Tales from the North

Continuing last Saturday's Graphical History Tour, we've got some century-late-breaking news out of Minnesota!

In a special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat of the late Cushman Davis, Minnesota elected Farmer-Labor candidate Magnus Johnson.

"Way Up in Alaska" by Harold J. Wahl in Sacramento Bee, July 19, 1923

The Senate seat won by Johnson had been held by Republicans since 1859. Fellow Farmer-Laborite Henrik Shipstead had been elected to Minnesota's other Senate seat in 1922 — a seat that had been held by Republicans almost as long, except for Charles Towne's 54-day term in 1900-1901.

"I've Seen 'Em Come..." by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1923

Edward Gale's Third Party Graveyard fails to include the Prohibition Party. By 1923, the Prohibition Party's principal campaign plank had been hammered by both major political parties into the U.S. Constitution. (That the 18th Amendment would eventually be negated by the 21st was still a decade into the future.)

The Greenback and Populist Party platforms of looser monetary policy and abandonment of the gold standard would eventually be adopted and passed by the Progressives and Democrats. This is how third parties' success is truly measured: do their issues become adopted by either or both the Democrats or Republicans?

"Some Consolation for the GOP" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 19, 1923

Where Gale gets it wrong is that the Farmer-Labor Party was not the "third" party in the Minnesota Senate race. John McCutcheon correctly notes that the Democratic Party was scarcely a factor. Johnson won the election with a commanding 57.48% of the vote to Republican Governor Jacob Preuss's 38.69%. Democrat James Carley was sent home with a measly 3.83% of votes cast.

"Powerful Katrinka Loses Her Composure" by Harold Talburt for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, before July 26, 1923

The Farmer-Labor Party and the Democrats would eventually join forces in 1944, strengthening both. Minnesota's DFL is one of only two affiliates of the Democratic Party with a name different from the national party. (North Dakota's Democratic-Nonpartisan League is the other.)

Your humble blogger provided the backstory on Fontaine Fox's Powerful Katrinka back in April.

Alaska Daily Empire, July 10, 1923

Meanwhile, President Harding was on his western non-campaign swing, making the first presidential visit ever to Alaska before heading south again. 

"Cinderella and the Golden Galoshes" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1923

His plans were to visit Vancouver, Canada and several cities on the U.S. west coast before sailing down to the Panama Canal and stopping at Puerto Rico on the way back to Washington, D.C.

"Somewhere in Alaska" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 16, 1923

Daniel Fitzpatrick, drawing from a city Harding had already left, used the occasion to accuse administration foreign policy as being adrift; but cartoonists in cities still on the president's itinerary rolled out the welcome mat. 

"Getting Ready for the President" by Frank Kettlewell in Oakland Tribune, July 23, 1923

I see a lot of similar editorial cartoons in this period — especially in summer months — welcoming visiting conventions of all kinds to town. Even the best and brightest pens and grease pencils of the day would let the Shriners and Tulip Fancier Society know how thrilled they were to play host to them.

"Just Watch Our Smoke" by O.C. Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, July 28, 1923

But Florence Harding took ill in Alaska, and her husband experienced abdominal pain after rushing through a speech at Washington State University. His doctors diagnosed recurrence of a previous heart problem, but falsely reported to the public that it was ptomaine poisoning due to copper-tainted clams.

Harding cancelled a stop in Portland, Oregon, arriving by train in San Francisco on July 29. Although he was visibly exhausted, he insisted on walking from the train to the car that took him to the Palace Hotel. The official announcement was that he was expected to fully recover and complete the trip.

But the next day, it was reported that Harding had developed pneumonia, and his condition was pronounced "grave."

"Renominate the President" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 1923

The Chronicle nevertheless ran this Bronstrup cartoon on July 31 alongside an editorial in moderately large print advocating a second Harding term. A second editorial, below the first and in regular type, acknowledged Harding's illness and regretted that he was unable to complete his San Francisco event schedule.

I have to wonder whether Bronstrup drew this portrait in case the worst were to come to pass by the newspaper's deadline. It's rather dark for an All Hail! cartoon

On the other hand, the sketch by R. H. Sommer (obviously drawn from the same photograph) on the front page of the Alaska Empire three weeks earlier is similarly dark, and that was published while, as far as the public knew, Harding was in perfect health.

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

Introducing Albert Fall (Holes and All)

My Saturday History Tours usually display several editorial cartoons; but today, I'm featuring only one.

It was the only cartoon I could find on this topic.

"What's the Idea" by J. N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, Jan. 12, 1922

Today, Warren G. Harding is remembered, first and foremost, for the Teapot Dome scandal, an oil leasing scheme that only blew wide open after President Harding's premature demise. "Ding" Darling's cartoon introduces us to the man who would become the central figure in the scandal, Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall.

Putting government coal and petroleum resources under the control of Fall's Interior Department was Harding administration policy from the beginning. Harding transferred the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming from the purview of the Navy Department (as established during the Taft administration to ensure that the Navy would have sufficient oil reserves for its fleet) to the Interior Department by a little-noticed executive order in June of 1921.

Darling's cartoon, however, is about transferring control of Alaska's natural resources from the Department of Agriculture to the Interior Department, which required congressional action. This is 37 years before Alaska became a state; even more of the territory was under direct federal control as is still the case now. Its governor, at this point Republican Scott C. Bone, was not elected, but a presidential appointee. Neither Bone nor any of his predecessors were actually from Alaska.

Harding was wholeheartedly in favor of opening up Alaskan resources, but as you should be able to tell from Darling's cartoon, Darling's pro-environment sentiments led the Iowa-raised cartoonist to fear the consequences of handing those resources over to predatory interests.

Few in Alaskan business or political leadership shared Darling's trepidation. Wilson-appointed Former Gov. Thomas Riggs (D) wrote a column in the December 18, 1921 New York Times, advocating for local control "without the hampering apron strings of most of the 48 fussy old stepmothers in Washington": 

"I do not know where a constructive enterprise ends and a predatory interest begins, but I sincerely wish that a few more of one or the other were allowed to come into the Territory to open up great mines, build railroads, explore for oil and coal, establish paper plants and pay the taxes."

Sen. Harry S. New (R-IN), Chair of the Senate Committee on Territories, authored a bill on November 8, 1921 to provide for the transfer from Agriculture to Interior of oil and coal mining leases, national forest reservations, ranger stations and lighthouses. Testifying before Senator New's committee, Secretary Fall, previously a Senator from New Mexico, boasted that he had in fact been the one to write New's bill:

"I discussed the matter with the President. His policy toward developing Alaska and my bill for coordination was introduced in accordance with his ideals."

Testifying against the New/Fall bill's provisions to put Alaska's forests under the authority of the Interior Department, Chief U.S. Forester Col. W.B. Greeley argued that no economy would be achieved by such a move. 

Rep. Charles F. Curry (R-CA), Chair of the House Committee on Territories, put forth a House bill similar to Senator New's on December 22. By then, however, New had tabled his Senate bill, reasoning that he, Fall, and President Harding should first visit the Alaskan territory the next summer.

Harding didn't get around to making that visit until July, 1923, and died before making it back to Washington D.C.

✍

By the way, "Sec. Wallace" in Darling's cartoon is Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, the father of Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt, and Progressive Party presidential nominee in 1948.

Exxon Valdez 30 Years On

Spillback Saturday takes a break from the century-old stuff this week to note the 30-year anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, so I can steal my own cartoons instead of those of a bunch of dead guys.

UW-Parkside Ranger, April 6, 1989

On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound after leaving Valdez, Alaska. The resulting oil spill was, at the time, the second worst in U.S. history (the 1910 Lakeview Gusher, the subsequent 2010 Deepwater Horizon blow-out, and continuing Taylor Oil spill were/are several times worse).

It was also only the second time gas prices rose above the $1.009/gallon mark in my area — this time to stay. Even accounting for inflation, the gas prices in my cartoon are quaint by today's standard: that $1.059/gallon price for regular would be the equivalent of about $2.16 today. The price up the street from my house hit $2.949/gallon earlier this week.

The price of gas, however, is only a superficial measure of the disaster. Well over 10 million gallons of oil spread over 2,600 square miles in the first couple of weeks, ultimately coating 1,300 miles of coastline. In terms of damage to wildlife, the Exxon Valdez spill is estimated to have killed 250,000 seabirds, 3,000 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 orcas, and countless salmon, herring, and other fish.

UW-Milwaukee Post, April 13, 1989

Alyeska Pipeline Service Company had promised Alaskans that their expert seamen would find smooth sailing with "an absence of substantial navigation hazards." Even in the "highly unlikely" event of a major spill, Alyeska predicted that it could be brought under control in a few hours.

In fact, the ship's captain, reportedly less than sober, steered the Exxon Valdez a mile and a half off course, then put the ship on autopilot and left the bridge. The ship's underwater radar system was malfunctioning. By the time a third mate saw the ship heading for well-marked shoals, it was too late to steer away.

It took Exxon three days to ready equipment to spray chemical dispersant on the spill (and for the state of Alaska to okay its use). By day five, a thick gooey coating had congealed on the surface of the slick, rendering the dispersant nearly useless and gumming up equipment trying to skim the oil off the water. The company, and citizen volunteers, spent months cleaning the water, the beaches, the wildlife and even the trees of oil. Even so, only 10% of the spill was cleaned up, leaving the other 90% for Mother Nature to handle.

If there was one bright moment when fortune smiled, it was that Captain Hazelwood's initial efforts to budge the Exxon Valdez off the shoals failed. Had he been successful, the ship probably would have sunk with all hands.

UW-Milwaukee Post, April 25, 1989

Of course, Donald Joffrey Trump's executive order this week allowing oil companies to completely disregard any and all environmental considerations and pipe-baby-pipe with impunity is "highly unlikely" to be any cause for concern whatsoever.

Toon: Whatever the Weather

It has been a brutal winter up and down the East Coast of the U.S. Boston, Massachusetts is suffering under almost 100" (2.5 meters) of snow as we seem to be stuck in a loop this year of one storm after another pounding New England.
Meanwhile up in Alaska, the starting point of this year's Iditarod dogsled race will be moved for only the second time ever due to a lack of snow. (And I'd like to point out that I only read the story at that link when I was writing this blog entry, after drawing this cartoon.)