Why? Because at the Republican National Convention he voted on every ballot for Warren Harding and used Hamon money finally to win all the other New York delegates (46). Why has Harding done these things? Because he has no moral life himself, because he cannot see straight. The Presidency to him is a chance to reward his friends and to punish his enemies. We state these matters in the beginning to afford the readers of this book material for the consideration of the causes why Harding is what he is and is doing such things.

Chapter II William Estabrook Chancellor

Who is this man?

He is a native of Dayton, as was his mother before him ; his father was born at New Carlisle. His grandfather Chancellor was born on the Wilderness trail in 1797. His grandfather Estabrook founded Brookville, near Dayton, and the linseed oil business of the Miami Valley.

He went to school in Dayton until twelve years old. Then he was educated in Northampton, Mass., Worcester, Mass., Harvard Law School, New York University, and spent a year in Europe. He took more prizes than any other man ever graduated from Amherst in the 101 years of its history to date, and was class orator. He was also President of the College Republican Club. He followed Roosevelt out of the Republican party in 1912, but became a Democrat then. He is the author of 38 different books, four on education, six on history, etc.

For sixteen years he was city school superintendent, part of the time in Washington as the head of c ■'• the schools, colored and white; he was also cliairman of the District of Columbia Architectural Commission.

He founded the Teachers' College of George Washington University, and the Education Department of Johns Hopkins University.

He wrote and worked through the Legislature the teachers' pension laws of New Jersey.

The Ohio School Code is based upon the outline of one of his educational works.

For twelve years he was officially connected with the College of Wooster, for over six of them being head of the Department of Economics and Politics.

He was a member of the New York Press Club for many years, and had written many long paid articles for the New York Times, the New York Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and other papers. As an economist, few men had equal standing in the world of journalism. He was a Wayne County delegate to the Ohio State Democratic Convention in 1916, 1918, and in 1920. He was Ohio Presidential Elector in 1916. He was a member of the City Council of Wooster, being elected in a Republican ward in 1919. He was the chairman of the Wayne County Four-Minute Men during the war. So impartial and fair was he in reputation that no less than six Ohio cities had him deliver the Roosevelt memorial funeral oration. This occurred before the William McKinley Club in Canton.

He has given paid public addresses in many different states upon over 4500 occasions.

He married a niece of Henry Ward Beecher. He has been a Presbyterian by church membership since 187F At. vvooster College, he had the men's junior and senirr Bible class. Because he would not sign a lie as to his belief, he was ousted contrary to all the college statutes and since then has been forced to leave the country for parts unknown.

Can the Republican plutocracy destroy this man? We think not.

Chapter III The Issues Of This Book First Issue

There is a race consciousness that becomes a class-consciousness when the amount of traits of an individual from one race is superior to that from the race in which he prefers to remain as a member. There is no disposition on the part of friends of Professor Chancellor in publishing this book to insist that Warren Harding is by race a negro. It is evident to all that the man is mainly white. What we insist on is that the race consciousness of the Hardings in Blooming Grove caused them to remain negro; and that George Tyron Harding II never thought of calling themselves white until after the death of Amos Kling, father-in-law of Warren. Warren and his brother and sisters were reared and treated as colored people.

We agree that they have the right to ask to be considered white because racially they are mostly white; but we deny that they have the right to assert the lie that they have always been considered and have always considered themselves white. We assert that the rest of us have the right to ask whether they have had the rearing of white men and women. We assert the right of American neighbors of these Hardings to pass upon their qualifications social and moral and intellectual to he treated as all-white persons are. Pure white is not colored and is the opposite of negro. It is something that can not be claimed without being questioned.

The Republicans call it les majeste to raise the issue ; but we raise it, not feeling as yet that the Syrian notion of the apotheosis of the ruler, making him a god, is unAmerican and improper in our democracy. We notice that the Ohio laws and courts call it no slander to speak of a man as a negro ; it is the truth when the fact, and the truth cannot slander especially when so used with the highest of human motives. If all men are created equal, why this Republican rage at telling the truth about their man in the White House ? A people threatened by contamination of the blood ought to care for the truth about its head men.

SECOND ISSUE

We raise also a less important issue. It is simply whether or not the College of Wooster should be supported by public opinion in the violation of all its statutes and the suppression of truth in academic circles. A nation may recover from false notions, but it can never recover from contamination of the blood. Is it a false notion that a college professor who happens to be a Democrat has no rights ? If so, the College of Wooster stands in a bad and lurid light before the world.

Professor Chancellor is an historian. As such he looked into the record of Warren Harding, but made no statement. By design or accident, a man with the first and last name, who is black and sixty-five years old, born and reared among the Hardings, had his name printed on millions of sheets of tissue paper and sent broadcast over the country with a title attached thereto that made ignorant persons think that Wilham Estabrook Chancellor was the author of these slips. William Chancellor was a Republican and trying to help Harding.

First the Republicans sent telegrams to Professor

Chancellor asking him to deny that he had made an investigation into Harding. This he declined to do. He said nothing for weeks.

Then they sent to him and offered him ten thousand dollars to make a denial. This he refused. Then they went out and reported that he v/as in the pay of the Democrats. Even this did not smoke him out. He rAood pat and silent.

Every day through even the summer vacation Professor Chancellor either taught the summer classes or gave teacher's institute lectures or taught in the regular autumn term ; but the Republicans charged that he was out spreading these tissue paper slips. He knew nothing as to who v/as doing this. They made him, like God, present everywhere.

But on about October 10th, the Republicans prepared an attack upon Professor Chancellor and filed an indemnity bond of $500,000 with the newspaper association in Chicago to protect themselves against any libel suit by Professor Chancellor.

On October 25th, they paid, in Columbus, in cash $500,000 in care of a certain well-known woman, a certified check of a well-known Chicago millionaire to pay for the publishing of these articles throughout the country.

This millionaire is the husband of a woman whose father's memory, City School Superintendent Chancellor, when in Washington by order of the President, Theodore Roosevelt, had insulted by removing his mistress from the schools, and who is otherwise tied up with a Washington real estate group whom Professor Chancellor had angered by refusing to play their hands when on the District Architectural Commission.

These articles stated that, on October 28th, Professor Chancellor had been ousted from his chair by the College Trustees for libelling Warren Harding;

v/hich shows that the spirit of prophecy rested upon the Chicago millionaire. This money was paid to those papers otherwise not willing to print them.

On October 28th, per order of the Republican National CommJttee, the Trustees m.et at Wooster, At 4 o'clock they asked Professor Chancellor to come to see them ; he did not know that they were even holding a meeting. He had already, at the request of the then dean of the faculty, signed a truthful statement that he had circulated no papers whatever about Harding, which in letter and spirit was the exact fact. But he had been told by the dean that the paper was desired solely for the Presbyterian Church at Kenton. The dean also asked him to sign a statement that Warren Harding was ALL WHITE. This THE PROFESSOR declined to do for the professor of ethics in the College, since it was a lie as to his belief. (The dean has now resigned). There were present at this raid upon Professor Chancellor, five Republican lawyers, not members of the board, and one Republican National Committeeman. There were absent seven members of the Board of Trustees, including one Trustee who had told Professor Chancellor that he had a perfect right to make an historical investigation. (He was then making a new edition of his book on the lives of the Presidents) . This man had received no notice.

The President of the Board of Trustees began by telling Professor Chancellor that he did not wish to know the truth whether Warren Harding was white or colored. What he wished was a denial by Chancellor that Warren was colored. This denial Chancellor absolutely refused to make.

The interview lasted fifteen minutes.

In the course of these fifteen minutes, Professor Chancellor had perhaps three minutes to give his denial. He offered to prove that only an illiterate negro or some other such person could have conceived this campaign. They refused to look at his written evidence of misspellings, etc.

The meeting then adjourned, and the President of the Board, with another member, went down to the home of Professor Chancellor and then and there agreed :

1. To allow him to disappear without any action by the Board.

2. Not to publish anything against him.

3. He was not to do anything against the College. Then the meeting reconvened, but the Republican

majority repudiated this agreement.

They called Warren Harding on the telephone and asked him to deny that he had colored blood, but he refused, saying that it would cost him the colored vote.

Then they wired to him, asking him again to deny this, but he did not answer.

After a late session, the President of the Board of Trustees persuaded them by a vote of 10 to 5 to repeal the action making Professor Chancellor a full member of the faculty for life ; and sent identical telegrams to Judson C. Welliver, Will H. Hays and H. M. Daugherty, explaining that they had ousted Chancellor after a full hearing.

He then sent a telegram to the New York Press Club advising the Club that Chancellor had confessed libelling Harding. He lied and broke his promises, both.

Now who is this President of the Board ?

He is pastor of the church where the Chicago millionaire worships when at home.

He was chaplain of the Republican National Contion.

What was the agreement between the Professors and the Trustees ?

1. That an accused professor shall have ninety days to prepare his defense.

2. That he shall have the charges in writing.

3. That he shall have a hearing first before the faculty, and Isecond before the Trustees with legal counsel.

4. That if both faculty and Trustees agree, then he may be discharged, but only with a full year's pay in advance.

In this case Chancellor had no hearing at all; no written charges; no time to prepare; no legal counsel, and no salary. Later he was given a few hundred dollars to move away. The faculty has never acted.

It was given out by members of the Trustee Board that there were five charges against Chancellor, as follows, viz.:

1. He was a Democrat and as such has been elected to the city council ; that this had given offense to many patrons of the College.

2. That he had made speeches for the League of Nations. He had done this by authority of the President of the College.

3. That he had written letters to others about Harding. One of these letters had been sent to the editor of a religious paper owned by the same millionaire, but by order of the President of the College who admitted it.

4. That he had built up a department so large as to be irritating to other men on he faculty and was too big a man to be employed by any college trustee board. In exact language, the President of the Board of Trustees said, "He is better known than all the College put together."

5. That he had written a New York Times-Annalist articles advocating the gold standard and attacking bankers' paper currency as dishonest.

There were defenses to each of these propositions, but they availed nothing except to hold five of the fifteen trustees in line to support Chancellor.

Professor Chancellor was ousted by ten men in a Trustees Board of twenty-two members.

One of the men who voted against him at the next meeting of the Trustees said that he had been grossly deceived by the others ; but this availed nothing.

Such is academic freedom in a so-called Christian college that does not wish to know the truth. God is truth.

The friends of Professor Chancellor, handicapped by being unable to get the records or even to consult him, desire to have the American public look into this Wooster College case.

Are the teachers of the youth, all of them, to be the tools and slaves of these negro-loving plutocrats ?

Chapter IV The Negro Question

What are the grounds for believing that Warren Harding rightly classifies among colored people?

On what some regard as the "question" whether or not Warren is a negro or a colored man, Americana take one of many different positions.

1. Some do not care. The President might be a Hottentot or a German from Berlin, and they would not care. It is not a matter of any importance or even of interest to them. They have other business to which to attend. The Government is a thing apart. It does not concern them who lives in the White House. Presidents may come and go. The Presidency is a kaleidoscope. University graduate or a negro school attendant ; it is all one to them. Why worry ? We can not change him, and the case might be worse than it is.

2. It is a good thing to try the experiment. Let's all wait and see what the "nigger" will do ! "There are fifteen million black and colored people in the country. Every race has a right to be tried out. He may prove to be a very desirable man. All races are equal with us. Black, white, red, yellow, we are all Americans. Back him up!

3. Some believe that government is bad, politics so rotten, that since the end of the world is coming soon, the worst that happens will only bring on the better sooner. Every wicked move by politicians is only an impulse toward the new day.

4. Some are interested and hesitant; they are disappointed that such a choice has been made; but it

2^ might be worse. After all, a good negro is better than a bad white man.

5. Some regard the charge, as they call it, as pure invention of malicious politicians. It is not worth even noticing.

6. Some admit that Warren was once considered colored, but he has lived it down. He is not any longer a negro roustabout but our foremost man. Race means nothing when a fine specimen comes along.

7. Some think that even a little negro blood is undesirable, still with so much white blood, there is no harm in the choice — an octoroon is really, after all, a white man.

8. Some are horrified. The thing is too awful to even think about. His election is an insult to the white women of the South. He ought to be impeached; but who can start it when the Senate and House are his political friends? We must take to the woods and try to survive. ', t..,

9. Some are anxious to know the truth, then they will try to prevent the recurrence of this outrage to the white race.

10. Many know the truth and are trying to get the proofs. They believe that white supremacy is the supremacy of patience and fair play.

On the negro question itself. North and South are hopelessly divided, and the wonder is that America has remained one nation. The South regards the black man as an evil presence. The white man must keep him under. While the blacks remain in the land, they must be treated decently. No one should kill an unoffending black or colored man or rob him of his goods or wages ; but he should not vote. He should never be allowed to mate with a white woman. He should live in a separate segregated part of every city or of the country-side. He may individually work as a servant or field hand, but all endeavor on his part to rise even to industrial equality should be frowned upon and when possible, defeated. These people do not hesitate to lynch an accused black or colored man on the same hypothesis that causes them to kill a wild beast.

There is much to justify this position of the whites.

A thousand instances of cruelty of the genuine blacks to one another might be cited. The black man will not lift a hand to help another black man in trouble. He will not work until driven by starvation to work. He punishes his own children so severely that it is not an unusual thing for a beaten child to die. He has no sex-morals.

There is a case of a black man working as a porter in a hotel who admitted that he had no less than twenty-six wives in the course of his sex-affairs. In one instance, he took a widow and her daughter both and lived with them at the same time.

In the official genealogy of the Hardings, which is included in the last chapter of the book, we have the printed statement that old Amos had one child born to one woman in November and another child born to another woman in April.

Of course, white men have often been without sex-morals. But the sex-looseness of the colored or black man is almost universal. With the black and colored women, the case is distinctly better; many being virtuous according to white standards.

The people who do not know these facts are simply ignorant of the negro problem.

Those who say that it is no worse for a black man to mate with a white woman than for a white man to mate with a black woman, are ignorant of a few very plain facts of human anatomy and of negro lust.

Many white persons who do know the facts, say because they believe that any black man known at

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any time to have sex-relations with a white woman, should be forthwith legally killed by electrocution or hanging, whether she consented or not.

It so happens that the charge against the Hardings is that, being colored men, they took white women as mates.

This is not a medical book, but we suggest that those who wish to get the scientific facts ask medical men who have knowledge of the negro anatomy and physiology.

At a time when one person in every seven in the population is black or colored, when they have controlled one Presidential election, the people have the right to know these facts.

There are leaders of Southern opinion who think that every person with negro blood should be placed in a part of the South where the whites shall be excluded. They would set aside certain counties for blacks alone.

It is an unhappy fact that every human being desires a mate superior to himself or herself. This is the law of ascent. Colored women desire white men; black women desire colored men. Black men are "crazy" to get white women or colored women. Therefore, we shall have lynchings, and we shall have them until the whole population is all white or all black, for race instinct is behind the sins and the lynchings. Such is the antique fear of many Southerners.

The interest of Professor Chancellor in this, the worst of all American problems, did not begin in 1920 with the Presidential campaign. It rested upon four grounds.

1. He comes upon his father's side from old Virginia slave-holding families, the Warwicks, Madisons, Marshalls, Servisses, Pogues, Boilings and Chancellors.