text: Presidency (1920–1930) King became Liberia's President in 1920 and served for ten years. As president, he helped establish the Booker Washington Agricultural and Industrial Institute in Kakata in 1929, and although King was considered a moderate reformer within the True Whig Party, his administration was mired in corruption and controversy, serving the party's patronage machine and making appointments based on nepotism and political favors.
  Negotiation of a loan from the United States
  By the early 1920s, Liberia's financial crisis had worsened to the point where President King headed up a commission that traveled to the United States to seek reorganization of the country's staggering debt burden. They arrived in March 6, 1921, shortly after President Warren G. Harding had taken office.  The U.S. Congress had suspended all foreign credit and extension of foreign loans, even though the U.S. State Department favored approving the request from the Liberian delegation. In July, U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes said that it was the moral duty to extend the requested loan to Liberia because of an 1918 agreement between the two countries. The following month, President Harding told Congress that he agreed with Secretary Hughes. Negotiations dragged on until October before the State Department finally granted Liberia a loan for $5million (equivalent to $million in )