With the Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations, the United States was isolated in world affairs. The question for its leaders was how to protect the economic interests of the country without committing the nation to an active international role. After Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes succeeded in persuading Congress to ratify a treaty in 1921 to formally end the war with Germany, Warren G. Harding looked for a way to ensure world peace and stability without limiting American freedom to act in world affairs. Hughes also attempted to prevent a costly naval arms race between the United States, Britain, and Japan. The Washington Conference on Naval Disarmament of 1921-22 provided a way to achieve that end. At the conference, Hughes surprised the delegates by outlining drastic reductions in the naval fleets of all three nations as well as a 10-year moratorium on the construction of large battleships. He proposed to scrap two million tons of shipping that already existed.
To the surprise of Hughes, the delegates actually agreed to most of the terms of his proposal. The Five-Power Pact of February 1922 established limits for total naval tonnage and a ratio of armaments for each of the nations. For every 5 tons of American and British warships, Japan was allowed 3 tons and France and Italy 1.75 tons.
Two other treaties also came out of the Washington Conference. The Nine-Power Pact pledged the five naval powers, plus other nations with interests in the Pacific (Belgium, China, the Netherlands, and Portugal), to maintain the Open Door Policy of protecting the territorial integrity of China and keeping equal commercial access in the region. Meanwhile, the countries (the United States, Britain, France, and Japan) pledged in the Four-Power Pact to cooperate to prevent aggression and to maintain the status quo of each nation’s territories in the Pacific. In the event that one of the countries was unable to resolve a conflict in the Pacific diplomatically, the four signatories agreed to invite the other countries to a conference to resolve the dispute.
If the signatories abided by the treaties, the pacts would effectively end the arms race in capital ships, but they did temporarily halt Anglo-American competition and reduced Japanese-American conflict in the region. The treaties sanctioned Japanese dominance in the Pacific. Yet compared to the latitude allowed the United States and Britain internationally, the pacts reinforced the military inferiority of Japan.
A majority of American naval officers opposed the pacts. Naval officers criticized the Five-Power Pact, because it did not produce parity with Britain. The Royal Navy would maintain superiority in large warships in the 1920s. In addition, Britain and the United States did not scrap all the large ships that were covered under the pacts. Instead they converted some of them to carriers. Consequently, the 10-year moratorium was an empty promise.
Nevertheless, Hughes lobbied for the treaties, saying that the Five-Power Treaty “ends, absolutely ends, the race in the competition of naval armaments.” The Senate approved the treaties by a large majority even though some senators viewed the pacts as only a first step toward disarmament. For example, Senator Borah wanted the abolition of submarines and parity between France and Japan in capital ships, but that kind of parity would have greatly disturbed the British and derailed the major powers’ acceptance of the treaties. Most Americans approved of the treaties of the Washington Conference of 1921. The American press generally praised the treaties. In addition, most businessmen supported disarmament, seeing government reductions in military spending as a way to being domestic tax relief.
Further reading: L. Ethan Ellis, Republican Foreign Policy, 1921-1933 (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1968); Richard W. Fanning, Peace and Disarmament: Naval Rivalry and Arms Control, 1922-1933 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995).
—Glen Bessemer
Watson, Thomas Edward (1856-1922) politician, publisher
Agrarian reformer and populist politician Thomas E. Watson was born in Columbia County near Thomson, Georgia, the son of John Smith Watson and Anna Eliza Maddox. He attended Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Following his sophomore year, Watson left Mercer and returned to Thomson, where he privately studied law. In 1875, he obtained his law license and embarked on a career as a criminal lawyer. On October 9, 1878, Watson married Georgia Durham, with whom he had seven children.
By the 1880s, Watson had not only established himself as a successful criminal lawyer, but also was becoming increasingly involved in Georgia politics. Former Confederates Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs were his political mentors. Entering Georgia politics as a Democrat, he was an agrarian reformer steeped in the traditions of the nostalgic Old South, and hostile to the order of things in the post-Reconstruction New South. A new spirit of enterprise had entered into southern life, and many southerners were calling for greater northern investment in the region. Watson often attacked Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, for his advocacy of the New South ideology. He also blamed northern bankers and industrialists for the failure of southern family farms and spoke out against the Georgia Democratic Party, which was dominated by capitalist-industrialists (Bourbons). Watson’s fiery populist rhetoric helped him win election to a seat in the Georgia Assembly.
In the state assembly, Watson continued his attacks on Georgia Bourbons and their cooperation with northern banking and industrial interests. In 1890, he won election to the U. S. House of Representatives. Although a member of the Democratic Party, Watson supported the Farmers Alliance platform. By 1892, politically active members of the alliance movement formed the People’s Party. Watson eventually left the Democrats and joined the Populists.
Once in Congress, Watson introduced many agrarian reform bills, supported the growth of labor unions, and won passage of legislation bringing free mail delivery to rural areas. In 1892, his district had been gerrymandered, and he was defeated for reelection. Watson also lost a controversial election to a Democratic opponent in 1894. Despite these electoral setbacks, he continued to denounce bankers, the trusts, and the policies of the Bourbon Democrats.
In 1896, the People’s Party endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate William J. Bryan. However, they nominated Watson for the vice presidency on a fusion ticket. The Republican candidate William McKinley won the election. The defeat of the Democratic-Populist fusion ticket was a bitter and humiliating experience for Watson. He retired from public life and turned to writing popular history and biography.
Watson returned to national politics in 1904. He gained 117,183 votes as the Populist candidate for president that year. In 1905, he founded Tom Watson's Magazine, which featured his reform editorials. He made a final, symbolic run at the presidency as a populist in 1908. He died in 1922.
Further reading: Ferald J. Bryan, Henry Grady or Tom Watson?: The Rhetorical Struggle for the New South, 1880-1890 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1994); C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York: Macmillan, 1938).
—Phillip Papas
World History
