1927 and the Rise of Modern America

by Charles Shindo

  generating publicity

  As secretary of commerce from 1921 to 1928, Hoover sought to transform the federal government into an efficient and nonintrusive bureaucratic machine. According to biographer Joan Hoff Wilson, Hoover’s objective “was the virtual elimination of poverty in the United States,” and he planned to accomplish this “through administrative reorganization and mass media dissemination of expert information.”1 By reorganizing the cabinet departments to eliminate duplication and waste, Hoover hoped to make the government function more efficiently, and by making important economic information available to all industries, businesses, and individuals, he hoped to enable businessmen to make informed decisions, which would mean an efficient and smoothly running economy as well. Hoover’s reorganization of the executive branch, although not as extensive as he wished, increased the role and importance of the Commerce Department, and of course, its secretary.

  To publicize the information gathered by the Commerce Department, as well as to publicize the achievements of the department, Hoover enlisted the aid of public-relations experts as well as of established figures in the press. Such journalists as George Akerson, Frederick M. Feiker, and Arch W. Shaw had worked with Hoover during the Great War and assisted him as secretary of commerce. Other such notable journalists as Ida Tarbell and William Allen White also lent their talents to Hoover’s cause. Hoover felt that public relations was a bureaucratic tool for use by experts, and as a result, “his approach reflected his own lack of emotional appeal and human warmth.”2 This impersonal approach can be seen in the over 3,000 conferences and commissions created to bring attention to various problems and solutions managed by the Commerce Department. Hoover tended to trust organizations and groups more than individuals, which gave much of the publicity garnered by the Commerce Department an impersonal air. During the flood crisis in 1927, Hoover’s command of the relief effort, while mainly managerial and organizational, had a direct personal impact on individuals in the flooded area, whose stories were relayed by the ever-present press. The flood relief illustrated all the best aspects of Hoover’s philosophy—volunteerism and organization—while masking the pitfalls of an impersonal bureaucratic society. The flood-relief effort enhanced Hoover’s popular image as the “Great Humanitarian.” In the late spring of 1927, near the end of the flood-relief effort, the owner of the Emporia (Kansas) Daily Gazette, William Allen White, organized a dinner for Hoover with over fifty newspapermen from Kansas. Another Kansan newsman, and a friend of Hoover’s, Arthur Capper, described the dinner in his Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital as “an ovation to Mr. Hoover, the handy-man of America.”3 The media and public celebrated Hoover’s seemingly unlimited ability to solve problems. Even though Hoover did not actively promote his own activities, his diverse array of undertakings in the 1920s were a sharp contrast to an otherwise lackluster political decade. “The one political figure,” writes Wilson of Hoover, “most out of tune with the flamboyant aspects of the Roaring Twenties became its best known Washington official.”4 He also emerged as a presidential contender when, on August 2, 1927, President Coolidge announced that he would not seek reelection in 1928.

  Though Hoover’s campaign for president did not officially begin until February 1928, when he entered the Ohio primary, he was quietly lining up supporters much earlier. In 1925 Hoover hired George Akerson as his press secretary, and in 1927 Akerson organized friends in the press, including Will Irwin, George Barr Baker, and Bruce Barton, to develop public support for Hoover. Famed advertising executive Barton wrote a well-publicized rebuttal to H. L. Mencken’s dismissal of Hoover as a “fat Coolidge” who was not entertaining enough to be a leader. Mencken labeled Hoover’s opponent Al Smith “a cocktail” and called Hoover “a dose of aspirin.” Barton responded by arguing that amusing rulers have no place in a modern society, though, he said, Mencken would make an excellent court jester.5

  Hoover’s use of publicity was an integral part of his ideas about how a bureaucracy should function, and in this sense he could be considered the first modern president, in that he recognized the importance of image in a mass-mediated society. His use of radio, the press, and advertising executives in his campaign, especially in the early stages when he was not officially a candidate, proved crucial to his success in the election. But Hoover’s use of publicity ultimately proved detrimental. Hoover’s public service, from wartime Belgium and the Food Administration to the Commerce Department and the flood-relief effort, created an image of a benevolent bureaucrat, a “Great Humanitarian.” Hoover’s works justified the label, but to the public the label not only celebrated the accomplishments of a public servant but also implied a warm and caring personality. Whereas Hoover based his life on character, the public saw him as a personality. Hoover seemed unaware of the difference and was incapable of effectively fulfilling the image of a personality. In this sense Hoover was far from a modern president, in that he did not actively cultivate a personality as part of his campaign. It was Hoover’s challenger in the 1932 election, Franklin Roosevelt, who combined the publicity methods pioneered by Hoover with an engaging public personality to emerge as the first fully modern president.

  As Hoover began his first presidential bid, however, the mosttalked-about issue concerning the American presidency was not the question of who would be the next president or anything about the current president, Calvin Coolidge, but, rather, the illegitimate daughter of the late president Warren G. Harding. In the summer of 1927, Nan Britton published The President’s Daughter, which described her longtime affair with Harding and the product of their affair, her daughter Elizabeth Ann. Of all the scandals arising from Harding’s administration, this one was unique in that its revelation was not meant to discredit the president, who was dead, or his administration, which was in the past. The book’s intention, according to Britton, was to push for the “legal and social recognition and protection of all children in these United States born out of wedlock.”6 Despite her claim of a “human cause,” that “there should be no so-called ‘illegitimates’ in these United States,”7 Britton wrote her book after she had made several failed attempts to gain financial support for her daughter from Harding’s siblings (Harding died in August 1923 and his wife died in 1924). Britton’s call for legal recognition of all children included the requirement that, by law, biological fathers would be named on birth certificates, which would entitle each child to a measure of support during the life of the father and a claim to any inheritance after the father’s death.

  In order to tell her story, Britton (with the help of Richard Wrightman, head of the Bible Corporation of America) created the Elizabeth Ann Guild, which published the book after the major publishing houses declined to do so. She also founded the Elizabeth Ann League to lobby for state and federal legislation to secure the rights of illegitimate children, though the organization did little more than write encouraging responses to letters from unwed mothers seeking financial assistance.8 Her main goal, or at least her primary result, seems to have been publicity. She could not conclusively prove her claim that Harding was Elizabeth Ann’s father, nor could she even substantiate her claim to have had an affair with Harding. She said that she and Harding had agreed to destroy the love letters they sent to each other and claimed that the fact they had both stuck to their agreement illustrated the depth of their devotion to one another.9 Whether she sincerely sought the legal recognition of all illegitimate children or just of her own, there was no better way to publicize her cause than to connect her child to the late president. Indeed, Britton had known Harding from his days as a newspaper editor in Marion, Ohio. Proof exists showing her schoolgirl infatuation with Harding, and it is evident that Harding, while he was a U.S. senator, did help Britton find employment in New York. Many analysts, however, dismiss her account, though once again, no solid evidence supports their refutations.

  The book was a sensation, selling around 50,000 copies by the end of the year and over 100,000 copies by the early 1930s. Many bookstor
es would not keep the book out on display but stocked it under the counter instead.10 Customers could also buy the book directly from the Elizabeth Ann Guild. The book was expensive for the time, at five dollars a copy, but according to Britton,

  its theme has found tender response in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers, and may be found in homes from far-off New Zealand to ancient Syria, from the Philippines to Alaska. It has been estimated that a million people in the United States alone have read The President’s Daughter. Lending libraries, even in the most sparsely populated sections of the country, are daily replenishing their supplies of this book, which, it is reported, is all too quickly worn with much reading.11

  The book also spawned an array of reactions. A lawsuit by Richard Wrightman’s wife, Patricia, claimed that he had written the book and should receive credit and compensation. A response titled The Answer, written by Dr. Joseph De Barthe, argued in thinly veiled language that Britton’s book was the result of her degeneracy and that Harding could not have been Elizabeth Ann’s father because he had been sterile. In addition, many articles attempted to prove or disprove the validity of Britton’s claims. The President’s Daughter was one part of a much larger debate over Harding—a debate that included the scandals in Harding’s administration under congressional investigation at the time of his death—along with such works as Revelry (1926), by Samuel Hopkins Adams, whose Hardingesque protagonist is a deeply troubled president who accidentally poisons himself, and The Strange Death of President Harding: From the Diaries of Gaston B. Means, a Department of Justice Investigator (1930), by Gaston Means, which suggested that Florence Harding had poisoned her husband. These criticisms of Harding and his administration were fought by Harding’s siblings and the supporters of the Harding Memorial in Marion, Ohio, dedicated in 1927 when the bodies of the president and his wife were interred at the site. This debate, which continues in biographies and histories concerning Harding, has created the perception that Harding was the worst president in the nation’s history.12

  The importance of The President’s Daughter, however, is not in its accuracy or its effect on Harding’s reputation; rather, the book illustrates the modern tendency to seek publicity as an end in itself rather than to champion a cause. Even though Britton claimed to be crusading on behalf of illegitimate children, she did not force any change in the legal standing of such children. She did make a significant amount of money from the sale of the book, as well as being on the payroll of the Elizabeth Ann Guild, but more importantly, she became known as Harding’s mistress and the mother of his child, even though she was unable to prove the claim. The notoriety of the book and the publicity it generated made Nan Britton famous. She became newsworthy and notable for writing a book that had no significant impact on policy or on the presidency but that fed the public’s prurient interests in illicit affairs and sex. Britton sold the one thing she had that could be commodified, her story.

  The media circus surrounding the 1927 arrest, trial, and conviction (and eventual execution in 1928) of Ruth Snyder and Henry Judd Gray for murdering Snyder’s husband, Albert, also reveals the public’s interest in illicit affairs and sex. Authorities arrested and indicted Gray, a corset salesman, and Snyder in March after the couple planned and implemented a plot to eliminate Albert Snyder and collect $96,000 from a life insurance policy that Ruth had tricked her husband into buying. Exactly who devised the plot is unclear, but in the end both received the death sentence for first-degree murder. The episode contained all the elements of a good media story: clearly definable characters (indeed, stock characters), illicit sex, mystery, murder, betrayal, and a lengthy trial attended by the curious and the celebrated.

  The facts of the case are few but significantly damaging. Snyder and Gray began their affair in the summer of 1925, she a thirty-yearold housewife and mother from Queens, and he a thirty-three-year-old salesman employed by the Bien Jolie Corset Company and living in East Orange, New Jersey, with his wife and daughter. Over the next year and a half, they met in hotel rooms (once when Ruth could not find a sitter for her daughter Lorraine, she sat her in the hotel lobby and told her to wait) and at Snyder’s home in Queens Village, New York. Over the course of the affair, Snyder told Gray about several of her failed attempts to kill her husband, including by poisoning and by leaving the gas on while he slept (Snyder claimed she had merely related stories about accidents involving her husband), and, according to Gray, Snyder enlisted his assistance in buying chloroform, a sash weight (a 5-pound weight used in window sashes), and other murderous implements.

  On Saturday, March 19, Judd Gray entered the home of Ruth and Albert Snyder while all the residents were out (Ruth, Albert, and Lorraine were at a party, and Ruth’s mother, who also lived there, was working as a nurse), and, following Ruth’s instructions, he hid in her mother’s room, where he found waiting for him the sash weight and other items. When the Snyders returned home after the party at around 2:00 a.m. Sunday, Gray was already quite drunk, having started drinking earlier in the day. Once Albert fell asleep, Ruth and Judd entered the bedroom, and Judd struck Albert on the head with the sash weight, but not hard enough to knock him out. A struggle ensued between Judd and Albert until Judd was able to hit Albert again and then strangle him. In order to ensure that he was dead, Judd and Ruth placed cloths soaked in chloroform in Albert’s mouth and tightened a wire around his neck. They also placed Albert’s own gun near his hand and messed up the house to look like a burglar had entered and fought with Albert. Judd then loosely tied and gagged Ruth and conspicuously placed an Italian-language newspaper in the house before leaving.

  On his journey from Queens Village to Syracuse, New York (where he was supposed to be making a sales call as his alibi), Gray talked to and was remembered by a man at the bus stop, a policeman, a cab driver, and the train conductor. Ruth, meanwhile, crawled to her daughter’s bedroom door (two rooms away from where the murder took place), woke Lorraine, and told her to go get help. When neighbors arrived to assist Ruth, they found Albert in his room dead. As police and press descended on the house, Ruth told her story of a dark and mustached man who had knocked her unconscious, leaving her bound and gagged until she was able to wake Lorraine for help. While she was recounting her ordeal and answering questions from the police, investigators found evidence that contradicted her story. A doctor examined her and found no evidence of a struggle or any contusion that could have caused her to lose consciousness. Police found the sash weight, hidden in a toolbox and covered with dried blood, but no evidence of a forced entry. The only items missing from the house were the contents of Albert’s wallet (which Ruth had given to Gray); her fur coat was hanging in the closet, and no other valuables were missing. Police also found Ruth’s jewelry hidden under her mattress. The most damaging evidence was a stickpin with the letters JG on it; Ruth’s hidden address book containing the names of twenty-eight men, including Judd Gray; and a canceled check for $200 made out to Judd Gray and signed by Ruth.

  For over twelve hours, police questioned Ruth Snyder before finally telling her that Judd Gray had confessed to the crime and had related the entire story to the authorities. With this, Snyder admitted to having been involved, but she insisted that she had tried to stop Gray at the last minute and that she had had no actual hand in the killing. Meanwhile, authorities had yet to apprehend Gray, but when they did arrest him at his hotel in Syracuse, he confessed to having had an affair with Ruth and to having been in the Snyders’ house at the time of the murder, but he said that he was hiding in a closet while the whole incident of the Italian burglar took place. While on the train back to New York City, police informed Gray of Snyder’s confession (producing a newspaper with headlines announcing her confession), and he too confessed to the crime. Once indicted, both Snyder and Gray tried to place the blame on the other. Despite a motion for separate trials, Snyder and Gray were tried together, but they had separate legal defenses. Snyder’s defense argued that she had taken no part in the crime—indeed, h
ad tried to stop it—and that Gray was an evil influence on a vulnerable woman caught in a bad marriage. Gray’s defense did not try in the least to acquit Gray of the charges; rather, by his own testimony Gray condemned not only himself but Snyder as well.13 The trial lasted eighteen days, and fifty-eight witnesses were called. The jury deliberated for only one hour and thirty-seven minutes before returning a guilty verdict, for which state law mandated a punishment of death by electrocution.

  Throughout the trial, both Snyder and Gray aired their feelings to the press. Snyder sought to gain public sympathy by appealing to “mothers and wives” like herself and by denouncing Gray as a manipulator who betrayed her. “He turned on me like a traitor and a liar. He made me a murderer condemned to die. He came into my home to steal another man’s wife and take another man’s life. He drank himself into a delirium of murderous mania and killed Albert Snyder with his own hands. . . . I shielded him. But the cowardly fear came up in him; when he saw he couldn’t save his own precious skin he turned on me.”14 Even after the verdict was in, Snyder tried to save herself by converting to Catholicism, not for the salvation it might provide but in an attempt to win the sympathy of New York governor Al Smith, a Catholic. Smith, while inclined to spare the life of a woman, could not stay her execution once she converted because, like Hoover, he was preparing for a presidential bid, and pardoning a Catholic would reinforce nativist fears of a papist conspiracy. Snyder’s serialized story in the press became a twenty-five-cent newsstand pamphlet entitled My Own True Story—So Help Me God! which John Kobler describes as “a fantastic stewpot of self-pity, hypocrisy, purple phrases and occasionally surprising flashes of self-revelation and frankness.”15