West of the Moon

"His Great Adventure" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. June 22, 1923

The text in Bushnell's cartoon serves to launch today's Graphical History Tour:

Pres. Harding west bound non political speech making tour - he will visit Alaska - being the third President to leave the U.S. while in office.

"I'm Sure This'll Be a Valuable Trip" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, June 20, 1923

One can argue whether any speaking tour by a President of the United States can ever be truly "non political." Along the way, President Harding's "Voyage of Understanding" made stops in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri; Hutchison, Kansas; Fairbanks, Alaska; and Seattle, Washington, touting the postwar economic recovery, and making the case for Prohibition and for U.S. participation in a proposed World Court. 

"Making the Trip for His Health" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. June 29, 1923

Harding also made stops at Yellowstone and Zion National Parks, plus the Oregon Trail and Vancouver, British Columbia — quite an ambitious itinerary for a man not known for being a whirlwind of activity, who had campaigned in 1920 for the presidency from his front porch, and found plenty of time while in office for golf.

Dorman Smith noted that one of the reasons for this trip was Harding's health, and he wasn't being ironic. Washington, D.C. and much of what is now the Lower 48 was hit with a deadly heat wave in late June. The weather in Alaska proved to be of little relief, however; temperatures in Fairbanks reached 94F (34C) during Harding's speaking engagement there.

"The President Seems to Be Building His 1924 Platform" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1923

Along the way, Harding touted his administration's record on the issues of the day and his agenda for a second term. To Republican McCutcheon, this was a platform built to appeal to every sector of the country.

"The Jovial Horse Doctor" by J.T. Alley in Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 26, 1923

Democrat Alley countered that all this prosperity was bypassing the agricultural sector. There were a number of reasons for this; I've been remarking on the weather again and again in these centennial observations, and it's because conditions were accumulating for the Dust Bowl of the 1930's. Protectionist tariffs, meanwhile, provoked retaliatory measures from the countries where farmers hoped to export their goods.

"Spring Housecleaning in the White House" by Callaghan for Federated Press, ca. May 10, 1923

Before wrapping things up today, I must remind everyone that the Harding administration was one of the three most corrupt in U.S. history, along with Nixon's and Trump's. The truism that the Teapot Dome scandal didn't break until after Harding's death is belied by this cartoon drawn for the socialist labor press by Mr. Callaghan, possibly working from Minneapolis.

The communists and socialists at Federated Press may have been the only ones paying attention to the Teapot Dome scandal in the spring of 1923, although it was first reported in the Wall Street Journal a year earlier. Albert Fall was Harding's Secretary of the Interior, which took over management of naval reserves at Elk Hills and Buena Vista, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming. Fall accepted bribes from his friends Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny to grant leases for Mammoth Oil Corporation and Pan-American Petroleum & Transport Company to drill for oil in those reserves. 

Callaghan and others accused Attorney General Harry Daugherty of refusing to look into the Wall Street Journal's reports. An independent investigation would clear Daugherty himself of culpability; the suicide of his personal assistant Jess Smith shortly before Harding left on his Great Adventure has left the suspicion that the Justice Department was not entirely clean in the matter.

The other cabinet-level chicaneries alleged in the cartoon were separate from the Teapot Dome scandal. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover suffered no lasting damage from whatever Mexican Mud refers to (the two countries were exploring closer economic ties that spring). Likewise with Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes; Callaghan may have been making some charge that he somehow profited from U.S. diplomatic intervention in the Coto border dispute between Panama and Costa Rica in 1921. And Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon had turned his banking stocks over to his brother Richard but made enough from his other investments to make him the third-highest taxpayer in the U.S.

"On the Back Porch" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 22, 1923