The president's daughter

Back in Chicago, after my several weeks’ sojourn in the mountains, I set about immediately to seek admittance into the Republican National Committee offices in a secretarial capacity, so that I might help in a small way to elect my hero. The headquarters were in the Auditorium Hotel. There I went and, upon hearing that Congressman Martin B. Madden was there, I went to see him. I explained that Mr. Harding had been kind enough to put me in the United States Steel Corporation in New York in 1917; that I came from Marion and had known him as a child; also that I was a girlhood chum of Judge Grant E. Mouser’s daughter Annabel, Mr. Mouser having been at one-time a Congressman and close friend of Mr. Madden. Mr. Madden forthwith took me in to Captain Victor Heinz’s office and introduced me as a friend of Mr. Harding. Captain Heinz was from Cincinnati; I afterwards met some of his relatives at the Mouser’s in Marion where they visited. Captain Heinz in turn took me to Mr. Frank A. Nimocks, whose regular job was postmaster in Ottumwa, Iowa. He “took me on” in a secretarial capacity immediately at a salary, if I remember correctly, of $35 a week. He had charge of the distribution of Republican campaign lithographs—a highly pleasing branch of the work to me. Next door to our office was that of the afterwards Postmaster-General, Hubert Work.

I was very happy to be a Harding booster; in fact, of all the work I have ever done, that was the most enjoyable. Everything was Harding! I wrote to Mr Harding’s sister Daisy, telling her where I was, and in her letter she said she knew how happy I must be to be working for my “hero.” She well knew he was that to me.

It seemed to be rather generally known in the offices along the corridor that I came from Marion, Ohio, and it is very likely that those who were not acquainted with this fact learned it from me, for I was the proudest person alive and wanted everybody to know where I hailed from.

Many notables were in and out of campaign headquarters, some of whom I met. Mr. Charles E. Witt, one-time secretary to Governor Harding of Iowa, had charge of another phase of the Harding picture distribution work and had his desk in our office. When Governor Harding came in one day Mr. Witt introduced me as a “friend of the next President.” In some such similar manner I was introduced to Senator New, whom I had often heard Warren Harding speak of and whom I was anxious to meet so that I might tell Mr. Harding I had met him.

Political fanatics roamed in and out of the headquarters as well as substantial party supporters, and I have devoted a whole page in my Harding scrapbook to clippings concerning one, Everett Harding, who falsely claimed to be a cousin of Warren G. Harding and embarrassed the President-to-be through spurious publicity.

Mrs. Woodlock was living on 48th Street during that time, and invariably when I left the offices of the Republican National Committee it was to go directly to her home to see our baby, Elizabeth Ann. I would usually reach there so fatigued I could scarcely stand, but what recuperative powers her baby exuberance had for me! And Mrs. Woodlock’s hearty laugh would ring through the length of the apartment as she related to me something amusing that had happened during the day. Or she, with her daughter Ruth, would show me how my baby had learned to laugh, and we would all bend over her, each trying to bring to her face the Harding smile that quickened my heart and made the others cry, “Isn’t she a darling!” Aunt Emma, gentle soul, would hobble into the room and say, as she said over and over again to me those days. “I don’t often take to babies, Mrs. Christian, but Elizabeth Ann certainly has won my heart!” She was her father’s daughter, all right.