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1919: Governor Consorts With Reporters

Feb2nd
2019
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

The tall handsome man standing in the center of the first row of a century-old photo of members of the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association is identified as Wm. C. Sproul Chester Times. This photograph is framed and mounted on the wall of the venerable newsroom in the State Capitol.

William Sproul was governor of Pennsylvania when the photograph was taken in 1919.

Sproul’s presence with the news reporters covering the Capitol says a lot about the intersection of politics and journalism in those days. The lines were blurred especially for newspaper editors and publishers who ran for public office. Standing next to the governor in the photo is Hiram G. Andrews of the Philadelphia North American who later became Speaker of the House.

“William Cameron Sproul, a newspaper man by training and instinct, was inaugurated in January 1919….” wrote E.J. Stackpole in his memoir “Behind The Scenes With A Newspaper Man.”

“Always a newspaperman, the Governor recognized the value of cooperation with the press,’’ wrote Stackpole. “He early foresaw how helpful the press was certain to be in the working out of his administration policies.”

Sproul of Chester County came from a wealthy family. He was in many lines of business and became a millionaire. But his first love was newspapers. He was a Chester correspondent for the Philadelphia Press at age 15 and then a reporter at the Chester Daily Times. He bought a half interest in the Chester Times and became an editor and publisher.

He also ventured into politics. At age 26 in 1896, Sproul was elected to the state Senate as a Republican and served in that chamber until his election as governor in 1918.

Sproul’s dual track wasn’t that unusual during a time when a newspaper was often identified with a political party. In an era where numerous dailies would compete for the readers’ attention in a major city, this was one way to carve out a market niche. In the 1919 PLCA photo, seven Philly newspapers are represented. Only the Inquirer survives.

Stackpole’s own career is a case in point. He spent 50 years in the newspaper business.

Stackpole exerted his greatest influence as owner and publisher of the Harrisburg Telegraph starting in 1901. He was also appointed postmaster of Harrisburg, a delegate to Republican national conventions and confidante of Sen. Boies Penrose, the GOP political boss whose statue is at the south end of the Capitol grounds.
“Senator Penrose clearly understood the personal distinction between representatives of the press and the policies of their employers,” wrote Stackpole of his association with Penrose. “All he expected was a fair deal and truthful statements regarding his course. He never held the correspondent to account for editorial comment at the receiving end of the line.”

So how did Sproul end up in the PLCA photo?

The PLCA had a policy into the 1920s of making the governor an honorary member. Sproul’s successor, Gov. Gifford Pinchot is pictured in the 1923 PLCA photo, but he is identified as the governor.

Sproul is remembered for creating the state highways system. Sproul State Forest is named for him, appropriately so since he named the conservation hero Pinchot as state forester and launched an initiative to plant one tree for each WWI casualty in Pennsylvania.

And oh yes, Sproul turned down an offer to be Warren Harding’s running mate in the 1920 presidential election. That would have meant a two-newsman ticket if it had come about. Harding was the longtime publisher of the Marion, Ohio Star as well as a U.S. Senator. The veep nod went instead to Calvin Coolidge who became president when Harding died in 1923. — Robert Swift

Politics

WWI critic dies in pandemic

Dec3rd
2018
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

Six weeks after the Armistice ending World War I, essayist and critic Randolph S. Bourne who built his reputation opposing that conflict died from the flu pandemic sweeping the world.

Dying young at age 32 on Dec. 22, 1918, Bourne made a profound impression on the writers and political activists of the Lost Generation who lived with the aftermath of the Great War. Bourne was a sharp critic of the liberal intellectuals who supported America’s entry into the war in 1917. He believed the war acted to reverse the social and economic gains of the Progressive Era, and in that sense, he was right. READ MORE »

Politics

1978 Governor’s race shifted power

Oct22nd
2018
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

Excitement is not the word to describe this year’s governor’s race, but 40 years ago there was plenty of excitement for all as Pennsylvanians chose between Republican Dick Thornburgh and Democrat Pete Flaherty for governor.

The 1978 election was a last hurrah for the county political chairmen who wielded political power from their roosts in courthouse towns for generations. The power that faded from the chairmen’s hands would eventually flow to the leaders of the legislative caucuses until they too would see it dissipate.

As a young political reporter for The Sharon Herald in western Pennsylvania, I had an opportunity to witness these changes in a battleground county. All the numerous candidates for governor in the spring primary and the two nominees in the fall paid visits to Mercer County.

Thornburgh won that election in an upset deflating a 30-point advantage given to Flaherty in the late summer polls. Perhaps you could say the election was exciting because of my youth, but there were deep forces at work changing the political landscape that became more evident with time. READ MORE »

Politics

WWI finale was America’s largest battle

Sep24th
2018
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

America was in the thick of its biggest battle 100 years ago this fall.

The seven-week Meuse-Argonne campaign started Sept. 26, 1918 and lasted to the second the guns fell silent with the Armistice on Nov. 11.

The campaign involved 1.2 million American soldiers heavily supported by French troops, 1,000 aircraft and 400 tanks. It was the first time Americans faced the horrors of modern warfare — poison gas, hand grenades, flame-throwers, machine gun nests and strafing by German airplanes.

More than 26,000 American soldiers died during the battle and nearly 100,000 were wounded.

The Meuse-Argonne was a testing ground for a generation of American commanders who led the nation to victory in World War II. The roster includes Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur, Col. George C. Marshall, Lt. Col. George S. Patton and Capt. Harry S. Truman.

Two bona fide heroes emerged from the conflict — Cpl. Alvin York of Tennessee who killed 32 Germans and helped capture 132 others when he stormed some machine guns nests and Major Charles Whittlesey of the Lost Battalion.

Gen. John Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Force, insisted on leading a separate army and not having it split up among French and British units. But the price of independence was the death of many American soldiers as their inexperienced commanders ordered headlong assaults against machine gun nests.

The Meuse-Argonne was the last big offensive on the western front during World War I. The Americans broke through the Hindenburg Line in several places and the Germans sued for peace as their allies collapsed under the strain of war.

Yet few Americans are aware of this largest battle in U.S. military history overshadowed as it is by Gettysburg and D-Day.

The Meuse-Argonne took its name from the Meuse River and Argonne Forest in the northeast corner of France. The battle was fought over difficult terrain for attack with the Germans entrenched in concrete bunkers on the heights above the Meuse. The advancing American soldiers had to deal with thick underbrush and ravines, shell holes and barbed wire. The weather was horrible that fall with cold rains making life miserable.

The battlefield was near two historic French towns – the fortress stronghold of Verdun that withstood a German siege in 1916, and Sedan where the Prussians trapped the army of Napoleon III in 1870.

My grandfather, George S. Swift, fought in the Meuse-Argonne as part of the 319th Infantry, 80th or Blue Ridge division. He had entered the Army one year before at Avalon, Pa., near Pittsburgh.

He wrote of Lt. Paris T. Carlisle dying in his arms after being hit by shell-fire.

Many notations in his diary deal with the everyday existence of a soldier, of being in the “dark woods” on a cold rainy night.

Sept. 30: “Our kitchen comes up and we get a meal for the first time from it in six days.”

Oct. 2: “Jerry shells all night and it is cold as can be.”

At the start of November, the Americans launched a new offensive to reach the critical German-held rail lines at Sedan.

As the battle continued, soldiers on both sides knew the end was near with reports of peace talks based on Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and revolution in Germany.

On Nov. 3, my grandfather noted: “More Peace talks. Armistice bulletin posted. But guns still booming.”

On Nov. 11 at the real Armistice was announced, he wrote “Bells ring and flags out. But who can believe it?”

The American Battle Monuments Commission held a centennial ceremony for the Meuse-Argonne campaign Sunday at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France. This is the final resting place for 14,247 soldiers, including nine Medal of Honor recipients.

The commission maintains the Pennsylvania Monument built in 1927 by the Commonwealth at Varennes, France. The monument underwent a needed restoration in 2015. – Robert Swift

1968 Veep candidates opened doors

Sep4th
2018
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

Overshadowed by the riots and political assassinations of that year, the melodrama of 1968 produced something few note today: an opening for new candidates seeking the nation’s top elective offices.

This came with the respective vice presidential nominations of Republican Spiro Agnew and Democrat Edmund Muskie. The Agnew and Muskie nominations at the party conventions that August signaled a breakthrough for non WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) getting a spot on a national party ticket. READ MORE »

Politics

PA modernizes constitution 50 years ago

May22nd
2018
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

With the nation in crisis in the spring of 1968, Pennsylvania voters peacefully went to the polls to ratify five proposals to modernize the state Constitution.

The amendments adopted on April 23, 1968 were the product of Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention of 1967-68.

The referendum and the three-month convention that preceded it capped a decade-long effort to revise Pennsylvania’s 19th century constitution. READ MORE »

Politics

The Ides of March — 1968

Mar5th
2018
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential candidacy blazed like a comet across the American sky in the spring of 1968. Kennedy launched his campaign on March 16 in the Senate Caucus Room. Neither he nor the nation was prepared for what transpired during the next three months.

As a teenager interested in politics, I had never seen anything like it and still haven’t to this day. The three-months campaign began on a note of uncertainty, generated intense excitement along the primary trail and ended with profound tragedy at a triumphant moment. READ MORE »

Politics

Abraham, Martin, John and…

Feb1st
2018
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

The turmoil of 1968 produced an enduring image that lives to this day. This print depicts a trio of freedom fighters who fell to assassins’ bullets: John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

It took five years of political and human tragedy to render this image of a generation’s loss.

At the start of the 20th century, prints featuring the likenesses of another trio of martyrs stirred the nation’s consciousness. They featured three Republican presidents who fell to assassins’ bullets: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley.

It took thirty-six years of political and human tragedy to render this image of loss for the Civil War generation. READ MORE »

Politics

McCarthy Finds his Moment

Nov28th
2017
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

Heroic moments are infrequent in presidential politics.

Fifty years ago this week, Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota was an unlikely hero as he launched a quixotic candidacy to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from President Lyndon Johnson.

The Vietnam War was the catalyst for McCarthy’s announcement of his candidacy on Nov. 30, 1967 in the Senate Caucus Room. It didn’t seem like much of an announcement. McCarthy didn’t refer directly to his own candidacy and mentioned how he wished someone else had taken on the task. Other liberal politicians courted by anti-war activists that fall, including Robert Kennedy, had rebuffed pleas to run. READ MORE »

Politics

Dickinson appeals to his countrymen

Oct29th
2017
Leave a Comment Robert Swift Written by Robert Swift

He was more a member of the landed gentry than a farmer, but that didn’t matter.

When John Dickinson wrote the first of a series of letters from a “farmer in Pennsylvania” in the Pennsylvania Chronicle in November 1767, he struck a chord with his “countrymen.”

“My Dear Countrymen, I am a farmer, settled after a variety of fortunes near the banks of the River Delaware in the province of Pennsylvania,” wrote Dickinson in his first letter. “…From my infancy, I was taught to love humanity and liberty.”

In the course of a dozen letters, Dickinson presented the legal and political reasons to support his argument that the various moves undertaken by Great Britain to impose taxes on her American colonies were illegal and unconstitutional. In these letters, Dickinson sounded themes that gained currency in the impending American Revolution and ring familiar to us 250 years later. READ MORE »

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