5.5: Government in the 1920s

As you read the summary for lesson 5.5 fill in the blanks with the correct key term In 1920, fun-loving Warren G. Harding was elected President. Preferring a laissez-faire approach to business, Harding named banker Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury. Together they worked to reduce regulations on businesses and to raise protective tariff rates. This made it easier for U.S. producers to sell goods at home. In response, Europeans also raised tariffs, making U.S. products more expensive there. Laws had been previously passed to break up monopolies and protect workers, but Harding favored less restriction on businesses. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover asked business leaders to voluntarily make advancements.Harding admitted that he preferred playing golf or poker to governing. He trusted his friends with important government positions. One friend, Charles Forbes, wasted millions of dollars while running the Veterans’ Bureau. Another, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, created the biggest scandal of Harding’s administration. In the Teapot Dome scandal, Fall took bribes to transfer control of oil reserves from the United States Navy to private oilmen. Fall was later forced to return the oil and sentenced to a year in jail. Harding died in 1923, before the full extent of the scandal came to light.The new President,Calvin Coolidge, was quiet and honest. He put his administration in the hands of men who held to the simple virtues of an older generation. Like Harding, he mistrusted the use of legislation to achieve social change. He favored big business. He reduced the national debt and lowered taxes to give incentives to businesses. However, Coolidge said and did nothing about many of the country’s problems, such as low prices for farm crops, racial discrimination, and low wages.In foreign policy, Coolidge pushed European governments to repay war debts to the United States. In 1924, an agreement known as the Dawes Plan was arranged to help Germany, France, and Great Britain repay those debts. In 1928, exhausted by World War I, 62 nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a treaty that outlawed war. Unfortunately, there was no way for nations to enforce the treaty, and it was quickly forgotten.