Question

Describe the presidencies of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

Answer 1

Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge were major personalities of the 1920s by virtue of being presidents, but one must view the government of the 1920s more broadly than the presidents alone. Even there, however, an examination of the policies promoted by Harding and Coolidge (and President Herbert C. Hoover at the end of the decade) show that they were considerably more sympathetic toward growth in government programs and expenditures than general opinion suggests.

The study of government growth in the 1920s is interesting in its own right, but the conclusions of this study have more significant implications for the process of growth in the surrounding decades, and more generally for the entire process of government growth in the 20th century. Popular opinion often credits (or blames) President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal for the major increase in federal government growth. This paper shows that the foundations of the New Deal go back to the 1920s and before, and that FDR's initiatives were not a crucial turning point in the growth of American government. As an extension of the trends begun during the Progressive era, the 1920s is not a key decade in the growth of American government, but understanding the government growth of the 1920s is a key element in understanding to process of the growth of the 20th century.