Fond du Lac and the Election of 1920
by Jason Ehlert

The national election of 1920 brought significant changes to the American electoral sys-tem. This was the first election in which women voted, and it also was the first election in which reporters broadcast the returns over the radio. The election also was a watershed in that its out-come repudiated Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism and America’s involvement in international affairs. Instead, the voters endorsed a Republican conservatism that was epitomized by Warren G. Harding’s promise of a return to “normalcy.”

As a repudiation of President Wilson’s foreign policy, the election of 1920 reflected a distinct desire for change in national politics. Democratic Party control gave way to Republican rule. The campaign centered on two primary issues. The first was whether the United States should become a member of the League of Nations. The second consisted of a blend of urban postwar unemployment and lingering rural distress that Republicans termed “the farm and labor crisis.” A secondary but important factor in this election was women’s suffrage and the conse-quent very large number of first time voters.

Republicans campaigned on the need for change, a feeling that resonated not only in Washington but also in Wisconsin and in Fond du Lac. The impulse for political change in the United States seemed likely to produce a swing to the Republican Party.

The national Republican standard-bearer was Senator Warren G. Harding. Harding had entered the Republican National Convention as a dark horse and emerged as the Republican can-didate for president. He had been involved in Ohio politics for years both as Lieutenant Gover-nor and as U.S. Senator, but he had hardly been mentioned as a likely candidate for president. Only a week before the convention opened in June, Harding ran sixth in a poll of Republican candidates for the nomination. At the opening of the convention he had only thirty-nine voting delegates pledged to him. ¹

The pre-convention favorite for the Republican nomination had been General Leonard C. Wood, who had served in World War I. His prospects faded after the results of an investigation into campaign spending were published. Senator William Squire Kenyon of Iowa led the in-vestigation and found that Wood had spent a whopping $1,773,303. Illinois Governor Frank Orren Lowden had spent $414, 984, whereas Harding had spent just $113,109. Wood and Lowden both had their campaigns tarnished by the Kenyon investigation, and this contributed to Harding’s victory at the Convention. ²

The Convention opened on June 8. In the early ballots for the presidential nomination, Wood led, while Harding was not doing well at all. Harding apparently became depressed and almost withdrew from the process, but Harry M. Daugherty, a lawyer and politician from Ohio and later U.S. Attorney General under Harding, encouraged Harding to stay in the race. Daugherty hoped for a deadlock between Wood and Lowden, and this eventually happened. When the convention stalled, the leadership, most of whom were either members of the Senate or the House of Representatives, met in the famous “smoke-filled room” in the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, where a debate on who should be the party’s candidate continued until the early hours of the morning of June 9. ³ Neither Wood nor Lowden could gather enough delegate support to regain momentum, and it was decided that a third candidate was needed. Warren G. Harding became that third candidate, a true dark horse. Harding gradually took delegates away from Wood, and on the tenth ballot, Harding was selected as the Republican nominee for president. ⁴

The campaign was enormously influenced by what most Americans perceived as a for-eign policy aberration, the nation’s participation in World War I, just the sort of foreign en-tanglement that George Washington had warned about in his Farewell Address. The reaction was an isolationist impulse that made the issue of membership in the League of Nations the most significant debating point of the election. Dr. D. O. Kinsman, a professor from Lawrence College in Appleton, explained the League issue to Fond du Lac voters. ⁵ Kinsman claimed that League membership might be one of the most important questions the United States would ever have to answer. The League of Nations, according to Kinsman, was an “historical product.” “The purpose in organizing the League was two-fold: to preserve the peace of the world and to promote the general welfare of mankind.” ⁶ Additionally, the League was to ensure the indepen-dence of all its member nations. The League Covenant also became an integral part of the Treaty of Versailles in fixing the conditions of peace with Germany.

Harding did not support the League of Nations, although he did favor parti-cipation in some kind of world governing body such as the World Court at The Hague. Harding and many other Republicans particularly disagreed with Article X of the League of Nations Covenant. Harding and the Republicans interpreted Article X as allowing the United States to mobilize troops to solve world conflicts without the consent of Congress. This was a dubious interpretation by the Republicans, as Article X simply provided for the independence of all the League member nations. If any member’s independence were attacked or challenged, its inde-pendence was to be protected by other League member nations. But Article X said nothing about anyone mobilizing troops to solve world conflicts or mechanisms that might be required to accomplish this. Nevertheless, it made a convenient inflammatory issue for a nation with recent memory of World War I battlefield losses and demands upon the civilian population.

James Middleton Cox, Governor of Ohio, former Congressman, and the Democratic can-didate for President, supported the League of Nations, a position reflected in the Democratic platform. The Democrats claimed that the League of Nations was the only way to put war in the past and to prevent future wars from happening. ⁷

An important factor in the election so far as Wisconsin was concerned was the State’s maverick Senater, Robert La Follette. La Follette, a Republican, was Wisconsin’s senior U.S. Senator and he strongly opposed the League of Nations. La Follette earlier had opposed United States involvement in World War I. He claimed that World War I was merely a war to protect big corporations’ interests overseas and argued that the majority of the country did not want to go to war in Europe. The idealistic and populist Senator asserted that the decision to go to war had been decided, not by a majority of the people, but rather by a select few. La Follette felt that the soldiers lying in a trench in Europe should decide if they wanted the war, not just a few people in Washington. La Follette saw big business getting richer because of the war and argued that conscription was also controlled by and benefited big business.

La Follette had supported President Wilson’s neutrality policy for the United States that had been adopted in 1914 and emphasized in Wilson’s 1916 campaign for reelection. When the United States went to war in April 1917, La Follette and Wilson became bitter enemies. La Follette and other members of the Wisconsin delegation of the House of Represen-tatives had been some of the few in Congress who had voted against a declaration of war on Germany. La Follette filibustered the declaration of war so much that they almost had to remove him from the Senate chambers forcefully. Following the logic of his economic analysis, La Follette asserted that if the war meant a way out of depression and economic difficulty, then he would rather that the country remain in depression. ⁸

La Follette’s message seemed likely to play well in Wisconsin, a state dominated by citi-zens with a strong German heritage. Descendants of German immigrants to Wisconsin did not like fighting a war against their relatives in Europe. In local referenda on the eve of the Ameri-can declaration of war, people in Sheboygan County voted 6,133 against the war and only 17 for it, while in Monroe County 954 voted against participation and only 95 in favor.

American intervention in the Russian Civil War and domestic U.S. government repression of so-called radicals led La Follette to articulate strong opposition to the League of Nations. While La Follette supported international cooperation, he saw the League of Nations as a tool of dominant imperialist powers that would prevent the formation of democracies through-out the world after the war. In La Follette’s view, the League was merely a mecha-nism for Woodrow Wilson and his allies to protect their financial interests against the Bolshevik Russia and other revolutionary and anti-colonial governments. La Follette’s vision of a future world order, on the other hand, was one without armaments, without imperialism, without con-scription, one in which the people voted by referendum before they went to war. “We do not need to restrain the peoples of different countries from making war upon each other. . . . We do need to restrain the ruling classes of every country from inciting or compelling its people to war upon those of some other country.”

La Follette also objected to what he saw as President Wilson’s domination of the Senate. La Follette worked to restore the Senate’s prerogatives. People, he claimed, were tired of “[d]emocracy and rhetoric” and were more concerned with local issues like their local econo-mies, their jobs, and their families. According to La Follette, Americans were patriotic and had fought World War I. But they were not then concerned about the League of Nations. They just wanted to get their lives back to normal. La Follette considered that Wilson’s plans for peace would not accomplish this. As he said, “The little group of men at Versailles were not peacemakers but instead were war makers.” ⁹

Wisconsin’s junior Senator, Republican Irving Lenroot, sided with Harding on the League of Nations issue. Lenroot shared none of La Follette’s populism. A more conservative Republican, he suggested that some international group of nations might be necessary, but he felt that the League of Nations, as it had been established, challenged American freedom and democracy. ¹⁰ Lenroot was accused by some, including Democratic Senator James Reed of Missouri, who spoke in Fond du Lac, of not taking a firm stand on the issue. ¹¹ Lenroot’s criticism of the League focused on the specious issue of Article X and the alleged requirement that U.S. troops be mobilized to help settle world affairs without the consent of Congress. So Reed’s criticism had some justification. ¹²

While foreign policy dominated campaign rhetoric, domestic concerns also played a role in the election. The United States had experienced an economic slump after the end of the World War. The “farm and labor situation,” as it was described, was not good at the time of the elec-tion of 1920. Not that the two factions were united. For example, farmers resented gains by urban labor from the1919 adoption of a new minimum wage law requiring that 22 cents per hour be paid to women and minors. This law went into effect on August 1 of that year and was seen by farmers as likely to increase their costs.

Contemporary newspapers in Fond du Lac provide descriptions of some significant economic issues that engaged the local public. Fond du Lac had become an industrial center and also a center of union activity prior to World War I, but the war accelerated both of these developments. Fond du Lac business was growing, so the postwar depression seemed to be ending, at least for some. The annual payroll at the Rueping Leather Company, one of Fond du Lac’s largest employers, had increased to more than $1,200,000, and 1,200 workers were employed there. Labor organizers were active, signaling perhaps an increasing militancy and also the return of better times. The trades and Labor Council occupied their new headquarters in the G.A.R. Hall. Workers in the city’s retail meat markets organized the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, Local 300. Rex Typewriter employees walked out in sympathy with the resignation of one J. H. Love. Members of Locals in the building trades went out on strike against the building contractors. And the labor market experienced pressure caused by the return of war veterans. To try to meet the employment needs of de-mobilized soldiers, The Knights of Columbus set up a Labor Bureau in the Labor Hall to assist the returning veterans. ¹³

Locally, the labor problems hit home hardest in North Fond du Lac, where the Chicago Northwestern Railroad shops were on strike as part of a national railroad strike in 1919-1920. Two-hundred shop workers, seeking an 85-cent raise, started their strike by walking off their jobs. In the local area, over 1,000 railroad workers left their jobs in support of the first 200 who had triggered the strike in North Fond du Lac. ¹⁴ “The movement of democracy in industry,” La Follette explained in 1919, “is tending to supersede at many points the old struggle for political democracy.” ¹⁵

The farmer’s plight also remained a serious one. The scissors crisis between low prices for agricultural products and high costs for goods needed on the farm produced increasing frus-tration among farmers. A Republican commentator, U.S. Senator Edwin Freemont Ladd of North Dakota, noted that farmers had been very individualistic and previously could deal with organized business, but this was no longer the case. Farmers had to find a way to reduce the role of the middleman and also get the cost of living down. In 1919, a Farm–Labor Cooperative Association was founded in Kenosha with the aim to do just that: reduce the high cost of living and get rid of the middleman. ¹⁶ Farmers were less likely to organize than urban labor, according to Senator Robert La Follette, who knew a great deal about farms. La Follette, who boasted having grown up on a family farm and having helped to run it, became a spokesman for both farmers and laborers.

According to La Follette, “The militance of labor was paralleled by a growing discontent among farmers.” The collapse of farm markets, the lifting of wartime regulations over the food industry, the end of guaranteed farm prices, and the Federal Reserve Board’s deflationary policy all combined to produce a depression in agriculture. This downturn further isolated farmers from urban prosperity. Wheat farmers were upset that they received only about a quarter of the price that consumers paid for bread, at the time around ten cents per loaf. Farmers clearly had to find new and better ways to get a larger share of the profits from their products. La Follette was dedicated to defeating large corporations and big business, and he clearly spoke for farmers and laborers at the 1920 Republican National Convention. His opinions were not widely shared at that gathering. Other delegates at the convention accused La Follette of being a “Bolshevi,” and when speeches nominating Harding began, the Wisconsin delegates stood up and booed. La Follette increasingly talked of forming a third party that was free from corporate control. ¹⁷

Farm prices continued to decline, but farmers were not alone in their economic distress; for industrial workers, the postwar depression had also brought hard times, and there were few pay raises. Strikes in the mining industry and by railroad workers could become very bloody. Even policemen in Boston walked off the job, and there was widespread fear that much of the unrest was stimulated by “Bolshevik” agitators. In general, the postwar working environment was characterized by great labor unrest, public alarm, and “red-baiting.”

Despite economic conditions that seemed desperate to many, the 1920 elections would provide no real solution for the farmer-worker discontent. They wanted to be a larger part of the productive process and get more returns for their many hard hours of work. ¹⁸ Neither political party seemed to address their issues effectively, and the political dialogue of the campaign evaded a frank discussion of their problems.

William Titus, a Republican State Senator from Fond du Lac County who was both a farmer and a businessman, worked hard in the State Senate for what he claimed were farmers’ interests. Titus drafted several bills intended to benefit farmers. He seemed to agree with U.S. Senator Irving Lenroot in his approach to help the farmer. Lenroot, in attacking La Follette, claimed that radicalism had crept into Wisconsin, and it was the farmer who stopped it. But Lenroot did not stop with “Red Scare” rhetoric. He argued that the best way to fight subversive threats was to help farmers with their problems. Lenroot advocated state help for farmers to secure better marketing facilities through establishment of producer cooperative associations built on business principles. Lenroot claimed that Republicans had made a covenant with the farmers, and it was up to party leaders to see that it was kept. Optimism was high that the State Legislature would pass bills that would deal with some of the farmers’ problems. ¹⁹

Women’s suffrage may have been one of the biggest factors in the election of 1920. Women had received the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1919 and its ratification in 1920. The United States thus became the 26th country in the world to give women the right to vote, joining the ranks of Canada, Russia, Mexico, and the Scandinavian countries, among others. Wisconsin’s State Legislature ratified the amendment for women’s suffrage on August 18, 1920, by a vote of 24 to 1 in the Senate and 54 to 2 in the House. A number of States, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and Tennessee, had given women suffrage prior to the election of 1920. ²⁰ Many Southern States, such as Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, still had not ratified the amendment. Many of the Western States, such as Wyoming, Idaho, and Colorado, had given women the vote as early as 1869. Wisconsin, like many other Midwestern States, awarded women suffrage in 1920, just in time for the presidential election.

Senator Irving Lenroot supported women’s suffrage, asserting that women would ensure cleaner politics. Lenroot also claimed that women had been studying the issues more deeply, would vote more responsibly, and would also appreciate the vote more. The Farm–Labor League formed under the direction of La Follette only had one concern with women voting, to encourage women to vote to help the “working man.” ²¹

Harding supported both national prohibition, the other great social issue of the day, and women’s suffrage; yet when the Senate voted on women’s suffrage, Harding was absent. Harding’s half-hearted support for women’s suffrage may have been a strategy to avoid offense to anyone and thus to gain more political power. It seems many of the things Harding did were done for that reason; he was very careful to avoid making anyone unhappy with him.

In Wisconsin, the Republican Party possessed a tremendous bundle of political energy in the person of Mrs. Theodora Youmans, an enthusiastic woman interested in politics, whose Democratic counterpart seems not to have existed. Theodora Youmans was married to business-man, newspaperman and politician Henry Mott Youmans. Her husband was printer and editor and eventual part-owner of the Waukesha Freeman. He also held many political offices in Waukesha. Mrs. Youmans had attended Carroll College in Waukesha and helped her husband edit the Waukesha Freeman. ²²

The women’s suffrage movement had been Theodora Youmans’ principal concern, and she vigorously pushed for women’s voting rights in Wisconsin. Her voice was a constant one in local newspapers during the 1920 campaign. In fact, Mrs. Youmans’ dynamic political views and activities resulted in her selection as a delegate to the 1920 Republican National Convention.

The Wisconsin Republican State Committee urged women to join political parties be-cause they claimed government was carried out through political parties. To join a political party, it was asserted, was the only way for women to achieve practical results with their ballots. ²³ Theodora Youmans of the Republican State Committee echoed this message by supporting the Republican Party because that organization, she argued, had been the leading force to give women the right to vote in Wisconsin. Youmans stated that, since the Republican Party in Wisconsin enfranchised women, it showed itself to be “possessed with a sense of justice and a progressive spirit.” Youmans claimed the Republican Party also should be the party of choice because its record, its strength, and its consistent support stood for a united nation. Theodora Youmans wrote that women should favor the Republican Party because the Repub-licans had given women the same standing as men, whereas the Democrats had not. ²⁴ The message worked: the Republican Party appeared to offer more to women and seemed to care more; thus women supported the Republicans.

Of major interest to women generally, and to women in Fond du Lac in particular, was the need for improvement of the educational system. According to Youmans, the Republican Party was more proactive and had passed legislation addressing those needs, particularly industrial education. ²⁵

The overall attitudes of voters seemed to blend a lingering regret by many for having entered the war, a widespread sense of dissatisfaction concerning the peace settlement, and a feeling of frustration with economic downturn and labor unrest after the war. After eight years of Democratic rule coincident to these events, a Republican victory in the election of 1920 seemed a certainty. Thus, it was not surprising that the presidential election of 1920 was a huge victory for the Republicans in Fond du Lac County, in Wisconsin, and in the nation as a whole.

Wisconsin and Fond du Lac County overwhelmingly voted for Warren G. Harding. The presidential election results in the County were 12, 543 votes for Harding, 3,400 votes for Cox, 695 votes for the Socialist Party Candidate, Eugene V. Debs, and 172 votes for Aaron Sherman Watkins of Ohio, the Prohibition Party candidate. Rural areas in Fond du Lac County, including Alto, Ashford, Oakfield, Eden, Byron, Rosendale, and Waupun, all went Republican, just as the pre-election polls had suggested would happen. ²⁶ In Byron, there were 198 votes for Harding and 82 votes for Cox. In Rosendale, there were 187 votes for Harding and only 14 votes for Cox, while in the Village of Waupun, there were 89 votes for Harding and only 37 for Cox.

Urban areas varied little from the rural pattern. The Village of North Fond du Lac gave Harding a majority of its votes, casting 476 votes for Harding, 212 votes for Cox, and a sur-prising total of 73 votes for the Socialist Party candidate, the largest vote total Debs received in any Fond du Lac County village. Doubtless this was due to the impact of labor unrest among the many railroad workers who lived there. Voters in the city of Fond du Lac cast 4,803 votes for Harding to only 1,871 votes for Cox, with 439 votes going to Eugene V. Debs. Most of the votes for Debs came from industrial sections of Fond du Lac located in wards 5, 6, and 7. The area in Fond du Lac around First Street and Ninth Street seemed to give Democrat James Cox many of his votes in Fond du Lac. The landslide victory went to Harding.

The city of Ripon also gave Harding an overwhelming majority, awarding the Republican candidate 1,177 votes, Democrat Cox 188 votes, and Socialist Debs only 21 votes. The city of Waupun gave Harding 395 votes, Cox 107, and Debs only five.

Fond du Lac County truly overwhelmingly favored the Republicans and Harding. Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate, received a surprisingly large amount of support in the city of Fond du Lac, an urban area with industrial laborers, but he did much less well in the rural communities like Byron, Alto, Ashford, and Rosendale. The one-issue Prohibition Party did not do well anywhere in Fond du Lac County, picking up just a few votes here and there. In summary, the Republicans received a huge majority of the votes in every village and city in Fond du Lac County. Results in other parts of Wisconsin and in the entire country mirrored this result. In the Electoral College Warren G. Harding received 404 votes and carried thirty-seven of forty-eight states, including Wisconsin.

The 1920 presidential election was not the only contest that the Republicans dominated in Wisconsin and Fond du Lac. State and county offices also went overwhelmingly to the Republicans. Wisconsin elected a Republican governor, James Blaine, over Democrat Robert B. McCoy, Prohibition Party candidate Henry Tubbs, and Socialist Party candidate William Coleman. The election for U.S. Senator from Wisconsin was also won by the Republicans, as incumbent Irving Lenroot defeated former Minister to China Paul S. Reinsch, the Democrat. The lieutenant gubernatorial election also went to the Republican candidate, George F. Comings, who defeated Socialist Henry Kleist.

Fond du Lac County local elections also favored Republicans, starting with the State Senate 18th District, where William Titus, the Republican candidate, defeated William Tomerlty, the Socialist Party candidate, 12,214 votes to 731. There was no Democratic candidate for the 18th District. The race for Assembly First District went to Republican candidate J. J. Lamb, 6,165 votes to 2,572 votes for his Democratic opponent, Spencer Palmer. The Second District also went to a Republican, John E. Johnson, who received 5,131 votes to only three for his opponent.

The contest for District Attorney was taken by Republican James Murray, running unopposed, who received 12,804 votes. The Register of Deeds was won by the Republicans. J. G. Brunkhorst received 12,941 votes to only 483 for the Socialist candidate, Herman Prehn. There was no Democratic competition for Register of Deeds. ²⁷ The absence of Democratic candidates for several races reflects the traditional strength of Republicans in Fond du Lac County.

According to national exit polls, many recent immigrant groups who might traditionally have voted Democratic had voted in favor of Harding. German immigrants supported Harding because they were upset at Woodrow Wilson over the decision to enter World War I. Swedish immigrants backed Harding for similar reasons. Irish-Americans voted for Harding because they were upset at Wilson for not supporting full Irish independence. European peasant immigrants also swung to Harding’s side because they believed he would permit them to return to the more simple way of life that they had experienced in Europe. Age cohorts were also significant in Harding’s victory. Middle-aged and elderly voters supported Harding because they wanted to return to the peace and quiet they thought had existed before the war and which they believed Harding would give them. ²⁸

In summary, Warren G. Harding won the election in a landslide, taking 16,152,200 votes, or 61 per cent of the vote nationally. It was truly an overwhelming victory by the Republican Party’s slate of candidates. Postwar frustration, isolationism, rural malaise, industrial strife, and a newly expanded electorate all helped to reinforce a reaction against eight years of Democratic incumbency in the White House. Both Fond du Lac and the State of Wisconsin reflected these national trends.

1 - Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 355. return

2 - Russell, 352. return

3 - Ibid. return

4 - Ibid., 380-381. return

5 - Ibid. return

6 - Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, October 30, 1920, 1. return

7 - Ibid. return

8 - David P. Thelen, Robert La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit (Boston: 1976), 129-136. return

9 - Thelen, 130, 150-151. return

10 - Daily Commonwealth, October 29, 1920, 1. return

11 - Daily Commonwealth, October 28, 1920, 1. return

12 - Daily Commonwealth, October 29, 1920, 1. return

13 - Harold Richter, The Labor Movement in Fond du Lac (Privately Printed, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, 1952). return

14 - Richter (no pagination). return

15 - Thelen, 161. return

16 - Thelen, 162. return

17 - Thelen, 161-3. return

18 - Ibid. return

19 - Daily Commonwealth, January 11, 1921, 2. return

20 - Daily Commonwealth, August 18, 1920, 1. return

21 - Daily Commonwealth, August 19, 1920, 3. return

22 - The Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography (Madison: Wisconsin State Historical Society, 1960), 383-384. return

23 - Daily Commonwealth, August 13, 1920, 1. return

24 - Daily Commonwealth, August 14, 1920, 1. return

25 - Daily Commonwealth, August 23, 1920, 1. return

26 - The Wisconsin Blue Book (Madison: Wisconsin State Printing Board, 1921), 619-620. return

27 - Daily Commonwealth, November 1, 1920, 1. return

28 - Daily Commonwealth, November 1, 1920, 1; Andrew Sinclair, The Available Man (New York: MacMillan, 1965), 163. return

Copyright 2002 by Clarence B. Davis. All Rights Reserved. Printed by Action Printing, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
Electronic publication by Fond du Lac Public Library has been approved by Clarence B. Davis.

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