Non-fiction: First Annual Message to Congress

Overview
President Warren G. Harding’s First Annual Message to Congress, delivered in December 1921, charts a program of postwar stabilization, governmental retrenchment, and cautious international engagement. Speaking amid a sharp recession and the unsettled aftermath of World War I, Harding urges budgetary discipline, tax reform, protective tariffs, and a reinvigorated private economy, while calling for targeted federal action where national interests are clear, veterans’ care, transportation, public health, and the administration of justice.

Economic Readjustment and Budget Discipline
Harding places fiscal responsibility at the center of national recovery. He extols the new national budget system, embodied in the recently established Bureau of the Budget and the General Accounting Office, as essential to pruning waste, coordinating departments, and restoring public trust. He advocates retiring war debt, refinancing at lower interest, and avoiding new obligations that would upset credit markets. Tax policy should shift from wartime levies to growth-friendly forms: he urges repeal of the excess profits tax, simplification of the income tax, and a structure that encourages investment while ensuring adequate revenue.

Tariff, Commerce, and Agriculture
As industry and farms absorb postwar shocks, Harding presses for a protective tariff tailored to domestic costs and anti-dumping safeguards to prevent predatory imports. He highlights the need to stabilize agriculture through better credit facilities, cooperative marketing, and research, acknowledging the particular distress of farmers after wartime price collapses. He links commercial revival to a competitive American merchant marine, calling for rational policies to dispose of war-built ships while sustaining routes vital to trade.

Transportation and Infrastructure
Recognizing transportation as the economy’s backbone, Harding endorses the framework of the Transportation Act, encourages consolidation and efficiency in railroads under responsible regulation, and supports fair wage adjustments through established tribunals. He backs inland waterways and harbor improvements and welcomes coherent highway development to integrate rural and urban markets. Strategic resource projects, such as development along the Tennessee River, should proceed under federal safeguards to serve the public interest.

Veterans and Public Service
Harding insists the nation’s first duty is to those who served. He supports hospital construction, rehabilitation, and administrative consolidation to deliver medical care and vocational aid efficiently. He voices caution about immediate cash bonuses that could strain the Treasury, preferring durable services that restore livelihoods. Within the civil service, he calls for reclassification and merit-based reforms to attract capable personnel and eliminate duplicative functions.

Civil Rights, Labor, and Social Welfare
Affirming equal protection under the law, Harding urges federal anti-lynching legislation to confront mob violence that states have failed to suppress. He supports a constitutional amendment empowering Congress to regulate child labor after judicial setbacks to earlier statutes. He encourages public health and education efforts and considers creating a department to coordinate welfare functions, reflecting a belief in limited but purposeful federal guardianship of national well-being.

Law, Order, and Immigration
The President demands faithful enforcement of Prohibition and other federal laws, linking respect for law to national recovery. He endorses continued immigration restriction to allow economic absorption and Americanization, while emphasizing fair naturalization and assimilation for newcomers.

Foreign Policy and Disarmament
Harding frames foreign policy around peace, independence of action, and practical cooperation. He hails the ongoing Washington Naval Conference as a hopeful path to arms limitation and reduced naval expenditures. He favors settling war debts on orderly terms, strengthening Pan-American comity, advancing self-government in the Philippines consistent with American responsibilities, and withholding recognition from regimes that reject lawful obligations. He rejects binding political entanglements while welcoming cooperative instruments that further stability and trade.

Administrative Outlook
Throughout, Harding’s message combines conservative restoration with selective modernization: a leaner, more accountable federal government; a protective but outward-looking commercial stance; and measured social commitments anchored in law and equity. He asks Congress to legislate with these priorities so the nation can transition from wartime turbulence to durable prosperity.