The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Family Life and Early Background
• Chapter 1: An American Family
• Chapter 2: Origins
• Chapter 3: Youth and Experience
• Chapter 4: Initiation Into Politics
• Chapter 5: The Early Years, 1894–1900
• Chapter 6: Entering the Business World
• Chapter 7: The Early Years, 1901–1916
• Part II: James P. Goodrich the Consummate Politician
• Chapter 8: The Political Years
• Chapter 9: The 1916 Campaign
• Chapter 10: Years As Governor, 1917–1921
• Chapter 11: The Middle Years, 1916–1923
• Chapter 12: The Great Russian Famine, 1921–1923
• Chapter 13: Emissary to Russia
• Chapter 14: Return to Russia, 1925
• Part III: Businessmen With the Midas Touch
• Chapter 15: The 1920s
• Chapter 16: The 1930s
• Chapter 17: Companies! Companies! Companies!
• Chapter 18: Ayrshire Collieries Corporation
• Chapter 19: The Ecologist
• Chapter 20: The Later Years, 1940–1960
• Chapter 21: The Later Years, 1960–1973
• Part IV: Pierre F. Goodrich Crusader and Philosopher
• Chapter 22: Associations and Causes
• Chapter 23: Wabash College
• Chapter 24: The Mont Pelerin Society
• Chapter 25: A Scholar’s Life
• Chapter 26: Education In a Free Society
• Chapter 27: Moral, Political, and Metaphysical Beliefs
• Chapter 28: Why Liberty?
• Chapter 29: Liberty Fund, Inc.
• Part V: The Goodriches Assayed
• Chapter 30: Who Was Pierre F. Goodrich?
• Chapter 31: Defining Influences
• Chapter 32: Why Did They Work So Hard? Work, Ideas, Citizenship, and Virtue
• Chapter 33: Epilogue
• Appendixes

Chapter 9

The 1916 Campaign

As the new chairman of the Indiana Republican Party, William Harrison Hays had a tremendous challenge before him. In the election of 1912, the Republican Party had come in a distant third behind the Democrats and the Progressives (the Bull Moose Party) in Indiana as well as nationally. Only twice since 1860 had the Republican Party failed to place its candidate in the White House. Hays’s approach was to return traditional Republican voters to the GOP fold by inviting Progressive Party members from throughout the state to participate in Republican meetings. He also flooded state newspapers with columns and editorials on major issues, cleverly promoting the Republican point of view. He worked closely with James Goodrich and Harry S. New, a former Republican Party national chairman and United States Senate candidate in 1916, to meet with large numbers of precinct committee members in nearly every county in Indiana.1

Hays’s diligence and brilliance paid big dividends for Goodrich’s political aspirations. In the autumn of 1915, James Watson had approached James Goodrich to inquire whether his longtime friend was serious about running for governor in 1916. Watson encouraged Goodrich to seek the office. Watson let it be known that if Goodrich did not run he would. If Goodrich did run, Watson would challenge the incumbent United States senator from Indiana, Democrat John W. Kern, who was up for reelection. Watson began pressing his former schoolmate for an early decision.2

Never one to react to someone else’s timing, James Goodrich first decided to test the political waters to see what interest a candidacy might generate throughout the state. He had political friends from South Bend to Evansville mention his name as a prospective candidate. Goodrich initially had serious qualms about running for governor. “I had always had a pretty high regard for the office, and was inclined to think of it in terms of [Oliver P.] Morton, [Henry S.] Lane, and men of that type, and I had no exaggerated notions about my own ability to fill that office,” he wrote.3 When the response throughout the state was highly favorable, however, he reached the conclusion that “there was nothing for me to do but to make the race.”4

Goodrich pursued the state’s top governmental position with intense energy and work. The first thing Goodrich did was to write a personal check for $40,000 and give it to his campaign manager, John McCardla. Goodrich admonished McCardla not to accept any contributions from any other individuals or groups. Goodrich believed that by bankrolling his own campaign he could avoid obligations to political contributors.5

Despite his twenty years of devoted service to the Indiana Republican Party and his hefty campaign war chest, Goodrich’s nomination was by no means certain. He would have to defeat two formidable candidates in the first state Republican primary: Warren McCray, a wealthy farmer from Kentland and the Tenth Congressional District, and Quincy Myers, a former judge of the Indiana Supreme Court, from Logansport. Goodrich acknowledged that he was no speechmaker, but he did not allow this weakness to hinder his pursuit of the office. He opened his campaign by delivering an announcement address in Greencastle, Indiana, the home of his alma mater, DePauw University, on December 29, 1915.6 While McCray relied heavily on advertising in newspapers, Goodrich took his campaign directly to the people in cities, towns, and rural areas across the state. He wrote approximately twenty-five thousand precinct chairmen whom he had met during the five political campaigns in which he had headed the state Republican Party; furthermore, Goodrich traveled and campaigned in every precinct in the state except four counties in McCray’s own Tenth Congressional District. Goodrich’s approach worked. He took the primary on March 7, 1916, in a landslide, winning the popular vote in eighty-seven out of the state’s ninety-two counties.7

With Goodrich in the governor’s race, Watson was determined to dethrone Kern, who was finishing his first term as the junior senator from Indiana. Watson, considered a favorite for the senate seat, unexpectedly lost to Harry New by a few thousand votes in the Republican primary. Strangely, Goodrich claimed that it was well known that Watson had aligned himself with McCray in the primary. It was an odd alliance, given that it was Watson who had encouraged Goodrich to run for the Republican nomination in the first place. Goodrich was convinced that had Watson made the race on his own, he could have defeated Harry New by fifty thousand votes.8

Shocked by his defeat, Watson alleged voter fraud and urged Governor Samuel Ralston, a Democrat, to appoint a special grand jury to investigate the primary election results in Marion County. No sooner had this occurred than a fortuitous event happened that affected Watson’s political future: Indiana’s senior United States senator, Benjamin F. Shively, unexpectedly died of a heart attack on March 14. Shively’s death occurred just a week after the primary election but before the state Republican convention. Thus, the Republican Party had the task of nominating two senatorial candidates, not just one, at the state convention in May.

Goodrich met with Will Hays the day after Shively’s death. He let Hays know that, should he desire Shively’s senate seat, he would support him over Watson. The next day, March 16, Hays sent to Goodrich, who was in New York on a business trip, a telegram to inform him that he wanted to remain chairman of the Indiana Republican Party. Shively’s death and Hays’s decision renewed Watson’s senatorial hopes. Watson dropped the allegations of voter fraud and lobbied his Republican colleagues for the chance to become a United States senator after all. Watson and New were formally nominated as the Republican Party’s senate candidates at the state convention.9

At the national level, Charles Evans Hughes received the Republican Party’s presidential nomination at the Chicago convention on June 8. He won over Indiana’s Charles Fairbanks. Hughes, a former governor of New York, resigned as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court to accept his party’s candidacy. James Goodrich would become quite familiar with Hughes when Goodrich served with the American Relief Administration in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Hughes then held the position of United States secretary of state. The 1916 election in Indiana drew national attention. Both major parties’ vice-presidential candidates were from Indiana (Fairbanks on the Republican ticket with Hughes, and Thomas Marshall on the Democrat ticket with Woodrow Wilson). The Prohibition Party candidate for president, J. Frank Hanly, was also from Indiana.

With the Republican Party nomination for governor sewed up, Goodrich still had to defeat the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, John Adair, to reach the statehouse. Adair hailed from Portland, Indiana, the county seat of Jay County, just twenty miles north of Winchester. He had served in Congress for the previous ten years. One of the criticisms of Adair’s gubernatorial candidacy, brought by Republican critics such as Will Hays, was that Adair had lived in Washington, D.C., for so long that he no longer was familiar with the pressing issues in Indiana.10

James Goodrich had his own criticisms to overcome, however, because of a perceived conflict between his business interests and his political pursuits. Goodrich was president of Washington Heat, Power and Light Company in Daviess County, Indiana; Union Heat, Light and Power Company of Union City, Indiana; and Peoples Loan and Trust Company in Winchester. He also served as a director of Jeffersonville Heat and Water Company, Citizens Heat, Light and Power Company, and several other public utilities in east-central Indiana. Opponents of Goodrich’s candidacy argued that he aspired to the governor’s seat so that he could increase his public utility holdings and wealth even more. A Republican announcement in the Winchester Herald a week before the election attempted to summarize and deflect the argument:

In an adroit political maneuver, Goodrich intentionally limited his campaign to the prominent state issues of the day: revision of the tax laws, abolition or consolidation of state positions and departments, workmen’s compensation, and centralization of power in the governor’s office.12 He also supported a measure that went against his own interests as an investor in two coal companies. Goodrich favored the “shot-firers” bill (a safety provision for the mining of coal) and the adoption of workmen’s compensation. This pleasantly surprised many labor leaders and aroused the ire of corporate officers. Because of Goodrich’s position on these issues, John Hewitt, then president of the Indiana Coal Operators Association, wrote a scathing letter to association members stating that Goodrich was not a man to be trusted. Goodrich secured a copy of the letter from Hewitt’s son and used it to his political advantage. He released copies of it to various labor organizations throughout the state, thus obtaining the support of many voters who traditionally would have opposed a wealthy Republican candidate.13

Goodrich proceeded to turn another potential liability into an asset in his bid for the governorship. Early in the campaign, Adair learned that Goodrich had paid only thirteen dollars in personal income taxes the year before (1915). Adair complained that Goodrich was hypocritical to suggest that the tax laws should be changed when Goodrich had paid so little. Goodrich admitted that he had paid only thirteen dollars in personal taxes, but he argued that was why he supported legislation that would levy a tax on intangible property such as stocks, bonds, interest income—the source of his wealth. Under the existing system, it was primarily tangible property, real and personal, that bore the burden of taxation.14 In an even more sophisticated deflection of Adair’s criticism, Goodrich attempted to make Adair appear to be the wealthier of the two candidates, when clearly the Democrat was not. In a speech to a group of railway workers in Logansport, Goodrich stated:

James Goodrich claimed that Adair never raised the tax issue again after this pronouncement.16 But Goodrich continued to hit the inequitable taxation issue hard wherever he campaigned, as he did when he spoke before the LaGrange County Corn Growers Association on October 7, 1916, and before three thousand supporters in Anderson on November 3.17

A survey of Goodrich’s campaign record makes evident that he was not an inflexible purist on the issues, but a very practical politician. He was far more interested in obtaining results if the means were acceptable to him. For example, he claimed that he had never taken a drink of alcohol and had repeatedly supported local remonstrances against liquor establishments. Yet time and again throughout the campaign, Goodrich entered taverns and saloons to court votes, much to the chagrin of his temperance supporters.18 Interestingly, however, Goodrich avoided, when at all possible, commenting on two of the most controversial issues of the day: prohibition and the vote for women.

Adair did not stick strictly to state issues, but raised the biggest question on the minds of most Hoosiers: Should the United States enter the European war against Germany? “In his major speech of the campaign, Adair told his Fort Wayne audience that because the President [Wilson] had avoided war the German-Americans were not faced with the necessity of fighting their Fatherland.”19 Adair’s appeal to the German-American vote was not sufficient to offset a Democratic campaign that was seriously underfunded and woefully unorganized. In fact, Adair’s alignment with President Wilson apparently hurt him, since many German districts in the state were incensed by Wilson’s unwillingness to take a strong stance against Germany’s aggression.20 These occurrences, combined with Goodrich’s highly effective campaign strategy, resulted in a victory for the Republican candidate, but not by a large margin. On November 7, 1916, Goodrich captured the governor’s seat by garnering 337,831 votes, 14,609 more than Adair received. Goodrich led the Republican ticket, while New and Watson also won their senate seats by about 9,000 votes over their Democratic opponents. Moreover, the Republican Party in Indiana also carried both houses of the General Assembly and nine of thirteen congressional seats. In the presidential race, Hughes also carried the state, defeating Wilson by a plurality of 8,779 votes. Nationally, however, Wilson narrowly defeated Hughes in one of the closest presidential elections in the twentieth century, capturing just twenty-three more electoral college votes than Hughes.21

James Goodrich remained in Winchester on November 6 and voted the following day. Pierre had returned from Massachusetts, where he was then a student at Harvard Law School, to be with his father on election day. On November 7, James and Cora left for Indianapolis to be present in the state capital for the election results. With victory achieved, on Saturday, November 11, James and Cora returned to Winchester on the Knickerbocker Express to be greeted at the train station by hundreds of well-wishers. A one-hundred-car caravan escorted the Goodriches around the town square and to their home on East South Street. There, the governor-elect, his wife, and his mother addressed the joyous crowd that had gathered around the home in freezing temperatures.22

Just a few days before Goodrich took office, another local gathering was held to honor the governor-to-be. On December 29, Goodrich’s men’s Sunday school class presented him with a chalice honoring him for his many years of service and wishing him well in his new position of leadership. It was a warm send-off that James Goodrich would greatly savor. As the new governor would quickly learn, colleagues and friends in the statehouse were not nearly so numerous or supportive.

[1. ]Walden S. Freeman, “Will H. Hays and the Politics of Party Harmony,” in Their Infinite Variety: Essays on Indiana Politicians (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1981), pp. 336–39; Hays, The Memoirs of Will H. Hays, p. 146. Hays’s organization of the 1916 campaign is discussed in detail in James O. Robertson’s “Progressives Elect Will H. Hays Republican National Chairman, 1918,” Indiana Magazine of History 64 (September 1968): 173–90.

[2. ]Goodrich, “Autobiography,” pp. 99–100.

[3. ]Ibid., p. 99.

[4. ]Ibid., p. 102.

[5. ]Ibid.

[6. ]“Goodrich Announces Candidacy for Governor on Republican Ticket,” Indianapolis Star, December 30, 1915, p. 6, col. 3.

[7. ]Goodrich, “Autobiography,” p. 103.

[8. ]Ibid., p. 104.

[9. ]Ibid., p. 106.

[10. ]Hays, The Memoirs of Will H. Hays, p. 146.

[11. ]“The Republican County Ticket,” Winchester (Ind.) Herald, November 1, 1916, p. 1, col. 4.

[12. ]Hays, The Memoirs of Will H. Hays, p. 108.

[13. ]Ibid., p. 109.

[14. ]See Earl Mushlitz, “Issues of the Indiana Campaign as James P. Goodrich Sees Them,” Indianapolis Star, September 24, 1916, magazine section, p. 2, col. 1.

[15. ]Goodrich, “Autobiography,” p. 112.

[16. ]Ibid.

[17. ]See “Speech of James P. Goodrich,” Indiana State Library, Indiana Division, Ip 336.2, no. 6; “Many March in Rain in Goodrich Parade,” Indianapolis Star, November 4, 1916, p. 1, col. 4. On Saturday, November 4, a day-long Republican rally was planned for “Goodrich Day” in Winchester. See “Goodrich Day” (paid announcement), Winchester (Ind.) Herald, November 1, 1916, p. 8, col. 1.

[18. ]Goodrich, “Autobiography,” p. 103.

[19. ]Fort Wayne (Ind.) Sentinel, August 19, 1916, p. 1, col. 3; Indianapolis News, August 19, 1916, p. 18, col. 2.

[20. ]According to one Democratic participant in the 1916 state election, the Democratic campaign “was a cross between a comedy and a tragedy. A political battle had never before been so miserably mismanaged in the history of the state accustomed for half a century to fierce fights.” Claude Bowers, The Life of John Worth Kerns (Indianapolis: Hollenbeck, 1918), p. 377. See also Jacob P. Dunn, Indiana and Indianans—A History of Aboriginal and Territorial Indiana and the Century of Statehood (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1919), p. 785.

[21. ]The Wilson-Hughes race was so close that Hughes’s running mate, Hoosier Charles Fairbanks, was convinced that he and Hughes had won. It was reported that he had won in at least one newspaper. See “Fairbanks Happy in G.O.P. Revival,” Indianapolis Star, November 8, 1916, p. 8, col. 1.

[22. ]“Great Reception Given Goodrich,” Winchester (Ind.) Herald, November 13, 1916, p. 1, col. 1. Harry Fraze, one-time Winchester mayor, was present for the parade and celebration, and he described the euphoric welcome that James Goodrich received (interview, October 26, 1991). We know that Pierre was present for election day from a sentence on the front page of the Winchester Journal: “Pierre Goodrich left Tuesday [November 7] to resume his studies at Harvard University” (November 8, 1916, p. 1, col. 3).