American History - Part 161 - Harding - Teapot Dome Scandal - Business moves to the front
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-08-01

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION-- American history in VOA Special English.
The Republican Party also had a difficult time at its nominating convention. 4 men wanted to be President. The delegates voted 6 times. None of the men gained enough support. So, several party leaders met in private. They agreed that only one man-- a compromise candidate-- could win the support of the convention. He was a senator from the state of Ohio, Warren Harding.
The delegates voted 10 more times before choosing Harding as their candidate for President. For Vice President, they chose Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts.
Warren Harding had owned a newspaper in Ohio. People advised him to enter politics, because he was such a good public speaker.
During the campaign, he promised lower taxes, less immigration, and more aid to farmers. He called for "normalcy"-- a new period of peace and quiet, with few changes. That is what the voters wanted to hear in 1920. Warren Harding won the election with 68 percent of the popular vote.
In his 1st act as President, he invited people to visit the White House. He permitted them to walk in the garden. The act was a sign. The government seemed to be returning to the people.
Warren Harding is remembered mostly for 2 events. One was a successful international conference. The other was a shameful national incident.
After WWI,  Britain, Japan, and the United States expanded their navies. They built bigger and better ships. Many members of the United States Congress worried about the cost. They also worried about increased political tension in Asia. They asked President Harding to organize a conference to discuss these issues.
The conference was held in Washington in November, 1921. President Harding invited representatives from the major naval powers of the time: Britain, Japan, France, and Italy. He also invited representatives from countries with interests in Asia: China, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. He did not invite the new Soviet leaders in Russia.
Mr. Harding's Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, spoke. He offered the conference a detailed plan to reduce the size of the world's major navies.
He proposed that the world's strongest nations should stop building warships for 10 years. He also proposed that Britain, Japan, and the United States should destroy some ships to make their navies smaller immediately.
Delegates to the conference debated the plan for 3 months. Japan demanded, and won, the right to have more ships. But the final agreement was very close to the one proposed by Secretary Hughes.
The conference was not a complete success.
For example, it did not prevent countries from building some kinds of ships. These ships would prove important in the 2nd world war. Also, it did not create ways to protect China and the islands in the South Pacific Ocean from Japanese expansion. Yet the naval treaty of 1921 was the 1st in which the world's strongest countries agreed to reduce the size of their armed forces. Most people thought it was a good treaty.
The 2nd thing for which President Harding is remembered is the Teapot Dome scandal. It involved the misuse of underground oil owned by the federal government.
President Harding appointed several men of great ability to his cabinet. They included Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover.  However, some of his appointments were dishonest men. One was Interior Secretary Albert Fall. He was responsible for the Teapot Dome scandal.
Secretary Fall gave a private company the right to take oil from land owned by the federal government. In return, the company gave him money and cattle.
Some of the oil was in the western state of Wyoming. The rock mass on the surface looked like a container for making tea. So, the area was called Teapot Dome. When the Senate uncovered Secretary Fall's wrong-doing, the press quickly called the incident the Teapot Dome scandal.
The Senate investigation led to several court cases which lasted throughout the 1920s. Secretary Fall was found guilty of misusing his government position. He was sentenced to prison for one year.
President Harding did not live to see the end of the Teapot Dome incident. In the summer of 1923, he made a political trip to Alaska and western states. On the way home, he became sick while in San Francisco. He died of a heart attack.
Vice President Calvin Coolidge was in the northeastern state of Vermont when he heard that President Harding had died. Coolidge's father was a local court official there. He gave the oath of office to his son. That is how Calvin Coolidge became the 30th President of the United States.
The story of his administration will be the subject of our program next week.