PRESIDENTS AND POLITICS

OF THE 1920s

Warren G. Harding "Return to Normalcy"

"My best judgment of Americas needs is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Lets get out of the fevered delirium of war, with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be made in the madness of war and the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquillity at home is more precious than peace abroad, and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people. "
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=954

Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which allowed the President to present a unified budget for the first time (rather than have each cabinet secretary submit a budget to Congress), and which also created the General Accounting Office to audit government expenditures. He also supported bills assisting farm cooperatives and the liberalization of farm credit. Perhaps most importantly, unlike his predecessor Wilson, Harding was generally tolerant on civil liberties, honestly criticizing the unfair treatment of African Americans Supported efforts by Secretary Mellon, one of the wealthiest men in the nation, to push through substantial tax cuts for the rich and for corporations

Encourage the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department, and the Interstate Commerce Commission to cooperate with corporations rather than to regulate them or to instigate antimonopoly actions against them
Use American banks, such as the John D. Rockefeller-backed Chase National Bank, to replace British financiers in the handling and financing of world trade
http://millercenter.org/president/harding/essays/biography/5

Calvin Coolidge "The Business of America is Business"

Hands-off leadership style and a restrained view of the executive, delegating tasks to his Cabinet, leaving most issues to the states to resolve, and even on federal matters frequently deeming restraint to be the wiser course than bold action Light hand in regulating business, strove hard to balance the budget (even managing to run a surplus), and cut the national debt Revenue Acts of 1924 and 1926 Believed in expanding America's commercial interactions with other nations Authorized American representatives--first Charles Dawes, then Owen Young-to help settle continuing European financial issues stemming from World War I

Signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as a means of solving conflicts
http://millercenter.org/president/coolidge/essays/biography/5

Herbert Hoover "Laissez-Faire"

Directed the Department of the Interior to improve conditions for Native Americans on government-controlled reservations.
Passage of the Boulder Canyon Project Act, which mandated the construction of a massive dam (later named the Hoover Dam) that would provide power for public utilities in California National Park Service and placed nearly two million acres of federal land in the national forest reserve White House Conference on Health and the Protection of Children of July 1929 looked at child welfare and produced an astounding 35 volumes of findings that social workers would use in the coming decades

Wickersham Commission on Law Enforcement investigated the federal government's judicial system
President's Committee on Recent Social Trends with assessing twenty-four aspects of American life, such as population, food, and public administration

Supported a bill that created a Federal Farm Board Agricultural Marketing Act, replete with a Federal Farm Board and no subsidies for farmers

Formed the President's Emergency Committee on Employment

National Credit Corporation

Signed the Emergency Relief Construction Act

Signed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-injunction Act Pushed for disarmament treaties, rethought American relations with the countries of South and Central America, and confronted Japanese aggression in China
http://millercenter.org/president/hoover/essays/biography/5

THE END