John Calvin Coolidge was born on 4 July 1872,
and he grew up on a farm in Plymouth Notch, Vermont.
His father John Coolidge was in the state legislature
and later became a superintendent of schools.
His mother loved literature, and she was chronically ill
and died in 1885 probably from tuberculosis.
Calvin also liked to read.
He had no brothers, and his only sister Abigail died of appendicitis in 1890.
Calvin admired his father and wanted to be like him.
He said his father was industrious, tenacious, and always “stuck to the truth.”
In his Autobiography Calvin wrote,
My father, John Calvin Coolidge, ran the country store.
He was successful.
The annual rent of the whole place was $40.
I have heard him say that
his merchandise bills were about $10,000 yearly.
He had no other expenses.
His profits were about $100 per month on the average,
so he must have sold on a very close margin.
He trusted nearly everybody,
but lost a surprisingly small amount.
Sometimes people he had not seen for years
would return and pay him the whole bill.1
His grandmother read the Bible to him.
In February 1886 he enrolled in the Black River Academy near Ludlow.
The boarding school cost $150 a year.
Calvin read The Green Mountain Boys about Ethan Allen
and Washington and his Generals about the first President.
He learned Greek and Latin and especially liked the orations of Cicero.
At his graduation in May 1890 he gave a speech about oratory,
and he praised Cicero, Demosthenes, Patrick Henry, and Daniel Webster.
He said,
What mighty changes have been wrought
in England’s political system within the last fifty years
by the indomitable energy of such orators
as Vincent, Cobden, Bright and scores of others,
who traversed the kingdom advocating the repeal
of the Corn Laws and other measures
which were once deemed Utopian and hopeless.2
He wrote that his father was also a constable, justice of the peace,
tax collector, and pound keeper for animals.
In September 1891 Calvin Coolidge enrolled in Amherst College in Massachusetts.
He was most interested in history, politics, rhetoric, and the philosophy he learned
from the mystic, Charles Edward Garman who taught with the Socratic method.
He found from experience that those ideas worked.
Coolidge won a prize for oratory, and he participated in debates.
He defended parliamentary government over presidential and won that debate.
In 1884 his students had helped Garman publish the
Life and Letters of Charles E. Garman,
and Coolidge kept a copy of that book in his library.
Although from Garman he learned about the teachings of the Christ,
Coolidge did not go to church.
He wrote this about Garman:
We looked upon Garman as a man who walked with God.
His course was a demonstration of the existence
of a personal God, or our power to know Him,
of the Divine immanence, and of the complete dependence
of the universe on Him as the Creator and Father
“in whom we live and move and have our being.”
Every reaction in the universe
is a manifestation of His Presence….
To Garman was given a power which took his class
up into a high mountain of spiritual life
and left them alone with God….
What he revealed to us
of the nature of God and man will stand.3
Garman taught them to be guided “by general principles
and not get lost in particulars.”
Mysticism leads to great truths.
Success comes from conscientious work.
Christ comes to earth as a servant who is also a master of disciples
and also a sovereign rather than a slave.
To a fellow student Coolidge wrote,
Each man must solve his own problems
if he is to perfect himself….
It requires eternity for the individual
to work out his own perfection….
The individual is the only conceivable unit of thought.4
Coolidge joined the Amherst Republican Club.
He competed with a humorous speech for graduation and learned this lesson:
While my effort was not without success,
I very soon learned that making fun of people
in a public way was not a good method to secure friends,
or likely to lead to much advancement,
and I have scrupulously avoided it.5
Coolidge graduated from Amherst in 1895.
He studied law and apprenticed himself to John Hays Hammond
and Henry Field, Amherst graduates who appreciated his wit.
That Christmas the Sons of the American Revolution awarded Coolidge
a gold medal
for his essay on “The Principals Fought for in the American Revolution.”
After two years at their firm he passed the bar on 29 June 1897.
He began his own law practice on 1 February 1898.
In a letter to his father on February 26 he wrote,
There is considerable chance of a war with Spain
and a more remote war involving all of Europe
which no one can tell the end.
These conditions will very probably
cause Govt. Bonds to fall in price.6
His law partner John Hays Hammond in his autobiography published in 1935
would write this about Coolidge:
It was most fortunate for the country that a man
of Calvin Coolidge’s type succeeded to the presidency.
He had an estimable record for probity and executive ability
during both his Massachusetts governorship
and the vice-presidency.
Sitting in at Cabinet meetings
during the Harding administration had given him
special knowledge of national problems.
His slightly rigid personality manifested caution and sanity.
His eccentricities were safe ones.
There was no derision in the anecdotes
that were told of him, and the laughter of the people
at hundreds of Coolidgisms only served to increase
their belief in him as a wise and forceful leader.
After the miasma of suspicion created by the scandals
of the Harding administration,
the country soon showed implicit confidence in Coolidge.7
Coolidge ran for the Northampton City Council as a Republican
and was elected on December 7.
In 1900 he was elected the City Solicitor for Northampton
that paid him a $600 salary, and he was re-elected in 1901.
In the spring of 1903 he was appointed the temporary court clerk
for Hampshire County with a salary of $2,300.
In 1904 he became chairman of the city’s Republican Committee.
Coolidge lost a race for the Northampton School Board in 1905.
That would be his only loss in twenty elections.
On October 4 he married beautiful Grace Goodhue.
She graduated Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Vermont,
and she taught the deaf at the Clark Institute.
In November 1906 Coolidge was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature
by only a margin
of 264 votes.
Grace had given birth to John in September, and Calvin Jr. was born in April 1908.
Coolidge was in the legislature for two years and supported the direct election
of U. S. Senators and the Women’s Suffrage Amendment
which made him known as a progressive Republican.
He also favored limiting the work-week to no more than six days,
and he was for restricting the hours that women and children could work.
He was for providing half-fares on streetcars for schoolchildren.
On 10 February 1909 he testified before the Judiciary Committee
and argued for a bill that would prohibit discrimination in commercial trade.
He advised that the bill should prohibit “large aggregations of capital”
from selling cheaper in one place than in another.
He said,
You forbid a labor union to injure a man’s business,
but a giant corporation can do exactly the same thing….
Havoc, spoil, and ruin follow these aggregations of capital.8
On 5 December 1909 Coolidge was elected the Mayor of Northampton
by a majority of only 187 votes, and he served for two years.
After the election they raised the salary from $800 to $1,000,
and Coolidge refused to accept the additional $200.
He wrote to his father,
At least 400 Democrats voted for me.
Their leaders can’t see why they did it.
I know why.
They knew I had done things for them,
bless their honest Irish hearts.9
From the time he became mayor on 3 January 1910 Coolidge would serve the public
in political offices from then until 4 March 1929.
He sold the Smith’s Ferry area to Holyoke for $45,000
and then invested it to benefit Northampton.
He managed to lower taxes, reduce the city’s debt, and raise the salaries of teachers.
His father John Coolidge was a member of the Vermont Senate 1910-12.
Calvin wrote this advice for his father,
You will I am sure find it a very interesting experience
and unless the members there are much better than ours
you will not find any one at Montpelier
who is better qualified to legislate for the State than you are.
You need not hesitate to give the other members
your view on any subject that arises.
It is much more important to kill bad bills
than to pass good ones,
and better to spend your time on your own committee work
than to be bothering with any bills of your own
except in some measure that your own county
or some other persons may want you to introduce for them.
See that the bills you recommend from your committee
are so worded that they will do just what they intend
and not a great deal more that is undesirable.
Most bills can’t stand that test.
It will usually be a good plan to see
what the Mass. Statute is on the point.10
Winthrop Murray Crane had been a progressive
Governor of Massachusetts 1900-03 and then was a U. S. Senator 1904-13.
He was a valuable supporter of Coolidge.
In 1911 Calvin Coolidge was elected to the Massachusetts Senate.
On 1 January 1912 textile workers in 12 mills at Lawrence went on strike.
As chairman of the committee on conciliation Coolidge helped mediate the strike
by the 30,000 mill workers who got a wage increase by March 15.
Also in 1912 he worked to heal the breach between the Republicans
who were divided by the contest between President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt,
and Coolidge was reelected in the state senate.
In 1913 he helped pass the Western Trolley Act which connected
Northampton with the industrial communities in Western Massachusetts.
He wrote in his Autobiography,
It was in my second term in the Senate
that I began to be a force in the Massachusetts Legislature.
President Greenwood made me chairman
of the Committee on Railroads, which I very much wanted,
because of my desire better to understand business affairs,
and also put me on the important Committee on Rules.
I made progress because I studied subjects sufficiently to
know a little more about them than anyone else on the floor.
I did not often speak but talked much with the
Senators personally and came in contact
with many of the business men of the state.
The Boston Democrats came to be my friends
and were a great help to me in later times.
My committee reported a bill transforming
the Railroad Commission into a Public Service Commission,
with a provision intending to define and limit
the borrowing powers of railroads
which we passed after a long struggle and debate.
The Democratic Governor vetoed the bill,
but it was passed over his veto almost unanimously.
The bill came out for our trolley roads
in Western Massachusetts and was adopted.
He vetoed this,
and his veto was overridden by a large majority.
It was altogether the most enjoyable season
I ever spent with any legislative body.11
In January 1914 the state senate elected Coolidge their president
with 31 of the 38 votes.
In response he made the speech “Have Faith in Massachusetts”
that was published with 22 other speeches as Have Faith in Massachusetts.
Here is the entire speech:
Honorable Senators:
I thank you—with gratitude for the high honor given,
with appreciation for the solemn obligations assumed
I thank you.
The Commonwealth is one.
We are all members of one body.
The welfare of the weakest and the welfare
of the most powerful are inseparably bound together.
Industry cannot flourish if labor languish.
Transportation cannot prosper if manufactures decline.
The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act,
but it is well to remember that
the benefit of one is the benefit of all,
and the neglect of one is the neglect of all.
The suspension of one man’s dividends
is the suspension of another man’s pay envelope.
Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.
Laws must be justified by something
more than the will of the majority.
They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.
That state is most fortunate in its form of government
which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of laws.
The latest, most modern, and nearest perfect system that
statesmanship has devised is representative government.
Its weakness is the weakness
of us imperfect human beings who administer it.
Its strength is that even such administration
secures to the people more blessings
than any other system ever produced.
No nation has discarded it and retained liberty.
Representative government must be preserved.
Courts are established,
not to determine the popularity of a cause,
but to adjudicate and enforce rights.
No litigant should be required to submit his case
to the hazard and expense of a political campaign.
No judge should be required to seek
or receive political rewards.
The courts of Massachusetts are known
and honored wherever men love justice.
Let their glory suffer no diminution at our hands.
The electorate and judiciary cannot combine.
A hearing means a hearing.
When the trial of causes goes outside the court room,
Anglo Saxon constitutional government ends.
The people cannot look to
legislation generally for success.
Industry, thrift, character,
are not conferred by act or resolve.
Government cannot relieve from toil.
It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service.
It can, of course, care for the defective
and recognize distinguished merit.
The normal must care for themselves.
Self-government means self-support.
Man is born into the universe
with a personality that is his own.
He has a right that is founded upon the constitution
of the universe to have property that is his own.
Ultimately, property rights
and personal rights are the same thing.
The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated.
Each man is entitled to his rights and the rewards
of his service be they never so large or never so small.
History reveals no civilized people among whom
there were not a highly educated class,
and large aggregations of wealth,
represented usually by the clergy and the nobility.
Inspiration has always come from above.
Diffusion of learning has come down
from the university to the common school—
the kindergarten is last.
No one would now expect to aid the common school
by abolishing higher education.
It may be that the diffusion of wealth
works in an analogous way.
As the little red schoolhouse is built in the college,
it may be that the fostering and protection
of large aggregations of wealth are the only foundation
on which to build the prosperity of the whole people.
Large profits mean large pay rolls.
But profits must be the result of service performed.
In no land are there so many
and such large aggregations of wealth as here;
in no land do they perform larger service;
in no land will the work of a day
bring so large a reward in material and spiritual welfare.
Have faith in Massachusetts.
In some unimportant detail some other States
may surpass her, but in the general results,
there is no place on earth where the people secure,
in a larger measure, the blessings of organized government,
and nowhere can those functions
more properly be termed self-government.
Do the day’s work.
If it be to protect the rights of the weak,
whoever objects, do it.
If it be to help a powerful corporation
better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that.
Expect to be called a stand-patter,
but don’t be a stand-patter.
Expect to be called a demagogue,
but don’t be a demagogue.
Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science.
Don’t hesitate to be as reactionary
as the multiplication table.
Don’t expect to build up the weak
by pulling down the strong.
Don’t hurry to legislate.
Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.
We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people—
a faith that men desire to do right,
that the Commonwealth is founded upon a righteousness
which will endure, a reconstructed faith that
the final approval of the people is given not to demagogues,
slavishly pandering to their selfishness,
merchandising with the clamor of the hour,
but to statesmen, ministering to their welfare,
representing their deep, silent, abiding convictions.
Statutes must appeal to more than material welfare.
Wages won’t satisfy, be they never so large.
Nor houses; nor lands; nor coupons,
though they fall thick as the leaves of autumn.
Man has a spiritual nature.
Touch it, and it must respond
as the magnet responds to the pole.
To that, not to selfishness,
let the laws of the Commonwealth appeal.
Recognize the immortal worth and dignity of man.
Let the laws of Massachusetts proclaim
to her humblest citizen, performing the most menial task,
the recognition of his manhood,
the recognition that all men are peers,
the humblest with the most exalted,
the recognition that all work is glorified.
Such is the path to equality before the law.
Such is the foundation of liberty under the law.
Such is the sublime revelation
of man’s relation to man—Democracy.12
Coolidge worked on the Republican platform for the 1914 election,
and he suggested that they continue to support the following:
every means of compulsory and public education,
vocational and technical merited retirement pensions,
aid to dependent mothers,
healthful housing and fire protection,
reasonable hours and conditions of labor,
and amplest protection to the public health,
workingmen’s compensation
and its extension to interstate railroads,
official investigation of the price of necessities,
pure food and honest weight and measure,
homestead commission, city planning,
the highest care and efficiency in the administration
of all hospital and penal institutions, probation and parole,
care and protection of children and the mentally defective,
rural development, urban sanitation,
state and national conservation and reclamation,
and every other public means for social welfare
consistent with the sturdy character and resolute spirit
of an independent self-supporting,
self-governing, and free people.13
Coolidge was re-elected to the state senate with 6,381 votes
to 3,596 for the Democrat Ralph Staab.
He worked to make legislation more brief.
The 1914 edition of The Blue Book of Acts and Resolves had 1,423 pages,
and in 1915 it had 1,230 pages.
That year Coolidge noted, “Only the man of broad and deep understanding
of his fellow men can meet with much success in politics.”
While he was presiding over the Senate, a member complained
that another member had told him to go to hell.
Coolidge replied, “I’ve examined the Constitution and the Senate rules,
and there’s nothing in them that compels you to go.”14
On 4 September 1915 he spoke in Essex County.
He was upset about the crowded state institutions for the sick, poor, and insane,
and he said,
I feel the time has come when the people
must assert themselves and show that they will tolerate
no delay and no parsimony in the care of our unfortunates.
Restore the fame of our state in the handling
of these problems to its former lustre.
I repeat that this is not partisan.
I am not criticizing individuals.
I am denouncing a system.
When you substitute patronage for patriotism,
administration breaks down.
We need more of the Office Desk
and less of the Show Window in politics.
Let men in office substitute
the midnight oil for the limelight.15
At the Republican State Convention in Boston on October 2 Coolidge
gave a speech of acceptance and said,
We are face to face with a system of administration
not for the public good
but for the dispensation of public contracts.
The majority of voters of this Commonwealth
are opposed to a continuation of these conditions.
They have secured a start here
because we have met defeat
in the past through a division of our forces.
We are reuniting now through the exercise
of wiser counsels—wiser counsels which are by no means
confined to either one of our past divisions.16
He favored humanitarian legislation and was concerned that
it be designed to build character and independence.
In criticizing their platform’s plank advocating social insurance
he revealed how conservative were his views on the role of government.
He said,
It ought to be understood that there can be no remedy
for lack of industry and thrift secured by law.
It ought to be understood that no scheme of insurance
and no scheme of government aid
is likely to make us all prosperous.
And above all these remedies must go forward
on the firm foundation of an independent
self-supporting, self-governing people….
To those who fear we are turning socialists,
and to those who think we are withholding
just and desirable public aid and support,
I say that government under the Republican Party
will continue in the future to be so administered
as to breed not mendicants but men.17
On 2 November 1915 Calvin Coolidge was elected
Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts with 52,204 votes
while the Republican Samuel McCall was elected Governor with 6,313 votes.
They would both be re-elected annually two more times.
Coolidge’s salary was $2,000.
In that position he did not preside over the Senate.
Instead he was chairman of the Governor’s Council
which could advise and veto pardons, finances, and the state appointments.
Wealthy Frank Stearns provided publicity for Coolidge’s campaigns.
He was devoted to Coolidge and gave favors to his family.
Coolidge returned to him a check for $5,000.
About Stearns he wrote this:
While Mr. Stearns always overestimated me,
he nevertheless was a great help to me.
He never obtruded or sought any favor for himself
or any other person, but his whole effort was always
disinterested and entirely devoted to assisting me
when I indicated I wished him to do so.
It is doubtful if any other public man
ever had so valuable and unselfish a friend.18
Coolidge ran for a political office nineteen times,
and he considered running for office his hobby.
He was always a Republican.
Yet some Democrats voted for him, and they were called “Coolidge Democrats.”
He spoke and wrote in simple, declarative sentences which tended to be
much shorter than those of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.
In 1916 Coolidge campaigned for the Republican candidate for President,
Charles Evans Hughes, as well as for Gov. McCall and himself for Lt. Governor.
McCall advocated for progressive reforms and to support the war effort in 1917.
On November 7 McCall was re-elected with 226,145 votes.
Coolidge was unopposed in the primary and got 95,858 votes.
In the election he got more votes than any statewide candidate in Massachusetts.
In 1918 McCall decided not to run again.
On October 7 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge had written to Theodore Roosevelt:
Calvin Coolidge, our present Lieutenant-Governor,
is our candidate for Governor.
He is a graduate of Amherst,
a very able, sagacious man of pure New England type.
He is not only wise and tolerant, but he also has
an excellent capacity for firmness when firmness is needed.
He has been ardently for the war from the beginning.
He has been in thorough sympathy with your views
and mine, and in his campaign he has not been talking
for himself at all but just making war speeches.19
Ex-President William H. Taft endorsed Coolidge,
and on October 28 Roosevelt added this long sentence:
Mr. Coolidge is a high-minded public servant of the type
which Massachusetts has always been honorably
anxious to see at the head of the state government;
a man who has the forward look and who is anxious
to secure genuine social and industrial justice
in the only way it can effectively be secured, that is,
by basing a jealous insistence upon the rights of all,
on the foundation of legislation
that will guarantee the welfare of all.20
On November 4 in Faneuil Hall Coolidge said,
We need a word of caution and of warning.
I am responsible for what I have said
and what I have done.
I am not responsible for what my opponents
say I have said or say I have done either on the stump
or in untrue political advertisements and untrue posters.
I shall not deal with these.
I do not care to touch them,
but I do not want any of my fellow citizens to misunderstand
my ignoring them as expressing any attitude other than
considering such attempts unworthy of notice when men
are fighting for the preservation of our country.21
On November 5 Calvin Coolidge was elected Governor
over the Democrat Richard Long who had 47% of the votes.
Coolidge received 51% and 214,863 votes.
The Republican House Speaker Channing Cox
was elected Lt. Governor of Massachusetts.
On 1 January 1919 the War Industries Board was closed,
and the next day Governor Coolidge was inaugurated
and addressed the Massachusetts legislature saying,
You are coming to a new legislative session under
the inspiration of the greatest achievements in all history.
You are beholding the fulfilment of the age-old promise,
man coming into his own.
You are to have the opportunity and responsibility
of reflecting this new spirit in the laws
of the most enlightened of Commonwealths.
We must steadily advance.
Each individual must have the rewards and opportunities
worthy of the character of our citizenship,
a broader recognition of his worth and a larger liberty,
protected by order—and always under the law.
In the promotion of human welfare
Massachusetts happily may not need much reconstruction,
but, like all living organizations,
forever needs continuing construction.
What are the lessons of the past?
How shall they be applied to these days of readjustment?
How shall we emerge from the autocratic methods of war
to the democratic methods of peace,
raising ourselves again to the source of all our strength
and all our glory—sound self-government?
It is your duty not only to reflect public opinion,
but to lead it.
Whether we are to enter a new era
in Massachusetts depends upon you.
The lessons of the war are plain.
Can we carry them on into peace?
Can we still act on the principle
that there is no sacrifice too great to maintain the right?
Shall we continue to advocate
and practice thrift and industry?
Shall we require unswerving loyalty to our country?
These are the foundations of all greatness.
Let there be a purpose in all your legislation
to recognize the right of man to be well born,
well nurtured, well educated, well employed, and well paid.
This is no gospel of ease and selfishness,
or class distinction, but a gospel of effort and service,
of universal application.22
Governor Coolidge in one year as governor
reorganized 118 departments into 18.
He reduced the work week for women and children from 54 hours to 48.
He increased the pay for teachers and said,
We compensate liberally the manufacturer and merchant;
but we fail to appreciate those
who guard the minds of our youth….
We have lost our reverence for the profession of teaching
and bestowed it on the profession of acquiring.23
On February 24 Coolidge welcomed President Wilson on his return
with the Treaty from the Versailles Peace Conference and said,
We hail, moreover, a great leader of the world
who is earnestly striving to effect an arrangement
that will prevent another horrible war.
He has gone across the seas to further his purpose.
He has given of his strength and energy.
I can assure him that, in all of his efforts
to promote and preserve the peace of the world,
he has the hearty support of the people of Massachusetts.24
American banks during the World War loaned
over $10 billion to the European allies.
Coolidge worked hard on reducing expenditures by using the budget.
A new article put in the Massachusetts Constitution in 1918 mandated reducing
the number of agencies from over one hundred to twenty by 1 January 1921.
Coolidge accomplished that despite the political consequences,
and he selected the new heads and deputies for the twenty new agencies.
In 1919 about four million Americans participated in 2,665 strikes.
The Boston police suffered from inadequate pay and many dangers.
Pay for the first year was $800.
Then it went to $1,100, and the highest pay was $1,400.
They worked six 12-hour shifts each week.
For months the police tried to negotiate for better contracts
while the Police Commissioner Edwin Curtis refused to let them form a union.
By 1919 police had unions in 37 cities.
The policemen’s negotiators organized their Boston Social Club into a union
and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL)
which accepted their application as the Boston Police Union on August 11.
Gov. Coolidge was in Northampton and Vermont with his family,
and he returned to his office on August 19.
Curtis suspended eight leaders of the new union.
He said the police must dissolve the union by September 4.
Boston’s Mayor Andrew Peters was also opposed to the union,
though as a Democrat he was partial to the many Irish police.
Peters appointed a committee led by the banker James Storrow to work on arbitration.
Coolidge rejected their plan and declined to mobilize the State Guard.
Adjutant General Jesse Stevens prepared one mounted squadron of the State Guard.
Coolidge considered those troops inflammatory and dismissed them.
Coolidge let the Police Commissioner Curtis
handle the situation and supported him.
On September 8 Coolidge spoke to the Massachusetts Federation of Labor,
and he did not talk at all about the police strike.
On that day Curtis suspended 19 police officers.
The policemen voted 1,134 to 2 to go on strike on September 9.
They demanded that the 19 officers be reinstated and that their union be recognized.
That evening 1,117 of the 1,544 on the force removed their badges
and walked out wearing uniforms.
News of the strike spread,
and drinking and minor crimes escalated into a riot and looting.
On September 10 Mayor Peters, fearing rumors that firemen and railroad workers
would go on strike and shut down the city, mobilized the state militia in Boston.
He replaced Curtis with General Charles Cole.
Curtis appealed to Coolidge.
War veterans helped police the city, and Harvard’s President A. Lawrence Lowell
let 700 students support the militia without being penalized academically.
Gun permits were given to 1,052 persons,
and 390 special policeman received licenses.
About 3,500 cooks and waiters went on strike with the police.
The troops could not control the mobs.
They shot into crowds, and three men were killed.
The Boston Globe estimated the damage from the rioting at $200,000.
Coolidge discovered a statute that allowed the Governor to summon police,
and he called out the rest of the guard.
This gave Curtis over 5,000 replacement police.
On September 11 Gov. Coolidge issued the following proclamation:
The entire State Guard of Massachusetts
has been called out.
Under the Constitution the Governor
is the Commander in Chief thereof by an authority
of which he could not if he chose divest himself.
That command I must and will exercise.
Under the law I hereby call on all the police of Boston
who have loyally and in a never to be forgotten way
remained on duty to aid me in the performance of my duty
of the restoration and maintenance of order
in the city of Boston, and each of such officers
is required to act in obedience to such orders
as I may hereafter issue or cause to be issued.
I call on every citizen to aid me
in the maintenance of law and order.25
Coolidge restored Curtis as police commissioner and answered a telegram
from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) President Samuel Gompers
by releasing to the press this message:
Replying to your telegram, I have already refused
to remove the police commissioner of Boston.
I did not appoint him.
He can assume no position which the courts would uphold
except what the people have
by the authority of their law vested in him.
He speaks only with their voice.
The right of the police of Boston to affiliate has
always been questioned, never granted, is now prohibited.
The suggestion of President Wilson to Washington
does not apply to Boston.
There the police remained on duty.
Here the Policemen’s Union left their duty, an action which
President Wilson described as a crime against civilization.
Your assertion that the commissioner was wrong
cannot justify the wrong of leaving the city unguarded.
That furnished the opportunity;
the criminal element furnished the action.
There is no right to strike against the public safety
by anybody, anywhere any time.
You ask that the public safety again be placed in the hands
of these same policemen while they continue
in disobedience to the laws of Massachusetts and in their
refusal to obey the orders of the Police Department.
Nineteen men have been tried and removed.
Others having abandoned their duty,
their places have, under the law, been declared vacant
on the opinion of the Attorney General.
I can suggest no authority outside the courts
to take further action.
I wish to join and assist
in taking a broad view of every situation.
A grave responsibility rests on all of us.
You can depend on me to support you
in every legal action and sound policy.
I am equally determined to defend
the sovereignty of Massachusetts and to maintain
the authority and jurisdiction over her public officers
where it has been placed
by the Constitution and law of her people.26
Coolidge reaffirmed and expanded on this with another proclamation
on September 24 which spread in newspapers.
In response about 70,000 letters and telegrams were sent to Boston with tributes.
Coolidge proclaimed:
There appears to be a misapprehension
as to the position of the police of Boston.
In the deliberate intention to intimidate and coerce
the Government of this Commonwealth
a large body of policemen, urging all others to join them,
deserted their posts of duty, letting in the enemy.
This act of theirs was voluntary, against the advice
of their well wishers, long discussed and premeditated,
and with the purpose of obstructing the power
of the Government to protect its citizens
or even to maintain its own existence.
Its success meant anarchy.
By this act through the operation of the law
they dispossessed themselves.
They went out of office.
They stand as though they had never been appointed.
Other police remained on duty.
They are the real heroes of this crisis.
The State Guard responded most efficiently.
Thousands have volunteered for the Guard and the Militia.
Money has been contributed from every walk of life
by the hundreds of thousands
for the encouragement and relief of these loyal men.
These acts have been spontaneous,
significant, and decisive.
I propose to support all those who are supporting
their own Government with every power
which the people have entrusted to me.
There is an obligation, inescapable, no less solemn,
to resist all those who do not support the Government.
The authority of the Commonwealth
cannot be intimidated or coerced.
It cannot be compromised.
To place the maintenance of the public security in the hands
of a body of men who have attempted to destroy it
would be to flout the sovereignty
of the laws the people have made.
It is my duty to resist any such proposal.
Those who would counsel it join hands with those
whose acts have threatened to destroy the Government.
There is no middle ground.
Every attempt to prevent the formation of a new police force
is a blow at the Government.
That way treason lies.
No man has a right to place his own ease or convenience
or the opportunity of making money
above his duty to the State.27
Coolidge would write in early 1921 in a review of
American Police Systems by Raymond Fosdick,
There is nothing so destructive of our liberties
as a misuse of police power.
No people will submit to it for long, least of all Americans.
The worst thing that could happen would be to have
the conviction abroad that police, courts,
and the government were more concerned
with the protection of property than
with the protection of the personal rights of the individual.
Under a wise and judicious leadership,
a well-trained and properly compensated police force,
this danger would not arise.
Under a police force which is the sport of political conditions
it is likely to arise at any time.28
On October 21 Coolidge sent out an Armistice Day Proclamation that declared,
War is the rule of Force.
Peace is the reign of law.
Let war and all force end,
and peace and all law reign.29
In 1919 Coolidge spent $2,172 on the campaign for re-election as Governor.
On November 4 he received 61% with 317,774 votes and defeated again
Richard Long who got 192,673.
That November the Republican Club of Massachusetts
began supporting Coolidge as a presidential candidate.
Gov. Coolidge approved $100 bonuses for soldiers returning from Europe,
and $10,000 was approved for the Yankee Division’s reception in Boston
that gave veterans preference in public positions.
In 1918 Massachusetts had added an amendment to its constitution for a budget system.
Coolidge vetoed the “Salary Grab Bill” that raised legislators salaries
from $1,000 to $1,500, though they overrode his veto.
The striking policemen in Boston had lost their jobs,
and Coolidge worked on finding them other employment.
He also hired former soldiers who passed the entrance examinations.
He managed to get some cost-of-living raises for factory workers
and public employees in order to prevent strikes.
Coolidge became known for not talking much in social situations,
and he was called “Silent Cal.”
In November 1919 the Literary Digest referred to him as
“Quiet But Convincing ‘Cal’ Coolidge.”
His wife would tell how a hostess once told him,
“I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you.”
Coolidge replied, “You lose.”30
The political humorist Will Rogers said,
“Mr. Coolidge had a more subtle humor than almost any public man I ever met.”31
On 15 December 1919 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge wrote to Coolidge
and offered to nominate him at the Republican National Convention
as the favorite son of Massachusetts.
On 8 January 1920 in his second inaugural address as governor Coolidge said,
The past always limits and directs the future.
Recent years have been marked by
much change and great progress.
It has been a time requiring great effort.
To discharge paramount duties great
obligations have been incurred.
During the past year the Constitution of the
Commonwealth has been revised.
The entire executive administration has been reorganized.
A forty eight hour week has been established.
The problems of reconstruction have been solved.
Disloyal speech and action has been prohibited.
Profiteering has been curbed.
Transportation has been relieved.
A great forward step has been taken in education.
No one year has ever witnessed like accomplishments.
Considered as a whole it has been stupendous.
The commitments of the Commonwealth must be met,
the various departments supported and strengthened,
the public security maintained, the organism of government
must continue to grow, but new enterprises should be
undertaken only in case of the most urgent public necessity.
In general, it is a time to conserve, to retrench rather than
to reform, a time to stabilize the administration of the
present laws rather than to see new legislation.
Not law, but perseverance; and patience.
It is not to be understood that additional legislation
will never be required.
The future will require it.
But it is the present that must be considered.
This Commonwealth is less in need
of new laws than ever before.
The greatest benefit you can confer is the speedy making of
necessary appropriations, adjustment
of some details, and adjournment.
This is not criticism.
The completeness of the laws reflects the ability
and accomplishments of the General Court.
You can display no greater wisdom than by resisting
proposals for needless legislation.
There is a limit to the taxing power of a State
beyond which increased rates produce decreasing revenues.
If that be exceeded intangible securities and
other personal property become driven out of its jurisdiction,
industry cannot meet its less burdened competitors,
and no capital will be found
for enlarging old or starting new enterprises.
Such a condition means first stagnation,
then decay and dissolution.
There is before us a danger that our resources may
be taxed out of existence and our prosperity destroyed.
Another and most important consideration, a fact that cannot
be controverted, is that taxes have to be paid by the public.
They cannot be imposed on any class.
There is no power that can prevent a distribution of the burden.
The landlord may be the one who sends a check to the public
treasury, but his tenants nevertheless make the payment.
A great manufacturer may contribute a large share to his income,
but still the money comes from the consumer.
Taxes must and do fall on the people
in whatever form or name they are laid.
There is no other source rich enough or powerful enough
to meet the public requirements.
It is useless to delude ourselves, and fraudulent
to attempt to delude others, with the claim that the public revenues
are or can be derived from any source save the people them selves.
Property cannot long be taxed.
It can be confiscated.
Ultimately it is always the user of property that is taxed.
In Massachusetts the users of the property are the people.
The taxes are paid by the people.
It is impossible to escape the conclusion
that high taxes make high prices.
So long as the cost of government is high
the cost of living will be high.
This is usually a source of misunderstanding
and always a source of discontent.
The duty that government now owes to the people is to reduce
their burdens by paying off the obligations that came from the war
rather than imposing additional burdens for the support of new projects.
The Commonwealth needs a double portion of the
civilizing influence of conservation and economy.
Having met our war obligation to pay, let us meet
our peace obligation to save.
The unsound social and economic theories which deluge the earth
from time to time are not the progeny of stalwart men and women.
Sound bodies do not breed unsound doctrines.
Along with a vigorous training for physical development
should go a teaching to think healthful thoughts.
For after all it must be remembered that
“as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.”
For some years Massachusetts has been committed to the
policy of aiding children by assisting the mother to care for them.
This has proved to be a wise and beneficial policy.
Institutional and family care have much to commend them,
but no mother should be parted from her children
on account of poverty alone.
This policy may well be extended in its scope to the giving aid,
nursing and medical care to needy expectant mothers.
Motherhood should be honored, childhood protected.
I earnestly recommend the extension of this relief through
the same or like agencies as now administer mothers’ aid.
In our desire to assist those who come from other shores
we must not neglect the native born.
Coming into the royal estate of every American
he should have a royal welcome.
It was the wise men who bore gifts.
A wise Commonwealth will not be neglectful
of the days of nativity.
Our population is in the main industrial, but the products
of our soil reach a very substantial figure, probably
well over one hundred millions of dollars.
There is no better opportunity for raising citizens
than on the farm.
Every encouragement should be extended to the farmers.
In particular, his keeping of domestic
animals should be stimulated.
Our efforts should be directed to the prosperity
of the men now on the farms.
We have some untilled soil.
But if the present farmer is made successful and prosperous,
if the rewards of his labors are made secure, there will be
no lack of others to enter the field and use all available land.
It is fundamental that the way to assist an enterprise is to
assist the people engaged in the enterprise.
Make he farmer succeed and the success of farming is established.
Facilities for this purpose are already provided.
Let a continuing appropriation insure their continued functioning.
It is preeminently the province of government to protect the weak.
The average citizen does not lead the life of independence that
was his in former days under a less complex order of society.
When a family tilled the soil and produced
its own support it was independent.
When it produces but one article, and that in a plant
owned by others, it is dependent.
It may be infinitely better off under the latter plan, but it is
evident it needs a protection which before was not required.
Let Massachusetts continue to regard with the gravest
solicitude the well being of her people.
By prescribed law, by authorized publicity, by informed public
opinion let her continue to strive to provide that all conditions
under which her citizens live are worthy of the high estate of man.
Healthful housing, wholesome food, sanitary working conditions,
reasonable hours, a fair wage for a fair day’s work,
opportunity full and free, justice speedy and impartial and
at a cost within the reach of all, are among the objects
not only to be sought but made absolutely certain and secure.
Government is not, must not be, a cold impersonal machine,
but a human and more human agency, appealing to the reason,
satisfying the heart, full of mercy, assisting the good, resisting
the wrong, delivering the weak from any impositions of the strong.
Massachusetts is committed to this and will
strive consistently for its complete realization.
This is not paternalism.
It is not a servitude imposed from without,
but the freedom of a righteous self direction from within.
A great money prosperity abounds
In accordance with what had for years been
so loudly proclaimed many supposed that in such
prosperity they would find complete satisfaction.
In this they have been, of course, sorely disappointed.
They now think if they could get more they would find
the satisfaction that has thus far eluded them.
This lies at the basis of the present discontent.
Prosperity must be sought, but it does not cure discontent.
Some say our economic and wage systems are all wrong.
They would apply some other principle.
They are not wrong.
They may have been used wrongfully.
It is the conception of them and their purpose that is wrong.
We are suffering from a shortage of all kinds of materials.
The only remedy is to put more effort, not less, into production.
If we want more coal and wheat and sugar we shall get it
by giving more cloth and shoes and machinery.
Changes in prices will give no ultimate relief.
Shortage is met only by saving and production.
Men have learned very well how to get;
they need to be encouraged to save.
Saving and production govern distribution.
Greater distribution comes from greater capital.
If we can produce and save, economic law distributes.
No power can prevent it.
Capital must accrue to the use of the people or it perishes.
The shop, the railroad, the bank are all for the use of the people.
Even the millionaire finds he must, for his own satisfaction,
turn over his art gallery to the public.
We cannot help the people by denouncing these fundamental
principles for their delight, but by
teaching them for their advantage.
It is time to discard fictions and bring forward realities.
We need to change our standards; not of property but of thought.
We need to stop trying to be better than some one else,
and start doing something for some one else.
If we put all the emphasis on our material prosperity, that
prosperity will perish, and with it will perish our civilization.
The best that is in man is not bought with a price.
To offer money only is to appeal to his weakness not his strength.
Man is more than of the earth.
He will not find his satisfaction in things that are of the earth earthy.
Employer and employed must find their satisfaction
not in a money return, but in a service rendered;
not in the quantity of goods, but the quality of character.
Industry must be humanized not destroyed.
It must be the instrument not of selfishness but of service.
Change not the law but the attitude of the mind.
Let our citizens look not to false prophets but to the Pilgrims;
let them fix their eyes on Plymouth Rock as well as Beacon Hill.
The supreme choice must be not the things
that are seen but the things that are unseen.
Our government belongs to the people.
Our property belongs to the people.
It is distributed.
They own it.
The taxes are paid by the people.
They bear the burdens.
The benefits of government must accrue to the people;
not to one class but to all classes; to all the people.
The functions, the power, the sovereignty of the government
must be kept where they have been placed by the
Constitution and laws of the people.
Not private will, but that public will, which speaks
with a divine sanction, must prevail.
There are strident voices urging
resistance to law in the name of freedom.
They are not seeking freedom even for them selves.
They have it.
They are seeking to enslave others.
Their works are evil.
They know it.
They must be resisted.
The evil they represent must be overcome
by the good others represent.
These ideas which are wrong, for the most part imported,
must be supplanted by ideas which are right.
This can be done.
The meaning of America is a power which cannot be over come.
Massachusetts must lead in teaching it.
Prosecution of the criminal and education
of the ignorant are the remedies.
It is fundamental that freedom is not to be
secured by disobedience to law.
Even the freedom of the slave depended on
the supremacy of the Constitution.
There is no mystery about this.
“They who sin are the servants of sin.”
They who break the laws are the slaves of their own crime.
It is not for the advantage of others that the citizen is
abjured to obey the laws, but for his own advantage.
What he claims a right to do to others,
that must he admit others have a right to do to him.
His obedience is his own protection.
He is not submitting himself to the dictates of others,
but responding to the requirements of his own nature.
Laws are not manufactured, they are not imposed;
they are rules of action existing from everlasting to everlasting.
He who resists them resists himself; he commits suicide.
The nature of man requires sovereignty.
Government must govern.
To obey is life.
To disobey is death.
Organized government is the expression
of the life of the Commonwealth.
Into your hands is entrusted the grave responsibility
of its protection and perpetuation.32
The Republican State Convention of South Dakota
proposed Coolidge for Vice President.
The advertising pioneer Bruce Barton assisted Coolidge
as a candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 1920.
Barton collected recent speeches by Coolidge and published them as Law and Order.
In January James B. Reynolds resigned as secretary of the
Republican National Committee, and he opened offices in
Chicago and Washington to promote Coolidge for President.
In the spring of 1920 Coolidge vetoed the bill to allow the sale of beer and light wines
because the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution
prohibiting liquor had been ratified on 16 January 1919.
In his veto message on May 6 he said,
“There can be no constitutional instruction to do an unconstitutional act.”33
At the convention in June 1920 Senator Lodge changed his mind
about nominating Coolidge, and they got Frederick Gillett
to nominate him as a presidential candidate.
Gillett said,
We need an era of hard sense, of old freedom.
We need to reinvigorate the homely, orderly virtues
which have made America great….
Do you want a winner?
Take the man who has never concealed his convictions,
who has never lowered his standards,
and who has never known defeat.
Such a man is our Governor.
He is as patient as Lincoln, as silent as Grant,
as diplomatic as McKinley,
with the political instinct of Roosevelt.
His character is as firm
as the mountains of his native state.34
The demonstration for Coolidge lasted only one minute
while some went on for over a half hour.
On the first ballot Coolidge got only 34 votes, and six men had more than that.
Their convention took ten ballots to nominate Warren Harding of Ohio
as their candidate for President on June 12.
Then they nominated Coolidge for Vice President on the first ballot.
When reporters told him the news, he made this brief statement:
The nomination for the Vice-Presidency,
coming to me unsought and unexpectedly,
I accept as an honor and a duty.
It will be especially pleasing to be associated
with my old friend, Senator Warren G. Harding,
our candidate for President.
The Republican Party has adopted a sound platform,
chosen a wise leader, and is united.
It deserves the confidence of the American people.
That confidence I shall endeavor to secure.35
On July 27 he made a very long speech officially accepting the nomination.
Here is some of what he said:
The greatest need of the nation at the present time
is to be rescued from all the reactions of the war.
The chief task that lies before us is to repossess
the people of their government and their property.
We want to return to a thoroughly peace basis
because that is the fundamental American basis.
Unless the government and property of the nation
are in the hands of the people,
and there to stay as their permanent abiding place,
self-government ends
and the hope of America goes down in ruins.
This need is transcendent.
The government of the nation is in the hands
of the people, when it is administered in accordance
with the spirit of the Constitution,
which they have adopted and ratified, and which measures
the powers they have granted to their public officers,
in all its branches, where the functions and duties
of the three co-ordinate branches,
executive, legislative, judicial, are separate and distinct
and neither one directly or indirectly
exercises any of the functions of either of the others….
Society to advance must be not a dead form
but a living organism, plastic, inviting progress.
There are no classes here.
There are different occupations and different stations,
certainly there can be no class of employer and employed.
All true Americans are working for each other,
exchanging the results of the efforts of hand and brain
wrought through the unconsumed efforts of yesterday,
which we call capital, all paying and being paid
by each other, serving and being served.
To do otherwise is to stand disgraced
and alien to our institutions.
This means that government must look at the part
in the light of the whole, that legislation must be
directed not for private interest but for public welfare,
and that thereby alone will each of our citizens
find their greatest accomplishment and success….
The economic strength of a country rests on the farm.
Industrial activity is dependent upon it.
It replenishes the entire life of the nation.
Agriculture is entitled to be suitably rewarded
and on its encouragement and success will depend
upon the production of a food supply large enough
to meet the public needs at reasonable cost.
But all these difficulties depend for final solution
on the character and moral force of the nation.
Unless these forces abound and manifest themselves
in work done there is no real remedy….
Our country has a heart as well as a head.
It is social as well as individual.
It has a broad and extending sympathy.
It looks with the deepest concern to the welfare of those
whom adversity still holds at the gateways
of the all-inclusive American opportunity.
Conscious that our resources have now reached a point
where there is an abundance for all,
we are determined that no imposition
shall hereafter restrain the worthy from their heritage.
There will be, can be, no escape from the obligation
of the strong to bear the burdens of civilization,
but the weak must be aided to become strong.
Ample opportunity for education at public expense,
reasonable hours of employment
always under sanitary conditions,
a fair and always a living wage for faithful work,
healthful living conditions,
childhood and motherhood, cherished, honored,
rescued from the grasp of all selfishness
and rededicated to the noblest aspiration of the race,
these are not socialistic vagaries
but the mark of an advancing American civilization,
revealed in larger social justice,
tempered with an abounding mercy….
There is especially due to the colored race
a more general recognition of their constitutional rights.
Tempted with disloyalty they remained loyal,
serving in the military forces with distinction,
obedient to the draft to the extent of hundreds of thousands,
investing $1 out of every $5 they possessed
in Liberty Bonds, surely they hold the double title
of citizenship, by birth and by conquest,
to be relieved from all imposition,
to be defended from lynching,
and to be freely granted equal opportunities….
The proposed League of Nations without reservations
as submitted by the President to the Senate
met with deserved opposition from the Republican Senators.
To a League in that form, subversive of the traditions
and the independence of America,
the Republican Party is opposed.
But our Party by the record of its members in the Senate
and by the solemn declaration of its platform,
by performance and by promise, approves the principle
of agreement, among nations to preserve peace,
and pledges itself to the making of such an agreement,
preserving American independence, and rights,
as will meet every duty America owes to humanity….
In a free republic a great government
is the product of a great people.
They will look to themselves
rather than Government for success.
The destiny, the greatness of America
lies around the hearthstone.
If thrift and industry are taught there,
and the example of self-sacrifice oft appears,
if honor abide there, and high ideals,
if there the building of fortune be subordinate
to the building of character, America will live in security,
rejoicing in an abundant prosperity and good government
at home, and in peace, respect, and confidence abroad.
If these virtues be absent
there is no power that can supply these blessings.
Look well, then, to the hearth-stone.
Therein all hope for America lies.36
Clarence Barron (1855-1928) believed in free trade,
and he began publishing Barron’s National Financial Weekly in 1921,
and by 1926 as Barron’s Magazine it had a circulation of 30,000.
He blamed protective tariffs for causing the Great War
because they turned the Germans against other nations.
Coolidge considered tariffs successful for enriching Americans.
Barron advised wealthy investors, and in 1920 he began exposing
the scheme of Charles Ponzi who recycled money by obtaining new investors.
Ponzi was handling $1 million a day by July.
Barron noticed that Ponzi was not investing in his own company.
On August 9 bank examiners discovered that
Ponzi’s main account was overdrawn.
His investors lost about 70% of their money.
In August bankers accused the State Treasurer Fred J. Burrell
of getting advertising in an agency that benefited him.
Coolidge ordered an investigation, and Burrell resigned
and was defeated by Coolidge’s appointed replacement in the next election.
On September 10 Gov. Coolidge proclaimed
October 9 Fire Prevention Day in Massachusetts.
In October he campaigned in Philadelphia, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas.
In the election on November 2 Harding and Coolidge received 60% of the votes
over James M. Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The salary of the Vice President was $12,000,
and the Coolidges chose to live in the New Willard Hotel apartment
that the outgoing Vice President Thomas Marshall made available to them.
Coolidge resigned as Governor on 6 January 1921.
On 4 March 1921 Coolidge took the oath as Vice President in the Senate
and gave this short address there about the important duties of the Senate:
Five generations ago there was revealed to the people
of this nation a new relationship between man and man,
which they declared and proclaimed in the American Constitution.
Therein they recognized a legislature empowered to express
the will of the people in law, a judiciary required to determine
and state such law, and an executive charged with securing
obedience to the law, all holding their office, not by reason of
some superior force, but through the duly
determined conscience of their countrymen.
To the House, close to the heart of the nation, renewing
its whole membership by frequent elections, representing
directly the people, reflecting their common purpose, has
been granted a full measure of the power of legislation
and exclusive authority to originate taxation.
To the Senate, renewing its membership by degrees,
representing in part the sovereign States, has been
granted not only a full measure of the power of legislation,
but, if possible, far more important functions.
To it is intrusted the duty of review, that to negotiations
there may be added ratification, and to appointment approval.
But its greatest function of all, too little mentioned
and too little understood, whether exercised in legislating
or reviewing, is the preservation of liberty.
Not merely the rights of the majority, they little need
protection, but the rights of the minority,
from whatever source they may be assailed.
The great object for us to seek here, for the Constitutio
identifies the vice-presidency with the Senate, is to continue
to make this chamber, as it was intended by the fathers,
the citadel of liberty.
An enormous power is here conferred, capable of much
good or ill, open, it may be, to abuse, but necessary,
wholly and absolutely necessary, to secure the required result.
Whatever its faults, whatever its human imperfections,
there is no legislative body in all history that has used its
powers with more wisdom and discretion, more uniformly
for the execution of the public will, or more in harmony
with the spirit of the authority of the people which has
created it, than the United States Senate.
I take up the duties the people have assigned me under
the Constitution, which we can neither enlarge nor diminish,
of presiding over this Senate, agreeably to its rules and
regulations, deeply conscious that it will continue to function
in harmony with its high traditions as a great deliberative
body, without passion and without fear, unmoved by clamor,
but most sensitive to the right, the stronghold of government
according to law, that the vision of past generations may
be more and more the reality of generations yet to come.37
President Harding made Coolidge a member of the Cabinet
and let him attend all the meetings.
Coolidge said little and listened well to learn about presidential government.
He was presiding when Harding presented his policies in a long speech
at a special session of Congress on April 12.
The main objectives were reducing government spending and taxes
while raising protective tariffs.
Harding said he wanted less government in business
and more business in government, and for the first time the
United States Government would have a national budget.
Harding had already begun making use of radio in his inaugural address.
In his Autobiography Coolidge described his experience as
Vice President and in presiding over the Senate writing,At first I intended to become a student of the Senate rules,
and I did learn much about them;
but I soon found that the Senate had but one fixed rule,
subject to exceptions of course, which was to the effect that
the Senate would do anything it wanted to do
whenever it wanted to do it.
When I had learned that,
I did not waste my time on the other rules,
because they were so seldom applied.
The assistant to the Secretary of the Senate could be relied
on to keep me informed on other parliamentary questions.
But the President of the Senate can and does exercise
a good deal of influence over its deliberations.
The Constitution gives him the power to preside,
which is the power to recognize whom he will.
That often means that he decides what business
is to be taken up and who is to have the floor
for debate at any specific time.
Nor is the impression that it is a dilatory body
never arriving at decisions correct.
In addition to acting on the thousands of nominations,
and the numerous treaties,
it passes much more legislation than the House.
But it is true that unanimous consent
is often required to close debate,
and because of the great power each Senator is therefore
permitted to exercise—which is often a veto power,
making one Senator a majority of the ninety-six Senators—
great care should be exercised
by the states in their choice of Senators.
Nothing is more dangerous to good government
than great power in improper hands.
If the Senate has any weakness it is because
the people have sent to that body
men lacking the necessary ability and character
to perform the proper functions.
But this not the fault of the Senate.
It cannot choose its own members
but has to work with what is sent to it.
The fault lies back in the citizenship of the states.
If the Senate does not function properly,
the blame is chiefly on them….
My experience in the Cabinet
was of supreme value to me when I became President….
An extra session of the Congress began in April of 1921,
which was almost continuous until March 4, 1923.
While an enormous amount of work was done,
it soon became apparent that the country
expected too much from the change in administration.
The government could and did stop the waste
of the people’s savings, but it could not restore them.
That had to be done by the hard work
and thrift of the people themselves.
This would take time….
While my party still held both the House and the Senate,
it lost many seats in the election, which made
the closing session of Congress full of complaints
tinged with bitterness against an administration
under which many of them had been defeated….
In these two years I witnessed the gigantic task
of demobilizing a war government
and restoring it to a peace-time basis.
I also came in contact with many of the important people
of the United States and foreign countries.
All talent eventually arrives at Washington.
Most of the world figures were there
at the Conference on Limitation of Armaments.
Other meetings brought people
only a little less distinguished.
While I had little official connection with these events
the delegates called on me,
and I often met them on social occasions.
The efforts of President Harding
to restore the country became familiar to me.
I saw the steady increase of the wise leadership
of Mr. Hughes and Mr. Mellon in the administration
of the government and the passing
of some of the veteran figures of the Senate.
Chief among these was Senator Knox of Pennsylvania.
He was a great power and had a control of the conduct
of the business of the Senate,
which he exercised in behalf of our party policies,
that no one else approached
during my service in Washington.
In the winter of 1923 President Harding was far from well.
At his request I took his place
in delivering the address at the Budget Meeting.
While he was out again in a few days, he never recovered.
As Mrs. Coolidge and I were leaving for the long recess
on the fourth of March, I bade him goodbye.
We went to Virginia Hot Springs for a few days
and then returned to Massachusetts, where we remained
while I filled some speaking engagements,
and in July I went to Vermont.
We left the President and Mrs. Harding in Washington.
I do not know what had impaired his health.
I do know that the weight of the Presidency is very heavy.
Later it was disclosed that he had discovered
that some whom he had trusted had betrayed him,
and he had been forced to call them to account.
It is known that this discovery
was a very heavy grief to him,
perhaps more than he could bear.
I never saw him again.
In June he started for Alaska and—eternity.38
Director of the Veterans Administration Charles R. Forbes had been convicted
of embezzling $2 million, and President Harding allowed him
to resign from Paris on 15 February 1923.
Jess Smith was a friend of Attorney General Daugherty.
They shared a bank account, and Smith had a desk near Daugherty’s office.
Smith was accused of helping German bankers regain $7 billion in securities
lost in the World War, and Smith had received a kickback of $224,000.
Smith apparently killed himself with a pistol on May 30.
Most of Coolidge’s work as Vice President was in making speeches.
His topics and venues included the philanthropy of
Andrew Carnegie in Pittsburgh on April 28, banks in New York City on June 29,
the mastery of thoughts in Philadelphia on July 7, the power of moral law in Springfield,
Massachusetts on October 11, what American means in Kansas City on October 31,
Alexander Hamilton in Chicago on 11 January 1922, Abraham Lincoln in Springfield,
Illinois on February 12, the purpose of America in Baltimore on February 22,
Ulysses S. Grant in Washington DC on April 27, education in New Haven on May 6,
and progress in Washington DC on June 7.
Coolidge in his talk on “Great Virginians” in Fredericksburg on July 6 said,
The world to-day is filled with a great impatience.
Men are disdainful of the things that are
and are credulously turning toward those who assert that
a change of institutions would somehow
bring about an era of perfection.
It is not a change that is needed in our Constitution
and laws so much as there is need
of living in accordance with them.
The most fundamental precept of them all—the right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—
has not yet been brought into universal application.
It is not our institutions that have failed,
it is our execution of them that has failed.39
His speech on Democracy was in Wellesley, Massachusetts on August 2.
On the 10th in San Francisco he talked about law and said,
The spirit of reform is altogether encouraging.
The organized effort and insistent desire
for an equitable distribution of the rewards of industry,
for a wider justice,
for a more consistent righteousness in human affairs,
is one of the most stimulating
and hopeful signs of the present era.
There ought to be a militant public demand
for progress in this direction.
The society which is satisfied is lost.
But in the accomplishment of these ends
there needs to be a better understanding
of the province of legislative and judicial action.
There is danger of disappointment and disaster
unless there be a wider comprehension
of the limitations of the law.40
Coolidge spoke on education in Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania on December 21,
and his Christmas Eve message from Washington was broadcast nationwide on radio.
He gave nine speeches in the first six months of 1923 on freedom in Evanston,
on Massachusetts in Washington, on progress toward freedom at Tuskegee,
on institutions in Albany, New York, on McKinley in Cambridge,
on the Old North Church in Boston, on American Destiny in Northampton,
on Vermont’s history in Burlington, and finally on June 19 at Wheaton College
his speech on “The Things That Are Unseen” concluded this way:
This is by no means saying that
we have reached perfection in any province;
it is merely a consideration of some of the things that
the liberally educated ought to do to promote progress.
We have reached the antithesis
of the asceticism of the Middle Ages.
There is no tendency now to despise self-gratification
or to hold what we call practical affairs in contempt.
To adjust the balance of this age
we must seek another remedy.
We do not need more material development,
we need more spiritual development.
We do not need more intellectual power,
we need more moral power.
We do not need more knowledge, we need more character.
We do not need more government, we need more culture.
We do not need more law, we need more religion.
We do not need more of the things that are seen,
we need more of the things that are unseen.
It is on that side of life that it is desirable
to put the emphasis at the present time.
If that side be strengthened,
the other side will take care of itself.
It is that side which is the foundation of all else.
If the foundation be firm, the superstructure will stand.
The success or failure of liberal education,
the justification of its protection
and encouragement by the government,
and of its support by society, will be measured
by its ability to minister to this great cause,
to perform the necessary services,
to make the required redeeming sacrifices.41
President Harding left Washington on 20 June 1923
with several people on a trip to Alaska.
On the way back in San Francisco the ailing and stressed Harding died on August 2
according to the official report of “apoplexy.”
Vice President Calvin Coolidge and his family were visiting his father.
U. S.
Attorney General Daugherty sent Coolidge a telegram
advising him to take the oath of office.
Coolidge called Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes
who advised him that a notary could administer the oath.
Coolidge’s father was a notary, and his son swore on the family Bible
at 2:47 a.m. on August 3.
On that day Coolidge released a statement saying,
Reports have reached me, which I fear are correct,
that President Harding is gone.
The world has lost a great and good man.
I mourn his loss.
He was my chief and my friend.
It will be my purpose to carry out the policies
which he has begun for the service of the American people
and for meeting their responsibilities
wherever they may arise.
For this purpose I shall seek the co-operation
of all those who have been associated
with the President during his term of office.
Those who have given their efforts to assist him
I wish to remain in office that they may assist me.
I have faith that God will direct
the destinies of our nation.42
Actually Coolidge had taken the oath as Vice President
and automatically became President upon the death of the President.
After visiting his mother’s grave Coolidge returned to Washington.
Attorney General Daugherty thought that Coolidge needed to be inaugurated
by a federal official rather than a state official, and that was done.
The Coolidges told Harding’s wife Florence
that she could stay in the White House for a while,
and she used the time burning all of Harding’s papers in a fireplace
before the Coolidges moved in on August 21.
Later evidence would reveal that Florence
may have poisoned Harding or assisted his suicide.
Calvin Coolidge was the last U. S. President
with only one secretary and very few aides.
As President he did not use a telephone at first
because he could not be sure it was private.
He had a direct line installed to Treasury Secretary Mellon.
Coolidge liked to use his wit, and now he was concerned that it gets him into trouble.
He wanted to be elected President in 1924,
and he began doing things to help him get the nomination.
On 5 August 1923 he began attending the First Congregational Church
that had a pastor who went to Amherst.
His first full press conference on August 14 was attended by 150 reporters.
He followed the same rules Harding had used,
and he met regularly with the press on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Questions were written and checked by his secretary.
Coolidge usually answered most or all of them, and he was not to be quoted directly.
In the 65 months of his presidency he held 520 press conferences.
He told them that he was for “stability, confidence, and reassurance.”
At the end of his first press conference in the White House, they applauded.
Later he thanked them for reporting the “constant correctness of my views.”
Coolidge enjoyed posing to have his picture taken and did so in various situations.
Judson Welliver had written speeches for Harding, and he stayed to help Coolidge
who mostly wrote his own speeches and gave many more than Harding did.
Welliver wrote in Coolidge’s style, and his salary of $7,500
was the same as senior aides got.
One of the reasons Coolidge was known for saying little was because
he knew how influential remarks by a U. S. President could be.
In his Autobiography he wrote,
One of my most pleasant memories will be
the friendly relations which I have always had
with the representatives of the press in Washington.
I shall always remember that at the conclusion
of the first regular conference I held with them
at the White House office they broke into hearty applause.
I suppose that in answering their questions
I had been fortunate enough to tell them what they wanted
to know in such a way that they could make use of it.
While there have been newspapers which supported me,
of course there have been others which opposed me,
but they have usually been fair.
I shall always consider it the highest tributeto my
administration that the opposition have based so little
of their criticism on what I have really said and done.
I have often said that there was no cause
for feeling disturbed at being misrepresented in the press.
It would be only when they began to say things
detrimental to me which were true that I should feel alarm.
Perhaps one of the reasons I have been a target for so little
abuse is because I have tried to refrain from abusing other people.
The words of a President have an enormous weight
and ought not to be used indiscriminately.
It would be exceedingly easy to set the country
all by the ears and foment hatreds and jealousies,
which, by destroying faith and confidence,
would help nobody and harm everybody.
The end would be the destruction of all progress.
While everyone knows that evils exist,
there is yet sufficient good in the people to supply material
for most of the comment that needs to be made.
The only way I know to drive out evil from the country
is by the constructive method of filling it with good.
The country is better off tranquilly considering its blessing
and merits, and earnestly striving to secure more of them,
than it would be in nursing hostile bitterness
about its deficiencies and faults.
Notwithstanding the broad general knowledge
which I had of the government, when I reached Washington
I found it necessary to make an extensive survey
of the various Departments to acquaint myself with details.
This work had to be done intensively from the first of August
to the middle of November, in order to have the background
and knowledge which would enable me to discuss the state
of the Union in my first Message to the Congress.43
The United States Congress did not have a session
between 4 March 1923 and December 2.
Coolidge accepted the advice of Republican leaders in Congress
and chose the politician C. Bascom Slemp to be his secretary.
His closest friends were Frank Stearns, his Amherst classmate Dwight Morrow,
and the late Murray Crane’s former advisor William Butler.
Coolidge considered it his duty to retain Harding’s Cabinet,
though eventually four of the ten were replaced.
He did not like the advice he got from the Commerce Secretary Hoover,
who would resign in 1928 to run for President.
Coolidge told the Cabinet members not to associate him
with their policies, and he explained why.
If you blunder, you can leave, or I can invite you to leave.
But if you draw me into all your department decisions
and something goes wrong, I must stay here.
And by involving me you have lowered
the faith of the people in their government.44
Thus President Coolidge delegated much of the work to the departments
and was observed to do less work than most presidents.
He spent much time thinking.
His secretary Slemp said that Coolidge did not originate policy which he administered.
On August 15 Pennsylvania’s Governor Gifford Pinchot asked President Coolidg
to intercede after the United States Coal Commission mediation failed to solve
the conflict between the coal miners led by John L. Lewis and the coal operators.
Coolidge declined, and on the 23rd Pinchot
informed him that wildcat walkouts had begun.
The next day Coolidge had lunch with Pinchot and the Coal Commissioner,
his friend John Hays Hammond, in Washington,
and Pinchot became the Special Coal Strike Mediator.
On September 1 Lewis called for a strike by 150,000 miners.
On the 7th the owners and the miners agreed on a 10% wage increase,
a union checkoff, and an 8-hour work day,
and the settlement was ratified on September 17.
Coolidge on September 3 had made the following appeal:
An overwhelming disaster has overtaken
the people of the friendly nation of Japan.
While its extent has not as yet been officially reported,
enough is known to justify the statement that
the cities of Tokio and Yokohama, and surrounding towns
and villages, have been largely if not completely destroyed
by earthquake, fire and flood, with a resultant
appalling loss of life and destitution and distress,
requiring measures of urgent relief.
Such assistance as is within the means of the Executive
Department of the Government will be rendered;
but realizing the great suffering which now needs relief
and will need relief for days to come,
I am prompted to appeal urgently to the American people,
whose sympathies have always been so comprehensive,
to contribute in aiding the unfortunate
and in giving relief to the people of Japan.
In order that the utmost co-ordination and effectiveness
in the administration of the relief funds be obtained,
I recommend that all contributions clearly designated,
be sent to the Chairman of the American National Red Cross
at Washington or to any of the local Red Cross chapters
for transmission to Japan.45
The scandal regarding the naval reserves of oil leases at Elk Hill, California
and Teapot Dome, Wyoming became known after Harding’s death.
In the fall Wisconsin’s Republican Senator Robert La Follette called for
an investigation, and the committee included Montana’s Democratic Senator
Thomas Walsh who was also in the progressive coalition.
In 1923 the revenue of the federal government was $3.8 billion
and expenditures were $3.1 billion.
The national debt, which had been $1.3 billion in 1917,
increased to $26.6 billion in 1919 and was reduced to $22.3 billion in 1923.
That year the army had 113,243 soldiers and the navy 94,094 sailors.
The federal government employed 436,900 in 1923,
and 268,000 of them worked for the post office.
George Harvey had been Ambassador to Britain since May 1921,
and on 13 August 1923 he told Coolidge he wanted to resign.
Coolidge replaced him with the former Senator Frank B. Kellogg
from Minnesota on November 3.
Those working to outlaw war were led by the attorney Salmon O. Levinson
in Chicago and the economist Col. Raymond Robins who had led
the Red Cross expedition to Russia in 1917.
In November 1923 Coolidge wrote this to Robins:
I trust that our country is in theoretical harmony
with the position you are striving to reach.
It is exceedingly difficult, in fact almost impossible,
to get any consideration of international questions
in Washington at the present time.
It would be especially so
just before the Presidential election.
Some of the things that you mention I am trying to do,
in so far as I can find them practicable.
You noticed, however, that when we made
as mild a suggestion as that we take an inventory
of what Germany had, the result of which
was to be binding upon no one,
we could not secure any agreement to that end.
You will recall also the obstacle
that stood in our path at the Washington Conference.
These things are not hopeless,
but they require long and painful effort.
I am very much pleased that men like you who have
the public ear are thinking of them and talking of them.
You have expressed an ideal
towards which I believe the world is moving.46
Coolidge was also the last U. S. President
who wrote almost all of his own speeches.
His first annual message to Congress on 6 December 1923
was quite long and was broadcast on radio.
Here is the entire message:
Since the close of the last Congress
the nation has lost President Harding.
The world knew his kindness and his humanity,
his greatness and his character.
He has left his mark upon history.
He has made justice more certain and peace more secure.
The surpassing tribute paid to his memory
as he was borne across the continent
to rest at last at home revealed the place he held
in the hearts of the American people.
But this is not the occasion for extended reference
to the man or his work.
In this presence, among these who knew and loved him,
that is unnecessary.
But we who were associated with him could not resume together
the functions of our office without pausing for a moment,
and in his memory reconsecrating ourselves
to the service of our country.
He is gone.
We remain.
It is our duty, under the inspiration of his example, to take up
the burdens which he was permitted to lay down, and to develop
and support the wise principles of government which he represented.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
For us peace reigns everywhere.
We desire to perpetuate it always by granting full justice
to others and requiring of others full justice to ourselves.
Our country has one cardinal principle
to maintain in its foreign policy.
It is an American principle.
It must be an American policy.
We attend to our own affairs, conserve our own strength, and
protect the interests of our own citizens; but we recognize
thoroughly our obligation to help others, reserving to the decision
of our own Judgment the time, the place, and the method.
We realize the common bond of humanity.
We know the inescapable law of service.
Our country has definitely refused to adopt and ratify
the covenant of the League of Nations.
We have not felt warranted in assuming the responsibilities
which its members have assumed.
I am not proposing any change in this policy; neither is the Senate.
The incident, so far as we are concerned, is closed.
The League exists as a foreign agency.
We hope it will be helpful.
But the United States sees no reason to limit its own freedom
and independence of action by joining it.
We shall do well to recognize this basic fact in all national affairs
and govern ourselves accordingly.
WORLD COURT
Our foreign policy has always been guided by two principles.
The one is the avoidance of permanent political alliances
which would sacrifice our proper independence.
The other is the peaceful settlement
of controversies between nations.
By example and by treaty we have advocated arbitration.
For nearly 25 years we have been a member
of The Hague Tribunal, and have long sought
the creation of a permanent World Court of Justice.
I am in full accord with both of these policies.
I favor the establishment of such a court
intended to include the whole world.
That is, and has long been, an American policy.
Pending before the Senate is a proposal that this Government
give its support to the Permanent Court of International Justice,
which is a new and somewhat different plan.
This is not a partisan question.
It should not assume an artificial importance.
The court is merely a convenient instrument of adjustment
to which we could go, but to which we could not be brought.
It should be discussed with entire candor, not by a political
but by a judicial method, without pressure and without prejudice.
Partisanship has no place in our foreign relations.
As I wish to see a court established, and as the proposal presents
the only practical plan on which many nations have ever agreed,
though it may not meet every desire, I therefore commend it
to the favorable consideration of the Senate, with the proposed
reservations clearly indicating our refusal
to adhere to the League of Nations.
RUSSIA
Our diplomatic relations, lately so largely interrupted,
are now being resumed, but Russia presents notable difficulties.
We have every desire to see that great people, who are our
traditional friends, restored to their position
among the nations of the earth.
We have relieved their pitiable destitution with an enormous charity.
Our Government offers no objection to the carrying
on of commerce by our citizens with the people of Russia.
Our Government does not propose, however, to enter into
relations with another regime which refuses to recognize
the sanctity of international obligations.
I do not propose to barter away for the privilege of trade
any of the cherished rights of humanity.
I do not propose to make merchandise of any American principles.
These rights and principles must go wherever
the sanctions of our Government go.
But while the favor of America is not for sale, I am willing
to make very large concessions for the purpose
of rescuing the people of Russia.
Already encouraging evidences of returning
to the ancient ways of society can be detected.
But more are needed.
Whenever there appears any disposition to compensate our
citizens who were despoiled, and to recognize that debt contracted
with our Government, not by the Czar, but by the newly formed
Republic of Russia; whenever the active spirit of enmity to our
institutions is abated; whenever there appear works mete for
repentance; our country ought to be the first to go to the
economic and moral rescue of Russia.
We have every desire to help and no desire to injure.
We hope the time is near at hand when we can act.
DEBTS
The current debt and interest due from foreign Governments,
exclusive of the British debt of $4,600,000,000,
is about $7,200,000,000.
I do not favor the cancellation of this debt, but I see no
objection to adjusting it in accordance with the principle
adopted for the British debt.
Our country would not wish to assume the role of an
oppressive creditor, but would maintain the principle that
financial obligations between nations are likewise moral obligations
which international faith and honor require should be discharged.
Our Government has a liquidated claim against Germany for
the expense of the army of occupation of over $255,000,000.
Besides this, the Mixed Claims Commission have before them
about 12,500 claims of American citizens, aggregating
about $1,225,000,000.
These claims have already been reduced by a recent decision,
but there are valid claims reaching well toward $500,000,000.
Our thousands of citizens with credits due them
of hundreds of millions of dollars have no redress
save in the action of our Government.
These are very substantial interests, which it is
the duty of our Government to protect as best it can.
That course I propose to pursue.
It is for these reasons that we have a direct interest
in the economic recovery of Europe.
They are enlarged by our desire for the stability
of civilization and the welfare of humanity.
That we are making sacrifices to that end none can deny.
Our deferred interest alone amounts to a million dollars every day.
But recently we offered to aid with our advice and counsel.
We have reiterated our desire to see
France paid and Germany revived.
We have proposed disarmament.
We have earnestly sought to compose
differences and restore peace.
We shall persevere in well-doing, not by force, but by reason.
FOREIGN PAPERS
Under the law the papers pertaining to foreign relations
to be printed are transmitted as a part of this message.
Other volumes of these papers will follow.
FOREIGN SERVICE
The foreign service of our Government
needs to be reorganized and improved.
FISCAL CONDITION
Our main problems are domestic problems.
Financial stability is the first requisite of sound government.
We can not escape the effect of world conditions.
We can not avoid the inevitable results of the economic
disorders which have reached all nations.
But we shall diminish their harm to us in proportion
as we continue to restore our Government finances
to a secure and endurable position.
This we can and must do.
Upon that firm foundation rests the
only hope of progress and prosperity.
From that source must come relief for the people.
This is being, accomplished by a
drastic but orderly retrenchment,
which is bringing our expenses within our means.
The origin of this has been the determination of the American
people, the main support has been the courage of those in
authority, and the effective method has been the Budget System.
The result has involved real sacrifice by department heads,
but it has been made without flinching.
This system is a law of the Congress.
It represents your will.
It must be maintained, and ought to be strengthened
by the example of your observance.
Without a Budget System there can be no fixed
responsibility and no constructive scientific economy.
This great concentration of effort by the administration and
Congress has brought the expenditures, exclusive of the
self-supporting Post. Office Department,
down to three billion dollars.
It is possible, in consequence, to make a large reduction in the
taxes of the people, which is the sole object of all curtailment.
This is treated at greater length in the Budget message, and
a proposed plan has been presented in detail in a statement by
the Secretary of the Treasury which has my unqualified approval.
I especially commend a decrease on earned incomes, and
further abolition of admission, message, and nuisance taxes.
Tile amusement and educational value of
moving pictures ought not to be taxed.
Diminishing charges against moderate incomes from investment
will afford immense relief, while a revision of the surtaxes will
not only provide additional money for capital investment, thus
stimulating industry and employing more but will not greatly
reduce the revenue from that source,
and may in the future actually increase it.
Being opposed to war taxes in time of peace,
I am not in favor of excess-profits taxes.
A very great service could be rendered through
immediate enactment of legislation relieving
the people of some of the burden of taxation.
To reduce war taxes is to give every home a better chance.
For seven years the people have borne with uncomplaining
courage the tremendous burden of national and local taxation.
These must both be reduced.
The taxes of the Nation must be reduced now
as much as prudence will permit, and
expenditures must be reduced accordingly.
High taxes reach everywhere and burden everybody.
They gear most heavily upon the poor.
They diminish industry and commerce.
They make agriculture unprofitable.
They increase the rates on transportation.
They are a charge on every necessary of life.
Of all services which the Congress can render to the country,
I have no hesitation in declaring to neglect it, to postpone it,
to obstruct it by unsound proposals, is to become unworthy
of public confidence and untrue to public trust.
The country wants this measure to have
the right of way over anothers.
Another reform which is urgent in our fiscal system is the
abolition of the right to issue tax-exempt securities.
The existing system not only permits a large amount of the
wealth of the Nation to escape its just burden but acts
as a continual stimulant to municipal extravagance.
This should be prohibited by constitutional amendment.
All the wealth of the Nation ought to contribute
its fair share to the expenses of the Nation.
TARIFF LAW
The present tariff law has accomplished its two main objects.
It has secured an abundant revenue and been
productive of an abounding prosperity.
Under it the country has had a very large export and import trade.
A constant revision of the tariff by the
Congress is disturbing and harmful.
The present law contains an elastic provision authorizing the
President to increase or decrease present schedules
not in excess of 50 per centum to meet the difference
in cost of production at home and abroad.
This does not, to my mind, warrant a rewriting of the whole law,
but does mean, and will be so administered, that whenever
the required investigation shows that inequalities of
sufficient importance exist in any schedule, the
power to change them should and will be applied.
SHIPPING
The entire well being of our country is dependent
upon transportation by sea and land.
Our Government during the war acquired a large merchant fleet
which should be transferred, as soon as possible, to private
ownership and operation under conditions
which would secure two results:
First, and of prime importance,
adequate means for national defense;
second, adequate service to American commerce.
Until shipping conditions are such that our fleet can be disposed
of advantageously under these conditions, it will be operated as
economically as possible under such plans as may be devised
from time to time by the Shipping Board.
We must have a merchant marine which meets these
requirements, and we shall have to pay the cost of its service.
PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS
The time has come to resume in a moderate way the opening
of our intracoastal waterways; the control of flood waters of the
Mississippi and of the Colorado Rivers; the improvement of the
waterways from the Great Lakes toward the Gulf of Mexico;
and the development of the great power and navigation project
of the St. Lawrence River, for which efforts are now being
made to secure the necessary treaty with Canada.
These projects can not all be undertaken at once, but all
should have the immediate consideration of the Congress
and be adopted as fast as plans can be matured
and the necessary funds become available.
This is not incompatible with economy, for their nature does not
require so much a public expenditure as a capital investment
which will be reproductive, as evidenced by the marked
increase in revenue from the Panama Canal.
Upon these projects depend much future
industrial and agricultural progress.
They represent the protection of large areas from flood
and the addition of a great amount of cheap power and
cheap freight by use of navigation, chief of which is
the bringing of ocean-going ships to the Great Lakes.
Another problem of allied character is the superpower
development of the Northeastern States, consideration
of which is growing under the direction of the Department
of Commerce by joint conference with the local authorities.
RAILROADS
Criticism of the railroad law has been directed,
first, to the section laying down the rule by which
rates are fixed, and providing for payment to the
Government and use of excess earnings;
second, to the method for the adjustment of wage scales;
and third, to the authority permitting consolidations.
It has been erroneously assumed that
the act undertakes to guarantee railroad earnings.
The law requires that rates should be just and reasonable.
That has always been the rule under which rates have been fixed.
To make a rate that does not yield a fair return results in
confiscation, and confiscatory rates are of course unconstitutional.
Unless the Government adheres to the rule of making a rate
that will yield a fair return, it must abandon rate making altogether.
The new and important feature of that part of the law
is the recapture and redistribution of excess rates.
The constitutionality of this method is now
before the Supreme Court for adjudication.
Their decision should be awaited before attempting
further legislation on this subject.
Furthermore, the importance of this feature
will not be great if consolidation goes into effect.
The settlement of railroad labor disputes
is a matter of grave public concern.
The Labor Board was established to protect the public in
the enjoyment of continuous service by attempting to insure
justice between the companies and their employees.
It has been a great help, but is not altogether satisfactory
to the public, the employees, or the companies.
If a substantial agreement can be reached among the groups
interested, there should be no hesitation
in enacting such agreement into law.
If it is not reached, the Labor Board may very well be left
for the present to protect the public welfare.
The law for consolidations is not
sufficiently effective to be expeditious.
Additional legislation is needed giving authority for voluntary
consolidations, both regional and route, and providing
Government machinery to aid and stimulate such action, always
"subject to the approval of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
This should authorize the commission to appoint committees
for each proposed group, representing the public and the
component roads, with power to negotiate with individual
security holders for an exchange of their securities for
those of the consolidation on such terms and conditions
as the commission may prescribe for avoiding any
confiscation and preserving fair values.
Should this permissive consolidation prove ineffective
after a limited period, the authority of the Government
will have to be directly invoked.
Consolidation appears to be the only feasible method for
the maintenance of an adequate system of transportation
with an opportunity so to adjust freight rates as to meet such
temporary conditions as now prevail in some agricultural sections.
Competent authorities agree that an entire reorganization
of the rate structure for freight is necessary.
This should be ordered at once by the Congress.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
As no revision of the laws of the United States has
been made since 1878, a commission or committee
should be created to undertake this work.
The Judicial Council reports that two more district judges
are needed in the southern district of New York, one in the
northern district of Georgia, and two more circuit judges
in the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit.
Legislation should be considered for this purpose.
It is desirable to expedite the hearing and disposal of cases.
A commission of Federal judges and lawyers should be created
to recommend legislation by which the procedure in the Federal
trial courts may be simplified and regulated by rules of court,
rather than by statute; such rules to be submitted to the Congress
and to be in force until annulled or modified by the Congress.
The Supreme Court needs legislation revising and simplifying
the laws governing review by that court, and enlarging the classes
of cases of too little public importance to be subject to review.
Such reforms would expedite the transaction
of the business of the courts.
The administration of justice is likely to fail if it be long delayed.
The National Government has never given
adequate attention to its prison problems.
It ought to provide employment in such forms of production
as can be used by the Government, though not sold to the
public in competition with private business, for all prisoners
who can be placed at work, and for which they should receive
a reasonable compensation, available for their dependents.
Two independent reformatories are needed; one for the
segregation of women, and another for the segregation
of young men serving their first sentence.
The administration of justice would be facilitated greatly
by including in the Bureau of Investigation of the Department
of Justice a Division of Criminal Identification, where there
would be collected this information which is now
indispensable in the suppression of crime.
PROHIBITION
The prohibition amendment to the Constitution
requires the Congress and the President
to provide adequate laws to prevent its violation.
It is my duty to enforce such laws.
For that purpose a treaty is being negotiated with Great Britain
with respect to the right of search of hovering vessels.
To prevent smuggling, the Coast Card should be greatly
strengthened, and a supply of swift power boats should be provided.
The major sources of production should be rigidly regulated,
and every effort should be made to suppress interstate traffic.
With this action on the part of the National Government,
and the cooperation which is usually rendered by municipal
and State authorities, prohibition should be made effective.
Free government has no greater menace than disrespect
for authority and continual violation of law.
It is the duty of a citizen not only to observe the law
but to let it be known that he is opposed to its violation.
THE NEGRO
Numbered among our population are
some 12,000,000 colored people.
Under our Constitution their rights are just
as sacred as those of any other citizen.
It is both a public and a private duty to protect those rights.
The Congress ought to exercise all its powers of prevention
and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching,
of which the negroes are by no means the sole sufferers,
but for which they furnish a majority of the victims.
Already a considerable sum is appropriated to give
the negroes vocational training in agriculture.
About half a million dollars is recommended for medical
courses at Howard University to help contribute to the
education of 500 colored doctors needed each year.
On account of the integration of large numbers into
industrial centers, it has been proposed that a commission
be created, composed of members from both races, to formulate
a better policy for mutual understanding and confidence.
Such an effort is to be commended.
Everyone would rejoice in the accomplishment
of the results which it seeks.
But it is well to recognize that these difficulties are to a large
extent local problems which must be worked out by the mutual
forbearance and human kindness of each community.
Such a method gives much more promise of
a real remedy than outside interference.
CIVIL SERVICE
The maintenance and extension of the classified
civil service is exceedingly important.
There are nearly 550,000 persons in the executive civil service
drawing about $700,000,000 of yearly compensation.
Four-fifths of these are in the classified service.
This method of selection of the employees of the United States
is especially desirable for the Post Office Department.
The Civil Service Commission has
recommended that postmasters
at first, second, and third class offices be classified.
Such action, accompanied by a repeal of the four-year term
of office, would undoubtedly be an improvement.
I also recommend that the field force for prohibition
enforcement be brought within the classified civil service
without covering in the present membership.
The best method for selecting
public servants is the merit system.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS
Many of the departments in Washington
need better housing facilities.
Some are so crowded that their work is impeded,
others are so scattered that they lose their identity.
While I do not favor at this time a general public building law,
I believe it is now necessary, in accordance with plans already
sanctioned for a unified and orderly system for the development
of this city, to begin the carrying out of those plans by authorizing
the erection of three or four buildings most urgently needed
by an annual appropriation of $5,000,000.
REGULATORY LEGISLATION
Cooperation with other maritime powers is necessary
for complete protection of our coast waters from pollution.
Plans for this are under way, but await certain
experiments for refuse disposal.
Meantime laws prohibiting spreading oil and oil refuse from
vessels in our own territorial waters would be most helpful
against this menace and should be speedily enacted.
Laws should be passed regulating aviation.
Revision is needed of the laws regulating radio interference.
Legislation and regulations establishing load lines, to provide
safe loading of vessels leaving our ports are necessary
and recodification of our navigation laws is vital.
Revision of procedure of the Federal Trade Commission
will give more constructive purpose to this department.
If our Alaskan fisheries are to be saved from destruction,
there must be further legislation declaring a general policy
and delegating the authority to make rules
and regulations to an administrative body.
ARMY AND NAVY
For several years we have been decreasing the personnel of the
Army and Navy, and reducing their power to the danger point.
Further reductions should not be made.
The Army is a guarantee of the security of our citizens at home;
the Navy is a guarantee of the security of our citizens abroad.
Both of these services should be
strengthened rather than weakened.
Additional planes are needed for the Army,
and additional submarines for the Navy.
The defenses of Panama must be perfected.
We want no more competitive armaments.
We want no more war.
But we want no weakness that invites imposition.
A people who neglect their national defense
are putting in jeopardy their national honor.
INSULAR POSSESSIONS
Conditions in the insular possessions
on the whole have been good.
Their business has been reviving.
They are being administered according to law.
That effort has the full support of the administration.
Such recommendations as may conic from their people or
their governments should have the most considerate attention.
EDUCATION AND WELFARE
Our National Government is not doing as much as it
legitimately can do to promote the welfare of the people.
Our enormous material wealth, our institutions,
our whole form of society, can not be considered fully successful
until their benefits reach the merit of every individual.
This is not a suggestion that the Government should, or could,
assume for the people the inevitable burdens of existence.
There is no method by which we can either be relieved of
the results of our own folly or be guaranteed a successful life.
There is an inescapable personal responsibility for the development
of character, of industry, of thrift, and of self-control.
These do not come from the Government,
but from the people themselves.
But the Government can and should always be expressive of
steadfast determination, always vigilant, to maintain conditions
under which these virtues are most likely to develop
and secure recognition and reward.
This is the American policy.
It is in accordance with this principle that we have enacted
laws for the protection of the public health and have adopted
prohibition in narcotic drugs and intoxicating liquors.
For purposes of national uniformity we ought to provide, by
constitutional amendment and appropriate legislation, for a
limitation of child labor, and in all cases under the exclusive
jurisdiction of the Federal Government a minimum wage law
for women, which would undoubtedly find sufficient power
of enforcement in the influence of public opinion.
Having in mind that education is peculiarly a local problem,
and that it should always be pursued with the largest freedom
of choice by students and parents, nevertheless, the
Federal Government might well give the benefit of its
counsel and encouragement more freely in this direction.
If anyone doubts the need of concerted action by the States
of the Nation for this purpose, it is only necessary to consider
the appalling figures of illiteracy representing a condition
which does not vary much in all parts of the Union.
I do not favor the making of appropriations from the National
Treasury to be expended directly on local education,
but I do consider it a fundamental requirement of national activity
which, accompanied by allied subjects of welfare, is worthy
of a separate department and a place in the Cabinet.
The humanitarian side of government should
not be repressed, but should be cultivated.
Mere intelligence, however, is not enough.
Enlightenment must be accompanied by that moral power
which is the product of the home and of rebellion.
Real education and true welfare for the people rest inevitably
on this foundation, which the Government can approve and
commend, but which the people themselves must create.
A special joint committee has been appointed
to work out a plan for a reorganization of the different
departments and bureaus of the Government
more scientific and economical than the present system….
By reason of many contributing causes, occupants
of our reclamation projects are in financial difficulties,
which in some cases are acute.
Relief should be granted by definite authority of law
empowering the Secretary of the Interior
in his discretion to suspend, readjust, and reassess
all charges against water users.
This whole question is being considered by experts.
You will have the advantage of the facts
and conclusions which they may develop.
This situation, involving a Government investment
of more than $135,000,000,
and affecting more than 30,000 water users, is serious.
While relief which is necessary should be granted,
yet contracts with the Government
which can be met should be met.
The established general policy of these projects
should not be abandoned for any private control.
IMMIGRATION
American institutions rest solely on good citizenship.
They were created by people who had a
background of self-government.
New arrivals should be limited to our capacity to
absorb them into the ranks of good citizenship.
America must be kept American.
For this I propose it is necessary to continue
a policy of restricted immigration.
It would be well to make such immigration of a selective nature
with some inspection at the source, and based either on a prior
census or upon the record of naturalization.
Either method would insure the admission of those with the
largest capacity and best intention of becoming citizens.
I am convinced that our present economic and social
conditions warrant a limitation of those to be admitted.
We should find additional safety in a law requiring
the immediate registration of all aliens.
Those who do not want to be partakers of the
American spirit ought not to settle in America.
VETERANS
No more important duty falls on the Government of the
United States than the adequate care of its veterans.
Those suffering disabilities incurred in the service must
have sufficient hospital relief and compensation.
Their dependents must be supported.
Rehabilitation and vocational training must be completed.
All of this service must be clean, must be prompt and effective,
and it must be administered in a spirit of the
broadest and deepest human sympathy.
If investigation reveals any present defects of administration
or need of legislation, orders will be given for the immediate
correction of administration, and recommendations for
legislation should be given the highest preference.
At present there are 9,500 vacant beds in Government hospitals,
I recommend that all hospitals be authorized at once to receive
and care for, without hospital pay, the veterans of all wars
needing such care, whenever there are vacant beds,
and that immediate steps be taken to enlarge
and build new hospitals to serve all such cases.
The American Legion will present to the Congress a legislative
program too extensive for detailed discussion here.
It is a carefully matured plan.
While some of it I do not favor, with much of it
I am in hearty accord, and I recommend that a most painstaking
effort be made to provide remedies for any defects in the
administration of the present laws
which their experience has revealed.
The attitude of the Government toward these proposals
should be one of generosity.
But I do not favor the granting of a bonus.
COAL
The cost of coal has become unbearably high.
It places a great burden on our industrial and domestic life.
The public welfare requires a reduction in the price of fuel.
With the enormous deposits in existence,
failure of supply ought not to be tolerated.
Those responsible for the conditions in this industry should
undertake its reform and free it from any charge of profiteering.
The report of the Coal Commission will be before the Congress.
It comprises all the facts.
It represents the mature deliberations and conclusions of
the best talent and experience that ever made a national
survey of the production and distribution of fuel.
I do not favor Government ownership or operation of coal mines.
The need is for action under private ownership that will secure
greater continuity of production and greater public protection.
The Federal Government probably has no peacetime authority
to regulate wages, prices, or profits in coal at the mines or
among dealers, but by ascertaining and publishing
facts it can exercise great influence.
The source of the difficulty in the bituminous coal fields is the
intermittence of operation which causes
great waste of both capital and labor.
That part of the report dealing with this problem has much
significance, and is suggestive of necessary remedies.
By amending, the car rules, by encouraging greater unity of
ownership, and possibly by permitting common selling agents
for limited districts on condition that they accept adequate
regulations and guarantee that competition between districts
be unlimited, distribution, storage,
and continuity ought to be improved.
The supply of coal must be constant.
In case of its prospective interruption, the President should
have authority to appoint a commission empowered to deal
with whatever emergency situation might arise, to aid
conciliation and voluntary arbitration, to adjust any existing
or threatened controversy between the employer and the
employee when collective bargaining fails, and by controlling
distribution to prevent profiteering in this vital necessity.
This legislation is exceedingly urgent, and essential to the
exercise of national authority for the protection of the people.
Those who undertake the responsibility of management or
employment in this industry do so with the full knowledge
that the public interest is paramount, and that to fail through
any motive of selfishness in its service is such a betrayal
of duty as warrants uncompromising action by the Government.
REORGANIZATION
A special joint committee has been appointed to work
out a plan for a reorganization of the different departments
and bureaus of the Government more scientific and
economical than the present system.
With the exception of the consolidation of the War and Navy
Departments and some minor details, the plan has the general
sanction of the President and the Cabinet.
It is important that reorganization be enacted
into law at the present session.
AGRICULTURE
Aided by the sound principles adopted by the Government,
the business of the country has had an extraordinary revival.
Looked at as a whole, the Nation is in
the enjoyment of remarkable prosperity.
Industry and commerce are thriving.
For the most part agriculture is successful, eleven staples
having risen in value from about $5,300,000,000 two years ago
to about $7,000,000,000 for the current year.
But range cattle are still low in price, and some sections
of the wheat area, notably Minnesota, North Dakota,
and on west, have many cases of actual distress.
With his products not selling on a parity with the products
of industry, every sound remedy that can be devised
should be applied for the relief of the farmer.
He represents a character, a type of citizenship, and a public
necessity that must be preserved and afforded
every facility for regaining prosperity.
The distress is most acute among those
wholly dependent upon one crop.
Wheat acreage was greatly expanded and
has not yet been sufficiently reduced.
A large amount is raised for export, which has to meet the
competition in the world market of large amounts raised
on land much cheaper and much more productive.
No complicated scheme of relief, no plan for Government
fixing of prices, no resort to the public Treasury will be of any
permanent value in establishing agriculture.
Simple and direct methods put into operation by the farmer
himself are the only real sources for restoration.
Indirectly the farmer must be relieved
by a reduction of national and local taxation.
He must be assisted by the reorganization of the freight-rate
structure which could reduce charges on his production.
To make this fully effective
there ought to be railroad consolidations.
Cheaper fertilizers must be provided.
He must have organization.
His customer with whom he exchanges products of the farm
for those of industry is organized, labor is organized,
business is organized, and there is no way for agriculture
to meet this unless it, too, is organized.
The acreage of wheat is too large.
Unless we can meet the world market at a profit,
we must stop raising for export.
Organization would help to reduce acreage.
Systems of cooperative marketing
created by the farmers themselves, supervised by
competent management, without doubt would be of assistance,
but, they can not wholly solve the problem.'
Our agricultural schools ought to have thorough courses
in the theory of organization and cooperative marketing.
Diversification is necessary.
Those farmers who raise their living
on their land are not greatly in distress.
Such loans as are wisely needed to assist buying stock
and other materials to start in this direction should be financed
through a Government agency as a
temporary and emergency expedient.
The remaining difficulty is the disposition of exportable wheat.
I do not favor the permanent interference
of the Government in this problem.
That probably would increase the trouble by increasing production.
But it seems feasible to provide Government assistance to exports,
and authority should be given the War Finance Corporation
to grant, in its discretion, the most liberal terms of payment
for fats and grains exported for the direct benefit of the farm.
MUSCLE SHOALS
The Government is undertaking to develop a great
water-power project known as Muscle Shoals,
on which it has expended many million dollars.
The work is still going on.
Subject to the right to retake in time of war,
I recommend that this property with a location for auxiliary
steam plant and rights of way be sold.
This would end the present burden of expense and should
return to the Treasury the largest price possible to secure.
While the price is an important element, there is another
consideration even more compelling.
The agriculture of the Nation needs a greater supply
and lower cost of fertilizer.
This is now imported in large quantities.
The best information I can secure indicates that present
methods of power production would not be able profitably
to meet the price at which these imports can be sold.
To obtain a supply from this water power would require long
and costly experimentation to perfect
a process for cheap production.
Otherwise our purpose would fail completely.
It seems desirable, therefore, in order to protect and promote
the public welfare, to have adequate covenants that such
experimentation be made and carried on to success.
The great advantage of low-priced nitrates must be secured
for the direct benefit of the farmers and the indirect benefit
of the public in time of peace, and of the Government in time of war.
If this main object be accomplished, the amount of money
received for the property is not a primary or major consideration.
Such a solution will involve complicated negotiations,
and there is no authority for that purpose.
Therefore recommend that the Congress appoint a small joint
committee to consider offers, conduct negotiations,
and report definite recommendations.
RECLAMATION
By reason of many contributing causes, occupants of our
reclamation projects are in financial difficulties,
which in some cases are acute.
Relief should be granted by definite authority of law
empowering the Secretary of the Interior in his discretion
to suspend, readjust, and reassess all charges against water users.
This whole question is being considered by experts.
You will have the advantage of the facts and conclusions
which they may develop.
This situation, involving a Government investment of more
than $135,000,000, and affecting
more than 30,000 water users, is serious.
While relief which is necessary should be granted, yet contracts
with the Government which can be met should be met.
The established general policy of these projects
should not be abandoned for any private control.
HIGHWAYS AND FORESTS
Highways and reforestation should continue
to have the interest and support of the Government.
Everyone is anxious for good highways.
I have made a liberal proposal in the budget
for the continuing payment to the States
by the Federal Government of its share
for this necessary public improvement.
No expenditure of public money contributes so much
to the national wealth as for building good roads.
Reforestation has an importance
far above the attention it usually secures.
A special committee of the Senate is investigating this
need, and I shall welcome a constructive policy
based on their report.
It is 100 years since our country
announced the Monroe doctrine.
This principle has been ever since, and is now,
one of the main foundations of our foreign relations.
It must be maintained.
But in maintaining it we must not be forgetful
that a great change has taken place.
We are no longer a weak Nation, thinking mainly of defense,
dreading foreign imposition.
We are great and powerful.
New powers bring new responsibilities.
Our duty then was to protect ourselves.
Added to that, our duty now is to help give stability to the world.
We want idealism.
We want that vision which lifts men and nations above themselves.
These are virtues by reason of their own merit.
But they must not be cloistered;
they must not be impractical; they must not be ineffective.
The world has had enough of the curse
of hatred and selfishness, of destruction and war.
It has had enough of the wrongful use of material power.
For the healing of the nations there must be
good will and charity, confidence and peace.
The time has come for a more practical use of moral power,
and more reliance upon the principle
that right makes its own might.
Our authority among the nations must be
represented by justice and mercy.
It is necessary not only to have faith,
but to make sacrifices for our faith.
The spiritual forces of the world make all its final determinations.
It is with these voices that America should speak.
Whenever they declare a righteous purpose
there need be no doubt that they will be heard.
America has taken her place in the world as a Republic—
free, independent, powerful.
The best service that can be rendered to humanity
is the assurance that this place will be maintained.47
On 8 December 1923 Coolidge at the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington
announced his intention to run for President in 1924.
On 6 June 1924 Coolidge gave the commencement address
at Howard University, and this is his entire historic speech:
It has come to be a legend, and I believe
with more foundation of fact than most legends,
that Howard University was the outgrowth
of the inspiration of a prayer meeting.
I hope it is true, and I shall choose to believe it,
for it makes of this scene and this occasion
a new testimony that prayers are answered.
Here has been established a great university,
a sort of educational laboratory for the production
of intellectual and spiritual leadership among a people
whose history, if you will examine it as it deserves, is one
of the striking evidences of a soundness of our civilization.
The accomplishments of the colored people
in the United States, in the brief historic period
since they were brought here from the restrictions
of their native continent, cannot but make us realize that
there is something essential in our civilization
which gives it a special power.
I think we shall be able to agree that this particular element
is the Christian religion, whose influence always
and everywhere has been a force for the illumination and
advancement of the peoples who have come under its sway.
The progress of the colored people on this continent
is one of the marvels of modern history.
We are perhaps even yet too near to this phenomenon
to be able fully to appreciate its significance.
That can be impressed on us only as we study and contrast
the rapid advancement of the colored people in America
with the slow and painful upward movement of humanity
as a whole throughout the long human story.
An occasion such as this which has brought us here
cannot but direct our consideration to these things.
It has been a painful and difficult experience,
this by which another race has been recruited
to the standard of civilization and enlightenment;
for that is really what has been going on;
and the episodes of Negro slavery in America, of civil war,
and emancipation, and, following that,
the rapid advancement of the American colored people
both materially and spiritually, must be recognized
as parts of a long evolution by which all mankind
is gradually being led to higher levels,
expanding its understanding of its mission here,
approaching nearer and nearer to the realization
of its full and perfected destiny.
In such a view of the history of the Negro race
in America, we may find the evidences that
the black man’s probation on this continent
was a necessary part in a great plan by which
the race was to be saved to the world for a service
which we are now able to vision
and, even if yet somewhat dimly, to appreciate.
The destiny of the great African Continent, to be added
at length, and in a future not now far beyond us,
to the realms of the highest civilization,
has become apparent within a very few decades.
But for the strange and long inscrutable purpose
which in the ordering of human affairs subjected
a part of the black race to the ordeal of slavery,
that race might have been assigned to the tragic fate
which has befallen many aboriginal peoples
when brought into conflict with more advanced communities.
Instead, we are able now to be confident that this race
is to be preserved for a great and useful work.
If some of its members have suffered,
if some have been denied, if some have been sacrificed,
we are able at last to realize that
their sacrifices were borne in a great cause.
They gave vicariously, that a vastly greater number
might be preserved and benefited through them.
The salvation of a race, the destiny of a continent,
were bought at the price of these sacrifices.
Howard University is but one of the many institutions
which have grown up in this country,
dedicated to this purpose of preserving one of the races
of men and fitting it for its largest usefulness.
Here is a people adapted,
as most people are not, to life in the tropics.
They are capable of redeeming vast luxuriant areas
of unexampled productivity, and of reclaiming them
for the sustenance of mankind
and the increasing security of the human community.
It is a great destiny, to which we may now look forward
with confidence that it will be fully realized.
Looking back only a few years,
we appreciate how rapid has been the progress
of the colored people on this continent.
Emancipation brought them the opportunity
of which they have availed themselves.
It has been calculated that in the first year
following the acceptance of their status as a free people,
there were approximately 4,000,000 members of the race
in this country, and that among these only 12,000
were the owners of their homes;
only 20,000 among them conducted their own farms,
and the aggregate wealth of these 4,000,000 people
hardly exceeded $20,000,000.
In a little over a half century since,
the number of business enterprises operated
by colored people had grown to near 50,000,
while the wealth of the Negro community has grown
to more than $1,100,000,000.
And these figures convey
a most inadequate suggestion of the material progress.
The 2,000 business enterprises which were in the hands
of colored people immediately following emancipation
were almost without exception small and rudimentary.
Among the 50,000 business operations
now in the hands of colored people
may be found every type of present day affairs.
There are more than 70 banks conducted
by thoroughly competent colored business men.
More than 80 per cent of all American Negroes
are now able to read and write.
When they achieved their freedom
not 10 per cent were literate.
There are nearly 2,000,000 Negro pupils
in the public schools; well nigh 40,000 Negro teachers
are listed, more than 3,000 following their profession
in normal schools and colleges.
The list of educational institutions devoting themselves
to the race includes 50 colleges, 13 colleges for women,
26 theological schools, a standard school of law,
and 2 high-grade institutions of medicine.
Through the work of these institutions the Negro race
is equipping men and women from its own ranks
to provide its leadership in business,
the professions, in all relations of life.
This, of course, is the special field of usefulness
for colored men and women
who find the opportunity to get adequate education.
Their own people need their help,
guidance, leadership, and inspiration.
Those of you who are fortunate enough to equip yourselves
for these tasks have a special responsibility
to make the best use of great opportunities.
In a very special way it is incumbent upon those
who are prepared to help their people to maintain
the truest standards of character and unselfish purpose.
The Negro community of America has already so far
progressed that its members can be assured that
their future is in their own hands.
Racial hostility, ancient tradition, and social prejudice
are not to be eliminated immediately or easily.
But they will be lessened as the colored people
by their own efforts and under their own leaders
shall prove worthy of the fullest measure of opportunity.
The Nation has need of all that can be contributed
to it through the best efforts of all its citizens.
The colored people have repeatedly proved
their devotion to the high ideals of our country.
They gave their services in the war with
the same patriotism and readiness that other citizens did.
The records of the selective draft
show that somewhat more than
2,250,000 colored men were registered.
The records further prove that, far from seeking
to avoid participation in the national defense,
they showed that they wished to enlist
before the selective service act was put into operation,
and they did not attempt to evade that act afterwards.
The propaganda of prejudice and hatred
which sought to keep the colored men
from supporting the national cause completely failed.
The black man showed himself the same kind of citizen,
moved by the same kind of patriotism, as the white man.
They were tempted, but not one betrayed his country.
Among well-nigh 400,000 colored men
who were taken into the military service,
about one half had overseas experience.
They came home with many decorations
and their conduct repeatedly won high commendation
from both American and European commanders.
The armies in the field could not have done their part
in the war if they had not been sustained and supported
by the far greater civilian forces at home,
which through unremitting toil made it possible
to sustain our war effort.
No part of the community responded more willingly,
more generously, more unqualifiedly, to the demand
for special extraordinary exertion,
than did the members of the Negro race.
Whether in the military service, or in the vast mobilization
of industrial resources which the war required,
the Negro did his part precisely as did the white man.
He drew no color line
when patriotism made its call upon him.
He gave precisely as his white fellow citizens gave,
to the limit of resources and abilities,
to help the general cause.
Thus the American Negro established his right
to the gratitude and appreciation
which the Nation has been glad to accord.
We are not all permitted the privilege
of a university training.
We cannot all enter the professions.
What is the great need of American citizenship?
To my mind it is this,
that each should take up the burden where he is.
“Do the day’s work,” I have said, and it should be done,
in the remembrance that all work is dignified.
Your race is entitled to great praise for the contribution
it makes in doing the work of the world.
There will be other crises in the national history
which will make other demands for the fullest
and most unselfish contribution to the national interest.
No generation will be denied its opportunity,
will be spared its duty, to put forth its best efforts.
We devoutly hope that these contributions
will not be demanded upon the field of battle.
But they will be just as truly needed, just as urgently
summoned, in the activities of peace, the efforts of industry,
the performance of all the obligations of citizenship.
We cannot go out from this place and occasion
without refreshment of faith and renewal of confidence that
in every exigency our Negro fellow citizens will render
the best and fullest measure of service
whereof they are capable.48
Despite this extraordinary speech Coolidge made
no notable appointments of African Americans
The 68th Congress held its first session from 3 December 1923 to 7 June 1924.
The House of Representatives had 225 Republicans and 206 Democrats.
On 3 January 1924 Democratic Senator Thad Caraway of Arkansas submitted
a resolution to ask President Coolidge to cancel Sinclair Oil’s lease
because of Harry Ford Sinclair’s bribery.
On January 23 Caraway called Interior Secretary Fall a “traitor.”
Later it became known that Fall had received $400,000 in bribes and payoffs.
The oil tycoon Edward Doheny admitted that
he gave Interior Secretary Fall $100,000 in a little black bag.
William Gibbs McAdoo had been Wilson’s Treasury Secretary,
and Doheny said he gave McAdoo $25,000.
At a press conference on January 25 Coolidge said he could not recall
ever hearing about the oil leases at a Cabinet meeting.
The next day Walsh told the Public Lands Committee that the President
should cancel the oil leases and appoint an independent special counsel to investigate.
Coolidge wrote a statement that he gave to the press by telephone,
and this was published in the New York Herald Tribune on January 27:
It is not for the President to determine
criminal guilt or render judgment in civil cases.
That is the function of the courts.
It is not for him to prejudge.
I shall do neither; but when facts are revealed to me
that require action for the purpose of insuring
the enforcement of either civil or criminal liability,
such action will be taken….
If there has been any crime, it must be prosecuted.
If there has been any property of the United States
illegally transferred or leased, it must be recovered.
I feel the public is entitled to know that
in the conduct of such actions no one is shielded
for any party, political, or other reasons.
As I understand, men are involved who belong
to both political parties, and having been advised
by the Department of Justice that
it is in accord with former precedents,
I propose to employ special counsel of high rank,
drawn from both political parties,
to bring such actions for the enforcement of the law.
Counsel will be instructed to prosecute these cases
in the courts, so that if there is any guilt it will be punished;
if there is any liability, it will be enforced;
if there is any fraud, it will be revealed;
if there are any contracts which are illegal,
they will be canceled.
Every law will be enforced,
and every right of the people and the government
will be protected.49
On the 29th Coolidge appointed the former Attorney General Thomas Gregory,
a Democrat, and the Republican Silas Strawn,
and they were both rejected for previous connections.
Coolidge then chose the Philadelphia lawyer Owen Roberts.
Secretary of State Hughes and Commerce Secretary Hoover also testified
that they did not hear anything about the oil leases.
Senate Democrats put pressure on Attorney General Daugherty.
Coolidge refused to remove him because Harding had chosen him.
Doheny testified for the Senate Investigating Committee on 24 January 1924,
and Fall was a witness on February 2.
On February 18 the Democratic Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana in a resolution
accused Daugherty of failing to prosecute Fall, Navy Secretary Edwin Denby,
Sinclair, Doheny, and Forbes.
On February 29 Coolidge refused to turn over income tax records
of Doheny, Fall, and Sinclair because that would violate the Revenue Act of 1921.
Denby, whom the Senate had questioned on 25 October 1923,
was forced to resign on March 24 and was replaced by Curtis D. Wilbur.
Finally on March 28 Daugherty resigned.
On April 2 Coolidge chose Harlan Fiske Stone,
the former Dean of the Columbia Law School, to be Attorney General,
and he was easily confirmed.
Albert Fall became the first United States cabinet Secretary who was sent to prison.
Daugherty was indicted in 1926 for allegedly receiving $441,000 from the sale
of the American Metal Company that was worth over $6.5 million,
and in two jury trials he was not convicted.
George N. Peek and Hugh S. Johnson had published Equality for Agriculture
in 1922, and the Agriculture Secretary Henry C. Wallace
supported their ideas in late 1923.
Senator Charles McNary of Oregon and Rep. Haugen of Iowa introduced a bill
to regulate a fair price for farm produce based on the ratio
between the general price index and prewar agricultural prices.
A federal board was to buy crop surpluses at a pre-war price and then
dump them on the world market at a loss
or to the domestic market when prices recovered.
President Coolidge vetoed the McNary-Haugen bill in 1924, 1926, and 1927
even when it was supported by Wallace and then by Vice President Dawes.
A bill modified to please Coolidge was also vetoed in 1928.
The price of farm products rose from 69 cents in 1921 to 91 cents in 1928.
In March the U. S. House of Representatives voted
to sell the unfinished dam at Muscle Shoals to Henry Ford.
The Senate Chairman of the Agriculture Committee George Norris
opposed that sale, and Ford withdrew his offer.
President Calvin Coolidge appointed five commissioners to study the issue.
He also fired William Burns who was head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
and on May 10 replaced him with his assistant, young J. Edgar Hoover.
In 1924 The Price of Freedom was published with 28 addresses by Calvin Coolidge.
At a press conference he said,
I don’t think I can give any definition of the words
“reactionary” and “progressive” that would be helpful….
Sometimes the person is not well thought of,
and he is labeled as a reactionary.
Sometimes he is well thought of,
and he is called a progressive.
As a matter of fact all the political parties are progressive.
I can’t conceive of a party existing for any length of time
that wasn’t progressive,
or of leadership being effective that wasn’t progressive.50
Senator David Reed and Rep. Albert Johnson introduced the Immigration Act
that became effective on May 26 and excluded immigration from Asia
and set quotas for Eastern and Southern Europe.
Those from the Western Hemisphere and the Philippines were not limited,
and many Mexicans and Filipinos came by 1930.
Congress in May passed the Rogers bill that reorganized
the Diplomatic and Consular Service, and it became effective on July 1.
On June 2 Coolidge signed the act that made all native Americans
born in the United States citizens.
Coolidge easily won the presidential nomination by the Republicans
on June 10-12 at Cleveland in their National Convention
which was the first convention broadcast on radio.
Coolidge received 1,065 votes to 34 for La Follette and 10 for Hiram Johnson.
Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden declined the nomination for Vice President,
and the delegates then chose Charles G. Dawes as the running mate.
He was a lawyer from Ohio, Nebraska, and Chicago
and had become the first Budget Director in June 1921.
Coolidge had persuaded the U. S. Senate to support a protocol for the World Court,
and the Republican Convention accepted that also.
The Boston lawyer William M. Butler had been chairman of the
Republican National Committee in 1896-1900 and again starting on 2 May 1924.
He managed Coolidge’s campaign.
Dawes did most of the traveling making many speeches.
On August 17 in Augusta, Maine where the Ku Klux Klan was very active,
Dawes told 6,000 people,
Government cannot last if that way,
the way of the Ku Klux Klan,
is the way to enforce the law in this country.
Lawlessness cannot be met with lawlessness
if civilization is to be maintained.51
The Gross National Product (GNP) had been $69.9 billion in 1921
and increased to $85.1 billion in 1923 and to $93.1 billion in 1924.
During those years the consumer price index came down from 53.6 to 51.2,
and unemployment was reduced from 11.7% in 1921 to 5% in 1924.
The budget surplus increased from $291 million in 1920 to $963 million in 1924.
The Democratic Party required a two-thirds vote
to nominate a candidate for President, and their National Convention
met in New York City from June 24 to July 9 before they nominated
the dark-horse candidate John W. Davis who had been in Congress in 1911-13,
U. S. Solicitor General in 1913-18, and Ambassador to Britain in 1918-21.
Nebraska’s Governor Charles W. Bryan, the younger brother of William Jennings Bryan,
was nominated for Vice President.
Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin became the candidate
of the Progressive Party on July 5 with Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana
for Vice President after Louis Brandeis declined.
Coolidge’s son Calvin Jr. died from an infected injury on July 7,
and the President grieved much.
The Republican Party raised $4.3 million for the campaign,
and the Democrats had $820,000.
Dawes did most of the Republican campaigning by traveling 15,000 miles
on a special train and gave 108 speeches to about 350,000 people.
In addition night speeches were broadcast on radio.
On August 9 Coolidge in Washington gave a short speech
affirming equal rights for colored people.
On the 14th he gave a long speech accepting the nomination in which he said,
The laws of the land are being,
and will continue to be, enforced.
I propose to use every possible effort
to resist corruption in office.
The American Government must be clean.
Many principles exist which
I have tried to represent and propose to support.
I believe in the American Constitution.
I favor the American system of individual enterprise,
and I am opposed to any general extension
of Government ownership and control.
I believe not only in advocating economy
in public expenditure,
but in its practical application and actual accomplishment.
I believe in a reduction and reform of taxation,
and shall continue my efforts in that direction.
I am in favor of protection.
I favor the Permanent Court
and further limitation of armaments.
I am opposed to aggressive war.
I shall avoid involving ourselves
in the political controversies of Europe,
but I shall do what I can to encourage American citizens
and resources to assist in restoring Europe,
with the sympathetic support of our Government.
I want agriculture and industry
on a sound basis of prosperity and equality.
I shall continue to strive for the economic,
moral and spiritual welfare of my country.
American citizens will decide in the coming election
whether these accomplishments and these principles
have their approval and support.52
On the Labor Day holiday on September 1 he spoke at length in Washington
again on the success of the American economy, and he cited many statistics
and examples of how the lives of workers are improving.
This is how his speech began:
Labor Day is more entitled than any other
to be called a national holiday.
Other holidays had their origin in state legislative action.
Labor Day had its origin in national legislative action.
After Congress had taken the lead the states followed.
It is moreover a peculiarly American holiday.
It is a most characteristic representation of our ideals.
No other country, I am told, makes a like observance.
But in America this high tribute is paid in recognition
of the worth and dignity of the men and women who toil.
You come here as representative Americans.
You are true representatives.
I cannot think of anything characteristically American
that was not produced by toil.
I cannot think of any American man or woman
preeminent in the history of our Nation
who did not reach their place through toil.
I cannot think of anything that represents
the American people as a whole
so adequately as honest work.
We perform different tasks, but the spirit is the same.
We are proud of work and ashamed of idleness.
With us there is no task which is menial,
no service which is degrading.
All work is ennobling and all workers are ennobled.
To my mind America has but one main problem,
the character of the men and women it shall produce.
It is not fundamentally a Government problem, although
the Government can be of a great influence in its solution.
It is the real problem of the people themselves.
They control its property,
they have determined its government,
they manage its business.
In all things they are the masters of their own destiny.
What they are, their intelligence, their fidelity, their courage,
their faith, will determine our material prosperity,
our successes and happiness at home,
and our place in the world abroad.
If anything is to be done then, by the Government,
for the people who toil, for the cause of labor,
which is the sum of all other causes, it will be by
continuing its efforts to provide healthful surroundings,
education, reasonable conditions of employment,
fair wages for fair work, stable business prosperity,
and the encouragement of religious worship.
This is the general American policy which is working out
with a success more complete for humanity,
with its finite limitations, than was ever accomplished
anywhere else in the world.
The door of opportunity swings wide open in our country.
Through it, in constant flow, go those who toil.
America recognizes no aristocracy save those who work.
The badge of service is the sole requirement
for admission to the ranks of our nobility.
These American policies should be continued.
We have outlawed all artificial privilege.
We have had our revolution and our reforms.
I do not favor a corporation government,
a bank government, a farm government
or a labor government.
I am for a common-sense government by all the people
according to the American policy
and under the American Constitution.
I want all the people to continue
to be partakers in self-government.
We never had a government under our Constitution
that was not put into office by the votes of the toilers.53
On September 6 he spoke at a dedication of the monument
to Lafayette in Baltimore, and he said,
The cause of freedom has been triumphant.
We believe it to be, likewise, the cause of peace.
But peace must have other guarantees
than constitutions and covenants.
Laws and treaties may help,
but peace and war are attitudes of mind.
American citizens, with the full sympathy
of our Government, have been attempting
with apparent success to restore stricken Europe.
We have acted in the name of world peace and of humanity.
Always the obstacles to be encountered
have been distrust, suspicion and hatred.
The great effort has been to allay
and remove these sentiments.
I believe that America can assist the world
in this direction by her example.54
The French and Belgians had occupied the Ruhr in 1923
because Germany had not paid the reparations from the Versailles Treaty.
Germany printed money to pay debts, and Germans suffered from disastrous inflation.
In 1923 one dollar was equal to 4.2 trillion marks.
Coolidge backed Secretary of State Hughes in his attempt to reduce tension.
Hughes in October proposed a commission to study the reparations issues
in order to fix the amount that Germany owed.
Coolidge in December named the American financiers Charles G. Dawes,
Henry M. Robinson, and Owen D. Young to be on the Reparations Commission,
and they proposed the Dawes Plan in April 1924.
On October 15 Coolidge spoke on “Religion and the Republic,” and said,
There are only two main theories
of government in the world.
One rests on righteousness, the other rests on force.
One appeals to reason, the other appeals to the sword.
One is exemplified in a republic,
the other is represented by a despotism.
The history of government on this earth has been
almost entirely a history of the rule of force
held in the hands of a few.
Under our constitution, America committed itself
to the practical application of the rule of reason,
with the power held in the hands of the people.55
On October 20 Coolidge had brought together the state governors
to discuss how to enforce the Volstead Act that Congress
had approved over a veto in October 1919 to enforce the Prohibition Amendment.
On October 25 the Agriculture Secretary Henry C. Wallace Sr. died.
The agronomy professor William Jardine would serve as Secretary of Agriculture
for four years until Hoover became President on 4 March 1929.
Coolidge’s personal secretary Bascom Slemp wanted a cabinet position.
When he did not get one, he resigned.
Coolidge chose the former Rep. Everett Sanders from Indiana to be his chief aide.
In the election on November 2 Calvin Coolidge was
overwhelmingly elected with 54% of the votes and 382 elector votes.
The Democrat Davis received 29% of the votes
and 138 electoral votes from 13 southern states.
The Progressive La Follette got 17% of the votes
and won only in his home state of Wisconsin.
In the U. S. Senate elections the Republicans gained three seats
increasing their majority to 54-41.
In the House of Representatives the Republicans gained 22 seats as Democrats lost 24.
The Farmer-Labor, Socialist, and Progressive parties each gained one seat.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge died on November 9,
and Coolidge appointed the lawyer and legislator William Butler
to lead the Republican National Committee.
The federal budget had reached a peak at $5.1 billion in 1921.
During his administration Coolidge worked at keeping the federal budget
at $3.3 billion per year, and this would reduce the national debt by about 25%.
Many portions of the economy followed the standard production used
by Henry Ford in making automobiles to keep wages high and prices low.
The number of automobiles in the United States would increase
from 7 million in 1919 to 23 million in 1929.
The telephones went from 15.3 million to 19.9 million,
and the radio receivers increased from 400,000 in 1923 to 10 million in 1929.
During his presidency Coolidge gave 15 addresses on radio
as his quiet voice was benefited by a microphone.
The percentage of households with electricity increased
to over 60% by the middle of the decade.
The middle class was increasing with more income and leisure time.
Coolidge and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon implemented
the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act and worked on
lowering taxes, spending, and regulations to balance the budget.
Mellon was the third richest man in America
after John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford.
In 1924 Mellon published Taxation: The People’s Business
to present his plan for fiscal reforms to eliminate the war tax system
which he criticized for using taxes to remove capital from businesses.
Liberals such as Walter Lippmann objected and called it
a restoration of the Gilded Age plutocracy.
Other critics named it “trickle down” economics as investments
by the rich were supposed to trickle down to workers and consumers.
When Coolidge became President, the main brackets
for most people taxed their income at 4% or 8%
while the highest tax bracket was 70%.
Treasury Secretary Mellon reduced that highest rate to 50%,
and it would be lowered three more times in the Coolidge years.
The corporate income tax rate was moved from 10% to 13.5% and then to 12%.
Coolidge’s supporter Bruce Barton wrote the best-selling nonfiction book
The Man Nobody Knows that describes Jesus as the “founder of modern business,”
using advertising as parables and portraying the apostles as businessmen.
Coolidge used his ability to adjust tariffs to keep them high.
This produced more revenue for the federal government
and American businesses by reducing foreign competition.
The Coolidge administration did bring seventy antitrust suits
and settled about a third of them to benefit the companies.
National Cash Register was convicted of fixing prices.
Yet their fine was reduced from $2,000 to $50.
Coolidge vetoed a new bill to grant more bonuses to veterans of the World War,
though he advocated free medical care for disabled veterans.
He also vetoed the Bursom Bill to increase pensions for veterans of various wars
as another budget-buster on May 3, and the Congress passed it over his veto.
He only briefly extended the 1922 Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act
that funded prenatal and child health care
to withdraw the federal government from that field.
Mellon persuaded Coolidge to approve the construction of federal buildings
in Washington so that they could avoid paying higher rent.
Coolidge did provide matching funds to help states and cities build roads.
After more arms control talks failed, he approved 15 new cruisers.
He also supported the Boulder Dam in Colorado that Hoover wanted.
Congress was refusing to pass bills to lower the top income tax rates
or the surtaxes on estates that raised revenues.
Eventually the top rate on income tax was reduced to 40%.
They imposed taxes on gifts and inheritance.
Coolidge reluctantly signed the bill.
On 3 December 1924 a clerk read to the Special Session of the outgoing Congress
Coolidge’s Second Annual Message that discussed many issues
starting with economics, taxes, and how the last revenue bill provided a stimulus.
This is the entire message:
The country is now feeling the direct stimulus
which came from the passage of the last revenue bill,
and under the assurance of a reasonable system of taxation
there is every prospect of an era
of prosperity of unprecedented propotions.
But it would be idle to expect any such results
unless business can continue free
from excess profits taxation and be accorded a system
of surtaxes at rates which have for their object
not the punishment of success
or the discouragement of business, but the production
of the greatest amount of revenues from large incomes.
I am convinced that the larger incomes of the country
would actually yield more revenue to the Government
if the basis of taxation
were scientifically revised downward.56
He noted that the National Government is reducing its debt.
He expressed the hope that reducing taxes on larger incomes
would stimulate the economy without reducing federal revenues.
He wrote about waterways, reclamation, agriculture
and how exhausted soils need to be replenished by nitrate.
He noted that railways are being extended.
He reviewed efforts to build up the American merchant marine.
He was concerned that the increasing number of judicial cases was delaying justice.
He suggested a commission to study the criminal code and make recommendations.
He urged prison reform and agreed that a National Police Bureau was needed.
He advocated the reorganization of departments, and he supported efforts to help
restore Europe with the Dawes Plan which gave Germany a moratorium for one year,
reduced their annual reparation payments by 80%, and gave them a loan of $200 million
from the United States, France, and Britain.
Those nations had signed the Dawes Plan on 30 August 1924.
J.P. Morgan & Company helped arrange the loans.
On 17 January 1925 Coolidge spoke to the
American Society of Newspaper Editors, and he said,
The relationship between governments and the press has
always been recognized as a matter of large importance.
Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public
information are the first to be brought under its control.
Wherever the cause of liberty is making its way,
one of its highest accomplishments
is the guarantee of the freedom of the press.
It has always been realized,
sometimes instinctively, oftentimes expressly,
that truth and freedom are inseparable….
Under a republic the institutions of learning,
while bound by the constitution and laws,
are in no way subservient to the government.
The principles which they enunciate do not depend
for their authority upon whether
they square with the wish of the ruling dynasty,
but whether they square with the everlasting truth.
Under these conditions the press, which had before been
made an instrument for concealing or perverting the facts,
must be made an instrument for their true representation
and their sound and logical interpretation.
From the position of a mere organ,
constantly bound to servitude, public prints rise to a dignity,
not only of independence,
but of a great educational and enlightening factor.
They attain new powers,
which it is almost impossible to measure,
and become charged with commensurate responsibilities….
There does not seem to be cause for alarm
in the dual relationship of the press to the public, whereby
it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion
and on the other side a purely business enterprise.
Rather, it is probable that a press which maintains
an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation,
is likely to be more reliable than it would be
if it were a stranger to these influences.
After all, the chief business
of the American people is business.
They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying,
selling, investing and prospering in the world.
I am strongly of opinion that the great majority of people
will always find these are moving impulses of our life….
Wealth is the product of industry,
ambition, character and untiring effort.
In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means
the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge,
the dissemination of intelligence,
the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook,
the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture.
Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified
as the chief end of existence.
But we are compelled to recognize it as a means
to well-nigh every desirable achievement.
So long as wealth is made the means and not the end,
we need not greatly fear it.
And there never was a time
when wealth was so generally regarded as a means,
or so little regarded as an end, as today….
It can safely be assumed that self-interest will always
place sufficient emphasis on the business side
of newspapers, so that they do not need
any outside encouragement for that part of their activities.
Important, however, as this factor is, it is not
the main element which appeals to the American people.
It is only those who do not understand our people,
who believe that our national life
is entirely absorbed by material motives.
We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth,
but there are many other things
that we want very much more.
We want peace and honor, and that charity
which is so strong an element of all civilization.
The chief ideal of the American people is idealism.
I cannot repeat too often that America
is a nation of idealists.
That is the only motive to which
they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.
No newspaper can be a success
which fails to appeal to that element of our national life.
It is in this direction that the public press
can lend its strongest support to our Government.
I could not truly criticize the vast importance
of the counting room, but my ultimate faith
I would place in the high idealism
of the editorial room of the American newspapers.57
On March 2 the Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone was moved up
to be a Supreme Court Justice, and Coolidge appointed
the lawyer John G. Sargent to be Attorney General.
Some believed that Coolidge wanted to prevent Stone from pursuing an anti-trust case
against Alcoa Aluminum which had large investments from Treasury Secretary Mellon.
The government lost appeals on antitrust cases against Standard Oil of Indiana, cement
manufacturing, and maple flooring.
In early March the House of Representatives approved by a vote of 303-28
American membership in the World Court.
In his inaugural address on March 4 newly elected President Coolidge said,
In conformity with the principle that
a display of reason rather than a threat of force should
be the determining factor in the intercourse among nations,
we have long advocated the peaceful settlement
of disputes by methods of arbitration
and have negotiated many treaties to secure that result.
The same considerations should lead to our adherence
to the Permanent Court of International Justice.
Where great principles are involved,
where great movements are under way
which promise much for the welfare of humanity
by reason of the very fact that many other nations
have given such movements their actual support,
we ought not to withhold our own sanction
because of any small and inessential difference,
but only upon the ground of the most important
and compelling fundamental reasons….
With a great deal of hesitation, we have responded
to appeals for help to maintain order, protect life
and property, and establish responsible government
in some of the small countries of the Western Hemisphere.
Our private citizens have advanced large sums of money to
assist in the necessary financing and relief of the Old World.
We have not failed, nor shall we fail to respond,
whenever necessary to mitigate human suffering
and assist in the rehabilitation of distressed nations.
These, too, are requirements which must be met by reason
of our vast powers and the place we hold in the world.
Some of the best thought of mankind
has long been seeking for a formula for permanent peace.
Undoubtedly the clarification of the principles
of international law would be helpful,
and the efforts of scholars to prepare such a work
for adoption by the various nations
should have our sympathy and support.
Much may be hoped for from the earnest studies
of those who advocate the outlawing of aggressive war.
But all these plans and preparations, these treaties
and covenants, will not of themselves be adequate.
One of the greatest dangers to peace lies in the economic
pressure to which people find themselves subjected.
One of the most practical things to be done in the world
is to seek arrangements under which such pressure
may be removed, so that opportunity may be renewed,
and hope may be revived.
There must be some assurance that effort and endeavor
will be followed by success and prosperity.
In the making and financing of such adjustments
there is not only an opportunity, but a real duty,
for America to respond with her counsel and her resources.
Conditions must be provided under which
people can make a living and work out of their difficulties.
But there is another element, more important than all,
without which there cannot be
the slightest hope of a permanent peace.
That element lies in the heart of humanity.
Unless the desire for peace be cherished there,
unless this fundamental and only natural source
of brotherly love be cultivated to its highest degree,
all artificial efforts will be in vain.
Peace will come when there is realization
that only under a reign of law, based on righteousness
and supported by the religious conviction
of the brotherhood of man, can there be
any hope of a complete and satisfying life.
Parchment will fail, the sword will fail,
it is only the spiritual nature of man
that can be triumphant….
We cannot permit any inquisition
either within or without the law
or apply any religious test to the holding of office.
The mind of America must be forever free.
It is in such contemplations, my fellow countrymen,
which are not exhaustive but only representative,
that I find ample warrant
for satisfaction and encouragement.
We should not let the much that is to do
obscure the much which has been done.
The past and present show faith
and hope and courage fully justified.
Here stands our country, an example of tranquillity at home,
a patron of tranquillity abroad.
Here stands its Government, aware of its might
but obedient to its conscience.
Here it will continue to stand, seeking peace and prosperity,
solicitous for the welfare of the wage earner,
promoting enterprise, developing waterways
and natural resources, attentive to the intuitive counsel
of womanhood, encouraging education
desiring the advancement of religion, supporting
the cause of justice and honor among the nations.
America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force.58
On March 5 Coolidge announced his arbitration decision between
Peru and Chile on Tacna and Arica that enabled the residents to vote in the plebiscite.
On April 25 the new Secretary of State Frank Kellogg in his first official statement asked,
“Is it not time that the conscience of the world should inculcate in the minds of the people
a better way to settle disputes than by going to war?”59
Coolidge affirmed international law and hoped that aggressive war could be outlawed.
He noted that several European nations owe about $12 billion to the United States,
and five had agreed on settlements for $5 billion.
Coolidge liked to talk with the newspaper moguls
William Randolph Hearst and Clarence Barron of the Wall Street Journal.
Coolidge also made newsreels that were shown in movie theaters.
In April 1925 he was one of the first Americans to be seen and heard talking in a film.
Local property taxes were over a quarter of the average farmer’s income in 1925.
That year Coolidge appointed William E. Humphrey to the
Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and that made Republicans a majority.
In March they required that investigations could not begin unless
there were allegations of unfair practices.
Other new rules made stipulations more confidential.
Treasury Secretary Mellon was a major shareholder in the
Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa),
and yet he could not get results of an investigation of Alcoa.
In 1926 Humphrey reorganized the FTC so that industries
could make their own rules on business conduct.
With the industry lawyer William Humphrey as its head the Federal Trade Commission
was not doing much on antitrust suits.
By 1925 Ford was producing 486,000 tractors.
Small tractors replaced horses and mules, and that freed up
30 million acres of oats and hay that had been used for animal feed.
On October 6 Coolidge spoke to the American Legion in Omaha, Nebraska and said,
One of the most natural of reactions
during the war was intolerance.
But the inevitable disregard for the opinions and feelings
of minorities is none the less
a disturbing product of war psychology.
The slow and difficult advances which tolerance
and liberalism have made through long periods
of development are dissipated almost in a night
when the necessary war-time habits of thought
hold the minds of the people.
The necessity for a common purpose and a united
intellectual front becomes paramount to everything else.
But when the need for such a solidarity is past
there should be a quick and generous readiness
to revert to the old and normal habits of thought.
There should be an intellectual demobilization
as well as a military demobilization.
Progress depends very largely
on the encouragement of variety.
Whatever tends to standardize the community,
to establish fixed and rigid modes of thought,
tends to fossilize society.
If we all believed the same thing
and thought the same thoughts and applied
the same valuations to all the occurrences about us,
we should reach a state of equilibrium closely akin
to an intellectual and spiritual paralysis.
It is the ferment of ideas,
the clash of disagreeing judgments,
the privilege of the individual to develop
his own thoughts and shape his own character,
that makes progress possible….
The war brought a great test of our experiment
in amalgamating these varied factors into a real Nation,
with the ideals and aspirations of a united people.
None was excepted from the obligation to serve
when the hour of danger struck.
The event proved that our theory had been sound.
On a solid foundation of a national unity
there had been erected a superstructure
which in its varied parts had offered full opportunity
to develop all the range of talents and genius
that had gone into its making.
Well-nigh all the races, religions, and nationalities
of the world were represented in the armed forces
of this Nation, as they were in the body of our population.
No man’s patriotism was impugned or service questioned
because of his racial origin, his political opinion,
or his religious convictions.
Immigrants and sons of immigrants
from the central European countries fought side by side
with those who descended from the countries
which were our allies; with the sons of equatorial Africa;
and with the Red men of our own aboriginal population,
all of them equally proud of the name Americans.60
Stuart Crawford, an Amherst classmate, would replace Judson Welliver
as press secretary on 1 November 1925 when Welliver left
to get more pay from the American Petroleum Institute.
In October 1925 Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Britain worked on
improving their relations with the Locarno Treaties, and Coolidge praised the likely effects.
The House of Representatives on March 3 approved them 302-28 with the “Hughes reservations.”
For accomplishing this Dawes and the British Austen Chamberlain
were given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925.
Coolidge on December 8 in his very long Third Annual Message to Congress
began by saying,
In meeting the constitutional requirement of informing
the Congress upon the state of the Union,
it is exceedingly gratifying to report that
the general condition is one of progress and prosperity.
Here and there are comparatively small
and apparently temporary difficulties needing adjustment
and improved administrative methods,
such as are always to be expected,
but in the fundamentals of government and business
the results demonstrate that
we are going in the right direction.
The country does not appear to require radical departures
from the policies already adopted so much
as it needs a further extension of these policies
and the improvement of details.
The age of perfection is still in the somewhat distant future,
but it is more in danger of being retarded by mistaken
Government activity than it is from lack of legislation.
We are by far the most likely to accomplish permanent good
if we proceed with moderation.
In our country the people are sovereign and independent,
and must accept the resulting responsibilities.
It is their duty to support themselves
and support the Government.
That is the business of the Nation,
whatever the charity of the Nation may require.
The functions which the Congress are to discharge are not
those of local government but of National Government.
The greatest solicitude should be exercised to prevent
any encroachment upon the rights of the States
or their various political subdivisions.
Local self-government is
one of our most precious possessions.
It is the greatest contributing factor to the stability,
strength, liberty, and progress of the Nation.
It ought not to be infringed
by assault or undermined by purchase.
It ought not to abdicate its power through weakness
or resign its authority through favor.
It does not at all follow that
because abuses exist it is the concern
of the Federal Government to attempt their reform.
Society is in much more danger from encumbering the
National Government beyond its wisdom to comprehend,
or its ability to administer, than from leaving the local
communities to bear their own burdens and remedy their own evils.
Our local habit and custom is so strong, our variety of race
and creed is so great the Federal authority is so tenuous,
that the area within which it can function successfully is very limited.
The wiser policy is to leave the localities, so far as we can,
possessed of their own sources of revenue
and charged with their own obligations.61
On 26 January 1926 the United States Senate voted 76 to 17 to approve
the protocol for the World Court with amendments limiting the court’s jurisdiction.
The Revenue Act designed by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was passed
in the House of Representatives 390 to 25 and by the Senate 59 to 19,
and it was signed by Coolidge on February 26.
Exemptions were $1,500 for singles, $3,500 for married couples and heads of families,
and $400 for each dependent under 18.
Corporations were charged 13.5% of net income.
Those with incomes under $4,000 paid 1.5%.
Those over that and under $8,000 paid 3%.
Those making between $10,000 and $14,000 paid 6%.
For those with incomes between $14,000 and $24,000 an additional 1%
for every $2,000 was added as a surtax.
From $24,000 the surtax was added for each $4,000 up to $64,000 that paid 22%.
Over $70,000 was 23%, over $80,000 24%, and over $100,000 paid 25%.
The maximum tax rate had been 60% in 1920.
This law would annually reduce federal revenue by about 10%
while releasing for investment an estimated $350 million.
On April 8 President Coolidge was in Washington D.C. at the
first Pan American Congress of Journalists and presented an Address.
He especially praised the writer Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, of Argentina
who had learned from Horace Mann.
Coolidge noted how American shipping and banks have become
much more involved in Latin America since the World War,
and he cited numerous statistics with various nations.
He concluded in the last paragraph,
The First Congress of Journalists was a fine idea.
I hope it will achieve all that its promoters could wish.
It seems to me it would be well if your gathering could
be repeated periodically, possibly alternating between
Latin America and the United States.
Such meetings can not fail to have far-reaching
consequences, not only in the preservation of the most
cordial good feeling existing among our respective nations
but also in the drawing together of our peoples into closer
bonds of sympathetic understanding.
It should result in a better comprehension that, after all,
we of the Western Hemisphere are one people
striving for a common purpose, animated by common ideals
and bound together in a common destiny.
Unto us has been bequeathed the precious heritage
and the high obligation of developing and consecrating
a new world to the great cause of humanity.62
The tax exemption for married couples was increased in 1926.
That year Charles M. Schwab visited the White House and told Coolidge that
he had started Bethlehem Steel with $12 million capital,
and it had become worth $800 million with “scores of thousands” of employees.
The Watson-Parker Act signed on 20 May 1926 allowed railroad brotherhoods
to bargain collectively, and its cooling-off procedures helped prevent work stoppage.
Hearings and negotiations resolved a conflict that threatened a strike on
western railroads in the summer of 1928.
On 5 July 1926 at Philadelphia in celebrating 150 years of
American independence in a long speech Coolidge concluded by saying,
Over a period as great as that which measures
the existence of our independence they were subject
to this discipline not only in their religious life
and educational training, but also in their political thought.
They were a people who came under the influence
of a great spiritual development
and acquired a great moral power.
No other theory is adequate to explain
or comprehend the Declaration of Independence.
It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people.
We live in an age of science
and of abounding accumulation of material things.
These did not create our Declaration.
Our Declaration created them.
The things of the spirit come first.
Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity,
overwhelming though it may appear,
will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp.
If we are to maintain the great heritage
which has been bequeathed to us,
we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it.
We must not sink into a pagan materialism.
We must cultivate the reverence
which they had for the things that are holy.
We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership
which they showed.
We must keep replenished,
that they may glow with a more compelling flame,
the altar fires before which they worshipped.63
In 1926 William Z. Ripley issued a critique of the speculation and secrecy
in the New York stock market.
His warning of an economic disaster was covered well by the New York Times.
The former speech writer Welliver visited the White House and advised that Ripley
might be right and that the President should do something
about the menace of the stock market.
Coolidge replied by asking what he could do since he had no authority
over the New York stock market.
Then Mr. Welliver said,
But, Mr. President, whether through
the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve Board,
or any other agency, you have legal authority,
you are the President and have a measure
of moral authority that would be effective.
President Roosevelt and President Wilson many times
invoked this moral authority, and made it effective.
Frankly, I have always felt that neither you nor Mr. Harding
have appreciated the extent or effectiveness
of the moral force you might wield in such situations as this.
A few words from you at a press conference would be
a warning to anybody who may be manipulating the market.
Or, if you want to do it by indirection,
I suggest that you invite Professor Ripley
down to dine with you some evening soon,
while his article is receiving so much attention.
That gesture of interest in him, at this time,
will be all the hint the stock market boys will need.64
Coolidge invited Professor Ripley for lunch,
and they had a long conversation at the White House.
Coolidge did not really see what he could do.
Yet news of this conversation drew more attention to Ripley’s article.
In the election on 2 November 1926 the Republicans lost 7 seats in the Senate
that narrowed their majority to 49-46.
In the House of Representatives the Democrats gained 11 seats.
After losing 9 seats the Republicans still had a 238-194 majority.
The Republican Party dominated the 1920s.
Coolidge’s very long Annual Message to Congress on December 7
advised this under the heading of "Federal Regulation:"
I am in favor of reducing, rather than expanding,
Government bureaus which seek to regulate
and control the business activities of the people.
Everyone is aware that abuses exist and will exist
so long as we are limited by human imperfections.
Unfortunately, human nature cannot be changed
by an act of the legislature.
When practically the sole remedy for many evils lies
in the necessity of the people looking out for themselves
and reforming their own abuses, they will find that
they are relying on a false security
if the Government assumes to hold out the promise that
it is looking out for them and providing reforms for them.
This principle is preeminently applicable
to the National Government.
It is too much assumed that because an abuse exists
it is the business of the National Government
to provide a remedy.
The presumption should be that
it is the business of local and State governments.
Such national action results in encroaching
upon the salutary independence of the States
and by undertaking to supersede their natural authority
fills the land with bureaus and departments
which are undertaking to do what it is impossible
for them to accomplish and brings our whole system
of government into disrespect and disfavor.
We ought to maintain high standards.
We ought to punish wrongdoing.
Society has not only the privilege but the absolute duty
of protecting itself and its individuals.
But we cannot accomplish this end
by adopting a wrong method.
Permanent success lies in local, rather than national action.
Unless the locality rises to its own requirements,
there is an almost irresistible impulse
for the National Government to intervene.
The States and the Nation should both realize that
such action is to be adopted only as a last resort.65
In February 1924 United States Marines landed in Honduras
and tried to prevent looting during the Second Honduran Civil War.
Secretary of State Hughes directed a Navy squadron into Honduran waters.
President Coolidge sent the diplomat Sumner Welles, and he arrived on April 20.
From April 23 to 28 he held a peace conference on the U. S. cruiser Milwaukee,
and he persuaded them to sign a treaty on May 3 that ended the war.
U. S. troops also intervened in Panama at the request of the government
during a rent strike that turned into a riot in 1925.
From 1919 to 1927 the United States loaned about $1.2 billion to Latin America.
Exports would reach $986 million in 1929.
That year investments in Colombia would be $282 million and in Chile $800 million.
American troops had been occupying Nicaragua since 1912.
When rivals clashed over the presidency, the United States supported Adolfo Díaz.
Coolidge withdrew the U. S. marines in August 1925,
and General Emiliano Chamarro overthrew
President Carlos José Solórzano in March 1926.
In Washington the international lawyer Chandler P. Anderson was working for Chamorro,
and he got leave from the State Department in June.
After Chamorro spent Nicaragua’s money, he resigned and was replaced by Díaz
who became President again on November 14.
Chamorro became minister to Britain, France, Spain, and Italy.
President Coolidge and Secretary of State Kellogg in late December
decided to send 3,000 troops to Nicaragua to prevent a rebellion,
and they released this statement to the press:
There is a revolution going on there and whenever
a condition of that kind exists in Central American countries
it means trouble for our citizens that are there
and it is almost always necessary for this country
to take action for their protection….
That is what is being done at the present time.
This government is not taking any sides,
one way or the other, in relation to the revolution.66
Henry L. Stimson had been Secretary of War under President Taft
and had served during the World War.
Coolidge asked him in the spring of 1927 to go to Nicaragua,
and he arrived with his wife and secretary on April 9.
Stimson proposed peace with amnesty and disarmament on both sides,
and Nicaragua’s President Adolfo Díaz agreed to a truce on May 4.
Stimson gave General José Moncada the following letter:
I am authorized to say that the President
of the United States intends to accept the request of the
Nicaraguan Government to supervise the election of 1928;
that the retention of President Díaz during the remainder
of his term is regarded as essential
to that plan and will be insisted upon;
that a general disarmament of the country
is also regarded as necessary for the proper
and successful conduct of such election;
and that the forces of the United States
will be authorized to accept the custody of the arms
of those willing to lay them down including the government,
and to disarm forcibly those who will not do so.67
U. S. Brig. General Frank R. McCoy and his assistants
supervised the Nicaraguan election.
He arranged what was called la ley McCoy,
though the U. S. Congress canceled that law.
The United States offered a neutral police force,
and Marines occupied Jinotega on May 23.
The U. S. sent 75 Marines and 150 Nicaraguan volunteers to disarm
Sandino’s forces in Nicaragua, and De Havilland biplanes
dropped 20 bombs on them at Ocotal on July 16 killing about 400 Sandinistas.
Coolidge accepted an invitation to attend the Sixth International Conference
of the American States at Havana, Cuba that began on 16 January 1928.
President Díaz proclaimed the McCoy law on March 21.
McCoy had control of the Guardia Nacional and increased its size.
During the summer 1,600 guerrillas surrendered.
On November 4 General Moncada was elected President of Nicaragua.
The International Conference of American States on Conciliation and Arbitration
met in Washington in December 1928 and January 1929,
and they negotiated a multilateral treaty to arbitrate
all juridical decisions and a conciliation treaty.
Hughes and Kellogg represented the United States.
Sixteen nations ratified the arbitration treaty and eighteen the conciliation treaty.
On 28 February 1929 Secretary of State Kellogg circulated a confidential instruction
disavowing the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
which was aimed at Europeans not Latin Americans.
In Mexico at the Bucareli Conference in the spring of 1923
the lawyer Charles Warren and the former Interior Secretary John Barton Payne
persuaded the Mexican government to interpret Article 27 of their Constitution
so that compensation could be made with Mexican bonds for expropriated property.
They signed an agreement on August 15.
On September 1 Coolidge recognized the Obregón administration in Mexico,
and Mexico’s government agreed to compensate Americans for seized property.
During a rebellion led by Adolfo de la Huerta the United States supplied Obregón’s
government with airplanes, machine guns, and Enfield rifles.
Secretary of State Hughes and War Secretary Weeks supported the President’s
decision not to let Obregón be overthrown.
In early January 1924 the Chief Justice Taft advised Kellogg
that the Mexican situation was impossible.
Senator Borah persuaded the Senate to vote unanimously for arbitration.
On February 12 Coolidge told the National Republican Club in New York City,
A situation has arisen in Mexico
which has caused some solicitude.
We recognize that the people of that country
have a perfect right to set up and pull down governments
without any interference from us,
so long as there is no interference with the lawful rights
of our government and our citizens within their territory.
We do not harbor the slightest desire
to dictate to them in the smallest degree.
We have every wish to be friendly and helpful.
After a long period of shifting and what appeared to us
to be unsubstantial governments in that country,
we recently reached the opinion that President Obregón
has established a government which is stable and effective,
and disposed to observe international obligations.
We therefore recognized it.
When disorder arose there, President Obregón sought
the purchase of a small amount of arms and munitions
from our government for the purpose
of insuring his own domestic tranquility.
We had either to refuse or to comply.
To refuse would have appeared to be equivalent to deciding
that a friendly government, which we had recognized,
ought not to be permitted to protect itself.
Stated another way, it would mean that we had decided that
it ought to be overthrown, and that the very agency
which we had held out as able to protect the interests
of our citizens within its borders ought not to be permitted
to have the means to make such protection effective.
My decision ran in a counter direction.
It was not a situation of our making,
but one which came and had to be met.
In meeting it, I did what I thought was necessary
to discharge the moral obligation
of one friendly government to another.
The supremacy of the Obregon Government
now appears to be hopeful.
Whatever may be the outcome,
we are not responsible for it.68
On April 25 he suggested that foreign powers must extend to aliens safeguards
recognized by international law.
Hughes and Kellogg agreed and advised against arbitration.
Coolidge knew the intelligence of his Amherst friend Dwight Morrow,
and in September he appointed him to a board studying aircraft for national defense.
They examined the charges made by Col. William Mitchell who led the
Army Air Service and charged that U. S. equipment was inadequate.
After listening to 99 witnesses over eight weeks the Board rejected Mitchell’s claims.
After Plutarco Elias Calles was elected President of Mexico in December 1924,
he restricted American oil and real estate claims in 1925 based on Mexico’s
1917 Constitution that stated in Article 27 that ownership of lands and water in Mexico
was vested in the nation and that foreigners with concessions
must agree to Mexican laws and regulation.
On 11 June 1925 Coolidge invited Senators Smoot and Borah to the White House
to meet with Attorney General Sargent and James R. Sheffield,
the new ambassador to Mexico.
The next day Secretary of State Frank Kellogg issued this statement:
The Government of Mexico is now on trial before the world.
We have the greatest interest in the stability,
prosperity, and independence of Mexico.
We have been patient and realize, of course,
that it takes time to bring about a stable government,
but we cannot countenance violation of her obligations
and failure to protect American citizens.69
The Mexican government reacted by passing a law to limit oil rights to 15 years
and another to allow foreign landowners to renounce protection
of their property by their governments.
The latter was based on the Calvo clause from an Argentine jurist
that governments used to make contracts with foreign corporations
to get them to waive protection.
Sheffield reported that the Mexican government was
“ignorant of government, of economics and of finance.”
He also wrote, “The courts are notoriously corrupt, and government by Presidential decree,
from which there is no appeal, is frequently resorted to.”70
Coolidge withdrew most of the U. S. Marines from Mexico in 1925.
He and Secretary of State Kellogg were concerned and worked to reduce tensions.
The U. S. Ambassador in Mexico expected that President Calles was going to put
Article 27 into effect, and the Mexican Congress did that in December.
In January 1927 Mexico canceled oil permits to oil companies
that did not comply with new regulations.
Coolidge warned Calles that Mexico might get the same treatment as Nicaragua got.
That month the former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky found exile in Mexico.
Secretary of State Kellogg told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
of his concern saying,
The Bolshevist leaders have had very definite ideas
with respect to the role which Mexico and Latin America
are to play in their program of world revolution.
They have set up as one of their fundamental tasks
the destruction of what they term American imperialism
as a necessary prerequisite to the successful development
of the international movement in the New World.
Thus Latin America and Mexico are conceived
as a base for activity against the United States.71
The New York Evening Mail editor Henry Stoddard
advocated American action against Mexico.
In response to that Coolidge said,
Here we are the most powerful nation in the world.
At this moment we have special representatives in Europe
as well as all our diplomats
urging reduction of armaments and preaching peace.
The world today would harshly condemn us if,
despite our attitude, we should go to war
with a neighbor nation not nearly our equal.
What do you suppose people in years to come would say?
Powerful United States crushing powerless Mexico!
Don’t you think it better for us
to find another way to handle the situation?72
President Calles asked for American military support,
and on January 24 about 400 U. S. Marines began arriving.
On April 25 Coolidge at a dinner of the United Press Association reviewed
the U. S. history with Mexico since 1857, and he reported,
The Senate recently passed a resolution
Supporting the protection of American life and property
and suggesting resort to arbitration.
We have at present two commissions of arbitration
with Mexico, and the principle of arbitration
has always been strongly advocated by our Government.
Everybody favors arbitration
when the question at issue is arbitrable.
Under the present circumstances I can see grave difficulties
in formulating a question which the two Governments
would agree to submit to such a tribunal.
The principle that property is not to be confiscated
and the duty of our Government to protect it
are so well established that it is doubtful
if they should be permitted to be questioned.
Very likely Mexico would feel that the right
to make a constitution and pass laws is a privilege
of her sovereignty which she could not permit
to be brought into question.
It has therefore seemed that we are more likely
to secure an adjustment through negotiation.
I am glad to report that the Mexican Ambassador
has recently declared to me that
she does not intend to confiscate our property;
that she has shown diligence in capturing
and punishing those who have murdered our citizens,
and expressed the wish, which we so thoroughly entertain,
of keeping cordial and friendly relations.
With a strong sentiment of this nature, which,
I am convinced, animates the people of both countries,
it will surely be possible to reach an amicable adjustment.
Our two people ought so to conduct themselves
that there will never be any interference
with our ancient ties of friendship.73
Coolidge persuaded Dwight Morrow to go to Mexico as the ambassador
and instructed him to keep out of war.
Morrow and his wife reached Mexico City on 23 October 1927.
Morrow got along with Calles and in December brought Col. Lindbergh
on a solo non-stop flight to Mexico City.
Lindbergh fell in love with Morrow’s daughter Anne, and they married.
Morrow paid the $5,000 telephone bill for calls in ten weeks.
Calles offered to get the Supreme Court to remove the problem,
and on November 17 that court ruled the Petroleum Law unconstitutional.
Then President Calles asked Congress to amend the articles,
and they did so on December 28.
In February 1927 Coolidge signed the Radio Act that established
the Federal Radio Commission in the Commerce Department
to issue licenses for broadcasting and to assign frequencies.
The two major networks NBC and CBS had advantages.
In 1926 noncommercial stations had 28% of the broadcasting licenses,
but by 1929 they held only 8.65%.
On February 27 the Pepper-McFadden Act authorized national banks
to operate branch banking.
Also on February 27 President Coolidge proposed a conference in June
at Geneva to limit navy ships.
He wanted to avoid wars so that military spending could be reduced.
In March a Columbia University professor who opposed wars visited France
and met with the Foreign Minister Aristide Briand,
and on April 6 he endorsed the idea for a bilateral treaty with the United States.
Senator Borah suggested including other powers so that they would not gain an advantage,
and Coolidge and Kellogg endorsed his proposal in December.
Britain and France had made a naval agreement on July 31,
and Coolidge considered it unfavorable to the United States.
In the spring massive rainstorms caused the Mississippi River to flood 4 million acres
causing property damage estimated at over $300 million
with a record crest of 47 feet at Baton Rouge.
On April 16 a levee of 1,200 feet collapsed in southern Illinois.
On the 21st another levee broke at Mounds Landing in Mississippi,
and hundreds of black workers were swept away.
Coolidge put Hoover in charge of the relief.
Several governors requested federal support.
Coolidge believed the states were responsible, though in his December message
he asked Congress to pass legislation for flood control with loans to aid property owners.
In February 1928 he supported a $180 million federal program.
Critics noted that damages were approaching $1.4 billion.
The Congress in April authorized $1.4 billion for flood control,
and in May they appropriated $500 million for relief.
River and harbor improvements would continue for several years.
Coolidge and his wife with secret service men took a long vacation
in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
They went there in June, and the sculptor Gutzon Borglum
told them about his Mount Rushmore project.
Coolidge decided not to run for President again.
After the stock market closed on August 2, the fourth anniversary of his presidency,
Coolidge announced that he was not a candidate for re-election by writing
on slips of paper “I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty eight”
and gave them to reporters in Rapid City.
At that press conference he reflected on his accomplishments saying,
It is rather difficult for me to pick out one thing
above another to designate what is called the chief
accomplishments of the four years of my administration.
The country has been at peace during that time.
It hasn’t had any marked
commercial or financial depression.
Some parts of it naturally have been better off
than other parts, some people better off than other people,
but on the whole it has been
a time of a fair degree of prosperity.
Wages have been slightly increasing.
There has been no time that
there has been any marked lack of employment.
There have been certain industries like the textile industry
and the boot and shoe industry in certain localities
like New England, which have not been running on full time.
But generally speaking, there has been employment
for everyone who wished employment.
There has been a very marked time of peace
in the industrial world.
There have been some strikes.
When I first came into office,
there was a strike in the hard coal fields
and another strike I think in the same line
a couple or three years later;
but those differences have been adjusted
without any great conflict or any great suffering
on the part of the industries or the public,
so that there has been rather a time of marked peace
in industry as between employer and employees.
There has been considerable legislation
which you know about, and which I do not need to recount.
There have been great accomplishments
in the finances of the national government,
a large reduction in the national debt,
considerable reduction in taxes.74
The Coolidges returned to Washington in September.
In June 1927 delegates from Britain, Japan, and the United States met at Geneva.
They could not agree, and the conference broke up
after the final plenary session on August 4.
Coolidge in a speech on 11 November 1928 would complain that France and England
made “a tentative offer which would limit the kinds of cruisers and submarines
adapted to the use of the United States
but left without limit the kind adapted to their own use.”75
Coolidge opposed more money for the Navy
while he asked for an increase for the Army Air Corps.
In 1927 the United States had 135,000 men in the Army and 95,000 in the Navy.
In his budget in December he called for a large increase in naval building.
Col. Edmund Starling was Coolidge’s bodyguard
and accompanied him on his early morning walks.
He told Starling that he saw economic disaster ahead,
and one day Coolidge said,
Well, they’re going to elect that superman Hoover,
and he’s going to have some trouble.
He’s going to have to spend money.
But he won’t spend enough.
Then the Democrats will come in,
and they’ll spend money like water.
But they don’t know anything about money.76
In his Fifth Annual Message to Congress on 6 December 1927 Coolidge said,
It is gratifying to report that
for the fourth consecutive year
the state of the Union in general is good.
We are at peace.
The country as a whole has had
a prosperity never exceeded.
Wages are at their highest range, employment is plentiful.
Some parts of agriculture and industry have lagged;
some localities have suffered from storm and flood.
But such losses have been absorbed
without serious detriment to our great economic structure.
Stocks of goods are moderate
and a wholesome caution is prevalent.
Rates of interest for industry, agriculture,
and government have been reduced.
Savers and investors are providing capital
for new construction in industry and public works.
The purchasing power of agriculture has increased.
If the people maintain that confidence
which they are entitled to have in themselves, in each other,
and in America, a comfortable prosperity will continue.
Without constructive economy in Government
expenditures we should not now be enjoying
these results or these prospects.
Because we are not now physically at war,
some people are disposed to forget that
our war debt still remains.
The Nation must make financial sacrifices,
accompanied by a stern self-denial in public expenditures,
until we have conquered
the disabilities of our public finance.
While our obligation to veterans and dependents is large
and continuing, the heavier burden of the national debt
is being steadily eliminated.
At the end of this fiscal year it will be reduced
from about $26,600,000,000 to about $17,975,000,000.
Annual interest, including war savings, will have been
reduced from $1,055,000,000 to $670,001,000.
The sacrifices of the people, the economy
of the Government, are showing remarkable results.
They should be continued for the purpose
of relieving the Nation of the burden of interest and debt
and releasing revenue for internal improvements
and national development….
Exemptions, have been increased until 115,000,000 people
make but 2,500,000 individual taxable returns.77
In December the U. S. Congress authorized a massive naval building
with 15 large cruisers, and this stimulated an arms race with the British.
The number of Americans paying taxes on more than $1 million increased
from 75 in 1924 to 283 in 1927.
State and local taxes and gasoline taxes were being raised.
In 1927 about $1.5 billion was being spent on advertising in the United States
which that year established the Federal Radio Commission.
The Radio Act began providing equal opportunity for political candidates.
Movies began including sound with the Warner Brothers Vitaphone.
They became even more popular, and by 1929 about 100 million people
were going to the movies each week in 23,000 movie theaters.
Coolidge wrote this Christmas message and shared it with the newspapers:
Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind.
To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy,
is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
If we think on these things there will be born in us a Savior
and over us all will shine a star
sending its gleam of hope to the world.78
During the Coolidge presidency the national wealth increased
from $71.6 billion in 1923 to $81.7 billion in 1928.
In 1929 over 92% of all goods would be products of corporations
with the biggest 1,289 accounting for 76%.
Inventions played a major role in improving American life.
In the 1880s the United States granted about 208,000 patents,
and in the 1920s there were 421,000 patents.
In 1880 the nation had 7,000 engineers, and in 1930 there were 226,000.
In 1914 only 30% of manufacturing used electricity,
and in 1929 this increased to 70%.
In 1928 only 1,221 persons were receiving pensions in the United States,
and their total benefits were $222,589.
The federal government was spending $752 million on public welfare,
and 96% of that went to former soldiers and sailors.
At a press conference on 7 January 1928 President Coolidge was asked about
brokers’ loans, and he admitted that he was “in no position to judge accurately.”
William Allen White’s biography of Coolidge reported that he said that
any loan made to gamble on stocks was an “excessive loan.”
Coolidge and Treasury Secretary Mellon were known for making bullish statements
to help slumping stocks rebound.
Senators Wesley Jones of Washington and Wallace White of Maine sponsored
the Merchant Marine Act of 1928 that provided export subsidies for large shipping firms
that increased the company’s profits and raised the seamen’s wages.
In the spring of 1928 Coolidge vetoed many bills including a costly defense act,
giving Indian tribes standing in the Court of Claims, rural post roads,
coordinating public health, and more payments for veterans of the World War.
The Republican National Convention held in Kansas City in June 12-15
nominated Herbert Hoover of California on the first ballot with 837 votes
to 72 for Frank Lowden of Illinois and 64 for Charles Curtis of Kansas
who was nominated for Vice President.
Democrats at Houston on June 26 for the first time nominated a Catholic,
Gov. Al Smith of New York, with Senator Joseph Robertson of Arkansas for Vice President.
With more Catholics and women voting on November 6 than had in 1924
Hoover won easily with 58% of the votes to 41% for Smith.
On 27 August 1928 in Paris the United States and 14 other nations
signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact which was called the
“General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy.”
The text included only these two articles:
Article I
The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare
in the names of their respective peoples that
they condemn recourse to war
or the solution of international controversies
and renounce it as an instrument of national policy
in their relations with one another.Article II
The High Contracting Parties agree that
the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts
of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be,
which may arise among them,
shall never be sought except by pacific means.79
The original 15 signatories were Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France,
Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa,
United Kingdom, and the United States.
The treaty was to take effect on 24 July 1929, and by then
there were these additional 31 signatories: Afghanistan, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, China
Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopian Empire, Finland,
Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Nicaragua,
Norway, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,
Soviet Union, Thailand Siam, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.
The following 25 nations joined after it was in force: Persia, Greece, Honduras,
Hejaz, Brazil, Chile, Luxembourg, Free City of Danzig, Ecuador, Haiti, Costa Rica,
Dominican Republic, Iraq, Venezuela, Mexico, Switzerland, Paraguay, Barbados (1971),
Fiji (1973), Antigua and Barbuda (1988), Dominica (1988), Czech Republic (1993),
Bosnia and Herzegovina (1994), Croatia (1994), and Slovenia (1994).
Coolidge, Kellogg, and Dawes worked to persuade U. S. Senators to ratify the treaty,
and they finally did so in January 1929 by a vote of 85 to 1.
Frank Kellogg was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929.
Herbert Hoover in eight years as the Secretary of Commerce accomplished much.
He had published his small book American Individualism in 1922,
and in 1928 he had it reprinted to help his run for the presidency.
His department had become the Government Printing Office’s largest customer.
He worked for decentralized self-government.
Hoover was a Quaker, and he told the New York State Chamber that
the “justification of any rich man is his trusteeship to the community for his wealth.”
Coolidge had difficulty with Hoover and was concerned that he was
“insanely ambitious for personal power.”
During the 1920s the proliferation of automobiles and roads reduced the
passenger traffic on railroads by 44%.
The number of passenger cars produced annually increased from 1.5 million in 1921
to 5.3 million in 1929, and that year the total number of cars was 23 million.
Automobile accidents also increased.
In 1924 there were 23,600 deaths including 10,000 children,
and there were 700,000 injuries.
Cars made residential suburbs popular.
The Federal Highway Act of 1921 spent $75 million on roads,
and in 1929 it reached $690 million.
Also union membership decreased from 5.1 million in 1920 to 3.4 million in 1929.
Wages increased; the work week went from 47.4 hours to 44.2 hours;
and unemployment was only 3.7% between 1923 and 1929.
There were no major strikes between the anthracite coal strike in 1923
and the Loray textile mill strike at Gaston, North Carolina that began in April 1929.
In the late 1920s those purchasing stocks could pay a portion and borrow
the rest at competitive bank rates.
This was called “buying on margin.”
Trusted customers could borrow 90% of the price using the stock purchased
as collateral, and others could borrow 73%.
As rates increased speculators continued to borrow.
The Democratic Arkansas Rep. William Oldfield observed that that
there were more than 48,000 bankruptcies in 1927.
That year there were one million fewer freight car loadings
than there had been in 1926.
During the Harding-Coolidge years there were about 3,000 bank failures.
Corporations were becoming bigger.
Three tobacco companies bought almost half the nation’s tobacco crop,
and three meat-packers purchased a quarter of the cattle and hogs.
Prohibition outlawed alcohol.
States and localities tended to let the federal government enforce the law,
and enforcement was minimal.
Drinking moved from saloons to private homes.
President Coolidge did not serve alcohol.
He smoked many cigars.
In his Autobiography in the chapter “Presidential Duties” Coolidge wrote,
Many occasions arise in the Congress
when party lines are very properly disregarded,
but if there is to be a reasonable government proceeding
in accordance with the express mandate of the people,
and not merely at the whim of those who happen to be
victorious at the polls, on all the larger and important issues
there must be party solidarity.
It is the business of the President
as party leader to do the best he can to see that
the declared party platform purposes
are translated into legislative and administrative action.
Oftentimes I secured support from those without my party
and had opposition from those within my party,
in attempting to keep my platform pledges.
Such a condition is entirely anomalous.
It leaves the President
as the sole repository of party responsibility.
But it is one of the reasons that the Presidential office
has grown in popular estimation and favor,
while the Congress has declined.
The country feels that the President
is willing to assume responsibility,
while his party in the Congress is not.
I have never felt it was my duty to attempt to coerce
Senators or Representatives, or to take reprisals.
The people sent them to Washington.
I felt I had discharged my duty
when I had done the best I could with them.
In this way I avoided almost entirely a personal opposition,
which I think was of more value to the country than
to attempt to prevail through arousing personal fear.80
Coolidge told James Derieux,
I don’t know why people say I am silent
unless it is because I have no dinner talk.
I have made more speeches than any other President.
If I tried, I suppose I could learn to talk at the table,
but I always have good company around me
and could have a better time listening than talking.81
In his Sixth Annual Message to Congress on 4 December 1928 Coolidge
had much to say, and the last two paragraphs are his concluding statements.
The great wealth created by our enterprise and industry,
and saved by our economy,
has had the widest distribution among our own people,
and has gone out in a steady stream
to serve the charity and the business of the world.
The requirements of existence have passed beyond
the standard of necessity into the region of luxury.
Enlarging production is consumed by an increasing demand
at home and an expanding commerce abroad.
The country can regard the present with satisfaction
and anticipate the future with optimism….
We have been coming into a period which may be fairly
characterized as a conservation of our national resources.
Wastefulness in public business and private enterprise
has been displaced by constructive economy.
This has been accomplished by bringing our domestic
and foreign relations more and more under a reign of law.
A rule of force has been giving way to a rule of reason.
We have substituted for the vicious circle
of increasing expenditures, increasing tax rates,
and diminishing profits the charmed circle
of diminishing expenditures, diminishing tax rates,
and increasing profits….
The situation in China which a few months ago
was so threatening as to call for the dispatch
of a large additional force has been much composed.
The Nationalist government has established itself
over the country and promulgated a new organic law
announcing a program intended to promote the political
and economic welfare of the people.
We have recognized this government,
encouraged its progress, and have negotiated a treaty
restoring to China complete tariff autonomy
and guaranteeing our citizens against discriminations.
Our trade in that quarter is increasing
and our forces are being reduced….
When a destructive and bloody revolution lately broke out
in Nicaragua, at the earnest and repeated entreaties
of its government I dispatched our marine forces there
to protect the lives and interests of our citizens.
To compose the contending parties, I sent there
Col. Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War
and now Governor-General of the Philippine Islands,
who secured an agreement that warfare should cease,
a national election should be held
and peace should be restored.
Both parties conscientiously carried out this agreement,
with the exception of a few bandits
who later mostly surrendered or left the country….
One of the most important treaties
ever laid before the Senate of the United States will be that
which the fifteen nations recently signed at Paris,
and to which forty-four other nations have declared
their intention to adhere, renouncing war as a national policy
and agreeing to resort only to peaceful means
for the adjustment of international differences.
It is the most solemn declaration against war,
the most positive adherence to peace,
that it is possible for sovereign nations to make….
It is desirable that the government continue
its helpful attitude toward American business.
The activities of the Department of Commerce
have contributed largely to the present
satisfactory position in our international trade,
which has reached about $9,000,000,000 annually.
There should be no slackening of effort in that direction.
It is also important that the department’s assistance
to domestic commerce be continued.
There is probably no way in which the government
can aid sound economic progress more effectively
than by cooperation with our business men
to reduce wastes in distribution….
The country is in the midst of an era of prosperity
more extensive and of peace more permanent
than it has ever before experienced.
But, having reached this position,
we should not fail to comprehend
that it can easily be lost.
It needs more effort for its support
than the less exalted places of the world.
We shall not be permitted to take our ease,
but shall continue to be required
to spend our days in unremitting toil.
The actions of the government
must command the confidence of the country.
Without this, our prosperity would be lost.
We must extend to other countries the largest measure
of generosity, moderation, and patience.
In addition to dealing justly,
we can well afford to walk humbly.
The end of government is to keep open
the opportunity for a more abundant life.
Peace and prosperity are not finalities;
they are only methods.
It is too easy under their influence
for a nation to become selfish and degenerate.
This test has come to the United States.
Our country has been provided with the resources with
which it can enlarge its intellectual, moral, and spiritual life.
The issue is in the hands of the people.
Our faith in man and God is the justification
for the belief in our continuing success.82
In 1928 brokers’ loans were a new high at $6.4 billion, a 45% increase over 1927.
Between 1923 and 1929 dividends increased by 65%
while wages and salaries went up 20%.
On Washington’s birthday on 22 February 1929 Coolidge noted that
the first President had warned against “permanent and political alliances,”
and he noted that Thomas Jefferson had used the expression “entangling” not Washington.
On March 1 Coolidge signed about 200 measures,
and then he stood by the door and shook hands with 553 visitors.
He left office on March 4 with about $400,000 in assets.
The Dow Jones was over 300, and it would go up to a peak of 381 on September 3
before its sudden fall began on October 24.
On 6 March 1929 The Nation magazine published this critique
of the Coolidge presidency:
Mr. Coolidge retires amid the acclaim
of those whom he has served.
To the business men who wanted a moratorium on reform
and newfangled ideas and wished to get the government
out of business he has been a godsend.
For others it is possibly too early to appraise his work,
but it has certain outstanding characteristics.
The Coolidge administration has been distinguished.
It has been distinguished, first, by its complacent attitude
toward shocking corruption in high office;
second, by its complete surrender of the regulatory powers
of the government to the interests to be regulated;
third, by the mediocrity or downright shabbiness of the men
appointed to high administrative and judicial posts;
fourth, by its hypocritical and despotic treatment
of our small Latin-American neighbors;
and fifth, by the policy whereby it was resolved that
the period of greatest national prosperity
was the proper time to inaugurate
the practice of starving all productive public enterprise.
Curiously enough, the things for which Mr. Coolidge
will be longest remembered—the Kellogg Treaty
and the appointment of Dwight W. Morrow
as ambassador to Mexico—
were in a sense accidental, notably the pact.
Mr. Kellogg, who proposed the treaty, did not realize
its significance and wanted to drop it
when France and England made their reservations.
It is doubtful if even today Mr. Coolidge realizes
what it is all about.
Otherwise, it is hard to understand why
he has stood for the fifteen-cruiser bill.
Vision, courage, the knowledge how to serve the masses
and the desire to aid them,
a realization of a new and better world—
these, and much else, have been denied him.83
The Coolidge administration reduced the national debt
from $22.3 billion in 1923 to $16.9 billion in 1929.
1. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, p. 9.
2. Coolidge by Amity Schlaes, p. 29.
3. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, p. 65-66, 68-70.
4. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 38.
5. Ibid., p. 41.
6. Ibid., p. 366.
7. The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond, Volume 2, p. 680.
8. Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont by Claude M. Fuess, p. 103.
9. Ibid., p. 105.
10. Ibid., p. 107-108.
11. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, p. 103-104.
12. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/wallaces-dozen-most-notable-speeches-3/
13. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 90.
14. Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President by Donald R. McCoy, p. 59.
15. Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont by Claude M. Fuess, p. 140.
16. Ibid., p. 142.
17. Ibid., p. 143.
18. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 96.
19. Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont by Claude M. Fuess, p. 156.
20. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 111.
21. Ibid., p. 114.
22. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/inaugural-address-as-governor/
23. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 117.
24. Ibid., p. 149.
25. coolidgefoundation.org/resources/a-proclamation-state-guard-announcement-1/
26. Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont by Claude M. Fuess, p. 225-226.
27. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 146-147.
28. Ibid., p. 148.
29. Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont by Claude M. Fuess, p. 237.
30. Calvin Coolidge by David Greenberg, p. 10.
31. Ibid.
32.
8 January 1920 Governor Coolidge's second inaugural address Online.
32. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/speeches-as-governor-of-mass-1919-1920-18/
33. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/
a-message-to-the-legislature-of-massachusetts
accompanying-the-governors-veto/
34. Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont by Claude M. Fuess, p. 253-254.
35. Ibid., p. 265.
36. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/accepting-the-republican-vice-presidential
nomination/
37.
Vice President Coolidge Inaugural Address4 March 1921 Online.
38. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, p. 162-168.
38. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/great-virginians/
39. See: https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/the-limitations-of-the-law/
40. See: https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/the-things-that-are-unseen/
41. Ibid.
42. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, p. 183-185.
43. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 242-243.
44. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources
president-coolidges-appeal-to-americans-to-relieve
distress-in-japanese-earthquake/
45. Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President by Donald R. McCoy, p. 187-188.
46. Coolidge's first annual message to the Congress December 6, 1923: Online.
47. See: https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/the-progress-of-a-people/
48. Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President by Donald R. McCoy, p. 208.
49. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 63.
50. The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge by Robert H. Ferrell, p. 111.
51. presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-republican-presidential-nomination.
52. See: https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/the-high-place-of-labor/
53. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/ordered-liberty-and-world-peace/
54.https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/religion-and-the-republic/
55. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/second-annual-message-to-the-congress-of-the-united-states/
56. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/inspiration-of-the-declaration-of-independence/
57.https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/second-annual-message-to-the-congress-of-the-united-states/
56. Ibid.
58. Calvin Coolidge by David Greenberg, p. 115.
59. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/toleration-and-liberalism/
60. See: https://coolidgefoundation.org/third-annual-message-to-congress/
61. Coolidge Address Before the First Pan American Congress of Journalists, Washington, D.C.
62. Coolidge Address on 5 July 1926 in Philadelphia: Online.
63. A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge by William Allen White, p. 336.
64. Coolidge's fourth annual message on December 7, 1926: Online.
65. Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President by Donald R. McCoy, p. 352.
66. The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge by Robert H. Ferrell, p. 135.
67. See: presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/
address-before-the-national-republican-club-the
waldorf-astoria-hotel-new-york-city
68. The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge by Robert H. Ferrell, p. 125.
69. Ibid.
70. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 348.
71. Ibid., p. 348-349.
72. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/
address-of-president-coolidge-at-the-dinner-of-the
united-press/
73. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 369-370.
74. See: coolidgefoundation.org/resources/
address-at-the-observance-of-the-tenth-anniversary
of-the-armistice/
75. Coolidge by Amity Shlaes, p. 398.
76. Seecoolidgefoundation.org/resources/fifth-annual-message/
77. Coolidge by Amity Shlaes, p. 405.
78. Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928 Online: avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/kbpact.asp
79. The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge by Robert H. Ferrell, p. 65.
80. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, p. 231-232.
81. A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge by William Allen White, p. 416.
82. See coolidgefoundation.org/resources/
sixth-annual-message-to-the-congress-of-the-united-states/
83. Coolidge: An American Enigma by Robert Sobel, p. 400-401.
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