Coolidge

by Amity Shlaes

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 up an expert, the loss caused by that false economy, he estimated, was “incalculable.” The departure of one man, a key expert in negotiations of a tax settlement with mining companies, had been caused by a dispute over a $300-a-year salary difference. That man’s departure had cost the Treasury a full $100 million in revenues, he wrote pointedly in his note to Coolidge.