ffltttnat!wiyi!i(',irf:.".»n)^;iiHitii!i!riw!htMwig!f'ii"iit?!i't:iiii!!i:.'ii-!»', LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDDDlb711S7 ^ v^\.*-v- ^ -^^ -. •^ '""^^ ^ "^ ^^' 1 ^^'(^ PRESIDENT WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING. WABREN GAMALIEL HARDIIg President of the United States A REVIEW OF FACTS COLLECTED FROM Anthropological, Historical and Political Researches -BY- William Estabrook Chancellor FORMERLY Professor of Economics, Politics and Social Science of Wooster College, Wooster, Ohio This book is sold and distributed by agents only. THE SENTINAL PRESS m -^^, I '' -- It is a biological, likewise a psychologies! fallacy to assume that human traits admit of any abrupt adapta- tion to new environments or laws of physical or mental operation. The Sentinel Press has acquired unreserved legal title to my original papers relating to my investiga- tions into the ancestry and life of President Warren G. Harding. Such references as may be made to me as the source of information concerning facts there- in should be credited as authentic. PUBLISHER'S PREFACE "The whole destiny of the world falls on President Harding's leadership; the fate of white civilization hangs in the crisis." This is the startling assertion of Sir Philip Gibbs, the 'distinguished war correspondent, in a recent analy- sis of world conditions. The very thought bids us pause. Undoubtedly the times are out of joint and a blind, selfish or false lead- ership will be calamitous indeed. It is proposed to discuss the inherited and acquired traits of President Harding and those of some of his intimate advisers that the reader may know as he should be advised as to the kind of leadership that is now directing our destiny. Our story is also as an exoneration and vindication of Professor William Esta- brook Chancellor upon whose investigations and writ- ings the facts herein stated are based as is also much of the form of statement. After reading these pages let the hesitant reader consider that selfish fear has closed the lips of many who, with Professor Chancellor, investigated and know the fadts of the President's ancestry. It should not be forgotten that the tradition charging fusion of races is over one hundred years old and that legal proof of the existence of such tradition is over seventy years old and was presented as evidence in the Butler murder case in the courts of Morrow, President Harding's native county, by one of the most distinguished Re- publican lawyers and leaders in the history of Ohio, Columbus Delano, who was Secretary of the Interior under President Grant. Living witnesses also are to be found who testify as to the tradition. But why in- 7 s deed hesitate when living witnesses will testify, as they have done, that they have heard the father of the President admit he is not of pure white blood. Most of all, let the reader remember that only scientific measurements and study of mental characteristics will be conclusive in these matters. All other testimony must be questioned in motives — of pride, prejudice or expediency. The challenge is here made to submit the Harding case to the test of exact science. The most humiliating and fearful fact confronting the reader is the attempt on the part of the friends of the President and the Republican leaders through the agents of the Postoffice Department and the personal representative of H. IvI. Daugherty to suppress the pub- lication of the facts by intimidating Professor Chancel- lor by use of an alleged warrant which he was as- sured would be quashed if ha would destroy his manu- scripts on the Harding Biography. Thus a man who has written the recognized work dealing exclusively with the lives of the Presidents, which work includes an account of them all except Woodrow Wilson, is now forbidden on principle of lese majeste from revising his work on the Lives of the Presidents. Why ? The publisher has many reliable reasons for believ- ing that the Republican leaders know that the state- ments of Professor Chancellor and others concerning the ancestry of the President are true and that the activity at suppression is due to the fear that the party will be rebuked at last for its imposition upon the American people. On March 30th, 1921, Carl D. Ruth, Washington correspondent of the Cleveland News, owned by Dan Hanna, in a message to that paper calls attention to reprisals that were to be made against Democrats for circulating scurrilous reports reflecting on the ances- 9 try of President Harding. This threat was repeated in the same paper on three or more occasions as the de- termined policy of Senator Willis, of Ohio. Evidently the plan was abandoned after wise reflec- tion for at a later date the same Carl D. Ruth sent a message advising the News readers that the whole plan had been changed. On March 9th, another Washington correspondent, Charles E. Morris, former private secretary of Gov- ernor James M. Cox, in a message to the Dayton News writes: "Since conferences here between Governor Myron T. Herrick, Howard Mannington, President Harding, former President William Howard Taft, Wal- ter F. Brown, and others, there has been an abandon- ment of the policy of making vicarious sacrifices of a few Democratic office holders in Ohio — postmasters and internal revenue collectors — who were to be given the opportunity for immediate resignation in lieu of the more embarrassing experience of being summarily fired 'for having engaged in scurrilous propaganda' during the campagn." "Requests for resignations have been made, and the requests may be met, but these particular charges are not to be pressed, since it has become known that the victims will fight back, and the fight may result in exposures decidedly embarrassing to several men now high in the councils of the party, members of the official family, personal counsellors, and even men who have in the past week figured in the gossip as recipients of the highest favors the President has to bestow. For a time it was assumed that the so-called 'offensive propaganda' had its origin in Democratic sources, but only a little investigation was necessary to show that before the general campaign it had been kindled to a glowing heat in the pre-primary campaign in Ohio by the sponsors for the candidacy of General 10 Leonard Wood, and that prior to that it had been agitated by men who for various reasons opposed Mr. Harding in the primary, and who now are accepted as his closest poh'tical friends." * * * "President Harding himself is disposed to forgive and forget and has frankly expressed his desire to let the animosities of campaign end with the contest. It is said that Judge Taft, Myron T. Herrick, Walter F. Brown, Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and Howard Mannington counsel this course." THE EDITOR. TABLE OF CONTENTS 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 11 12 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 ulti- mate history will regret. FIRST, he has broken the heart of the world by set- ting 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 un- derstand 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 Re- publicans that Harding has negro blood and would re- member 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 15 16 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 let- ters to societies and to individuals that the Presidency has fallen into ignorant hands, that he cannot write English that is understandable, that the American poli- tical 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 clut- ter of unrelated and discordant minds, such as can- not be brought together into any system of states- manship. 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 leader- ship 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 blun- dering. This involved permanent alienation from Sen- ator 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 17 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 Judge- ships. 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 them- selves, 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 de- sire 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 18 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 Attor- ney 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. Har- vey is the man who printed in his WEEKLY a sacri- legious 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. Cris- singer, 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 ex- pert. 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 tem- poral 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. 19 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? Be- cause 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 grand- father 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 Uni- versity, and spent a year in Europe. He took more prizes than any other man ever graduated from Am- herst in the 101 years of its history to date, and was class orator. He was also President of the College Re- publican Club. He followed Roosevelt out of the Re- publican party in 1912, but became a Democrat then. He is the author of 38 different books, four on educa- tion, 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 Wash- ington 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 29 21 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 dur- ing the war. So impartial and fair was he in reputa- tion 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 differ- ent 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 indi- vidual 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 con- sidered 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 is- 22 23 sue ; 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 peo- ple 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 sup- ported 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 hap- pens 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 Esta- brook Chancellor was the author of these slips. William Chancellor was a Republican and trying to help Hard- ing. First the Republicans sent telegrams to Professor 24 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 Pro- fessor Chancellor either taught the summer classes or gave teacher's institute lectures or taught in the regu- lar 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 pre- pared an attack upon Professor Chancellor and filed an indemnity bond of $500,000 with the newspaper as- sociation 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 cer- tified 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 Chancel- lor, when in Washington by order of the President, Theodore Roosevelt, had insulted by removing his mis- tress 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, Pro- fessor Chancellor had been ousted from his chair by the College Trustees for libelling Warren Harding; 25 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 Presi- dents) . 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 ab- solutely refused to make. The interview lasted fifteen minutes. In the course of these fifteen minutes, Professor Chancellor had perhaps three minutes to give his de- nial. He offered to prove that only an illiterate negro 26 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 re- fused, 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 mil- lionaire worships when at home. He was chaplain of the Republican National Con- tion. What was the agreement between the Professors and the Trustees ? 27 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 dol- lars 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 fol- lows, 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 Presi- dent of the College. 3. That he had written letters to others about Hard- ing. 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 ad- mitted 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 Trus- tees 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. 28 There were defenses to each of these propositions, but they availed nothing except to hold five of the fif- teen 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 dis- appointed that such a choice has been made; but it 2^ 80 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 un- desirable, 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 un- offending 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 81 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 an- other 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 vir- tuous 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 ^2 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 con- trolled 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 de- sires 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. There- fore, 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 Vir- ginia slave-holding families, the Warwicks, Madisons, Marshalls, Servisses, Pogues, Boilings and Chancellors. 2. He studied race anthropology in Europe, and has made many field studies in this country. 33 3. He was school superintendent in Washington, having there in the negro department of the schools 19,000 colored children, 670 colored teachers, and 260 colored engineers and janitors. 4, He has been a college teacher and writer upon these matters for many years. When he heard that Harding had negro blood it aroused his established scientific interest. There appears to be easily separable in the United States among the several hundred thousand negroes of pure blood — about one-sixteenth of them all — no less than fourteen negro "races," using the word in the ethnological sense, so Professor Chancellor has written to his friends. There are also classed among the negroes, falsely, groups of Malays, Berbers, Arabs and Moors. Even pure Indians have been so grouped by action of di- visive forces of public opinion and of social taboo. These so-called negroes, fourteen races in all, are Senegambians, Hottentots, Mosambiquians, Pigmies, Sudanese, Kaffirs, Zulus, Gold Coast, Plateau, Ethio- pians, Abyssinians, Congoese, Senegalians, and domesticated negroes who for many centuries have been made the slaves of Moors and urbanized. The differences between these various races of negroes are as great as those between the white races of Europe, in culture and even in external appearance; but they have one trait in common — long, naiTOw heads. This has been discussed elsewhere. To say that Warren Harding has negro blood is not to assert that his ancestry is from the Senegambian negroes, or from plantation field hands enslaved to white masters. Northern people who do not know many negroes, have a concept of the negro ; according to this concept, he is kinky-haired, pot-bellied, black as coal, with big 84 brown eyes, a prognatious jaw, flat feet, and long arms and legs, the knees not standing straight. There may be a few such negroes in the United States, but they are very few. Were the question about Harding in this form: "Did his family rear him with the notion that he was a colored boy to be a colored man?" there could be in the light and truth of the opinion of the neighbors, a thousand of them in Little Africa, meaning the three counties, Crawford, Morrow and Marion, where the thousands of Hardings live, just one answer, "Yes!" Doctor George Tryon (Tyrone) Harding, father of Warren, never would have considered himself any- thing but a colored man until his death if Warren had not married the rich banker's daughter. And Warren with his brothers and sisters would have all so re- garded themselves. They would have gone back and forth to Blooming Grove and have shared the views of their colored kinsmen, who are half of the population. But fate had something else in store. It had in store the effort of George T. Harding and of his chil- dren to defeat the truth of social opinion. But again the question about Harding is not whether or not he was reared as a colored boy with the training and notions of colored people; he has escaped that social classification at last though not without having left some bitter enemies in Marion, where the better element never yet has had him in their homes. Senator or President, though he be, he will never again live in Marion. When he becomes ex- President, he will go to some city where his past will be ignored. The actual question is, in the physical sense, has Warren any negro blood? If so, what is the line of proof ? Socially, a man is what his neighbors report. He 35 has to take their classification or get out from among them. When they call him a negro, it does no good to sue them for slander ; they still think so. In September and October, when Professor Chancel- lor and newspaper correspondents and others by scores went to Blooming Grove, New Caledonia, Iberia and Steam Corners, no one of them ever found one man or woman who denied that the Hardings were anything but colored people. The Hardings themselves agreed that they were so called by everyone. Of course, after the tremendous furor over the mat- ter, and especially after Professor Chancellor was ousted from his position and after the rich Republi- cans had gone among them with threats and with money, the neighbors became silent — naturally. Many ignorant persons now believe that President Harding could put them in jail for telling the truth about him, and so he could with Daugherty and the secret service at his call. But once that Harding ceases to be President, what will then happen? Give the neighborhood time to recover itself. Espe- cally bitter are the darker negroes whom the Republi- cans have failed to reward as promised. There will be scores to settle that will make the old feud — as Hard- ing calls it — mild indeed. For Warren Harding himself says that "The peo- ple have been calling his family and kin negroes for eighty years." This was given out twice in a long in- terview. Curious how the falsehood has lasted ; but Harding does not dare to pronounce it a lie ; he says that people have a right to their opinions and that he is sorry about their opinion. Thousands of telegrams were sent to him from all parts of the country asking him to deny the truth about 36 his ancestry; but he never has yet said that he has no negro blood. He deplores the discussion of the subject. Is he afraid of the ghosts of his negro ancestors? No man should ever deny his ancestors. That is like denying God Himself. No man should be ashamed of his forefathers. Some of them, perhaps a man who was hanged, may have transmitted to him some trait of exceeding value in his own life. It is easy to see that at least a few of the traits of Warren that have enabled him to "succeed" so well are negro traits. What people call one does not make it so. All Blooming Grove may be wrong on Warren and his father, George T. Harding, and his grandfather, Charles A. Harding, and his great-grandfather, George T, Harding I, and the second wife, Elizabeth Madison, so-called, who was black. She was Warren's great- grandmother. No Harding descended from this Elizabeth has ever had the courage to tell who her parents were. No pic- ture of her is acknowledged to exist. Yet this is the fact: George Tryon, or Tyrone, Harding born June 5, 1790. Married Ann Roberts, 1812. Ann died in 1815. Married Elizabeth Madsion, 1816. Elizabeth died Jan. 6, 1869. The children were Huldah and Phoeba Ann. The children of Elizabeth were Oliver Perry, Charles Amos (or Alexander), Miranda. No persons with ears can doubt for one moment what Elizabeth was; she is well remembered by eight old persons still living as late as October, 1920, in Blooming Grove and near by. One and all say that Elizabeth was black. One woman, past ninety, said that "she had eyes black as night." She was so dark 87 that she frightened white children of her neighbors. Possibly se was a Moor? A Blackmoor? Or a very- dark Scottish woman, say of the black Picts? Country neighbors are not experts in such matters. Her son, the grandfather of Warren, lived till past 1880; he also is well remembered and there are pictures enough of him. He had curly, kinky hair, and a swart complexion, and a wide, big body, and great nostrils. Also, he left a lot of children. Professor Chancellor offered to take the Dean of the College of Wooster, at his own expense, to Bloom- ing Grove and show these brothers, sisters and cousins bom of Charles A. Harding and of his brother, Oliver Perry Harding, to the Dean in order to show the living proofs. But the Dean preferred to publish his state- ment that he had circulated nothing on the subject and let the country believe that Chancellor had "retracted" what he denied having done. Dean Elias Compton teaches ethics in the college, and was Dean then. Exigencies of politics require flexible ethics. There are five of these descendants of Elizabeth in Blooming Grove and nearby. One of them is Mrs. J. C. She is a fine old dark colored woman, who never has offended any one; she is a good woman. She allowed Professor Chancellor to take six pictures of herself, for which courtesy he has refrained from printing them. She has a large heavy body, big brown eyes, very dark skin, and is typical mulatto. She had her pictures taken with her Bible under her arm, and that warded off evil spirits. She is not a Moor, or an Arab; she is a dear old colored mammy, very dark. In a letter to one of his friends. Professor Chancel- lor said that he could not bring himself to using those pictures, because she was so much like the old colored 88 \voman who had always lived in his family, helping bring up the children. One preacher asked him why he objected to having a colored President. "Do not these colored people go to Heaven?" He replied: "No doubt of it; but what has that to do with their intellectual fitness to bear sons to go to the White House? Not every Saint is fit to rule a nation." There are four others, all of them darkies. Their names, like hers, might be given, but they live in Blooming Grove and Gallon and can be seen at any time. One of them, smaller, is equally dark. All of them are plainly negro. Such are the nearest living relatives of Warren Harding in that generation. Let us proceed to the court records. In 1849 one David Butler killed Amos Smith in this manner. Butler and Smith were blacksmith partners at Blooming Grove. Butler's wife was a Harding woman. She owed some money to Smith's wife — fifty cents. Like negro women, she was thriftless. One afternoon as they were closing the shop. Smith asked Butler to ask his wife to pay the money to Mrs. Smith. Butler replied that his wife denied that she owed any money to Mrs. Smith. Thereupon Smith told Butler that he had a nigger for a wife. Butler replied by throwing a piece of iron at Smith — a piece about an inch square and ten inches long. This iron hit Smith on the side of his head, and down he went. Butler immediately ran to him and picked him up and carried him into a house nearby. They sent for a doctor who treated the skull frac- ture. A few days later fever developed and the doctor bled him, the same doctor who afterwards taught 89 George Tryon Harding all the medicine he ever knew. A fortnight later Smith died. In 1850 the grand jury of Morrow county, which had just been created out of Crawford county in the wilderness, indicted Butler for manslaughter, and he was tried. The defense was: 1. He was justified in killing Smith because his wife was not a negro woman. 2. Smith died of malpractice. 3. He had no malice, because he immediately tried to re^''"^^ Smith. It was only a hot instant of wrath betv een friends. He was a man of good character. The prosecuting attorney was a famous lawyer, namx ;d Columbus Delano. We have sent men to a dozen statss to find the copious notes that Delano kept of this trial. We saw at Mt. Gilead the original brief records of the indictment and steps in the course of the trial which was in the court seven years. In the midst of the search of this record the investigator was con- fronted by a low-browed, square- jawed heckler whose only business apparently was to maintain the curtain of darkness over the skeletons of family history just as the same investigator found another busy guardian had extracted the pardon papers in the same Butler case from the files at the State House at Columbus, but fortunately too late to prevent photographic copies being made of the papers by the man who beat the vandal on the job. There was intense neighborhood feeling aroused, mostly against Butler. On this the Hardings countered as best they could. The jury found: 1. That it was not slander to call Mrs. Butler a negro, since the Hardings were always so called. But even if untrue it was no justification for the act. 40 2. That Smith died of the fracture, not of the bleed- ing by the doctor. 3. That he was of good character and recom- mended mercy. Butler was sentenced to the penetentiary for five years. After two years he was pnrdoned by the Governor on a petition presented by the Harding relatives. Two other killings have been charged to the same feud. The country people decline to take the Hardings as all-white. When they try to escape from this social classification, quarrels result. As we have shown elsewhere, contrary to the sup- position of our kind New England and other far-away Northern friends, it is NOT the presumption in Bloom- ing Grove that every child is white until the opposite is proven. Blooming Grove is a Fugitive Slave district. More than half the people have colored blood. The pre- sumption is that there is colored blood somewhere in the ancestry. This is not charged as a crime, but as a fact. There is nothing "bar sinister" about it. Warren Harding is not a white man's illegitimate son nor was his father before him. We are not engaged in slander and libel but in science. If Warren Harding turns out "to be the best Presi- dent since Lincoln, engaged skilfully in cleaning up the awfulness left by the Democrats and by the miserable internationalist and invalid Woodrow Wilson," as the Republicans say, then we should, all of us, seek to marry our sons to colored girls; though, of course, not our girls to colored men. The Dickersons have told us they were horribly shocked at what their daughter did. Nevertheless, if Warren proves to be a very great man, we may have to come to just this. When the report M^ent out through the country that Warren Harding has negro blood, the city editor of the , , - ^^ Republican POST INTELLIGENCER turned to his most experienced of reporters and said, "There is a niece of Warren Harding living here in Seattle: I don't know who she is or where she lives; take the photog- rapher and find her ; we will print her picture and show up the 'bughouse' professor out there in Ohio." The city editor did not know that his information came from William Chancellor, colored, aged sixty-five, a Republican trying to get votes for his friend. It took the reporter two days to find the woman. He brought back the photographer and had the pic- tures developed, but he refused to write any story, and the city editor was wroth within him. In an hour or so the developed plates came down from the sky room. The city editor looked at them and he told the vet- eran reporter this: "That college professor out in Ohio is not so bughouse after all." And the veteran reporter told this to the people of Seattle after the election ! But the people have not yet seen the pictures of the niece of Warren. When Professor Chancellor was city school super- intendent of Washington, Senator Joseph B. Foraker took very great interest in the colored people. He sent a letter of introduction for a woman to Professor Chan- cellor asking the appointment of the woman to a posi- tion in the schools, saying that she was a quadroon and desired to go into the colored schools. She was a sister of Warren Harding. Later she became a policewoman in Washington, where she served until Warren was chosen President. In October, 1920, she was living in a colored board- ing house with a colored landlady. She is now in the soldiers' reconstruction work, and passes for white ; that is, she tries to do so. Would a white man allow a sister to be a police- 42 woman in Washington when he was United States Senator? We think not. Warren allowed his sister to do this dangerous and vile work — in Washington, one of the foulest cities on earth in sex-morals. This sister is a far abler and better person morally than her brother in the White House. We are not making war on women ; if we were, we could tell much more. It is, however, the black sheep of this family who has risen to the top, where Daugherty can be regent over him and President in fact The husband of this sister of Warren's has never supported her, and told various persons that there were obvious reasons why he desired no children by her; they are childless by intention, he says. They do not keep house together as he is a white man, of French descent, the reasons are obvious enough. But he is low enough himself morally to bask in the sunshine of the favor of the President and get money through him. It is painful to observe that Warren Harding and the Duchess do not invite these neighbor kinsfolk to the White House and introduce them to their friends. The masquerader there is playing a very difficult role. Warren Harding has alive now one father, ONE BROTHER, SIX SISTERS, and some thousand other kinsfolk descended from his own great-grandfather, Amos Harding, the man who had the two women at the same time bearing him children. Why are they not often, many of them at a time, in the White House? Several of them are very rich. One is a Chicago millionaire, C. E. Harding. Another has a fine store in Salt Lake City. His own brother is a physician in Columbus, Ohio. Are they ashamed of him, or is he ashamed of 43 them; or are they all afraid of the CUMULATIVE EVIDENCE when viewed together? On Thanksgiving D?y, 1920, after election, Warren gave a dinner party to six men belonging to the Re- publican Associated Press. No women were present except the "Duchess." But old George Tryon Harding sat alone in a restaurant in a town famous among traveling men for its lov/-class eating places, and ate his dinner alone, the father of the President-elect. Was this the way a white man would have treated his di- vorced father, living in comparative need? Why are these thousand kinsfolk alienated from this man in the White House ? Would the kinsfolk of a white man there be so afraid to exhibit their interest in him? When William Henry Harrison was President, thirty-five of his kinfolk lived with him in the White House. Zachary Taylor filled it with sons, daughters, cousins, aunts. Jefferson made it a boarding house for kin and friends — free board. Roosevelt kept a lot of guests going and coming, proud to have them all. But there is a pall upon the White House now ; it is not the pall of negro blood, but something worse ; it is the pall of fear of exposure. Open, frank, honest ad- mission long ago would have cleared the atmsophere; but Warren and Fall and Daugherty and the Duchess ?nd Hays must play the game as it is. They dealt themselves this hand. CHAPTER V 'HE LOOKS LIKE A PRESIDENT' When Warren Gamaliel Bancroft Harding — for such is his name, if it is not really Warren Gamaliel Winni- peg Bancroft Harding, as his father first said in the Presidential campaign — first came before the country as the Republican candidate, the Republican proponents of this singular human phenomenon, a mestizo in American big politics, started a BATTLE CRY "Warren looks like a President." This did catch the people. What is it to "look like a President?" There were the big men physically, viz.: Weight Height Party George Washington 200 6 ft. 2 in. None Thomas Jefferson 170 6 ft. 1 in. Democrat William Henry Harrison _..170 6 ft. 2 in. Whig Zachary Taylor 225 6 ft. in. Democrat James Buchanan 180 6 ft. in. Democrat Millard Fillmore 200 6 ft. 4 in. Democrat Abraham Lincoln 165 6 ft. 4 in. Republican Grover Cleveland 275 6 ft. in. Democrat William Howard Taft 325 6 ft. 2 in. Republican Woodrow Wilson 180 6 ft. 1 in. Democrat It does not appear that there has been any monopoly of big men, physically considered, by the Whig-Republicans. Nor does it appear that only big men have made good Presidents. The following were relatively small men, viz.: 44 45 Madison, Jackson, Van Buren, B. Harrison, McKin- ley. Roosevelt was a heavy man but only 5 feet 9 inches in stature. He weighed 225 pounds most of the time he was President, but most of his life he was un- der 200 pounds. Warren Harding is 6 feet tall and weighs over 200 pounds. He has a large face and long narrow head : no other President looked like him. He has, it is said, dignity. So had, in a very marked degree, James Buchanan. Is the requisite posture, tall, upstanding, eyes to the front, searching, self-reliant pose? Warren has it not. He does not stand well. He never looks anyone in the eye. It is said by his admirers that he has "a beetling, craggy brow v/ith deep-set eyes." Then he is compared with Black Dan Webster. But Black Dan had eyes on fire, black and alive, very wonderful eyes. He made all his great speeches without notes. He had the divine fire, no doubt. Put the two heads side by side in the front and sideways both, and see not resemblance, but the eternal differences. Black Dan was a Black Pict, straight from the purest blood of Scotland, and had brains that matched. The obscure gray eyes of Warren Harding contradict the craggy brow. Still people keep his face on view in their parlor windows even now ; he saved the Republican party from defeat ; he kept it to- gether. The party was more important than the nation and the world. Warren Harding is big; he is wide with a curved back; and with long prehensile weak hands but with heavy arms. His underpinning is frail relatively. He has a posture exactly the opposite of that of a well- trained soldier. Besides John J. Pershing, who is every inch a soldier, or Leonard Wood, he is a slouching civilian. 46 This brings up the question that was raised im- mediately after his election by his announcement in the press that he had ordered many suitable garments for his work as President. Afterwards he denied that he had ordered so many ; the managers told him to do this. He had an idea that clothing makes a difference in Presidents. George Washington loved good clothes. But Abra- ham Lincoln did not. Washington was born to good clothes. Theodore Roosevelt, who was by far the rich- est of the Presidents, had a great variety of attire, but he preferred his outing clothes to any other, and old clohes at that. Jackson dressed well when on parade — otherwise he dressed in the plainest way — in old clothes. Jefferson had no interest at all in clothes. The man who thinks first of how to dress in a new office has something the matter with his mind. He sees the externalities of his functions. Arthur was af- flicted with a passion for good clothes. So was Kaiser Wilhelm II. Beginning at fifty-two years of age in order to fight arterio-sclerosis by advice of sanitarium physicians, Warren Harding took up golf ; he can make a very long drive. His score being usually about 95, In other words, he is not a natural athlete ; he does not ride horses, though brought up in the country ; he does not swim or play tennis ; or take long walks. He does not dance; he never has boxed or wrestled; he did not play baseball or football; of course, he never had the athletic training of college. Like every other man, he is entitled to every ounce of credit that he can weigh in. What is this ? Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson drank no alcoholic stim- ulants and smoked and chew no tobacco. McKinley smoked tobacco. Harding uses tobacco in every form, 47 including even cigarettes, and, of course, he drinks. The Anti-Cigarette League published a cartoon showing him caught in eight different poses smoking cigarettes. Since that time he has been careful not to be snapped with even a cigar in his mouth. He is very shrewd in such matters. Experts in heredity have discovered a very import- ant law ; that a hybrid tends to slough off as he grows older the traits of the shorter-lived races that have en- tered into his making. This law is working for Warren- The negro is a short-lived race. That blood is dying in him. The question is whether if he lives to be a hun- dred years old, his Dutch or his Indian ancestry will win the mastery ; both races are long-lived. To those who survive him the matter is worth following up. The Indian has the trait of seeming to think hard for a long, long time ; he requires a very long time to "make up his mind." His decisions in ages past have generally been far from wise ; but he has acquired the reputation for being very wise all the same. Truth is that there is no rule about this matter; some men decide quickly, and are geniuses because they decide so many issues well. Few Indans have shown genius. The Dutch have taken much time to decide and have generally decided wisely; but few Dutchmen are geniuses. The long thinker is usually dull and stupid. If while he is thinking, he is getting new facts, then he does well to take time. Otherwise, long deliberation is stupidity or senility. Before he became President, even in the campaign, in order to get votes, but sincerely, he told everyone that he intended to "keep the doors of the White House open for anyone to come and see him ;" this has a beau- tiful sound. But no sooner had he come to the White House than like every olher man since Jefferson he 48 ■' found that the American people are too many for one man. He has had to make appointments and not many a day at that. He spoke derisively of the plan of Woodrow Wilson before his illness to allot two hours a day to callers, and just so many minutes to each caller, never over fifteen. On this basis he saw ten or twenty a day. But why not keep the doors of the executive offices always open? Totally inexperienced in such executive work, never having managed even "THE STAR," Warren Harding was unaware that a President has from 300 to 1000 pieces of mail each day; that he is always getting resignations and making appointments to office; that he must read and sign no end of documents of all kinds. The clerical work is enormous. Even in his convalescence, Woodrow Wilson spent four hours a day in merely signing necessary state papers, and did other work a few minutes at a time. Thanks to his wife and good medical care, he survived. There is no way of turning this work off upon the Cabinet Secretaries; they are clerks by law and the President is solely responsible. The Controller of the Treasury must see the name of the President himself upon thousands of documents before he allows the Treasury to make any payment. It will take a change in the Constitution itself to change this. But what is the personality of the President? Why is it that the Republicans are sendng out so many "pen pictures" of the man? When the Wayne County dele- gation of Republicans — Ohio — 300 strong, came back from Marion in the Presidential campaign, they were strangely silent. The people asked them to tell what Warren was like and they flunked out on this ques- tion. What is he like? In his early days he applied for admission to a cer- tain secret society ; and he failed in three lodges. Then 49 he was admitted to one for one degree only. He was blocked for all others until after he was elected Presi- dent. What is the personality of such a man ? The many "pen portraits" are due to the fact that he is an enigma to all those who do not understand a very simple fact ; a mirror flat in the sunlight reflects all the sky and clouds ; and it very closely resembles deep blue water. Jump in and what happens? This is the trouble with Warren. A very great man, a candidate against him for the Republican nomination, went from New York to see him in an interview ; after the interview he had nothing to say about Warren. He was baffled, as every other intelligent man is. Warren Harding has no progi'am ; he has no depth ; he reflects what is near him that appeals to a very few primitive instincts. He is genial enough; and, in a light way, affable; but how can a man who has never studied American history or government beyond the elementary school books converse on politics and juris- prudence and economics with a University President? He can seem to listen. As his pastor, Reverend Doctor McAfee, says in an interview in the New York World, he is an "eloquent listener." Before proceeding, we have a word to say about this same C. F. McAfee. He is a Baptist who went to Marion to the church where Harding goes occasionally, just five years ago ; that is, in 1913, when Harding was United States Senator. Being a preacher, he looks professionally for the good in men, and for nothing else. He knows nothing of the past of this man. He has no familiarity with his Washington life. Because Warren pays his church dues, or rather Mrs. Warren, he regards him as a useful church member, though ad- mitting that he is never at prayer meeting, has no Bible class, and makes no personal contribution to the Christian World, Warren is a devout Christian, and 50 three daj^s afterwards he had a stroke of paralysis. This is not cause-and-effect, but it shows the mental and physical instability of the man who is cited as authoritj^ for the fine Christianity of Warren Harding-. Of course, being a Baptist, he wished Warren to win. Even preachers are human. But to go back to the question. It is "incredible" that a man who has so little mental life should have been Lieutenant Governor and United States Senator. Yet exactly this has happened. Those who are familiar with colleges knovv^ that the college president is often a distinctly confused and ignorant man ; that is what the trustees desire in order to manage the college through a dummy. It even happens in business that a big man in the concern is confused and ignorant. Warren Harding is very ignorant. He has asked many times — What is an association of nations? He knows no geography outside of the United States, and he knows this but little, as is shown by his going to Point Isabel in P'ebruary. He knows no Latin and no foreign language; he knows only English words, and not even English gram- mar and rhetoric. He did nothing in business as an accountant. But a man may be both ignorant and confused and at the same time shrewd according to his ov^^n lights. When he was nominated so suddenly, he turned to his advisers and asked, "Is not this too premtiture?" He knew that the convention had been brought up with money, and he was afraid that Hiram Johnson, Wood and Lowden would "blow up" on him, as they did not. Only Nicholas Murray Butler "blew up," and he apologized in order to save his Presidency of Columbia University. Hunger, lust, vanity — these are the dominant in- stincts, together with a gaming passion, a love of play- 51 ing for good stakes. He is a born adventurer ; does this show the truth of the story of the neighbors that his great-grandfather, Amos Harding, was a pirate? Warren is no open fighter; he prefers to get at the backs of men, as the RepubHcan Convention proved. We are very plain and direct here. There have been several great public political crimes by great parties in the history of the United States, backed apparently by the people. One was the Mexican War. Another was the P^'ugitive Slave Act, together with the infamous Dred Scott Decision which made Abra- ham Lincoln President, because they permitted free speech in those days and lese majeste did not rule as it does today in our cowardly times. Stealing the Presi- dency from Tilden was a crime in 1876-7. But a far greater political crime, organized by a great party, was the rejection of peace for the world and the setting back of the clock of time for all hu- manity a thousand years. The injury for the present is irreparable. Therefore, bad as Polk was, bad as Taney and Buchanan were, politically bad as Hayes was, this Warren Harding will go down into history, the history of the world, as still worse. Perhaps a Harriet Eeecher Stone and an Abraham Lincoln will arise to show the whole deviltry up. The private morals of Polk and Buchanan and Hayes were spotless ; and the only sin of Taney was that he had defended many smugglers of slaves when a young lawyer. Even if the private morals had been always what his pastor says he believes they have been, this would not save him from the condemna- tion of the just. Pilate appears to have been a very good man in his private morals. Big, lazy, slouching, confused, ignorant, affable, 52 yellow and cringing like a negro butler to the great, such is the man who has been used by Lodge, Smoot, Penrose, Knox, Harvey, Daugherty, to ruin Woodrow Wilson for the time being and to crash the hopes of mankind for world peace. CHAPTER VI THE PLUTOCRACY It was in the days of President William McKinley that Americans began to see the conversion of the American social order into a plutocracy, and when Theodore Roosevelt came down from Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks to succeed him after his death at the hands of a foreign-born and foreign-reared anarchist, the first question that was asked of him was what would be his disposition toward this developing plu- tocracy. What he said was very different from what he did — for which the would-be plutocrats never for- gave him ; but bided their time and waited, and plotted, until they made an election to order in 1920, of which we have spoken fully elsewhere. But what is the plutocracy? It certainly is not capitalism, which is a very good economic scheme. Capitalism is a plan by which, through the organ- ization of corporations, all, even those with but small savings, may contribute to the permanent tools of pro- duction — buildings, lands, machinery, materials, work- ing funds, credits. Plutocracy could exist even without corporations, through the very admirable system of private property personally owned with full liabilities for every debt against every partner. Nevertheless, corporate prop- erty lends itself easily to the schemes of plutocracy. Far back in the nineteenth century, when Governor of the State of New York, Silas Wright, who had been a United States Senator, and who was the actual 68 54 author of the famous Wilmot Proviso against slavery in the free States, which was directed against the Fugi- tive Slave Act, but destroyed by the Dred Scott De- cision in 1857, prophesied that corporate property would become a curse to America. This is why he was impeached by his Legislature and removed from the Governship. Unhappily he died in the very year when the common people were organizing to secure for him the nomination of the Whigs to the Presidency, The great slaveholders were a plutocracy that held all the South and the great Atlantic Coast cities, includ- ing New York. All together the slaveholders had about one billion dollars worth of domestic chattels in human form, but more or less off color frm Caucasian, though many of them had the best white blood of the South, a condition due rather to the race customs of the primitive negroes than to the advances of the younger white men. In Africa, as in Tahiti today, it is the cus- tom of the girls to be promiscuous until after marriage. But small as a billion dollars looks to Americans now when single corporations are said to have that much and more of property, commercially valued, it M'as fully one-tenth of all the wealth of America prior to the Civil War. A plutocracy does not necessarily own all the prop- erty of a people. It needs only to own the public press, the pulpit, the larger banks, and the larger business enterprises ; thereby it owns the government. Such was the power of the slavery plutocracy that in 1862 the F)oard of Aldermen of New York City voted to form the State of Tri-Insulae in order to secede from the Union and to help the South overseas and by resist- ing he draft. The end of the war broke that plutocracy and started new wealth, especially in great railroads to the Pacific. 55 Oil, steel, railroads and banks are now the main interests of the plutocracy that began to form in the days of McKinley when Hanna was the real President. Then we called them "trusts" and "syndicates" and "pools." By no means all the rich are "plutocrats," and not all the plutocrats are very rich. Plutocracy is a sys- tem. Henry Ford is not a plutocrat, though undoubt- edly one of the richest men in America, Truman H. Newberry, who ran against him and bought the elec- tion to the Senate and thereby defeated the League of Nations Covenant, is but a small multi-millionaire com- pared with Ford. But Newberry belongs to the plutocracy and Ford fights against it. The core of the plutocracy, of course, consists of men and of the estates of men of very great wealth. In order to avoid being misunderstood, we name a few of the very rich men and families that belong to the plutocracy : The Rocke- fellers, George H. Baker, the Guggenheims, Judge Gary, the Noyeses, of Washington. Vast as is the wealth of the Morgan bankers, the firm does not belong to the plutocracy for the sufficient reason that it realizes the fallacy of the proposition ; plutocracy in a free land under Magna Carta and the Federal Constitution, is certain to invite its own ruin. There are said to be now in this land seven men or estates worth over $100,000,000 each ; and 37,000 mil- lionaires. When we have real publicity, we shall learn from the income tax reports just who these million- aires are. But it is safe to say that not one-half of them belong to or care anything about the plans of the plutocracy other than to prevent dog eating dog and being themselves devoured by yet richer men. The plutocracy as a developed system now owns control of the major enterprises in — 1. Steam railroads. 66 2. Iron and steel. 3. Coal and oil. 4. Newspapers, magazines and books. 5. Meats. 6. Grain elevators. 7. Pulp and paper. 8. Money and banks, 9. The national government and many state and city governments. 10. The real estate of several great and many small cities. 11. National and city debts. 12. Many churches, but not all, nor half. 13. Many colleges and universities, but not all. 14. Wholesale trade. 15. Foreign trade. 16. Rubber. 17. Lumber. It desires to own these enterprises clean through, and all others also. It desires to reduce the ordinary man to being an animal interested only in space and things and what and how, while it owns time and cause and why — that is, the future. It wishes to put all wage-earners where the colored slaves were in 1860, and to treat all poor men not on wage-payrolls as "poor white trash." It hates trade unions, closed shops, col- lective bargaining, independent livelihoods, including small tradespeople. The plutocracy is smart enough to spread broadcast such false ideas as these, viz. : 1. Paper money is just as good as gold. How can the people know? They never see gold any more. 2. The man who works hard can make a fortune and die rich. Give us all you've got. This is too ob- vious a lie to be worth answering. 3. Saving money is the highway to success. This ' 57 draws the herring over the trail of the men who grew very rich in totally different ways from savings their wages. The poor have too many children. This is wicked. 5. In the next world God will right the wrongs of this one. Endure for this life — endure us. 6. Reformers are all weak-minded. 7. A bank account is a man's best friend. In view of the ease with which a rich man can seize legally the bank account of a poorer enemy, this is fraud. God, who is Right, is a man's only worthwhile friend. 8. Own your own home, and slave for us, because it will be hard for you to sell it when out of work and anxious to get to some other employers. 9. It is a good thing for a great nation to have a great national debt; it makes the government stable, and develops a class opposed to revolutions. 10. It is unsafe for the people to pick their own rulers; they do not know how to judge men; let us hand-pick them. Such are the ideas that the plutocracy is forever having reiterated in its own papers and by its own preachers. In your own town, no matter where that town is, you will certainly see the evidences of encroachments of the plutocracy. It destroyed Tom Johnson in Cleve- land and made Myron T. Herrick and Mark Hanna be- fore him. It fought James M. Cox in Dayton in 1920. It smashed Augustus F. Heinze in Montana and New York. It is after Henry Ford in the motor car busi- ness, of which it controls perhaps one-third, including General Motors. In some lines, the plutocracy is having poor going; it cannot master the farm ownership and operation problems yet, nor does it have good success in the re- tail trades. 58 It does not own over one-third of the tobacco busi- ness. It is after the motion picture industry, but is making a poor showing as yet. It has done but little in gold and silver, though it owns copper mining. It has failed in every fishery corporation scheme, it has been buncoed by its own plans for the ownership of sea- transportation and makes generally but poor success in electric railways. It has failed to secure the California citrus fruits lands. If America has actually the value of sixty billions of gold dollars in business of all kinds — measured by the gold standard, not by this pseudo-money of paper and ink — the plutocracy may have already the control of one-fourth and power in another fourth. America may be worth in gold in all §150,000,000,000; but even now, most of this is free from the plutocracy. What the plutocrats wish is all of it. What are the keys to the position of the plutocracy ? 1. The Associated Press — news service carefully edited to help the plutocrats. 2. The U. S. Steel Corporation — our biggest busi- ness with almost two billions of assets in the watered currency of today. 3. The Standard Oil interest — thirty-two compan- ies all owned by the same rich men. These spread into Mexico and Canada, into Mesopotania and China, and all over the earth. 4. Certain great banks, including the National City Bank of New York, the Continental and Commercial National Bank of Chicago, the Guaranty Trust Com- pany of New York, the Mellon National Bank of Pitts- burgh. 5. The Ncvn^ York Central Railroad, the Reading, etc. (Not so much the Pennsylvania, which has 110,000 different stockholders). 59 6. Certain Protestant Churches and the Mormon Church. 7. Certain organs of opinion, conspicuously the Wall treet Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Saturday Evening Post, the Philadelphia Ledger, Washington Post, the New York Herald, the Cleveland News, the American Magazine. 8. The Republican party. Anyone who keeps one's eyes on these will know the plans and intentions of the plutocracy. What does the plutocracy desire now ? The right so as to blacklist any man needing em- ployment or credit in business that he will be unable to make a living under the Stars and Stripes. It is to be made free of libel to represent as dishonest, or in- subordinate, or incompetent, or insane any man who resents his treatment anywhere by any employer. The blacklist is to be universal. Private personal bargaining with every employer; as in one great business where the employment man- ager refuses to talk with any two men at any one time I Hire-and-fire at their own will. Unlimited paper "money," inflated credits, inflated prices. - Liquidated wages — that is, deflated wages. A subsidized merchant marine. A higher protective tariff, always higher and higher. Taxation on the poor; exemption for the rich. Wars and munitions for war with a great govern- ment market, and with voluntary enlistments for the rich. All higher teachers of "learning" to be Republicans. No Democratic, Socialist, or reform magazines or papers of any kind ; as a step thereto second-class mail- ing privileges only for the Republican papers. 60 Suppression of mail service of the first-class to all persons not recommended by the Republican National Committee as safe. The present national debt to be refunded and con- tinued. How does plutocracy operate in the economic field ? By funding into the future all its hopes of gain and selling the securities — so-called — to the gullible people. The plutocracy began to do this far back in the eighteenth century. But the present century sees this scheme in all its glory. Enterprises are capitalized at sixteen per cent, twelve per cent, ten per cent, six per cent, and in peculiarly audacious instances at even four, three and two per cent of the hope of gain. Take a case: A man has an oil well and some leases. He forms a company and tells the suckers that his well is pay- ing a thousand dollars a day profit; that is, a third of a million a year. At sixteen per cent, this would enable him to capitalize at $1,800,000, which, as things go, would not be criminal if one could be sure that the well would operate (say) a hundred years. But the man never stops at this; he argues to the suckers that the leases will produce ten such wells, and that ten per cent on their money would be fine. The result is that he gets them in on the basis of a reliable income of $3,000,000 a year, funded at ten per cent; and he sells out his well for $30,000,000, less commissions to the promoters. This is not an extreme case. Or take the case which is historical — of the U. S. Steel Corporation. When its common stock was floated, it was not worth a dollar; the whole issue of $600,000,000 was water. But the stock was sold at par! Then the corporation, through its subsidiaries, went to work to put value into the common stock; and the 61 first thing to do was to get the Republicans into power under Taft to raise the steel tariff. The next thing to do was to water the currency so as to make a gold dollar do the work of two dollars and get the earnings into the big banks. This automatically inflated the inventories of the Steel Corporation. Soon every share of the common stock was worth in book value over $100. Where do the bondholders come in who paid gold dollars for the bonds ? Well, Andrew Carnegie got the bonds, and he gave them away to colleges and libraries, letting the rich out neatly. That is why colleges with endowments have found their endowments so reduced in purchasing power. But only the insiders are sup- posed to understand such difficult matters. The common people are too dull to see. Such is the plutocracy and such are its ways ; there- fore, it had to make an election to order in 1920. CHAPTER VII THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND THE PLUTOCRACY The REGENCY— Florence Kling (de Wolfe) Hard- ing, Harry M. Daugherty, Boies Penrose, Le Roi Faine- ant (King Donothing) Warren Gamaliel Harding, Speaker of the House of Representatives Frederic H. Gillett, steel multi-millionaire; Senators, who are mil- lionaire plutocrats are, Colt, Frelinghuyson, Hale, Knox, Lodge, IsIcCormick, McKinley, Smoot, Warren (father-in-law of General J. J. Pershing), Wolcott, Wadsworth. Cabinet Secretaries — Mellon (multissimo million- aire), Hoover, multi-millionaire; Daugherty, Hays, Davis, Wallace, Fall, Weeks, Denby. Only Hughes loves personal liberty. Where does the Supreme Court stand? Holmes and Brandeis, both from Massachusetts, love freedom, and may be relied upon to oppose the Massachusetts bloc composed of Senator Lodge, Speaker Gillett and Secretary Weeks. Clark and Pitney have human feelings. The rest are plutocratic — White, McKenna, McReynolds, Day and Van Devanter. On the same day that the United States Senate voted to "pay" Colombia $25,000,000 blackmail, to help "oil," April 20, 1921, the New York Tribune financial page published this, viz.: Standard Oil in Colombia "Evidence accumulates that the Standard Oil in- terests consider the Colombian oil fields among the most promising for future operations. Several months 62 G3 ago the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey acquired control of the International Petroleum Company, Ltd., and yesterday came the announccmen that this con- cern has acquired one of the larger islands in the har- bor of Barranquilla, Colombia, at the mouth of the Magdalena River, According to reports in the finan- cial district yesterday, the company will build a re- finery with a daily capacity of 25,000 barrels. Inter- national Petroleum was formerly owned by the Tropical Oil Companj^ controlled by the Benedum-Trees-Treat- Crav/ford interests, of Pittsburgh." Standard Oil represents billions of dollars of prop- erty. The United States Senate is four times as powerful as the House of Representatives, and since it has only a fourth as m^any members, each Senator is sixteen times as powerful as a Congressman in the House, The Speaker is the third most powerful officer of the Gov- ernment — the Chief Justice and the President alone surpassing him because of his power to form com- mittees even under the new rules. In the Senate, there are but few friends of hum.an rights, only a few like Norris and Kenyon ; though there are several who lean toward freedom as against plutocracy with this puppet doing the shadow work in the White House. Pomerene, to whom, among others, Harding admitted his social classificatioji as a negro; Borah, Cummins, Culberson, Johnson — these have not entirely gone over to the view that corporate property is immortal and divine. The real hope for the friends of freedom is in the Supremo Court, and that m_ay easily be overturned, now that five men are ready to quit. The best friend of the ordinary man in public life is Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the Federal Judge, which is one reason why he took the baseball supervision, knowing that he could 64 never become a Supreme Court Justice, as he merits becoming. Even Hughes may forget Nagna Charta and the United States Constitution in his present sur- roundings. A PICTURE Three thousand years ago, Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Tables of the Law that were to end the CAUSES of personal hatreds among men. He found that while he had been listening to the thunders and to the voice of God, the people had made a GOLDEN CALF and were dancing, singing and shout- ing in its worship. In AJpril, 1921, President Warren Harding stood in a square in New York City and read a paper on the Monroe Doctrine, pledging that if any nation should attack the South American States, he would set afoot the army and hoist anchor for the navy and fight ; and the great men of many nations looked up at him — university graduates, jurists, publicists, scholars — wor- shipping the GOLDEN CALF of today — oil, rubber, guano, gold in Columbia, Peru and South America. And Woodrow Wilson, who brought from Versailles a new Table of the Law to end the causes of national hatreds among men, sat remembering the thunders of German guns against Paris and the voice of God in the hearts of statesmen at the Peace Conference, sat quietly in his library in Washington and waited and will wait un- til the worship of the Golden Calf is exposed once more as a fraud and delusion and snare of the peoples. Warren was thinking of the eighteen billions of dollars that Europe now owes to the plutocrats of America. He was thinking of Japan armed to the teeth and ready to strike. 65 He was thinking of Mexico that he may yet invade, as Polk invaded that land to please the slavelords. He was thinking of Great Britain, mistress of the seas, and of the American war program to build a navy as big as the biggest and the best of all. He imagined that wars must come and go forever, BUT Has slavery been outlawed? Has polygamy passed from civilized lands? Has the saloon been abolished from America foi- ever? (fcRAWF ORD COUNTY OBUGYRdS M A R I H COUNTY Omariojj i •Iberia CorriQrs !^ew Caledonl a Mt.GILEAD MORROW COUNTY LITTLE AFRICA— HARDING LAND When will wars end? When will the God Mars be slain? 66 In the day that America joins the League of Nations and ceases to obey the plutocrats in worshipping their golden image. But Warren has no son to go to war. Little Africa consists of three counties, where for a hundred years has raged the feud between the whites and the mestizoes. In it live almost a thousand de- scendants of Amos Harding and ten thousand other hybrids. At Blooming Grove Warren was born; here David Butler killed Amos Smith in 1849. At Steam Corners lives the mother of Warren's chauffeur ; a woman who remembers him as a baby. Here also lives other peo- ple who know all the history of Harding Corners. At Iberia was the seat of the little teacher's school to train for rural work to which Warren went two years. It was called a college, but it did not require for admis- sion even a rural elementary school diploma. At Gallon lives a man who went to school with him and roomed with him at Iberia. At New Caledonia lives the bankers who remember him as a school mate there. At Marion lives Dr. George Tryon (or Tyrone) Harding, Wan-en's father. CHAPTER VIII. FAKE BIOGRAPHS OF W. G. HARDING We have printed elsewhere in this book the valid and various proofs that old William Chanceller, of Mount Gilead, negro, and the many other friends of *'Nig" Harding in his boyhood days, told the truth to the negroes of America when they said, as they did in the pulpits of ther churches that Warren Gamaliel Ban- croft is a negro in part himself, and that he was per- fectly willing to admit this until ambition to rise in politics got the better of what little sense of truth- fulness he has. Here we propose to take up a few points from the various articles that have been printed about him in Republican and Baptist organs. In an article published by the aged Abie Gunn Baker in THE CHRISTIAN HERALD during the cam- paign, she told a story of how the mother of the mother of Warren discovered at church that her daughter was deeply interested in George Tryon Harding, his father. (We assume here that Tryon is the right way to spell this middle name, though we have stated elsewhere that Tyrone appears to be the family name, not Tryon). It appears that one day at church the daughter, their youngest child, failed to enter the church with her parents, but lingered outside. Right in the midst of the service, in walked her daughter on the arm of her soldier mate. After church Mrs. Dickerson asked the girl what was the meaning of the affair. She replied that — so Mrs. Baker says — George was already her husband. This makes a perfectly good story, for Mrs. 67 68 Baker does not neglect to say that this young woman was a full year older than her mate, which, of course, was the truth. DR. GEORGE TYRON HARDING, Father of the President But, unfortunately, this story does not "gee" with the interview printed in McClure's Magazine after the 69 election from the lips of George Tryon Harding, father of Warren. This old man said to the interviewer that his wife was a year younger than himself, which was false, and also that he married her with the full ap- proval of the parents on both sides. Let us look into the war dates in order to get the truth itself from these conflicing yarns, and from cer- tain facts that are indisputable. Warren Harding was born November 2, 1865. His father was released from the army on furlough in March; it was a furlough, and he went back in the service. This credibly establishes the paternity of the boy, which no one doubts. But when did the marriage take place? Old George Tryon Harding says that they had a long courtship and often went out together. If so, when? George served three years in the army. Now the truth is that these two persons spent much of their later lives trying to agree as to dates, places, persons variously reported by them to have celebrated their wedding for them, and they never agreed. Nor did Mrs. Harding ever possess a marriage certificate, nor was any license ever issued by any court officer. This does not concern the legitimacy of the TEN chil- dren, but it happens to concern the fact that one was white and the other was not. It happens to explain why the Dickersons allowed their youngest child to stay at home with them for a half year after Warren was born ; but then made her move out. The true story of George Tryon Harding after this event when he got his white wife, wthout the courtesy of asking her parents, is this, viz.: They got a piece of land for him and made him work it. They got Doc- tor McCuen, the only white physician in the place, to allow George to study with him privately so that in the course of time George Tryon became first a veterinary 70 then a country doctor. When Warren was fifteen years old, the father adventured into Marion, where he got a practice with servants, colored people and cattle and horses, higher than which he never rose. We shall return to this later. In these same two articles, according to Doctor George, he never had any other love than his wife, Elizabeth Dickerson. Yet the court records of Marion County, Ohio, show indisputably that no sooner was the old lady laid in her grave in 1907, than the old man married a widow who had a son and four thousand dol- lars. She is now living in Muncie, Ind. ; three years later than the marriage, she got a divorce from George T. on the ground that he had been trying to cheat her out of her money. The court allowed her to take as her alimony a small house that belonged to one of the Hardings. She has come out with an affidavit that •her real reason for desiring a divorce was that George T. was too much nigger for her to endure him. She has been seen and interviewed often by Republican and Democratic reporters, but it has seemed impolitic to their newspapers to tell the story. Of course, her last name is Harding now; her first name is Endora, and she can be seen by any one who cares to find her in Muncie. So much for the testimony of George T. Harding that he never loved but one woman. This bears out her story that he tried to cheat the second Mrs. Hard- ing. But it makes him out a gay deceiver of women once more in his old age. Of course, he deceived his real mate, Elizabeth Dickerson, by proposing to wish to support her. The old man and the old writer of the Harding story have both tried to make out that he was a good provider for his large family, and that Mrs. Elizabeth was a very happy woman. 71 Unfortunately, for the beauty of this story, it hap- pens that the very naive Warren has himself spoiled it by spilling some facts. One thing that he has said in an interview is that whenever the children got hungry, they either went down the road to Grandmother Dick- erson, or up the road to Grandfather Harding and got food in plenty. Another of these naive statements was that they always ate at their grandparents on feast days and often on Sundays. Still another was that the children all worked at the neighbors' as soon as they were big enough to do anything at all. Still another statement v/as that their only real poverty was in re- spect to clothes. Now we have but to add two or three more facts to get the whole situation. One fact is that Mrs. Dickerson Harding, mother of Warren, went out as midwife and also as nurse and even as servant fre- quently. A second is that the George Tryon family got their little farms from their blood kin as tenants. A third is that all the children had very much cut-down educations. In other words, the father, mother and children were drifters in a rich countryside, protected from poverty by the good nature of all their neighbors and by the pity that they felt for a white woman with a black husband, so-called. Of course, this was un- usual, though there were many negroes about. Mixed unions were not the common thing. Fifty years ago, more than half of the Blooming Grove people had negro or Indian blood, or both. Another of the pleasant fictions in which the Re- publicans have indulged is the printing of the alleged birthplace of Warren. This is a house only thirty years old. His log cabin shack was burned down long ago. Indeed the family occupied it only a few months, and the truth is that his mother gave him birth in her own bed chamber at the Dickerson house, for at this time the two were not yet living in a home together. 72 We have the affidavit from the present Dickerson family that they acquiesced in the mating solely be- cause their sister was pregnant when they found it out that she intended to consort with this negro youth from the army. It is important here to recall that of the more than 3,000,000 boys in blue, no less than 275,000 were negroes, and no less than 700,000 were foreign-born. Colored men and boys with firearms helped to whip the Southern whites, who did not arm their loyal negroes. Mrs. Harding herself often said that she "married" George T. only because he wore soldier stripes and blue. It may be worth while to take the picture of her as she is portrayed, first, by the Republicans ; second, by her neighbors ; third, by the photographer, Mrs. Baker says that she was tall and willowy, with a lovely singing voice, and very industrious. She had light brown hair, and was pale. The neighbors report that she was always over- worked ; that she did not have very much interest in anything except babies and sick people; and that she was always penniless. They say that she was very amiable. The picture of her that has come down shows her at forty years of age, with very dark hair, a thin, an- xious face, and poorly dressed. On the other hand, her children are fat and cheerful in their early pictures. Of course, Mrs. Elizabeth Harding was a very good woman, but having poor judgment; else she would not have taken up with this imposter. She had TEN chil- dren and was as good a mother to them as any woman in poverty can be. She was the youngest of all her family, their pet; the Dickersons were among the superior people of the neighborhood, far above the Hardings. Her union with 73 this George Tryon was a heavy blow to her old parents. It came when she was twenty-one years old, and she was wthout anything more than a very elementary rural schooling. Her parents and her mate never cared for books ; nor did she make a reading man of her son, Warren. It is also to be remembered that these ten children were never at home together. Warren, the eldest, had cut loose long before the youngest was bom. There are, of course, hundred of stories afloat about how the President of the United States behaved when he was a boy, and what he did. These are not of the Lincoln type. There are no stories of study late into the night ; or of kindness to animals. They are indeed the stories of a people who were crude and illiterate and who took some of the serious things of like as jokes. One Harding himself tells. Once when he was going to Grandfather Harding's to spend Thanksgiving with them, on the way near the farmhouse he saw the turkey gobbler that was to be the piece de resistance for the repast, and he threw a stone and killed it. His grandfather could not find the bird, and they had to have chicken instead; but later the dead fowl was found and they charged Warren with the killing. This he stoutly denied until they proved it on him, when one and all took the affair as funny. This does not strike one as a white people's way of dealing with such a mat- ter; and when one looks upon the face of Charles A. Hfirding in his daughter's home in Blooming Grove, one does not take the face for that of a pure Caucasian, either. All the neighbors report that Warren was very dis- obedient when a child and had to be soundly thrashed by one or the other parent ; he had an especially violent temper. Once he was expelled from school, and the 74 teacher would not take him back ; but the family moved to another farm, and he started on again. The peregrinations of these George Tryon Hardings were from Blooming Grove to Steam Corners, a mile away ; here now lives the very aged mother of his motor car chauffeur. She lives a widow with an old man a widower. This old woman is a chair-bound invalid of large size, with many stories to tell of Warren, whom she tended when he was a baby. There was a story diligently circulated by the Republicans throughout Ohio among the white people that their candidate was born in Pennsylvania and was not a Blooming Grove man at all. The women of several cities still believe this, and old Mrs. Blacksten, which is the name of this aged woman, was furious at the denial that this par- ticular man, for whom her son worked, was the Repub- lican candidate for the Presidency. She also insisted that she had often seen him naked and that he was dark like all the Hardings. But on this point, the testi- mony of all was unanimous. She admitted, as did all the Hardings, that there was a story afloat that they had negro blood ; but this did not interest her. Negroes were too common to disturb her peace. Another story is that when Warren was about twelve years old he was employed to do some field work in September; he was to get fifty cents for the day; and he worked just five minutes, saying then that the work was too hard; it was shucking corn. This story is told by the son of the farmer who employed Warren, who at this time had no power to stick to any- thing. Perhaps if he had possessed this power, he would have not become useful to the Republican pluto- crats later; he does not possess much pertinacity even yet. The rural schools lasted about five months in Mor- row County at this period, and Warren went to them 75 until he was fifteen years of age, though he was not a regular pupil in attendance nor at all apt in his studies. From Steam Corners he went to New Caledonia, where there still live many persons who remember his few years there quite well. Two of them run the bank there. He seldom knew his lessons; but big for his age and hearty. They always called him "Nigger," be- cause he looked so black when wet with the water when they went swimming together. At Iberia there was a small school with the grand- iloquent name "Ohio Central College." This name has fooled all the Republican biographers of Warren, who imagine that he was very brilliant and got into col- lege at fifteen years of age. These people do not know the educational history of Ohio, and they mean not to learn it. This institution was founded in order to educate the fugitive slaves. It was a one-building philanthropic affair maintained by gifts from religious people in small sums. It never had any endowment. The whole affair represented an investment of but a few thousand dollars. To this day, a college can be founded in Ohio by any one who gets $100,000 together. Iberia Col- lege never saw any such sum. It had sometimes two or three teachers, some times four or five. The boys and the girls had to room out where they could, except such as did manual labor for their tuitions, for whom there were provided in the recitation hall, the only building, some beds, occupied by two or three together. The school had a very general collection of studies. They took an illiterate and gave him lessons in read- ing. They took a big boy or girl who wished to be- come a rural teacher and taught him some United States history and grammar and arithemetic. This was the course that Warren pursued. In all, at this 76 time there were forty or fifty young persons all from the neighborhood going to Iberia College. There were no courses such as the title indicates; none. Even to- day, "a business college" is not a college. At seventeen years of age, Warren quit this school and, according to his own statement, went to teaching winters and to doing teamster's work summers; and also did some railroading. Professor Chancellor and the investigators for several newspapers, after spend- ing several weeks upon this phase of the matter after the election was over, and he was free to do as he pleased with their help, found that no school in which Warren ever taught could be located, which proves nothing, because many rural schools have been burned down. None of the country people remembered that he ever taught school. Nor did they remember that he ever did any teaming in that neighborhood. What was found was that in this period, viz., while Warren was from seventeen to nineteen years of age, a man from Morrow County named Harding served in the United States army, but deserted in the very years that Warren says that he taught school. But this again proves nothing, for there were hundreds of Hardings ; and the War Department has declined to furnish the evidence on the ground that it never helps to incrimi- nate any man. But it so happens that when Warren was seventeen years of age, he did not know how to play upon any musical instrument, but that at twenty years of age, he knew several. It also happens that he has a very good personal knowledge of many things about the army. It also happens that he hates military life and is a pacifist. All this proves nothing. A physician who had occasion to administer medical treatment to Warren for several years after he moved there, says that Warren had a mliitai 3' way with him and gave 77 evidence of having had troubles sometimes associated with military life. But there is no legal evidence on this point. He did arrive in Marion when he was just about twenty years of age ; he went there to join his father. The next five years are all within the evidence. Many persons have written them up. Jack Warwick, in par- ticular, did so in Republcan newspapers; he had been his printing partner for a while. But hundreds of persons now alive in Marion and elsewhere remember this, the worst period of Hard- ing's life. He came to Marion to a fiimily hard pressed to get food and shelter. He was a roustabout. He did what- ever his hands could find to do, and he did not do these things well. He gave no evidence to anyone of having any future. At this time, Marion was undergoing a very rapid industral development ; and there v/ere many strangers coming into the city, especially foreigners and negroes. No one ever then thought of Warren as anything else than a colored man. He was still called "Nig." He did not take up any regular work, did not try to become a machinist in the steel works. He felt out of the current. But he had plenty of muscular strength, and good wits, and by keeping on with his parents, to whom he had now returned, he managed to get along. He was a persistent frequenter of saloons and played all the familiar games, crap included. He liked to go to the skating rink, and get in with the various girls. Marion never was a clean city, and Warren felt at home in it soon. A few persons were making fortunes in it; and they cared nothing whatever save for their money. The man who roomed with Warren Harding for the two years that he spent in reviewing the elementary 78 courses in preparation for becoming a teacher, himself a pro-German during the World War, as he now insists, but who voted against him all the same in November, 1920, explains that the only peculiarities of Warren during the two years that he knew him were two : He liked to talk all the time in the debates that the boys had and to give declamxations and to write, though no one could understand what he had to say, and he liked to make friends; he would make up with anyone. He had outgrown the childish hot temper and was notably affable. In other words, the higher instinct from his superior heredity in this respect were getting control. Now this explains why Warren became a printer and joined with two partners in a little paper. The city had one paper, which was successful; but the Hard- ings were red-hot Republicans, as why should not all G. A. R. negroes be Republican? The leading paper was Democratic. The Republican party has been a machine for ex- tracting more than a hundred million dollars every year for the G. A. R. pensions out of the ultimate con- sumers for the benefit of the protective tariff lords and of the "old soldiers." It set free the negroes and it gave to them the franchise. Negroes belong in the Republican party. The problem was how to get press and paper to- gether and get out a daily issue. Originally, it appears that the Hardings became as- sociated with this fantastic enterprise in the following manner: About 1884 from a small printing office in Marion was occasionally issued a small paper dubbed the scandal sheet and whose proprietors were in finan- cial straights. J. O. Sickles, with a little money, and Jack Warwick with a little experience, in a spirit of venture, took over the plant. As natives of Caledonia they knew Warren Harding, who at this time was 71) temporarily working on the Democratic paper of Marion. He also had a little experience and better ac- quaintance in Marion and having nothing else to offer him to join them in the enterprise, Sickles and War- wick offered him a third interest to join them in their shop. So the arrangement stood until Sickles withdrew full of experience but lighter in pocketbook. His in- terest was disposed of to Dr. George Tryon Harding for promissory note and several vacant lots of little value. Eventually the note was paid, which accounts for the doctor's claim to having financed the enter- prise. The doctor admitted his inability to consider the deal for cash. At this time he was forty-three years old, encum- bered with a little real estate of doubtful value and the care of eigh living children, a ninth and middle one hav- ing died just previously of diphtheria, under his per- sonal care. The oldest man of the group was Jack Warwick, so far as we can find out. Warren set type, wrote news and fed the presses ; occasionally he got advertisements. Their support, small as it was, came from three sources — soreheads against the Democratic daily, bitter partisan Republicans, and persons who sympathized with the young men. They were bucking a monopoly at a time when Marion had some ten thousand people. What with paper to pay for even at the then low price of paper, and the small subscription list, and very few advertisers, generally the week showed no money to distribute for the livings of the partners. At this time, Warren borrowed money from friends — "hand- outs." There are persons who then lived in Marion and are still alive who say to this day Warren has never paid them back. True or false, such is his reputa- tion. We have explained elsewhere how, with this 80 reputation, he was able, in 1920, to get a large major- ity of the votes. It has been reported that the change in the original partnership was due to the progressive tendency of Warren and the disagreement about the installment of a telephone in the office, but his partner says that the change was due to financial causes of which one was the result of a trip by Warren to Chcago, taking with him $150 of partnership money with which to secure a second-hand press for the shop. He stayed ten days, came back penniless, without having shipped or paid for the press, but with the tale of a swell time. Jack Warwick then undertook the trip with complete success, at less cost of time and money. Not long after, Sickles left the business. Whether this or Warren's version is the real cause of Sickles leav- ing, one thing is true, and that is, that Sickles is the man who started Warren G. Harding in the newspaper game. At this time there was in Marion a very rich man, said to have been at the time the richest man in the little city, a banker named Amos Kiing, His age was about fiftyfive. He had three children, two sons and a daughter. This girl had united herself with a man named Harry de Wolf, but she did not take the situa- tion as very serious, frequenting the skating rink of the little city and neglecting her one child, a boy, and this mate. What we here report is a court record. So flagrant was her style of living that her father would have nothing to do with her. Unhappily, her mother was dead. Harry decided to get an annulment of the mating. Each set up a date when an alleged wedding took place. Harry set a date that showed that the boy was bom soon after the union; while Florence set up a much earlier date. In he court on the show-down, it ap- 81 pearecl that there had never been any wedding. The court would not even construe the case as a common law marriage, but did in a fashion release Harry, who soon after married and went to Colorado, where, after begetting two more children who concern this record, he died. He claimed he got tuberculosis from drinking, and that the conduct of his first mate drove him to drink. At the skating rink long before the annulment of the relation by the court, Warren became acquainted with Florence, as did many other men. Gradually, in her way, but with inherited thrift, she acquired enough money to buy a house of her own. This house was not given to her by her father, as the Republicans falsely allege. Years went by. Florence Kling de Wolfe, so-called, made it a habit to spend hours every day at the print- ing shop, often publicly caressng Warren. She begged him to marry her. Warren did not see this at first; but in view of the saving of rent, he did take her as his wife. Kling was even angrier than ever. He bought the mortgage on the building rented by Warren and his partners and tried to force them out. The legal contests resulting are a part of the common gossip of Marion to this day. Florence Kling became business manager of the paper to show her father what blood could do. She never went to his house, and Warren was forbidden to go there. This warfare between Amos H. Kling and his son- in-law and daughter is what made each of them what they have become. To fight the richest man of a city is in itself a course that creates sympathy. New peo- ple came in who did not remember the old situation, and who would not believe the old stories. There was no sudden reform in the young man or his six-years'- older wife; but they had a fight to keep alive, to get 82 I'ood and clothing. Warren never ceased to frequent the saloons and to play poker, which he playec^ well enough not to lose money. But he began to see that work is a necessity. His notion that Amos would re- lent and give money to his daughter died out, and there grew in its place a desire to show the old man that he could get along, without him. Florence went among the bankers and borrov/ed money to put the STAR on its feet. They sold stock on the co-operative plan to their own printers; mostly they employed women and young men ; but they got a very good editor named Van Fleet. And the Republicans, needing an organ, helped them more and more. There is one picture given by Warwick that helps to an understanding of the relations of Warren to the others. Every few days he would go out and invest a half dollar in chewing tobacco that he tied by a string to a post in the composing room, and he and the others would take their jacknives and whittle off a piece as long as it lasted. He was what in Ohio they call "com- mon," meaning that he was just like the other fel- lows; he "put on no dog." There was a considerable income from job advertising — circulars, posters, etc. — from the tradespeople, theaters, etc. To this, Warren gave much personal attention, having almost nothing to do with the money affairs and the outer office. Warwick left the business and moved on, as peri- patetic printers will. He says frankly in the series of articles that the Republican papers ran, that he had no idea that Warren Harding would ever amount to anything or ever rise to great heights. All Ohio people talk politics, and talk it most of the time. Poker games are a very common scene for political plans. Newspaper offices talk politics. These were the two great interests of Warren, who saw so 83 much of his wife at the printing shop that he did not bother to spend his evenings with her. About the time when Harry de Wolfe died in Colo- rado, without accomplishing his threat to kill Warren before he did go himself, and the time when the one de Wolfe child died, who had been born to Mrs. Hard- ing (though de Wolfe at times disputed its paternity, which he attributed to another man, however, than Warren), the big printer conceived the notion that he would like to get some of this easy political money. It is well to pause here and consider some of the peculiar social ideas of Ohio. One is that teachers, preachers and officeholders belong to the inferior classes. There are but few States in which these three lines are held in as deep contempt as in Ohio. But edi- tors were considered even lower, and printers still lower. The big men in Ohio, the high-class people, are the rich, especially the bankers. There were so many colleges — seventy-five at this time used the name — that educational degrees and diplomas were at a dis- count. With such an institution as Ohio Central Col- lege using the name we need not wonder at this. Warren thought that a political office would get him some money, and he desired office for this reason alone. He was now thirty-four years old — it was 1899 — and he happened to live in a senatorial district of the State where the Democrats always had easy pickings for election, but where the Democratic Senator was about through. Few Senators served over two or three terms. A very weak man was being put up by the Democrats. Warren had met Daugherty, and he now got some advice from him. Daugherty agreed to send out some fine speakers and to make a big fight for him. Even then Daugherty knew that Warren was a negro, but he thought that for this very reason, if 84 Warren should win, he would be a pliant servant for himself in the Legislature. Warren got the nomination easilj^ and all the Re- publicans anticpaled that he would be thoroughly- licked, of course. The Marion district lies just northwest of Colum- bus, the home of Daugherty. It was easy to send out many speakers. One more Senator for Daugherty at this time in but thirty-three in all meant a lot to him in his fight for power. Daugherty was then forty years old. There was a tremendous fight, but it was made not by Warren Harding, but by old Amos Kling against Daugherty and against his son-in-law as a nigger. Amos was then about seventy years old. But he jumped into the fray and canvassed every county, tak- ing several men with him. He had made many enemies by refusing loans to farmers. He was not a good pub- lic speaker. Warren was kept hidden from the people who had never seen him in order not to verify the charge that he was colored. He spoke only where he was already known. The people were told that the rich man was "a mean old thing," who had let his daughter go to work and would not help her in her financal troubles. Negroes were all lined up sub rosa for their colored brother; and the foreigners were told to vote for the poor man against the candidate of the rich man. The election was close; but the colored man won, as colored men have often won in Ohio. The talk of race prejudice was worked where it would work, and the color was denied wherever that seemed advisable. The result was that Warren Harding was put on the track that eventually brought him to the White House. His nomination for Lieutenant Governor was brought about in 1904 in much the same way and he 85 was carried in on a Republican landslide to Roosevelt. Save Warren Harding himself, no one knows just what he got financially out of these six years of office- holding other than salary and mileage — the total of which was about ten thousand dollars. After that his connection with THE STAR was not taken by him very seriously ; he did some work as a printer, but in the main his time was spent in scheming to get into the United States Senate. He ran for the nomination several times, once against Daugherty himself — in or- der that one or the other should have it. Both lost. But the Marion newspaper man benefitted in indirect ways by all this political publicity. There are always interests that desire newspaper support, and he was given small holdings in various local enterprises for his influence — including a brewery and a bank. The total was not large, but it was all on the right side of the ledger. His health was often in sour condition from heavy di'inking and night excesses. Several attacks are known to have occurred of delirum tremens, when he was taken to the Marion sanitarium managed by Doc- tor C. E. Sawyer, now Admiral of the United States navy, and personal attendant upon his very distin- guished patient. Let no person imagine that THE MARION STAR was a great money maker. The Hardings together have never entirely owned it. There have been other stockholders and heavy debts. It is improbable that the average amount of money available to the Hard- ings from the property from 1904 to 1920 has been over three thousand dollars a year; and it is very doubtful whether in any year it ever has earned for them over five or six thousand dollars. It is no gold mine. And it is to be remembered that this represents the labor of Mrs. Harding rather than of her husband since 1899. 87 When Amos Kling died of the disappointment in seeing his plans to ruin his son-in-law defeated and to rid himself of the disgrace of having such a person in his famly, he left an estate of over a million dollars; but not one dollar to them. The sentimental race equalitarians may object to this. Strangely enough, he made some provision for the other two children of poor de Wolfe, not much but enough to show that he had a warm heart after all. These are the two chil- dren whom Harding and his wife in one interview claimed as their own, together \^'ith the two little chil- dren of one of these two, already now married, but without a drop of Kling or Harding blood. How can these things be? How did Jezebel ever get to be Queen over Israel? How came Nero, Caligula, Galba, Claudius to rule in Rome? How did Catherine de Medici ever get her power? How did it happen that Aaron Burr was once Vice-President of the United States? He was defeated for the Presidency itself by ONE VOTE. There are m.any stories told of how seriously Kling took this marriage of his daughter to Warren Harding. To one sheriff of a county in the district he told that it was hell just to be alive with such a per- son closely related to himself. A man who had been a business associate for many years, but who witnessed the wedding of the two (de- scribed by Kling in unprintable words), was ordered never to speak to him again ; and shut out from all loans from the Kling bank. Much has been made of an alleged reconciliation be- tween Warren and Kling. The facts are that in his extreme old age, Kling decided to marry again; and the woman whom he chose, believed that his hatred for Florence was shortening his life. She persuaded him 88 to allow his daughter to come to see him occasionally. At the time of his trip to Florida, the newspapers were told that many years before then, Warren had visited Amos Kling in his Florida home. This was not Amos Idling at all, but a son of one of Kling's brothers. And it was not a visit but a mere afternoon call for a few minutes. Amos Kling had no Florida home; he went there several times to stay in hotels. It will, of course, be said that he should have brought up his daughter better ; if so, she would never have bought Warren Harding for a husband ; and with- out her to pay his bills, he would have been a plain failure and soon out of life itself. She has been what- ever good genius he has had. She has run his cam- paigns for him, and she has written the best speeches he ever read. The rise of Florence Kling will remind students of history of Theodosia, wife of Justinian, and of Catharine de Medici in their origin and success. The campaign for the United States Senatorship in 1914 tells the inside of Ohio politics. Daugherty and Harding had been getting in bad for several years ; 1914 saved them. Until Judson Harmon became Governor of Ohio and Timothy S. Hogan became State Attorney General for various vicious election methods, Ohio had nothing to learn from, and something to teach to, even the Republican Gas Ring in Philadelphia. Hogan now has a law office from which he can look down upon the State Capitol of Ohio in Colum- bus ; in ability and character, in personality, and in his actual record until he was unhorsed by the righteous- ness that is in him, he is one of the best men Ohio or any other State has ever produced. We hear much of the ignorance of the country folk in the Appalachians. They are far away from civiliza- 89 tion; but the ignorance of many country folk in Ohio is quite as dense. They read no papers ; they have no books, perhaps not even a Bible; magazines are un- known to them. They do know that there is a Govern- ment at Washington, but its relations to themselves are unguessed at. They do not understand the govern- ment even of Ohio. One such county was Adams ; not far from Cincinnati, upon the Ohio River. Here voters were bought not "in blocks of five" as in the old days of 1880 in Indiana, but wholesale; everyone sold his vote. This county was not the only offender; but it was one of the worst. Into this county Attorney Gen- eral Hogan went and punished those who had broken the Ohio Corrupt Practice Act, the convicted offenders include both the bribers and the bribed. By it no one can legally talk about politics within a certain pre- scribed distance of the polling booth. And only the regularly appointed officers can help even a blind man to vote. By convicting and securing the punishment of some hundreds of persons, Hogan made himself hated by politicians of all parties. He exposed too much. In addition, he is a very brilliant speaker, and many leaders hated him as being far abler than themselves. And he is a Roman Catholic, There is a notion in some parts of Ohio that a Roman Catholic is a good deal worse than an infidel or an atheist. In some parts of Ohio it is taught to the children that even an Episcopalian is a Catholic and an enemy of the Republic. To be a Roman Catholic Democrat is to arouse a fury of resentment in some persons who pro- fess to be disciples of Jesus Christ. But the Democrats decided to risk the United States Senatorial campaign in Ohio all the same upon this glorious apostle of honest government; and Daughertj^ accepted the chal- lenge by running Warren G. Harding against him. It 90 looked to many as though Warren was in for another defeat; but what with the anti-Catholics, the wets, the G. A. R., the negroes, the politicians of both parties, the hide-bound high-tariff and stand-pat Republicans, the race-sentimentalists who believe in race-equality provided it does not concern their own daughters, Daugherty proved to be the better guesser, and Warren Harding went in in the off-year In commenting upon this result, Professor William Estabrook Chancellor, the white man, not the colored man named William Chancellor who worked for the Republicans, said in a letter to one of his friends in New England: "You say that the election of Hard- ing as Senator proves that he cannot have any negro blood. Just how you figure this out I cannot under- stand. You are a Republican and in politics. Suppose that a brilliant Roman Catholic attorney, who hates corporations when they are dishonest, had shown up your party to the tune of several hundred bribers and bribed, would you have voted for him or for a colored man who was loyal to your party? You are yourself a rabid race-equalitarian. You belong to the people who voted to give the franchise to the negro because your fathers voted for Charles Sumner. There are 400,000 negroes in Ohio. Would you have played them double in this case? I judge not. What the vote for Harding proved was not that he has no colored blood, but that a majority of Buckeyes, of whom I am one by birth, and two generations of forefathers, like a com- placent, convenient black Republican tool better than a fine-spirited white Democrat; and it proves nothing else." They now have their black man in the White House, and after a while they will learn what this means. That light house will prove to be a track combers lure. It is a curious thing that in every group photograph 91 ever taken where Warren appears he has shown the deepest color. This was commented upon even in 1914 — what does it mean? When a person has negro color it shows in photographs because they register depth of pigmentation. There is no way to avoid this except to be skinned and have a new skin grafted on. It was about 1906 when he left the Lieutenant Governship that Warren Harding began seriously to try to get rid of the story that he has colored blood. Then also his father began to show some spirit in the matter. But when Warren arrived in Washington, he met there in the Senate several men who knew the truth. One by one he took them aside and asked them to keep the matter quiet, admitting its truth. One such was Senator Atalee Pomerene, who, however, has told many persons about the affair. Pomerene has now given out that he will not run again in 1922 for the United States Senatorship from Ohio. He can- not stomach the notion of serving in the Senate under a negro President. There are many stories about this consciousness that they are now playing a part, both father and son. In 1905, there was preaching in Marion a man who is still a preacher, but now located elsewhere with both Republicans and Democrats in his congregation. This good man reports that one evening in the year cited. Doctor George Tryon Harding told his wife, in a con- versation not sought by her upon a public street corner, that because he was a negro, he found it hard to make a living, and asked her to ask her husband to recom- mend h*m to the people of their church. A very close relative of this preacher, then and now living in Marion, says that the wife reported this to her, and that she saw Doctor George Tryon Harding soon there- after and that he admitted saying this, and asked her for help. At this time, his oldest son was Lieutenant 92 Governor, and a daughter was teaching in the Marion High School, where she still teaches. When Professor Chancellor went first to Marion, on the errand of trying to find out the record of this man — he has often given public addresses there — five high school boys, all of the same car, told him that they always called Harding a "nigger," and his sister also. One of these boys was himself a negro, and he was the only one among them who was not wearing a Cox button. As we have seen, Marion, however, went for Harding; and we have given the reasons. Yet the Republican Board of Education and City School Superintendent have, since the election, named the city high school, the Harding High School, and thereby insulted all the white youth in attendance; they have done more than this — they have forbidden, in what was once free America, their teachers to discuss the politics. It is perfectly safe to predict that — 1. The name of the Harding High School will be changed soon. 2. This order for silence will be rescinded soon, for it is not only infamous, but is also detractive to the Re- publicans themselves. It so happens that there is on the Marion (Harding) High School staff a woman who was Chairman of the Marion County Democratic Committee, and who in that capacity made speeches about the League of Nations ; of course, she knew the truth about the color of the Hardings, and she told it. The order forbidding her to talk politics was passed after the election. Next time, the women of Mai-ion County will vote Democratic because that order inter- feres WITH THE GOD-GIVEN RIGHT 0?^ ALL WOMEN TO TALK. Of course, this order is contrary to the Constitu- tion of the United States. So was the order to seize and destroy the manu- scripts of Professor Chancellor. Let the Republicans fill up the cup of their in- iquity; they Vv'iU drink it themselves. Like Haman, they have built a gallows upon which they themselves will be hung until they are dead, as dead as the Whig and Federalist parties. There lives in Marion a native-born old man, who has been a judge of court, a cripple and an invalid in his old age. After the election, getting a six-foot young pro- German, with a German name, to help him, Doctor George Tryon Harding, cane in hand, on a public street attacked this old man because he told exactly what the Black Republicans had been paid to tell other Black Republicans that the Hardings are niggers. This was fully reported in the newspapers, even the Republican ones, which took great delight in the anecdote. But it made Democratic votes all the same. 1922 and 1924 Vv-ill show a come-back. Suppose that the Republicans could silence free speech in America, as they have gagged the press v/ith money. Where would their own children come in? You can stop, let our Republican neighbors understand this, free public speech; but you can never stop mouth- to-ear gossip and slander; but can you stop sub rosa pamphlets ? Try it and see. What tyrants have failed to do, the plutocracy will quickly fail in trying to do. A gang of Republicans at night entered the office of a rich old Democrat in Marion and stole all his papers. He had been corresponding with other free Americans about the negro ancestry of Warren Hard- ing. Cannot the Democrats retaliate? Where is this crime going to end? Old Doctor George Tryon Harding, everyone of whose neighbors resents his presence on their street, 94 in his interview with McClure's Magazine ended the stuff by saying that he had some scores to settle with those who have been lying about him. He him- self told one of the richest Republican women in the city that he knew that he had negro blood and that some people said that he had Indian blood. This same admission was made many times in the presence of former business partners of Warren. For what is he seeking Indian revenge? In order himself to be am- bushed some night and taken away to some remote cave for a few years? You reap what you sow. Truth is that the Republicans are sowing the wind, and that, of course, they must reap the whirlwind. Already old Mrs. George M. Pullman has died of the shame of the discovery that she spent two mil- lion dollars trying to get her son-in-law chosen for the Republican nomination. Half-Indian Jake L. Hamon is dead in the same horrible mess. Where is this Re- publican horror to end? They are inviting the wrath of God. What James I. could not kill; what cost Charles I. his head; this is the spirit of liberty. For this Peter Zenger, in 1735, made his fight in New York, for the right to find and speak the truth in the fear of the Almighty only. Nevertheless pressed by his ambitions and by his brunet-aged wife, Warren Harding has been trying to convince himself that he has too little negro blood to count. He is too ignorant to know that THE PAST IS ADAMANT. It takes a dull man to try to change it. In this fierce struggle in his mind, WaiTen went, in 1915, to Washington. He was absent in the next five years from 1300 roll calls for votes. He voted wet when he did vote, and he voted anti-suffrage. He made very few speeches, none of them long. Every time the tariff was mentioned he showed some interest. There 95 are several reasons for this. He stopped what little schooling he has experienced when he was seventeen years old, an epoch when the school world was under the control of high protective tariff teachers; and he has learned nothing since. The other reason is that the manufacturers of Marion are high protective tariff men, and own the banks also ; he has always catered to them in THE STAR. That is why THE STAR exists. Every negro desires a master. He reverences the man who can tell him what is what and how to do it; he never asks why; that is too much for his type of brain tissue. Who has financed his political cam- paigns anyway? No poorer record was ever made in the United States Senate by a man serving five and a half years than was made by this man ; he was merely a creature of his creators, and not a good one in some ways at that. But he looked well, and he prevented a free trade Democrat from filling the place and the news- papers also with his arguments. While much more might be told in detail of the record of Hardng until the political campaign of 1920, there is nothing worth telling beyond more corrobora- tion of the main point. He was in training, severe training for the business of doing just what his mas- ters of the plutocracy were to tell him as President to do. There were fully fifty thousand negroes in New England at the time when the Hardings say they moved out of Connecticut. Many other negroes also moved out. There are still negroes and Indians of almost pure blood living in Caucasian clothes and according to Cau- casian manners in New England. Proving (?) that they came from New England does not prove that the »6 Harding blood is all white. They evidently know nothing- of New England. It is quite possible that the Harding pose is a com- bination of Indian chief and Ethiopian chief also. It worked beautifully in the Presidential campaign of 1920. As it had also worked in the Senate. CHAPTER IX RACES OF MANKIND It is wicked to assert the equality of men or of races. The glory of men is in that all differ — one star differeth from another. It is wicked to desire the amalgamation of all races ; and only the unscientific imagine that this will ever come to pass in America. Climates vary too much; the original germ plasms differ too much. Ideas differ too much. Abilities to make livings and other adjustments to one another and to the earth differ. The man who believes that ultimately all Ameri- cans will be light saffron :v ellow knows nothing of his- torical anthropology. The differences between men and the races of men concern everything that man is. Men have different gods; they have different brains, different skins, different sense, powers, differ- ent instincts. The wickedness consists in denying the truth ; it consists also in asking one man to do something be- cause other men can do it. It relieves the great and strong from doing what they should do for the lesser. It is thoroughly unchristian. There are many races, and the men of each race dif- fer from one another. There are in America representatives of every race and hybrids of them all. The so-called white race consists of brunets and f7 98 blonds and gfi'ades between — the melanchroics, the xanthrochroics, and the grades. All whites have thin skins and can blush; that is, their blood cells fill up and make them redder upon the moment when there are strong emotions of cer- tain kinds. Negroes cannot blush ; nor can Indians. This does not mean that they do not feel shame; but that they do not show it uncontrollably. The true negroes are all black or brown. The true Indians are all reddish brown. There is a typical negro head shape. There is a typical white head shape. There is a typical red head shape for the Indians. No pure negro has a head shaped like the head of any white man; the same is true of the Indian. In America, there aie very few true negroes ; nearly all negroes have Portugese or Spanish blood, for the sufficient reason that the slave traders saw to it that every negress who came into America had a half -white child, white in the sense that the Moor or Portugese or Spaniard is white. This is all well told in the book on the Slave Trade by a great negro named W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, who has negro, French, German, Portuguese and Dutch blood. Only five per cent of city negroes are all negro; and in the rural districts the proportion does not rise above twenty-five per cent anywhere. To say in America that any colored man is all black is a very risky thing so far as the truth is concerned ; he probably has at least some white blood of the brunet stocks, if not of the blond stocks. The typical negro head is relatively long, often fully eight and a half inches long. The white man seldom has a head over seven and three-quarters inches long. The negro sometimes has a head even a half-inch &9 longer, while such a head is very, very uncommon among white. The typical negro head is relatively not of large measure from the ear entrances over the forehead ; sel- dom more than thirteen inches ; most of them measure but twelve inches. The white man's head is usually fourteen inches in this measurement. The negro has a low crown; his head seldom measures over the crown from the ear to entrance over thirteen inches. The white man seldom goes under fourteen, and often rises to fifteen and a half. The negro has a large measurement over the back head at its greatest, often fourteen inches; while the white man seldom goes above this. Under the back head of the negro measures entirely different from the white man ; he has little or no lobes. His back head comes to a peak in the level of the ears. The white man has a square or round back head. Look at Warren Harding, side view. Here the negro comes to about nine inches, while the white man goes to ten. This peak is unmistakable. Theodore Roosevelt was mainly Dutch and Kelt, partly Huguenot French. The friends, so-called, of Warren Harding claim that he is also French, Dutch and Kelt-Scotch. Take their two faces, the two front views, their two side views, and see which is the truth. No one imagines that Warren Harding is a black or even a brown negro. He has china blue white eyes ; his flatterers call them gray. These eyes are set deep in caverns under the eye- brows and this by analogy is not a human compliment. 100 There is typical negro body pose, view of Warren Harding. Look at the side PRESIDENT WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING In a social study more recently of Washington city negroes and colored men, it was found that only one in eight is self-supporting; the other seven live upon women, their mothers, their wives, their sisters, even their grandmothers and daughters. 101 Of these self-supporting city negroes, very few are self-directing, and he has never supported his wife. The buck nigger does not support any one else even when he works. It is when one gots into the psychic life that one realizes the differences between races and the indi- viduals within the same race. Take the dominant traits. The dominant of the red man is revenge. An- other powerful trait inclination to do as he pleases. But at home his squaw rules him, and hoes the com in the garden while he hunts beasts and men. Why does Warren Harding call his wife the Duchess Pride and vanity consume alike the black man and the red man ; each must save his face from the shame of the kinds he understands. Each is a consummate actor ; each is forever on the masquerade in public. To work like a nigger means only to work hard under the lash. All blacks and all reds hate work. A humble delight in work is a trait reserved to the yellow man rvd cl: