Coolidge_An American Enigma

by Robert Sobel

  Throughout his presidency Coolidge would oppose several versions of the McNary–Haugen bill. This measure had its origins in agricultural despair following World War I. High food prices had encouraged farmers to expand their holdings and invest in machinery. Wheat acreage rose from forty-eight million acres to more than seventy-five million between 1914 and 1919. Iowa farmland that sold for $82 an acre in 1910 went for $200 in 1920. Then, as a result of the European recovery, American farm exports slumped from $4.1 billion in 1919 to $1.9 billion in 1922. Commodity prices collapsed in the face of oversupply, with corn and wheat leading the way. Land prices declined sharply, especially in the Midwest. There was some recovery after 1922, but the circumstances in the nation’s agricultural heartland remained serious, and farmers there called for government assistance.

  The situation was more complicated than it appeared. According to the Department of Agriculture, using 1910–1914 as a base of 100, farm income, which was 259.7 in 1919 and fell to 96.8 in 1921, rose to a decade high of 171.2 in 1924. By this measure, the farmers, in the aggregate, were better off in the mid-1920s than they had been before the war. Even so, they were not as well off as nonfarmers, whose incomes were at 184.1 in 1924. Nor was there a mass exodus from the farms, as might have been expected if conditions had been as dire as portrayed. However, the agricultural sector was shrinking. In 1921 the farm population was 31.8 million; in 1924 it was 30.1 million; and in 1929, 30.2 million. Since the total population was expanding, the percentage of Americans on farms declined. In 1880 three out of every four Americans lived in rural areas; by 1930 it was less than one out of every two.

  Part of the reason for these anomalies results from the use of aggregates in presenting the farm picture. There was a world of difference between the truck farmers in the Northeast, the cotton and tobacco farmers in the South and Southwest, the wheat and corn farmers of the Midwest, and the citrus growers of Florida and California. Their agendas were as different as their crops. Also, because of the increased productivity of farmers resulting from mechanization, the use of superior fertilizers, and improved management, the country didn’t require as many farmers as before. Even so, those farmers who were suffering wanted help, and rallied behind the McNary–Haugen bill.

  McNary–Haugen was a plan whereby farmers would sell their surpluses to the government, which would then market them abroad. In 1924 agricultural surpluses included wheat, corn, cotton, wool, cattle, sheep, swine, and flour. Since McNary–Haugen would remove excess agricultural goods from the domestic market, domestic prices would rise and benefit the farmers. Foreign competition would be kept out by high tariffs. The government would sell the surplus at world prices, and the losses would be made up through an “equalization fee” charged to the farmers who produced that particular crop.

  It was a contentious measure. Midwestern farmers, especially in wheat, strongly supported McNary–Haugen, and expressed themselves through the farm bloc in the Senate. However, cotton farmers in the South and West and the more diversified eastern farmers tended to oppose the measure, as did fruit farmers.

  Coolidge believed that raising agricultural prices would encourage farmers to increase their production, which would require more subsidies, and the process would be repeated. As an alternative, he favored cooperative marketing arrangements made without government intervention. His opposition to McNary–Haugen hardened the antagonism of the progressives and the farm bloc.

  The bill was introduced in the House during the next session and defeated on June 3 on a sectional vote, 155 to 233, with the Midwest in favor and the South and East opposed. But the matter did not die; it was to be an important issue for the rest of the decade.

  After his well-received address to Congress and subsequent announcement of his candidacy, there was little doubt Coolidge would receive the Republican nomination. Coolidge, like Roosevelt before him, would successfully defy the tradition that presidents who succeed on the death of predecessors have no chance of receiving the nomination on their own. By then, too, Slemp was working effectively behind the scenes to assure Coolidge’s success. Slemp managed to alter a rule adopted in 1920 reducing the number of delegates from Mississippi, South Carolina, and Georgia, states all safely for Coolidge, and restored their old strengths. He called in favors throughout the country, not an onerous task, since Coolidge was quite popular in his own right. While Slemp was winning solid southern support, Butler was taking care of matters in the Northeast. Outgoing National Committee Chairman John Adams scouted the Midwest and Far West, while Chief Justice William Howard Taft wrote letters to his large circle of friends and admirers on Coolidge’s behalf. Coolidge was in control of the situation and was willing to use his power to advance his interests. Johnson and Lowden had wanted the convention to be held in Chicago, the former for its progressive tradition, the latter because it was in Illinois. At Coolidge’s behest, the national committee selected Cleveland as the host city.

  One by one potential rivals dropped aside. Only Lowden remained as a possible threat. The former governor experienced renewed approval after the bruising 1920 convention. By the summer of 1924 he was being urged to run for the governorship or the Senate. After Harding’s death several prominent Republicans, among them former Speaker Joe Cannon, offered to endorse him publicly, and Lowden confided to a friend that it was “very likely” he would challenge Coolidge. Aware of this, Coolidge offered Lowden the ambassadorship to the United Kingdom, which would get him into the administration and out of the country. Lowden rejected the offer.

  For a while Lowden thought the Harding scandals might damage Coolidge, but when the president emerged unscathed, Lowden gave up on the idea of a run. Governor Pinchot, once an almost certain challenger, also backed down. Hiram Johnson, who believed he had been cheated of the nomination in 1920, remained in the field, but he was a long shot. La Follette was there once again, but he knew he didn’t stand a chance in the GOP, and so he prepared to revive the Progressive Party and make the run as its candidate. Thus, in early 1924, Coolidge knew he would obtain the nomination without serious opposition. “We cannot now see that anything can prevent my nomination on the first ballot at the Republican Convention, but one never knows what will happen in politics.”

  Only Johnson remained to contest Coolidge. Johnson’s name was entered in the primaries, and in March he defeated Coolidge by a slim margin in North Dakota. The biggest challenge would come in California, Johnson’s home state, and there the Coolidge machine swung into action early. Hoover was deputized to take charge of the campaign, and won support for his progressive stances and conservative statements. Coolidge won the primary and ended Johnson’s bid for the nomination.

  Johnson could not have had much hope given the nation’s condition, which was quite agreeable. The 1921 GNP had been a depressed $69.9 billion; for 1923 it came to $85.1 billion, and would go on to $93.1 billion in 1924. This worked out to a growth rate of 9 percent from 1921 to 1924, much of it due to the shabby condition of the economy in 1921. In this same span the consumer price index fell from 53.6 to 51.2, and the unemployment rate from 11.7 percent to 5 percent. There had been a budget surplus of $291 million in 1920, which rose to $509 million in 1921, $736 million in 1922, declined slightly to $712 million in 1923, and rose to $963 million in 1924.

  In 1923 a record 3.6 million automobiles were sold; 3.2 million were sold the following year. Radio sales skyrocketed; 2.7 million households had receivers in 1924, more than twice as many as in 1923. Statistics for refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and clothing were taking off. In the aggregate, Americans had never been so well off, and the prospects for the future were pleasing. There were some soft spots in the economy, to be sure—coal mining, textiles, some farm products, among others—but for the rest, prosperity was the rule.

  Coolidge, who continued to work in the White House and did not attend the convention, signed the 1924 Revenue Act as the Republicans gathered. It was not the bill he had preferred, as a coalition of pro
gressive Republicans and Democrats had hacked away at the Mellon proposals. In its final form the measure cut taxes for all levels of income. Missing were those tax increases on the wealthy he had asked for, and the decrease in the surcharge was less than what he had wanted. The estate tax was increased, and a new gift tax was to go into effect. Thus, the measure that reached his desk was not what Coolidge had wanted, and he said so in his message. “A correction of its defects may be left to the next session of Congress,” he said. “I trust a bill less political and more economic may be passed at that time. To that end I shall bend all my energies.” In this fashion, Coolidge indicated that he would consider his election a sign of public approval for his stand on taxes, and expected the congressional Republicans to do the same. Yet the Republican Congress, just before adjourning, had defied a Republican president certain of renomination on this key issue, clearly illustrating Coolidge’s standing within his own party.

  In another instance, Coolidge vetoed the Bursum pension bill, which would have increased the pensions of soldiers who had served in the Civil, Indian, and Spanish–American Wars, and of their dependents. His veto was upheld. Just before Congress adjourned, he vetoed a measure to increase the salaries of postal employees, which would have added $69 million annually to government expenses. In his message Coolidge observed that the Post Office workers had had three wage increases since 1919, and that they were already better paid than the average government worker. He noted that in 1923 the salaries for postal clerks were $1,750, a 110 percent increase over the 1918 figure. Coolidge favored making the Post Office Department self-supporting and independent of federal largesse—an idea that would not come to fruition for another six decades.

  After Coolidge had been nominated, Judson Welliver, the presidential assistant who had become a well-regarded journalist, wrote that such policies put Coolidge at odds with his party, but endeared him to the voting public:Individuals might disagree with some of his vetoes, might disapprove of some of the measures he advocated, might favor policies he opposed. But all that was unimportant compared to the fact that he was constantly demonstrating a calm, simple, unhesitating courage in his convictions. Moreover, his convictions seemed to coincide with a decidedly preponderant public opinion.

  To have won his nomination in such a time of turmoil; to have gained so remarkable a testimony of public confidence at the very time when it might have seemed that all the fates were in a conspiracy against him—this is the big, impressive achievement of President Coolidge. Whatever may be the standing of his party, it has been made as plain as anything in politics can be, that he holds the confidence of the masses of his party. He has won that confidence in a time so brief, and in the face of difficulties so great, as to make the accomplishment unique in our politics.

  Although Coolidge had no serious opposition for the presidential nomination, the vice presidential contest was wide open. Coolidge had earlier announced that he would not interfere, and allowed the delegates to select his running mate. The leading prospects were Lowden and Charles Dawes, the director of the Budget Bureau. There was some talk of Johnson, Borah, and a handful of others, but this was not taken too seriously. Ordinarily these candidates would be dismissed outright, but memories of 1920 dictated that one of them might sway the convention.

  There were two sticky, emotional issues in 1924. One was Prohibition, for which Coolidge had a simple response: Congress had passed the Volstead Act, and he would support it. But he also said, “Any law that inspires disrespect for other laws—the good laws—is a bad law.” In his own oblique manner, Coolidge made his meaning quite clear.

  Prohibition continued to breed lawlessness; in 1923 the Justice Department complained that it “has been called upon to prosecute a member of the judiciary, prominent members of the American bar, high officials of federal and state governments. The sordid story of assassination, bribery, and corruption has been found in the very sanctums where the law was presumed to be sacred.” In response, Coolidge convened a meeting of the nation’s governors for October 20 to consider the matter of enforcing the Volstead Act.

  With this in mind, brewer Adolph Busch, a leader of the moderate anti-Prohibitionists, wrote to the new president, stating:Mr. President, we have always stood for law enforcement and real temperance. We recognize that we labor under the disadvantage of having our motives misunderstood, but we hope that you will at least give us some credit for our interest in good citizenship and genuine temperance…. An unpopular statutory control of individual habits can never be substituted for voluntary temperance, individual self-restraint and reasonable statutory regulation. The law should be written in terms of temperance and reasonable regulation; then the evils of the present system would disappear.

  Coolidge never indicated what he thought of this position. He replied with a noncommittal “Thank you,” and let it go at that.

  Under Prohibition, scores of organizations formed to demand outright repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment or its modification. The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, the Moderation League, and the Constitutional Liberty League were three of the more prominent. The American Federation of Labor was also in favor of a drastic overhaul of the law. All had lobbying groups in Washington. So did the forces favoring Prohibition, but they also had a political party. On the day before the GOP convention, the Prohibition Party held its convention in Columbus, Ohio, and nominated H.P. Faris for the presidency, and a woman, Maria Brehm, for the vice presidency.

  The second thorny issue was the Ku Klux Klan, which posed more of a problem for the Democrats than for the Republicans, but it still had to be addressed in Cleveland. Unlike the earlier Klan, this one contained Republicans as well as Democrats. The Klan had been reorganized by Colonel William Simmons of Atlanta in 1915. The organization was more than just anti-black, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic; the Klan offered a broad program aimed at “uniting native-born white Christians for concerted action in the preservation of American institutions and the supremacy of the white race.” It conducted a crusade against foreign-born citizens of all religions, and was strongly pro-farmer, pro–poor Americans, and anti–Wall Street. The Klan program, which was clearly articulated and forcefully presented, demanded “100 percent Americanism,” and had broad appeal.

  This new Klan was more northern and midwestern than the post–Civil War organization had been—some major centers of activity were Oregon, Maine, Kansas, California, Texas, and Long Island, New York. At its height the Klan had some four million members and was a potent national political force. Texas Klansman Earle Mayfield was a U.S. Senator, as was Samuel Ralston of Indiana, and the governors of Georgia, Alabama, California, and Oregon had won their seats with Klan support.

  Both sides were prepared for a struggle. R.B. Creagar, a GOP national committeeman from Texas, was in Cleveland to work for an anti-Klan plank in the platform, which read, “We condemn any or all secret organizations founded on racial or religious intolerance, and oppose all secret political societies as being against the spirit of the American people.” Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans arrived in Cleveland to work against this condemnation.

  Coolidge said nothing directly regarding the Klan, but he was not morally neutral on the issue of race. Harding and Coolidge, presidents generally considered conservative, had much better records on this issue than the progressive Woodrow Wilson. Coolidge spoke out on the subject obliquely but unmistakably. On June 6 he delivered the commencement address at Washington’s all-black Howard University—in itself an unusual move for the time. In his speech Coolidge touched on themes of interest to his audience. He spoke of the progress of American blacks, contrasting this with the lack of progress in Africa, indicating that one of the tasks for the graduates would be to assist in the modernization of that continent. Coolidge noted that at the time of Emancipation, there were four million black Americans—twelve thousand of whom owned their own homes, twenty thousand their farms—and the aggregate wealth of the race was growing rapidly.

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bsp; In a little over half a century since [Emancipation] the number of business enterprises operated by colored people has grown to nearly 80,000, while the wealth of the negro community has grown to nearly $1,100,000,000. And these figures convey a most inadequate suggestion of the material progress. The 2,000 business enterprises that were in the hands of colored people immediately following Emancipation, were almost without exception small and rudimentary. More than 80 percent of all American negroes are now able to read and write; when they achieved their freedom not 10 percent 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 two high grade institutions of medicine.

  In the context of 1924, these statements constituted a liberal attitude toward black America. But to underline his thoughts, Coolidge talked about contributions during the war. “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.” Coolidge’s position on this issue was clear; what concrete measures he initiated was another matter.

  The Republican Convention opened on June 10 in a celebratory mood. It was, as expected, quite placid and totally unlike the 1920 convention, which had been marked by uncertainty and drama.

  From the first the convention was Coolidge-controlled insofar as operations and agenda were concerned, with William Butler, the new national chairman, carrying out his wishes. At this convention Henry Cabot Lodge was nothing more than a delegate, a sign that a new era had arrived. For the first time in a quarter of a century—except for 1912, when he had not been present—Lodge would not serve on any committee. Nor would he head the Massachusetts delegation; that position would to go to Governor Channing Cox, a staunch Coolidge man. Butler wouldn’t even provide Lodge with a decent hotel room. At one point in the proceedings some of the delegates started to boo him, and others picked up on it. It was a sad end for the proud old man, who would die four months later.