James M. Cox

Cox was born on a farm near the tiny Butler County, Ohio, village of Jacksonburg, the youngest son of Gilbert Cox and Eliza Andrew; he had six siblings.[2] Cox was named James Monroe Cox at birth; he was later known as James Middleton Cox, possibly because he spent part of his early years in Middletown, Ohio.[3][4] Cox was educated in a one-room school until the age sixteen.[5] After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother in 1886 to Middletown, where he started a journalistic apprenticeship at the Middletown Weekly Signal published by John Q. Baker.

In 1892 Cox received a job at the Cincinnati Enquirer as a copy reader on the telegraph desk, and later started to report on spot news including the railroad news. In 1894, Cox became an assistant to Middletown businessman Paul J. Sorg who was elected to U.S. Congress, and spent three formative years in Washington, D.C. Sorg helped Cox to acquire the struggling Dayton Evening News, and Cox, after renaming it into the Dayton Daily News, turned it by 1900 into a successful afternoon newspaper outperforming competing ventures. He refocused local news, increased national, international and sports news coverage based on Associated Press wire service, published timely market quotes with stock-exchange, grain and livestock tables, and introduced several innovations including photo-journalistic approach to news coverage, suburban columns, book serializations and McClure's Saturday magazine supplement inserts, among others. Cox started a crusade against Dayton's Republican boss, Joseph E. Lowes, who used his political clout to profit from government deals. He also confronted John H. Patterson, president of Dayton's National Cash Register Co., revealing facts of antitrust violations and bribery.[6] In 1905, foretelling his future media conglomerate, Cox acquired the Springfield Press-Republic published in Springfield, Ohio, and renamed it, the Springfield Daily News.

Cox won the 1912 election for Governor of Ohio, in a three-way race gaining 41.5% of the vote. Cox served three terms; after winning the 1912 election, he served from 1913 to 1915; he lost reelection in 1914, but won the 1916 and 1918 elections, and served from 1917 to 1921. He presided over a wide range of measures such as laying the foundation of Ohio's unified highway system, creating no fault workers' compensation system and restricting child labor.[7] He introduced direct primaries and municipal home rule, started educational and prison reforms, and streamlined the budget and tax processes.[8]

During World War I, Cox encouraged voluntary cooperation between business, labor, and government bodies. In 1918, he welcomed constitutional amendments for Prohibition and women's suffrage.[5] Cox supported the internationalist policies of Woodrow Wilson and reluctantly supported U.S. entry into the League of Nations.[9][10]

In 1919, shortly after the Great War ended, Governor Cox backed the Ake Law, introduced by H. Ross Ake, which banned the German language from being taught until the eighth grade, even in private schools. Cox claimed that teaching German was "a distinct menace to Americanism, and part of a plot formed by the German government to make the school children loyal to it."[11] Legislation restricting the teaching of foreign languages was declared unconstitutional in Meyer v. Nebraska.

Cox/Roosevelt electoral poster

Roosevelt (left) and Cox (right) at a campaign appearance in Washington, D.C., 1920

A capable and well-liked progressive reformer, Cox was nominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party at the 1920 Democratic convention in San Francisco defeating A. Mitchell Palmer and William Gibbs McAdoo on the 44th ballot.[12]

Cox conducted an activist campaign visiting 36 states and delivering 394 speeches mainly focusing on domestic issues, to the displeasure of the Wilsonians, who pictured the election "as a referendum on the League of Nations."[5] To fight unemployment and inflation, he suggested simultaneously lowering income and business profits taxes. He promised to introduce national collective bargaining legislation and pledged his support to the Volstead Act. Cox spoke in support of Americanization to increase the immigrant population's loyalty to the United States.

Despite all of his efforts, Cox was defeated in the 1920 presidential election by a fellow Ohioan and newspaperman, U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding of Marion. The public had grown weary of the turmoil of the Wilson years and eagerly accepted Harding's call for a "return to normalcy." Cox's running mate was future president, then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. One of the better-known analyses of the 1920 election is in Irving Stone's book about defeated presidential candidates, They Also Ran. Stone rated Cox as superior in every way over Harding and claimed that Cox would have made a much better president. Stone argued that there was never a stronger case in the history of American presidential elections for the proposition that the better man lost. Of the four men on both tickets, all but Cox would ultimately become president: Harding won and was succeeded by his running mate, Calvin Coolidge, after Harding died in office, and Roosevelt would be elected president in 1932. Cox would, however, outlive all three men by several years.

Cox with FDR in Dayton, Ohio during 1920 presidential campaign

During the campaign, Cox recorded several times for The Nation's Forum, a record label that made voice recordings of American political and civic leaders in 1918-1920.[13][14] Among them was the campaign speech now preserved at the Library of Congress that accused the Republicans of failing to acknowledge that Wilson's successful prosecution of the Great War had, according to Cox, "saved civilization."[15]

After stepping down from public service, he concentrated on building a large media conglomerate, Cox Enterprises. In 1923 he acquired the Miami Daily News and the Canton Daily News. In December 1939, he purchased the Atlanta Georgian and Journal, just a week before that city hosted the premiere of Gone with the Wind.[16]^: 389 This deal included radio station WSB, which joined his previous holdings, WHIO in Dayton and WIOD in Miami, to give him, "'air' from the Great Lakes on the north to Latin America on the south."[16]^: 387

He continued to be involved in politics, and in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944, Cox supported and campaigned for the presidential candidacies of his former running mate Franklin D. Roosevelt, unlike the other losing Democratic presidential candidates of the time John W. Davis and Al Smith. In 1933, Cox was appointed by Roosevelt to the U.S. delegation to the failed London Economic Conference.[17]

When he was seventy-six, Cox published his memoir, Journey through My Years (1946).

In 1915, Cox built a home near those of industrialists Charles Kettering and Edward Deeds in what later became Kettering, Ohio, where he lived for four decades. It was constructed in the classical French-Renaissance style with six bedrooms, six bathrooms, two tennis courts, a billiards room and an in-ground swimming pool.[18] Cox named the home Trailsend.

Cox was married twice. His first marriage to Mayme Simpson Harding lasted from 1893 to 1912, and ended in divorce.[5] He married Margaretta Parker Blair in 1917 and she survived him.[5][25] Cox had six children, three by Mayme Harding, sons James McMahon and John William and a daughter Helen Harding,[26][27][28] a son who died in infancy, and two daughters by Margaretta Blair: Anne Cox Chambers and Barbara Cox Anthony.[5][25] His son James M. Cox Jr., who took over the business after his death, was chairman of Cox Enterprises, Cox Communications, and Cox Media Group in Atlanta.[26][29] His daughter Helen died in 1921 and her husband Daniel Joseph Mahoney was president of Cox Newspapers. His descendants through Chambers and Anthony, including billionaires Blair Parry-Okeden, James C. Kennedy, James Cox Chambers, Katharine Rayner and Margaretta Taylor, are major shareholders in Cox Enterprises.

Cox practiced a variety of trades throughout his life, being a farmer, reporter, Congressional staff member, newspaper publisher and editor, politician, elected official and finally, a regional media magnate.[30]

In Ohio, Cox is remembered as a crusading publisher of the Dayton Daily News and progressive governor; the newspaper's editorial meeting room is still referred to as the Governor's Library. The James M. Cox Dayton International Airport, more commonly referenced simply as Dayton International Airport, was named for Cox as well.

Cox is credited with words, "If there is anything in the theory of reincarnation of the soul then in my next assignment, if I be given the right of choice, I will ask for the aroma of printers ink."[6]

The Cox Fine Arts Building at the Ohio Expo Center and State Fair in Columbus, Ohio, is named in honor of Cox.

• Ohio gubernatorial elections
• List of governors of Ohio

Wikimedia Commons has media related to James M. Cox.

Wikisource has original works by or about:
James Middleton Cox

• United States Congress. "James M. Cox (id: C000835)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• James Middleton Cox Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University, Dayton, OH
• Works by or about James M. Cox at Internet Archive
• 1920 Presidential Election Links Archived 2018-12-11 at the Wayback Machine