Talk:Warren G. Harding: Difference between revisions

Death and Funeral

"Interred" is a better word to use here, instead of "rest". Warren and Florence Harding are not resting, and they are not sleeping, they are decomposing. Interred means to place a body in the ground, OR in a tomb, that's why interred is the correct word to use in the "Death and Funeral" section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:3011:E03:4400:DDBA:58E2:1936:5CF (talk) 21:22, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Questionable interpretation under Mellon's Tax Cuts

Hello Everyone,

So I was looking at this page the other day, and I saw a view referenced that I thought was pretty dodgy. It is this bit:

"Libertarian historian Thomas Woods contends that the tax cuts implemented by President Harding ended the Depression of 1920–21 and were responsible for creating a decade-long expansion."

The part that I think is questionable is the bit about the tax cuts ending the Depression of 1920-21. Looking into it I noticed that the NEBR pegged the end of the Depression as being July 1921, but tax cuts were not passed until the Revenue Act of 1921 in November of 1921. I added some text noting the discrepancy between the cited claim and the timeline of events, which clearly indicates to me that the tax cuts could not have ended the Depression, as the Depression ended months before the tax cuts passed.

However, my revision has been shot down twice. Thoughts? It seems pretty cut and dried to me.

~~Rbrior~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbrior (talk • contribs) 20:29, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Did you read WP:OR and WP:SYNTH? You would need to find another historian (or other reliable source) that contradicts Wood. You may also want to check Wood to make sure he actually said what we have attributed to him. And that Wood is not just some crackpot. Kendall-K1 (talk) 20:47, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the best way to respond, as I'm not very familiar with the these talk pages and such. I did check the WP:OR page, and it did not seem relevant, as I was not referring to any original research that I had published on my own, but to two legitimate sources which establish a time line that undermines the contention made.

The citing in the article would seem to indicate that perhaps Wood is being cited in another work (Schweikart and Allen's A Patriot's History of the United States). I actually have this work somewhere at home. I think that it definitely has a perspective, which is not to say that it is wrong, but I think that Wood's rather revisionist history of things like the Civil War would appeal to the angle that the authors are taking. Woods is well known (relatively) and has a pedigree, but that doesn't mean that he isn't a crackpot. It is somewhat concerning that perhaps the reference to Woods is not legitimate and that it perhaps has remained unquestioned for so long, let alone that if Woods did make such a contention that such a basic overlooking of the historical timeline has also not been picked up upon ~~Rbrior~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbrior (talk • contribs) 21:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. This article is in way better shape than most. In many articles if you check what we say against the source, you'll find they say two completely different things. That often happens when some random editor decides he doesn't like what the cited source says, so he changes it and leaves the citation in. So I hope you'll forgive me if I'm overly cautious. It does appear that we are including Wood's opinion without actually citing him. If you can get to the bottom of this, with proper source citations, we will all be appreciative.

By the way, there is a similar problem at Depression of 1920–21, where I removed some material that was sourced to a self-published undergraduate research paper! Kendall-K1 (talk) 22:00, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I've added two tags to the material in question -- the first asks for a quote on the Woods claim and the other asks for a better source for the claim of the effectiveness of Mellon's actions. The source (apparently a textbook covering all of American history) received a scathing review by David Hoogland Noon at The History Teacher, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Aug., 2006), pp. 554-555 (the only review I could find at JSTOR). W/o a response in a month or so the material can probably be deleted. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 22:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Possibly we should remove the material. A lot of this, I think, was added after we got it to FA and if it's plausibly cited, and I don't have the book, I assume it's all good faith. I'd be happy with reverting to the way we had it at FA.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:56, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm going to take it out. That entire paragraph was added post-FA. It even contradicts itself, assuming the depression of 1920–21 was over by 1922: "Based on this advice, Harding cut taxes, starting in 1922... tax cuts implemented by President Harding ended the Depression of 1920–21." Kendall-K1 (talk) 00:58, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I think the whole question of the economics of the Twenties and whether it was good or bad (given the Depression) is controversial enough that you are in my view correct to do so.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:18, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi there, Not to jump onto you guys' discussion this is my first time talking about a page but as someone who has been studying history and wikipedia for 14+ years what is going on with pages like this? Like it is very clear to me that this page has been edited and written in a way to show a clear bias and viewpoint that a) is not held by most historians and b) shows personal belief and hyperbole. Not to mention sources are usually given in hard to come by books that most internet users are not going to take the time to research. Here is probably the most bothersome quote, ″"Libertarian historians Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen argue that, "Mellon's tax policies set the stage for the most amazing growth yet seen in America's already impressive economy."[148]″ I'm also someone who has a lot of experience in white hat and black hat seo techniques (as part of my job). I'm not sure how relevant you guys will feel this is to this topic but there has been mass editing of wikipedia articles with inaccurate information to help boost rankings of sites with certain viewpoints so that when you search certain topics those sites come up. Now when you search 1920s tax cuts two of the top sites are the heritage foundation and cato institute. Both right-leaning think tanks/lobbying groups. It's of the utmost importance that Wikipedia maintain it's neutrality during this time as it's often the only place people get their information as far as "facts" from. If that isn't an issue to be raised here then I apologize (again new).

I mean historians actually fault Mellon's tax cuts as one of the reasons for creating the huge concentration of wealth that ended up happening and being one of the factors for the great depression. From encyclopedia.com, ″The government did little to address the growing maldistribution of wealth. In fact, government action worsened the problem. Andrew Mellon (1855–1937), secretary of the treasury under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, was one of America's richest men. He saw to it that tax cuts for the wealthy passed through Congress in the 1920s, helping the rich retain even more of their wealth.″ --JaqenHghar80 (talk) 19:07, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

What are your thoughts about what Rjensen wrote in the preceding section?--Wehwalt (talk) 19:32, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Schweikart is a leading historian of banking with numerous well-received books on that topic from established publishers. take a look for example at https://www.amazon.com/1913-1989-Encyclopedia-American-Business-Biography/dp/0816021945/ JaqenHghar80 wants to counter this scholarship with pop stuff -- a three sentence quote from encyclopedia.com-- an anonymous popular essay written by "nobody" without footnotes or evidence. The argument seems to be that the Harding-Mellon tax cuts of 1921 (which ended the special wartime taxes imposed to pay for the war) caused prosperity for 8 years ---but that 6 years after Harding died his tax cuts suddenly caused a worldwide depression. As for "growing maldistribution" maybe not. In 1913 the top 1% received 15.0% of national income. In 1921 = 13.5% 1929 = 14.6% Source: Historical Statistics of US series G337 p 302 online free at https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/histstatus/hstat1970_cen_1975_v1.pdf 00:02, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

References

"Long shot" links to long shots in cinematography

It shouldn't link to anything at all, unless there's a wiktionary article for the phrase? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.242.200.33 (talk) 22:54, 19 June 2017

Removed link.--Wehwalt (talk) 04:42, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

At rest

As it says in the edit summary, "interred" is not correct. Please do not change this again without first getting consensus here. Kendall-K1 (talk) 21:11, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

"Adulterous Bastard"

When I look up the wikipedia page of Warren Harding, the first result displays a false description. The description is this: "Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was an adulterous bastard." It clearly does not say that in the real article. I'm not sure what could be done about this, but it seems to be a pretty big issue. 69.126.250.20 (talk) 15:11, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Some mixup at Google no doubt. They're thinking of Trump of course, but since they're both corrupt incompetents you can understand the confusion. EEng 15:35, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

• Today, a person using different IPs kept trying to add that line to the article. They were reverted many times, and now the article is protected. Google crawled the article while that edit was live. Google will crawl it again shortly and it won't appear in searches. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:29, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
• As expected, a day later the search result does not show the epithet. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 August 2019

Under "Scandals" section, and under "Teapot Dome" sub-section. The second sentence:

Like most of the administration's scandals, it came to public light after Harding's death, and he was not aware of the illegal aspects. 

It states that he was not aware of the illegal aspects, however no reference is given for this and I can not find anything about it anywhere else. It would be better to leave that part out instead of making an assertion without backup.

So I propose to change the following:

Like most of the administration's scandals, it came to public light after Harding's death, and he was not aware of the illegal aspects. 

To the following:

Like most of the administration's scandals, it came to public light after Harding's death. Skyturnrouge (talk) 12:42, 10 August 2019 (UTC)