The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified on August 18, 1920. It reads:
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." [1]
The presidential election of November, 1920 was right around the corner; the candidates - Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox - would need to appeal to a new voting group.
The newly empowered women of the United States rightly understood that with the vote came the chance to bring about far more change. Suffrage was only the start of a wider movement toward equality and progressive success. On October 1, 1920, around 12,000 women made their way into tiny Marion, Ohio to march in a "Social Justice Day" parade, present their policy goals and demands to Mr. Harding, and listen to him give a campaign speech. The gathering of women was incredibly diverse, and the interests of African-American, immigrant, and Native-American women were among the positions represented. Among the issues most important to women's rights advocates in 1920 were maternity care, proper pay, inclusion in government employment, the eight-hour workday, and multiple actions to combat child labor and improve their welfare. [2] Social Justice Day in Marion was a chance to figure out if the Republican candidate for president would give proper attention to the needs of all Americans. What followed was an outline of an incredibly progressive and detailed action plan for promoting the general welfare of the American people [the speech can be accessed in the public domain here].
In Warren Harding's speech to the delegation of women voters from his famous front porch, he presented what amounted to a Harding-esque Great Society program. While many in his day and ever since have presented Harding as a man of pleasant but useless words and gestures, he emphasized from the start of his Social Justice Day speech that "it is our duty to consider without hypocrisy or high-sounding phrases a program of action." Moreover, he explained:
"Only by reason of the depth and permanence of such belief can be founded our grave duty and our solemn obligation to consider the subject of social justice without mere emotion, without mere inspirational words, ... but with that wisdom which is needed when the desire of our hearts and heads must be translated into terms of living action and actual achievement."
The future president then put forth his vision for how America could accomplish a dutiful program of social justice at the federal level of government but avoid the waste and excess of bureaucratization, taking the people as the source of America's true authority and expression. This aligned with his fiscally responsible message and the preference that many Republicans had for the legislative branch's supremacy over the executive. However, the actual policies that were to be outlined would be things which appealed to the historically seditious and outspoken progressive wing of the party.
There was much in the speech for the assembled women to admire. On women in the workforce, he proclaimed:
"there must be an increasing enlightenment in industry and business which will tend to break down distinctions of sex in matters of remuneration, and establish equal pay for equal work."
Later, he added that the needs of women "probably can not be understood by men alone," pointing out that women should be added to federal and local government positions on various boards when they have the same qualifications and merit as a man. Harding appealed to the variety of women gathered before him by advocating for the forgotten voices of more rural women workers:
"I am hearing constantly voices raised in behalf of the women in industry. I desire to raise mine now in behalf of the women on the farms of the United States ... There must be labor, normal labor, available to farm as well as factory."
He even called out some of the hypocrisy of government laws which, in order to help the businesses make a better profit, treated the health of animals as more important than the health of the most vulnerable humans:
"It is for us a grim jest, indeed, that the federal government is spending twice as much money for the suppression of hog cholera as it spends for its entire program for the welfare of the American child."
The way to begin an appropriate federal-level response to the injustices and inadequacies in the lives of the men, women, and children of the lower classes was, in Harding's view, the creation of a Department of Public Welfare. Having one administrative division dedicated to addressing the issues laid out by Harding was to him far better than the wasteful processes undertaken by the various parts of the government each working on small parts of the greater whole of public welfare. For a man traditionally portrayed as a tight-budget, small-government conservative, this appears confusing to us today; however, the real and nuanced Harding evidently saw some compromise between the progressive and conservative sides of various arguments and sought to find a way to increase government efficiency while at the same time technically increasing the amount of bureaucratic agencies. As long as the agency had the proper mission and organization, it would be better than the "bickerings," "wasted funds," and "overlapping" which he identified as reasons for other parts of government being unable to meet the demands of labor, women, and minorities. As is clear from his speech, Harding did not see social justice advancement and strict government management as mutually exclusive.
One interesting factor in Harding's message was his appeal to law and order. He explained his traditional constitutional understanding of the executive branch as the enforcer, not the creator, of laws. Using his law and order stance, Harding called out the lawless and usually racially motivated practice of lynching and the "failure of established authority" to do something substantial about it. Harding went on to end his Social Justice Day message with an expression of faith in the woman voter and a call for American sovereignty against the entanglement of European internationalist efforts backed by the Wilsonian Democrats.
It appears that many of America's women were impressed and hopeful about what they heard at Marion on Social Justice Day. Notable suffragette publication The Woman Citizen called positive attention to Harding's speech and voiced the opinion that women's voices were already going to be heard in government. [3] While many of the goals listed earlier are still not realized today, those that were met were pushed by the Harding administration. Some of the changes that Harding was supportive of would not pass during his time in office, but were finished in the Coolidge administration. The Harding Home suggests that Warren G. Harding was for action - not just words and pandering - when it came to issues of social justice. [4] From my research, I am inclined to agree for the most part; however, the time has not yet arrived for me to discuss the actions of Harding's presidency. If readers are interested in approaching Harding's record on social justice issues of the 1920s prior to when I tackle them in the coming months and years, I suggest looking into more of his advocacy for anti-lynching legislation and labor reforms. I hope that from the little that has been elaborated upon today you are able to see a piece of the Harding plan for domestic policy and how the Republican position of the early 1900s was compared to what it is like today. The reader may judge for themselves whether Harding's was a more optimistic and just policy than the ones advocated in modern times, but my personal opinion is that Harding's patriotism and expressions of trust in/support for the potential of the everyday person of America was far more genuine and empowering to read than what comes out of the political atmosphere of the 21st century.
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