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May 19 - July 31, 2021
“I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty eight.”
“The progress of America has been due to the spirit of the people,”
“It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country,” Coolidge wrote, “for him to know that he is not a great man.”
When he passed away, in January 1933, the Coolidge family, respecting his wishes, laid the president to rest in the Coolidge row in the modest cemetery at his birthplace, Plymouth Notch, Vermont. The tallest stone in the row is that of Coolidge’s grandfather, Calvin Galusha Coolidge. Coolidge’s own gravestone stands no higher than that of his wife, Grace. The only sign that the grave is a former president’s is the presidential seal chiseled into the granite.
“The chief business of the American people is business.”
those who like Coolidge call him the Great Refrainer.
“Men do not make laws,” Coolidge once told the Massachusetts senate. “They do but discover them.”
Sometimes, Coolidge said, the problem was simply too many laws: “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones,” he wrote to his father once.
“There is no right to strike against the public safety,” Coolidge wrote in a terse telegram to labor leader Samuel Gompers, “by anybody, anywhere, any time.”
His father was a notary public and swore Coolidge in by lamplight: a symbol of the authority of the local even in the gravest matters of our republic.
Coolidge therefore committed to reducing the federal debt, telling Americans: “I am for economy. After that I am for more economy.”
He signed legislation that made all Native Americans citizens for the first time.
“If all men are created equal, that is final,” he said in that speech. “If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final.” He concluded, “No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.”
Coolidge cut the federal budget rather than contenting himself with reducing its increase.
Not the Coolidges: when the president received twin lion cubs as a gift, Coolidge pointedly named the pair “Tax Reduction” and “Budget Bureau.”
Every year he forced the federal budget down some more, so that when he left office the budget was lower than when he had taken office, a record for a peacetime president. By the time Coolidge left Washington, the national debt had dropped by one-third from its postwar high, assuring American economic primacy in the world.
Because of automation resulting from such innovation, factories could do in five days what they had previously done in six. That meant families got a gift in time as well: Saturday. Thanks to Coolidge, the 1920s, contra progressive historians, were no champagne bubble but a decade to replicate.
Don’t expect to help the weak by pulling down the strong.”
September 1919 The Boston police force breaks its contract and walks out on strike to protest low wages and poor conditions. The move prompts strong action by Governor Coolidge to ensure law and order. Coolidge calls out the Massachusetts State Guard and fires the policemen. Coolidge’s handling of the crisis catapults him to national prominence.
Coolidge says, “There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.”
May 24, 1924 With overwhelming bipartisan support, Congress passes the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, halting most immigration from eastern and southern Europe, as well as from Japan. Coolidge signs the bill into law, noting his regret over, in particular, the Japanese exclusion provision, which he calls “deplorable.”
July 7, 1924 Coolidge’s younger son, Calvin Jr., dies of sepsis from a blister sustained while playing tennis on the White House court.
November 1924 Macy’s holds its first Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Coolidge says: “Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.”
February 25, 1927 Coolidge vetoes the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Act, by which the federal government would fix agricultural prices and then buy farmers’ products at those artificially high prices.
March 4, 1929 Coolidge leaves office, having balanced the federal budget every year while president. Coolidge’s budget efforts have resulted in a significant reduction in the size of the national debt and a decrease in overall federal spending. The national debt falls by a third during the Coolidge presidency, from $22.3 billion in 1923 to $16.9 billion in 1929.
1981 President Ronald Reagan places a portrait of Coolidge in the White House Cabinet Room.
It seems impossible that any man could adequately describe his mother. I can not describe mine.
He evidently wished me to stay on the land. My own wish was to keep store, as my father had done.
Her maiden name was Sarah Almeda Brewer. When she married my grandfather she was twenty and he was twenty-eight years old. She was accustomed to tell me that from his experience and observations he had come to have great faith in good blood, and that he chose her for his wife not only because he loved her, but because her family, which he had seen for three generations, were people of ability and character.
I was accustomed to carry apples and popcorn balls to the town meetings to sell, mainly because my grandmother said my father had done so when he was a boy, and I was exceedingly anxious to grow up to be like him.
As I went about with my father when he collected taxes, I knew that when taxes were laid some one had to work to earn the money to pay them. I saw that a public debt was a burden on all the people in a community, and while it was necessary to meet the needs of a disaster it cost much in interest and ought to be retired as soon as possible.
I early learned to drive oxen and used to plow with them alone when I was twelve years old.
Father had no taste for books, but always took and read a daily paper.
The common school subjects were taught, with grammar and United States history, so that when I was thirteen I had mastered them all and went to Black River Academy, at Ludlow. That was one of the greatest events of my life. The packing and preparation for it required more time and attention than collecting my belongings in preparation for leaving the White House. I counted the hours until it was time to go.
I did not know that there were mental and moral atmospheres more monotonous and more contaminating than anything in the physical atmosphere of country life. No one could have made me believe that I should never be so innocent or so happy again.
“If the spirit of Liberty should vanish from other parts of our Union and the support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of the brave little state of Vermont.”
The experience of watching the village of Plymouth Notch levy and collect taxes gave Coolidge an unusual awareness of the trade-offs involved in taxation. He saw that greater taxes meant less money for citizens to use to support themselves and their families.
One of the sages of New England is reported to have declared that the education of a child should begin several generations before it is born. No doubt it does begin at a much earlier period and we enter life with a heritage that reaches back through the ages. But we do not choose our ancestors. When we come into the world the gate of gifts is closed behind us. We can do nothing about it. So far as each individual is concerned all he can do is to take the abilities he has and make the most of them. His power over the past is gone. His power over the future depends on what he does with himself
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This was my first introduction to the Constitution of the United States. Although I was but thirteen years old the subject interested me exceedingly. The study of it which I then began has never ceased, and the more I study it the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity. The good it has wrought can never be measured.
Latin was not difficult for me to translate, but I never became proficient in its composition. Although I continued it until my sophomore year at college the only part of all the course that I found of much interest was the orations of Cicero. These held my attention to such a degree that I translated some of them in later life.
His investigation disclosed the presence there of a domestic animal noted for his long ears and discordant voice. In some way during the night he had been stabled on the second floor. About as far as I deem it prudent to discuss my own connection with these escapades is to record that I was never convicted of any of them and so must be presumed innocent.
What men owe to the love and help of good women can never be told.
I discovered that our ideas of democracy came from the agora of Greece, and our ideas of liberty came from the forum of Rome. Something of the sequence of history was revealed to me, so that I began to understand the significance of our own times and our own country.
Much of its social life centered around the fraternities, and although they did not leave me without an invitation to join them it was not until senior year that an opportunity came to belong to one that I wished to accept. It has been my observation in life that, if one will only exercise the patience to wait, his wants are likely to be filled.
yet it seems to be true that unless men live right they die. Things are so ordered in this world that those who violate its law cannot escape the penalty. Nature is inexorable. If men do not follow the truth they cannot live.
But while I am not disposed to minimize the amount of evil in the world I am convinced that the good predominates and that it is constantly all about us, ready for our service if only we will accept it.
The Presidential election of 1892 came in my sophomore year. I favored the renomination of Harrison and joined the Republican Club of the college, which participated in a torch-light parade, but the unsatisfactory business condition of the country carried the victory to Cleveland.
If we keep our faith in ourselves, and what is even more important, keep our faith in regular and persistent application to hard work, we need not worry about the outcome.
It was here that we learned the nature of habits and the great advantage of making them our allies instead of our enemies.
