Ohio History Journal

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AN IMPRESSION OF HARDING IN 1916

AN IMPRESSION OF HARDING IN 1916

 

by DOROTHY V. MARTIN

Curator of Manuscripts, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

It was as the "keynoter" and permanent chairman of the sixteenth

Republican national convention that the name of Warren G.

Harding became known nationally for the first time. Harry M.

Daugherty, Harding's political manager, confessed that his aim

at that convention was simply to bring his protege before the

delegates in such a way that they would remember him, and he

felt that he had succeeded. "Every man in the convention," he

said, "went home with a vivid picture of the man, Warren

Harding."1

How well he succeeded in impressing a member of the Michigan

delegation is illustrated in an exchange of letters between Delegate

Jerome H. Remick and his friend Arnold Augustus Schantz.2

Remick, president of the Jerome H. Remick & Co., Music Pub-

lishers, and prominent in many other enterprises, represented the

first district of Detroit. His friend Schantz, at that time vice

president and general manager of the Detroit & Cleveland Navi-

gation Co., was a former Ohioan, a native of Mansfield, though

Detroit had been his home for nearly forty years.

Remick, writing to his friend at the end of the first day of the

convention, interrupted his discussion of other business to say:

 

The Convention is most interesting. Harding's speech this morning was

wonderful. Don't miss reading a word of it. I would not at all be surprised

to see him the nominee of the Republican Party, and he will be some

standard bearer. I think T. R. is practically eliminated.

Our delegation is for Hughes, hook, land [sic], and sinker, with a

complimentary vote on the first ballot to Ford. The Detroit delegation of

manufacturers and automobile heads are all here, but they have not cut any

1 See Harry M. Daugherty, The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy (New York,

1932) as quoted in Samuel H. Adams, The Incredible Era (Boston, 1939), 111.

2 J. H. Remick to A. A. Schantz, June 7, 1916; and A. A. Schantz to J. H.

Remick, June 8, 1916. James McMillan Papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit

Public Library.

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