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The First Amendment and a free people. A weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The program has produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University the host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Reuben. One of our great joys on this series is to have significant men and women from the world of letters come on to describe the processes that lead to their conclusions to their researchers. We've had I guess more historians and social analysts since this is a program about First Amendment issues than other categories. Today I'm very delighted to have with me and Mr. Francis Russell whose book The Shadow of Blooming Grove Warren Gamaliel Harding in his times was published by McGraw-Hill Book Company 1968. Before I ask my first question Mr.
Russell I want to make clear that everybody understands that we're talking to a man of varied interests a prolific writer whose mind turns to new fields all the time and heads for that kind of scholarship among his books are the Roaring Twenties the great interlude tragedy in Dedham about the sack of Vendetti trial. He's his conclusions are not the prevailing conclusions in certain circles. He feels that he was convinced by his researchers that there was some guilt there in regard to Sacco and Vanzetti. He's written a collection of essays on Joyce Kafka and Gertrude Stein study of Albert dürer Time-Life the American Heritage Series books on American History of America in the making the nation in the making 1783 to 860 and one on the confident years. He's written books on the president makers people who are
behind these campaigns for the American presidency. A concise history of Germany. A recent book on a city called a city in Terre about the Boston police strike and his last book was of course Adams an American din a city which was published in 1976. He's a Bostonian Roxbury High School did his art in school Roxbury Latin school excuse me undergraduate work at German universities completing that work. Bowden College with the the ABC. And finally the AM at Harvard University served as a captain in the Canadian army and World War 2 and has lived extensively in Europe. Mr. Russell the shot of Blooming Grove. It was a book that I had been wanting to read for some time about Warren G Harding and the twenties and what happened to Harding and what kind of a man was he and what was the tragedy of this man sometimes
called amongst the worst presidents that the United States has had. I found a new view of a whole segment of American history. May I first ask what kind of a man was Harding this man who grew up in a small town of Ohio became a newspaper publisher an owner and then president. Well basically he was a kindly kind so many words and he he liked people he liked animals he liked women. He didn't have much of an intellect really and he didn't have any particular education. But I found in writing my biography of him that I came to like him. I know that there were three other biographers at the time who were writing books on how do you think. And you know they seem to loathe the M.O. They kept it somewhat to themselves but
you know I found him an affable man. I think it was his misfortune to be president. He could have been very happy is the middle so this frog in the little pond of Madian living and dying a newspaper. And if you're curious concatenation of Fate had propelled him upwards I think you would have not only been better off but he might have lived longer. I'm interested in Warren Harding because of the references cross references we might make to our own time where at present searching for a new president going through the presidential process. Some of the men who want to be president are good friendly kindly men as well. I think that all of them are at a level higher intellectually than Harding was. I was sympathetic to Harding because of the title of your book The Shadow of Blooming Grove. He was pursued throughout his life although he didn't
take bitterly to that pursuit he handled it I think fairly well with the charge which was considered venomous in those days that there was some black blood in the Harding family going back to colonial days. You know you saw the curious Indian blood and Wilson and he's proud of the fact and poor Harding was paralyzed by the thought that he might be one sixteenth of a 130 second degree block. No other music no fun. He was struggling to handle that situation. He was accused by a lot of people he was not admitted to the inner circles of his own little home town of Marion Ohio which his family was listed amongst the founders of. Simply because of that it's hard to understand today that kind of small time. Assiduity But do you feel that it is still
present in American politics behind the scenes. Well of course Xenophobia is a loss inherent in human nature. I'm afraid that one particular prejudice goes and it seems that you have another of some sort of cause until Jack Kennedy became president there was this tremendous bias against Roman Catholics and if you remember when Al Smith run against Hoover in 1928 there was talk that if he were elected the pope was going to come to Long Island. Frankly if I had thought that was so I should have been going to vote for him I think a different blog. Given the tone but there was tremendous by house against him and of course against his wife. If you remember the source you couldn't have a woman like that as the president's wife in the White House. I don't remember what was wrong with it seems to me she was somewhat
overweight. In regard to Hartings wife known more familiarly as the duchess she was a the epitome of what novelists like to call the entrenched unverse not worldly. Small town person and yet one has a little sympathy for her in a way because all she wanted was for one. Is that the way to pronounce it. Well not quite. This is funny. After my book came out one night I was sitting at my desk and I had a telephone call the imperious voice. And so this is all this Roosevelt Longworth. This is so the least took me back a little and she said I've just finished reading your book and I didn't know whether I was going to be blasted out of my chair or not. But I said well I hope you
liked it should. Yes I'd like to. That's why I called you up I never write letters but I call up people and I said Well. You know you knew these people and I've just written from documents you knew them personally. Did you find any mistakes you saw. Not really. You made my husband speaker of the house two years too early but I'll forgive you. And she said you didn't really know the details about the loss because paying off Hardings mistress she said he had $25000 and a such woman came around was the Hardings house and called up to Harding who opened his bedroom window and Oscar told him to come down to get the money. And that was the way it was. But she said also you spell his name Wu apostrophe. And she said that wasn't the way she said it she used
to say it. Wow wow and she she wanted all for hair Ware and she she was a woman who married on the second try around. She was a divorcee. She was a cold woman. She was cold to her own child to the nth degree. And where and seem to be from a genre of American men that were fast and loose with their where their amorous adventures. For years he had this mistress from again from the home town wife of a friend of his. Keri Phillips And he met this 17 year old or was she younger now in Britain when he mentor first motile she was only 13 or 14 but I don't think that he was aware of you know feelings towards him until about four or five years later. I was
aghast. One thinks of the presidency today. I mean when one thinks of how Mr. Carter was put upon for having lust in his heart in an article before he became president using that kind of phraseology here is a man who is president of the United States has an ice ignition. With icing nations with Nan Britain in a big closet in the White House when she visits small clubs at small cars it meets with her the night he is nominated in Chicago gets caught in a hotel room with her uses the Secret Service to act as the go betweens etc. etc.. Is it possible that a man like Warren G Harding in your view could come out of the political process in our time. Is that is that kind of a character
still able to slip through the screen. You mean his morals or his intelligence in both senses. Well of course as far as his morals go here he was murmured to this cold rather horrible woman who in her way loved him as a kind of threatening maternal figure. He never could quite bring himself to get away from. But obviously as far as warmth and emotion go it wasn't there. I know the thing about how to good struck me was I read it as you know I discovered these hundred five letters uncovered let's hundred five Love Letters coding wrote to his mistress over a period of 20. Keri Phillips Keri Phillips And of course for my pains I got sued for a million dollars by the hunting's which I think was to say the least little
unrealistic of you know I don't know what and they stopped you through court action from using that material yes. So I had to print. I didn't count fairly well I said my introduction 800 blank section of their book to twenty five hundred. But the thing is that Harding was really in love with this woman and Harding was really in love so far in his bumbling way with none Britten this is not my idea of luxury. This is the emotion that he could not. Find that for his wife. He phoned with him and I felt sorry for him when I read the letter so I really think that if he'd been married to a warmer older blowsy good natured woman he would have lived very happily as an adult and if it had had a few children and probably not strayed particularly not his the
cold blooded luxury comes from the president so I think I'd better not name them but I think you understand this. This sort of cold girl approach to women must not hold her not hounding. What frightens me though about Harding and trying to refer it as a citation for our own times not for the moment but for the general air in which we live. He was surrounded by. Second rate people. He he wanted to be close to big money. He was much flattered by being close to the Longworth family Alice and her husband Nicholas Longworth because they had the railway car because they had the houses that they could go to and so on they went to Florida to play golf and went to the Caribbean. But he was surrounded by men like Harry Darby and others. And one wonders when one hears about the the bird glances of
recent years. The president is so vital to our concept of liberties so instrumental in organizing the popular mind. That Harding must be studied as a kind of a of a type that we will find in the presidency in part of each man perhaps or in a good deal of any man. Is that a fair assumption. Of course Harding did has some first rate people in his cabinet. If you remember Hugh that's true and Hoover that's true. And they both thought well of him you know a certain degree. But he was at the end ruined you hint very strongly by this. Gee I'd love to tell you about what's the calamity is he somehow never got it out he made a point missed to tell just before he died.
Various people if they would only sit with him. What how bad it was what was it that was so bad. Was it that he realized that those of his colleagues who were corrupt were as corrupt as he found them out to be. What was it in your mind as his biographer. Well I think that was it that he discovered corruption where he hadn't suspected this. May have discovered that he certainly had already discovered that Forbes had betrayed him and he may have discovered that how very dirty in his way had I think he had a naive trust in His friends like fall and people like that. The interior was full as it is a more complicated case than the new might think this is the Teapot Dome xians so call
him a name struck West who's written a biography for all he kindly let me see the manuscript you go to for his doctor's thesis and I don't know whether it was ever published or not but the fact is that if fall had taken no money he still would have done what he did with the oil leases and if he had been out to be. For bribery what he had done would be worth millions to him. The few hundred thousand that he got is a petty sum of money compared to what he could have demanded if he were the complete grafter he undoubtedly felt he was entitled to these perquisites. Yet you hint that wanted to expand his ranch. And I do know this is crazy but he could but he was rather proud of what he had done if you remember.
He was able to build oil storage facilities at Poole Harbor which opinion earliest Congress refused to vote the money for in the post-war reaction towards almost complete disarmament. This was a very far sighted action. It was indeed and he was able to do this by selling these oil leases. And you're one of the conditions being that don't he build these oil facilities at Pearl Harbor. My own feeling is that little as I like. Person of his like for the moon in a way but it seems to me that he wasn't the arch villain that he was made out I think this is a simplification. There were no arch villains except perhaps super ambitious men like your new general Parma who wanted to to use
political suspicions of the left to put himself in the presidency. It is clear of course one reason was going to kiss blew off the front of his house for money. Yes he probably put her money right. Right but they rounded up under his administration literally thousands of people. Yes I was surprised in looking at your research. Warren G Harding had how he wanted to back the League of Nations that he wasn't that far from Wilson. When he finally began to understand the situation he was really not the typical Republican of his day. He was not a Senator Lodge adamant on that point he was trying to push his party toward participation in the league. Yes the World Court who vote yes. Yes. I think when he begun to understand things he wasn't the doctrinaire.
People like large were of course he didn't have an intellectual background to be very consistent I suppose. A lot would depend on who had his. You know if Hughes heard his ear you know then he might be more amenable. Well you did say that he tended to say exactly what the last person had argued him into. You know see it's a frightening thing though and I keep as I read it and I must tell the listeners that I read this book and I didn't know Francis Russell but I was so impressed with the book and when it said that Francis Russell lived in Sandwich near Cape Cod I called you and said if possible we must talk about it. It is frightening to look at Warren G Harding in his times to see that there are certain elements which might be in our own times. Now he was a newspaper editor and publisher and he took great pride in that that was the one thing in his life owning the newspaper. Another thing that he took great
pride in was being a joiner. He wanted to join anything in sight and had trouble in joining. Most things because of the shadow of Blooming Grove you know the most and Suso wanted to get in and they wouldn't take him in until he was nominated as president. And yet he had to say this man who had a mediocre. Intellectual talent I don't know where he would shine S.A.T. scores if he was a college applicant became a newspaper publisher and editor of some editorial writing ability became governor of his state became United States senator became a powerful organizer of the Republican Party and finally President of the United States when they couldn't find anybody else he looked like a president. He really sounded like a president didn't he. Oh if you didn't think about what he said too much. Of course in the days
before amplification systems a voice like yours was of the premium. He was that the old stentorian. And of course he had the weakness for the McKinley Barach as I call it oratory that had been cultivated for several generations in declamation in school. Yes it doesn't matter so much what you say as how you say it. He may suppose that declamation continued in attenuated form until early twenties I understand that the Boston Latin School. I was rock spit and so were they. They used to have declamation until relatively recent times. Was he one of the last with Coolidge and Hoover to follow. The last of the
breed of an innocent America I'm now accepting Wilson. We have new research on Wilson and even the partisans of Wilson agree that in regard to his record on civil rights during the war he would did not live up to the high standard he got frightened he became Xeno phobic and so on. But was Harding part of this trio of Harding Coolidge and perhaps even leaving out Hoover the last of the Know Nothing. The last of the innocence. Well in a sense yes I think he was elected because people were tired of the war and they wanted to get back to 1914 as they remembered it and of course in 1914 it never existed. You know they thought it was a period of peace in the words of the humor used to suggest peace prosperity and held public bliss and private wealth.
It was like I was abused greatly what would have happened if two of your favorite characters of research had met Adams. One of the items the particular one that you most enjoy and Harding meant to say they had met at someone's club and were introduced by a third party to discuss world affairs or whatnot what do you think the reaction would have been of Adams. I don't think they could have bridge the GUP third world. Who you of course have the people of education with a rather rather finely honed intellect in the classical background. I think probably Harding would have tried to be affable and sort of sniffed was the hardening and inevitable In other words was he so far out of his milieu. He begged people not to nominate him for president he said I have great doubts that I can handle the job let me stay in the Senate and so on. Was it inevitable when he was elected that the downward course
had to begin with him. Was he so unfit. Well. I think no matter who had been president the twenties would not have been so very very different events except in situations where the charismatic leader events are larger than the participants. I don't think for example if would had been elected so there would have been certainly more decorous presidency but I don't think the net result would have been much different and the same with Coolidge. General Wood was one of the prime nominees the year that Harding was nominated he was the hero of the Panama Canal. So when he was a medical officer was an E.. Yes he was he knew nothing about the presidency as far as I could get. No but he had been chief of staff. Yeah it was the army he was saying.
He was among course and he did administer the Philippines and he was a fairly broad scope and understanding I think of course some do consider him an up note reactionary and possibly he was. But I don't know. You haggled Geist spirit of the times was that and I think that the 20s reaction to the war was inevitable almost doesn't matter who was elected really I think that the events were much larger than these men who certainly were not very large. You don't think it would have made a difference if Herbert Hoover for example had moved ahead that early. You made a big difference to Herbert Hoover but I do think you know it took the country because he did have a much finer mine. Yes he did because he never would have ended up being hated the way he was and maligned because of course he became a symbol again for that.
We went beyond supposing Al Smith had been elected in 1920. You know for the second depression and now Smith as much as we revere his stands on civil liberties in his fight against the last clause in New York state which intended to censor teachers and all the rest of it. Al Smith was presumably no better prepared than Harding for the great task of being an American president was lucky he got defeated really in 1920 it we didn't know it at the time. Sometimes luck plays a part as one wonders what would have happened if Roosevelt had been in office when the stock market crashed in 29 and the often boy had become president in 1933 probably with his mind he would have taken the same advantage of the situation your signs of the times. I must say that reading your book Francis Russell is an excellent adventure but its only better adventure. Having talked to you about it now I'm very pleased to have you for it is pleased to have been able to come
here with us. Thank you all the afternoon for this edition. Bernard Reuben. The First Amendment and a free people weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in the United States and around the world. The engineer for this broadcast was Barry Carter and the program is produced by Greg Fitzgerald. This broadcast is produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University which are solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange. The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The program is produced cooperatively by
WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University the host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Rubin.
Series
The First Amendment
Episode
Francis Russell: The Biography
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-23vt4mh3
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Series Description
"The First Amendment is a weekly talk show hosted by Dr. Bernard Rubin, the director of the Institute for Democratic Communication at Boston University. Each episode features a conversation that examines civil liberties in the media in the 1970s. "
Created Date
1980-01-24
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Social Issues
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:56
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 80-0165-06-18-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:28:37
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Citations
Chicago: “The First Amendment; Francis Russell: The Biography,” 1980-01-24, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-23vt4mh3.
MLA: “The First Amendment; Francis Russell: The Biography.” 1980-01-24. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-23vt4mh3>.
APA: The First Amendment; Francis Russell: The Biography. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-23vt4mh3