Political Cartoon D: The caption of this 1924 cartoon reads: “The First Good laugh They’ve Had in Years.” The most
sensational of the scandals during the Harding administration was the attempted theft of the national oil reserves. Oil had
taken the place of coal to power the ships of the navy. It had become a prime need for commerce and national defense.
The government had set aside three promising oil fields as reserves for the nations’ future. But Harding’s Secretary of the
Interior, Albert Fall, leased two of these—Teapot Dome in Wyoming, and Elk Hills in California—to private interests in
return for $325,000 in fits and “loans.” A Senate Committee began an investigation in 1924, and a grand jury indicted Fall
for bribery. The Democrats, having lost control of both Congress and the Presidency in the early 1920s, were delighted
with the scandal in hopes that it might help them politically. Eventually Fall was convicted, sentenced to one year in
prison, and fine $100,000. He was the first cabinet officer in history to be sent to prison.