A BIT OF HISTORY | © SARAH BECKER
Nearly 100 years ago, it took the Democrats 103 ballots and 16 sweaty days to select a nominee.
The Wildest Convention in U.S. History The Democratic Convention of 1924
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n 1924 Congress overrode President Calvin Coolidge’s veto of the WWI Soldiers Bonus Bill, and an anti-Asiatic Immigration law was passed. A constitutional amendment “to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age” was sent to the states for ratification. The country, “led by the South, [was] reluctant to circumscribe the work done by child labor.” 1924 was also a presidential election year. Four political parties participated. The Republican Party nominated Vice President Calvin Coolidge, President as of 1923 to serve another term. The Democrats chose New York attorney John W. Davis. It took the Dems a record 103 ballots to decide. Virginia’s 1924 Democratic Convention delegation included U.S. Senator Carter Glass; U.S. Senator Claude A. Swanson and State Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., Chairman of the
Alexandria’s own Dr. Kate Waller Barrett.
8 June 2022
1924 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION PRESIDENTIAL VOTE, 1ST BALLOT
1924 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION PRESIDENTIAL VOTE, 100TH BALLOT
Candidate
Candidate
Votes Percentage
William G. McAdoo 431.5
39.4%
Alfred E. Smith
22.0%
241
Votes Percentage
Alfred E. Smith
351.5
32.4%
John W. Davis
203.5
18.7%
190
17.5%
59
5.4%
William G. McAdoo
43.5
4.0%
Edwin T. Meredith
75.5
7.0%
Oscar W. Underwood 42.5
3.9%
Thomas J. Walsh
52.5
4.8%
George S. Silzer
38
3.5%
Joseph T. Robinson
46
4.2%
John W. Davis
31
2.8%
Oscar W. Underwood 41.5
3.8%
Samuel M. Ralston
30
2.7%
Carter Glass
35
3.2%
Woodbridge N. Ferris
30
2.7%
Josephus Daniels
24
2.2%
James M. Cox Pat Harrison
25
2.3%
Robert L. Owen
20
1.8%
22.5
2.1%
Albert C. Ritchie
17.5
1.6%
Joseph T. Robinson
21
1.9%
James W. Gerard
10
0.9%
Jonathan M. Davis
20
1.8%
David F. Houston
9
0.8%
Charles W. Bryan
18
1.6%
Willard Saulsbury
6
0.6%
2
0.2%
Carter Glass Albert C. Ritchie
Fred H. Brown
17
1.6%
Charles W. Bryan
William Ellery Sweet
12
1.1%
George L. Berry
1
0.1%
Newton D. Baker
1
0.1%
Willard Saulsbury
7
0.6%
John Kendrick
6
0.5%
Houston Thompson
1
0.1%
Virginia Democratic Party; Governor E. Lee Trinkle and former Governor Henry C. Stuart; Mrs. B.B. Mumford, Mrs. W.B. Sirman, and Alexandria’s Dr. Kate Waller Barrett. They were “to support Glass for the presidential nomination so as long as his name was before the body.” “Anyone who would not expect me to lead—to impress upon Congress my conception of important matters— need never to advocate me for this presidency,” Glass said in reply.
Representative Glass was instrumental in the passage of the 1913 Owen-Glass Federal Reserve Act: the formation of the central bank of the United States. “Four years ago [in 1920] Virginia furnished the platform for the [National] Democratic Party,” The Richmond-Times Dispatch reported. “This year it will, in all probability, go-a-step farther, providing both the platform and the candidate. The name Carter Glass is on the lips of every man or woman who discusses
nomination possibilities.” “It is admitted on all sides that, in point of ability and general fitness…no man in American public life is better qualified for the Presidency than Carter Glass,” The Washington Post agreed. “The single count against him is that he is from the South.” Born in 1858, in Lynchburg, Virginia, Carter Glass left school at age 13. Self-educated, he became a newspaper reporter cum owner. A conservative Democrat, Glass served in the U.S. House of Representatives [1902–18]; the U.S. Senate [19201946], and as President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of the Treasury [1918-1920]. In 1902 State Senator, soon to be U.S. Representative Glass was a white supremacist. According to the Encyclopedia Virginia “Glass’ bluntness was apparent during the [Commonwealth’s] Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902…He joined the ‘reformers,’ who wanted to revamp state government and eliminate the black vote.” “[T]he problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line,” W.E.B. DuBois, the first black American to earn a doctorate wrote in 1903. “This meaning is not without interest to you.” The 1924 National Democratic Party Platform, as drafted by U.S. Senator Glass, was accepted by the Virginia convention with only one change. The change was made in the Personal Freedom section, the section which reaffirmed Thomas Jefferson’s A BIT OF HISTORY > PAGE 9
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