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.
179
180
Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly
figure with the Michigan Delegation. As
you know by this time, the caucus
last evening decided on Hughes.
The characteristic warmth of Remick's
endorsement pleased
Schantz, though his reply was, as
usual, a brief and formal para-
graph at the beginning of a letter
devoted to business matters:
I have your favor of June 7th and am
very glad indeed to hear you are
having such a great time. Am also glad
to hear you speak so encouragingly
of Senator Harding of Ohio. As you know,
I have always said that he is
the dark horse and I believe the
strongest man we have today who is a
statesman and a good business man.
Harding, of course, did not come
forward as the dark horse of
the 1916 convention, though he did
receive the vote of one New
Jersey delegate on the second ballot
for president,3 and his name
was heard and recorded in the cries
from the floor when he opened
the nominations for vice president.4
3 Official Report of the
Proceedings of the Sixteenth Republican National Convention
(New York, 1916), 183.
4 Ibid., 204.