Teapot Dome Scandal Analysis

Ohio senator assumed the presidency in 1921 when President Harding invited several major powers to the Washington Naval Conference. With the most soothing speeches, Harding’s judgment turned out to be poor. Being considered one of the least successful presidents, Harding favored a limited role for government in business affairs and in social reform. In the end, he didn’t understand many of the issues and avoided them as much as possible.

Included in the cabinet, the Ohio Gang, also the president’s poker-playing cronies, soon caused a great deal of embarrassment. Harding appointed Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state and Herbert Hoover the secretary of commerce. Andrew Mellon was the secretary of treasury, however, he was later found

cabinet official served jail time for a felony committed while in office. The government had set aside oil-rich public lands at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California, for use by the U.S. Navy. Albert Fall secretly leased the land to two private oil companies. Although Fall claimed that these contracts were in the government’s interest, he suddenly received more than $400,000 in “loans, bonds, and cash.” He was later found guilty of bribery and became the first American to be convicted of a felony while holding a cabinet post. As a result, the problem with the Teapot Dome Scandal was that after Harding’s administration became corrupt with bribery.

The installment plan would have to be the most important aspect of the 1920s because it shows the beginning of an era where the people who once couldn’t have anything, now could have it all at the expense of paying a slower rate. This movement explains many of the faults in today’s economy and debt

The government was trying to stop something that the majority of the population wanted. If the government was going to prevent it, the people were going to have to get their goods illegally. This is where the organized crime comes in. People with brilliant ideas of making mega money decide to sell the illegal goods for high prices- the people can’t get it anywhere else but from a specific dealer. Men like Al Capone killed out their opponents to control their profits of the illegal goods. Like a monopoly, their greed made their illegal sales into a death race.

I think that the passage of the Volstead Act and the ruling in the Scopes trial did represent genuine triumphs for traditional values. During the Scopes trial people were fighting for their religious beliefs because a biology teacher tried to teach his student the theory of evolution. Since the theory of evolution was completely against their traditional values, the process of the Scopes trial was justifiable. The Volstead Act was also a genuine triumph for traditional values because the act actually