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A Coolidge forefather had signed the Dedham Covenant, which explicitly posited as its goal to keep out those who did not fit: “That we shall by all means labor to keep off from us all such as are contrary minded, and receive only such unto us as may be probably of one heart with us.” The reasoning was simple: create virtue and lead by example. Testing virtue—inviting too many different thinkers into your midst—was, in their view, too dangerous. There were still numerous Coolidges all around Boston, many wealthy and distinguished. A few were also descended from Thomas Jefferson.
John and Victoria might remember July 1609, when Samuel de Champlain had discovered the great body of water, Lake Champlain, that now defined their state’s border.
The proprietors of the new place were black: “They are coons,” he wrote in the language of the day. He wrote also, in regard to football, that “our best man of last year” was now playing football for Harvard, advantaging Harvard. “He is a negro by the name of Lewis.” This was William Lewis, who was now studying law at Harvard. Calvin was endeavoring to talk more of “we” and “us” to try to find ways into the community.
After the election he wrote to John about the fickleness of the voter, “The result of the election was as much a surprise to the Democrats here as to the Republicans, and nobody seems able to account for it satisfactorily yet. I do not think it much use to blame Chairman Carter [Thomas Henry Carter, the chairman of the Republican National Committee] or the tariff or the Homestead affair, the reason seems to be in the never satisfied mind of the American and in the ever desire to shift in hope of something better and in the vague idea of the working and farming classes that somebody is getting
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The machine of commerce seemed more powerful than any ethnicity.
Readers knew that shorter was harder and appreciated his work.
He tried out another line that reflected a conviction growing inside him: “it may be that the fostering and protection of large aggregations of wealth are the only foundation upon which to build the prosperity of the whole people.”
Again, his job was to defend spending. The Democrats were blocking more outlays for homes for the mentally ill. Coolidge backed the administration’s plans: there must be “no parsimony in the care of our unfortunates,” he said. Such statements did not come easily, but he believed that this was the kind of piloting the party needed.
Civil war was racking Mexico.
The girls’ antic presence lightened it all.
have about come to the conclusion that the division of the people in the world is not really between conservative and radical, but people that are real people and people that are not.
Then Barton introduced a phrase that he hoped might resonate: “silent majority.” Wrote Barton, “It sometimes seems as if this great silent majority had no spokesman. But Coolidge belongs with that crowd, he lives like them, he works like them, and understands.”
Echoing Theodore Roosevelt, General Wood was saying that “relations between capital and labor, between those who work and those who direct must be on the basis of a square deal.”
Coolidge would soon begin to chime in with his own version of the phrase: “old times.”
The result was a shift in the official policy of the Grand Old Party. It was not so much the progressive party as the party of low taxes, tariffs, less central government, and stability.
The great domestic legacy of the war, even beyond the debt, remained the size and waste of government.
That was a slip Couzens was too clever not to exploit. By referencing Couzens’s personal finances, Mellon had legitimized the discussion of all politicians’ finances, especially, of course, his own. Couzens did not squander the opportunity and assailed Mellon personally: “So long as you have entered into the record of my securities, will you please tell us what your securities are; how much you own of each and how you will benefit by the reduction of the surtaxes as proposed by you?” Mellon was working on establishing an independent appeals board so that citizens might get their tax cases
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The campaign’s advertising men, especially Edward Bernays,
but under Wilson the country had seen that Democrats too were capable of great nationalizations. If they teamed up, the Democrats and progressives could undo all that he and Harding had done. If he wanted to push the government back farther, Coolidge had at most only a few more years. The economy needed to grow so fast that all the errors of the past regarding the railroads no longer mattered, so that people could see that where the railroad enterprise had slowed, cars or aviation might take its place in the future.
too little aware that this reception was accorded just about every interest group.
To Coolidge and Lord, both from the forests of New England, the name “woodpecker” meant something: they had often heard the distinctive rat-a-tat of the bird.
Praise for Coolidge’s position came from The New York Times: “Fortunately, there are still some things that can be done without the wisdom of Congress and the all-fathering Federal Government.”
Looking around at the ungraded roads, the Coolidges saw that their visit was a crucial one for the South Dakota economy. With automobile tourism just beginning, it was important for a place like the Black Hills to get its bid in early. First, though, the state needed some attractions. Borglum’s sculpture would be one. The ability to claim that the Black Hills had been the site of a presidential visit was another.
Every gain tourism made meant that farming’s troubles would matter less.
The crisis in Mexico had driven the U.S. ambassador there to resign and write a furious report: the Plutarco Calles government was waging a Soviet-style war against churches and confiscating U.S.-owned properties.
“The blow has fallen,” she wrote. “President Coolidge wrote to Dwight today asking him to be Ambassador to Mexico and Dwight is going to do it! ‘No skates or sleds left in my bag!’ says Santa Claus, ‘but here’s a silly little whistle!’ ” In her view a more dignified position, such as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, suited a J. P. Morgan partner better.
He found it natural, he said, that Borglum’s art should begin with George Washington; Washington had formed people’s aspirations, to make them not greater men but rather “into permanent institutions.”
you totaled the veteran payments with the military costs and the amount paid in interest on debt mostly generated by wars, you could see that about three-fourths of the federal costs had to do with war in one way or another.
You could even argue that the war was damaging the political culture.
Next came another shock. Even Mellon, who had been so faithful until now, betrayed impatience with the impulsive Coolidge thrift. In a report about case delays at the Board of Tax Appeals, his Treasury found that Coolidge’s relentless budgeting policy represented the basis of the delays. At the salary level at Treasury, Mellon wrote, “it has been impossible to build up and retain an adequate personnel.” A full fifty-two attorneys had resigned from the general counsel’s office. A total of 4,727 professionals and technicians had left Treasury in the past seven years. Since it took years to build
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John, at college, had just blithely agreed to serve for a third year on the “hop committee” that planned proms even though he knew Coolidge disapproved of too much socializing.
aging Minnesotan
American Indians were seeking additional funding beyond what they had received; the most important thing Coolidge could do had already been done: the government had granted the Indians full citizenship in 1924.
As the holiday neared, disappointments mounted. Morrow had hosted Lindbergh in Mexico with great success, but the Coolidge combination of aviation and arms shipments was not always working as foreign policy. Stimson, operating in Nicaragua, had demonstrated great talent, but he and General Hilario Moncado, who was leading the Nicaraguan government, had not stopped General Sandino and his rebels; on the contrary, Sandino’s men were refusing to turn in their guns for any price; their refusal to be bought by the Americans looked like character. After a visit from Stimson, it was clear that
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Here is the humatarian nation of the world fixing so more people can get shot.
Finally, he spoke against force. It was time to heed “the admonition to beat our swords into plowshares.” The phrase resonated because just days before, Coolidge had ordered marines into Nicaragua.
“Rubio,” red-haired.
Cubans, like the citizens of so many other nations, were not merely glad to undertake a common project with the United States. They were eager to do so. All they were waiting for was an invitation.
Through Paul Claudel and others, Briand was quibbling over phrasing. Instead of opposing “war as an instrument of national policy,” his own original words, the treaty, he now said, should be against “wars of aggression.”
The difference between Coolidge and some progressives was that Coolidge believed that immigrants should come only if the United States could absorb them and only if they were prepared to make an effort to assimilate.
That July there was also troubling news from Mexico. The new president, General Álvaro Obregón, was assassinated. Mexico was still nowhere near normalcy and perhaps settling into dictatorship: as Morrow had feared, now President Calles might find a way to stay in office after all.
The men would give away $4 million to start with and more later. They made the biggest bequests to the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and hospitals of varying denominations.
was a sloppy constitutionalist.
“Observers say President Hoover committed a fatal mistake in signing the tariff measure, and it is further asserted that the tariff law may go far to undo here the great work of reconciliation effected by Ambassador Morrow,” reported The New York Times on June 21, 1930, from Mexico City.
That key power, now ensured, would enable a president to veto not only Indian land claims or the nationalization of Muscle Shoals but also other congressional spending programs.
Others shared Coolidge’s sense of isolation. So many habits of the 1920s—the affection for the individual, the enthusiasm for the reproduction of colonial furniture, the attention to New England, suddenly seemed outdated. Even Robert Frost, who had felt himself unassailable, now sensed that he was wrong for what he called “these times.” “Mr. Frost does not understand our time and will make no effort to understand it,” the critic Isidor Schneider wrote in The Nation. He accused Frost of replying to contemporary ideas “with know-nothing arrogance.” Schneider mocked Frost’s denial of social
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and after the presidency, including documents related to his law practice
