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Posted February 7, 2007
On Oct. 3, 1877, Gov. William L. Harding was born on a farmstead near Sibley, in northwest Iowa. Harding served governor from 1917 to 1921 but spent most of his term overshadowed by scandal and controversy.
Harding was opposed to extending voting rights to women and was against road improvement. He spoke out against Woodrow Wilson’s pro-British stance in the simmering days leading up to World War I, a move that won him favor from Iowa’s large bloc of German-American voters.
However, any favor Harding had with German voters disappeared when he issued his Babel Proclamation in 1918, ordering it illegal to use any foreign language in public, over the telephone, in schools and in church. Although the act was believed to be unconstitutional, it stayed in effect during World War I.
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Gov. Harding, Babel Proclamation author
Antagonism toward Germans and their language was common across the United States during the years before, during, and after World War I. But Harding was the only governor in the United States to outlaw the public use of all foreign languages. Harding understood the connection between communication and assimilation. He was convinced that destroying the vital bond of language within ethnic communities would force assimilation of minorities into the dominant culture and heighten a sense of patriotism in a time of war.
Misuse of the law by County Councils of Defense led to the persecution of people who spoke Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Czech, as well as German. Elderly women in Scott County were jailed for speaking German over the telephone. A Lutheran pastor was jailed for preaching part of a funeral service for a soldier killed in the war in Swedish because the young man's grandparents did not speak English.
In Denver, Iowa, a minister at the German Evangelical Church defiantly declared that he would continue preaching in German. After a visit from state officials, the Rev. Bauschoff agreed to
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preach his sermons first in English and later in German. Harding even made the point in a public speech that God did not hear prayers that were spoken in any language but English.
Harding left office in disgrace in 1921 after being censured by the Iowa legislature over his alleged role in a scandal involving the pardon of a northwest Iowa man charged with rape. The man was pardon before entering prison. After a trial with the state legislature acting as jury, the governor’s order was overturned, but the alleged rapist disappeared before he could be rearrested.
The suit established for the first time in the judicial history of Iowa the right to cancel by legal procedure a pardon issued by the governor where there was fraud used by the person procuring the same.
Harding died on Dec, 17, 1934, after a brief attempt to rehabilitate his political career by running for the U.S. Senate. He is buried in Sioux City.
William Harding outlawed foreign language during World War I.