Selling the President, 1920: Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding

126 Pages·2001·6.6 MB·English

by  John Morello

Selling the President, 1920
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Selling the President, 1920
Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and
the Election of Warren G. Harding
John A. Morello
Westport, Connecticut
PRAEGER
London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morello, John A., 1951-
Selling the president, 1920 : Albert D. Lasker, advertising, and the election of Warren
G.Harding / John A. Morello.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-275-97030-2 (alk. paper)
1. Presidents—United States—Election—1920. 2. Advertising, Political—United
States. 3. Lasker, Albert Davis, 1880-1952. I. Title.
JK526 2001
324.973,0913—dc21 00-064944
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2001 by John A. Morello
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without
the express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-064944
ISBN: 0-275-97030-2
First published in 2001
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
To Ruth: Your sacrifice made all of this possible. Thank you.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1. Season of Change 3
2. Albert Lasker and "Reason Why" Advertising 15
3. Pork, Beans, and Politics 27
4. To Washington, Through Chicago 37
5. Something Old, Something New ... 49
6. Something Borrowed ... 63
7. The Man with the Best Told Story Wins 75
8. November 2, 1920: Closing the Sale 91
Epilogue 99
References 103
Index 109
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Acknowledgments
It has been said that success has a thousand fathers, but that failure is an orphan.
Should this work prove to be a success, then it would be the former and not the
latter. I had quite a bit of help bringing this project to paper, and the names of
those who helped could quite literally fill a book. Here are just a few.
First and always to my wife Ruth, whose belief in me at times exceeded mine
and whose sacrifices made mine seem small by comparison. My sister-in-law,
Sharon, gave me office space in her home where a good deal of this work was
written. She has a garden that proved to be a continuous source of inspiration. Drs.
Richard Jensen, Leo Schelbert, and Jerry Danzer, professors at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, have all played a role in helping this work take shape, and for
that I am in your collective debt. Marianne Berger, Lalu Palamatan, and a legion
of reference librarians across the country deserve my thanks for their assistance
and their patience. The reference librarians at the Ohio Historical Society and the
Indiana State Library were especially helpful in providing critical primary source
documents essential to this project. The organizers of the 1999 Ohio Valley
History Conference, the 1999 Illinois State History Symposium, and the 2000
Missouri Valley History Conference are all to be thanked for allowing me to
present slices of this work to colleagues for their consideration. Their comments
have helped to sharpen its focus. Dr. Sandra Graham, Dean of the General
Education Department at the DeVry Institute of Technology in Addison, Illinois,
has supported this project from its inception and approved my request for a
sabbatical. William Hughes, former Dean of Academic Affairs at that same
institution, first suggested that I pursue this project, and his successor, Susan
Friedberg, Ph.D., has followed in his footsteps. My students at DeVry also deserve
a word of thanks. Frequently my class discussions would somehow wander into a
discussion of the work I was doing. They didn't seem to mind. They were
genuinely interested in what I was doing, and that support kept me going when I
found myself stymied either by insufficient research materials, or simply writer's