Coolidge_An American Enigma

by Robert Sobel

  The pieces, which Coolidge scholar Edward Lathem collected and published in 1972, show that Coolidge was not a natural journalist. Writing a daily column was perhaps too much for him, since some of the columns, especially toward the end, were inconsequential and bland. Or perhaps Coolidge was worn out and incapable by then of expressing himself as he had as governor and president. Yet the Autobiography, written only a short time earlier, is vintage Coolidge. The reader can judge for himself or herself from the following column, written on December 12.

  Three or four years ago there began considerable discussion of the practice of installment sales. While the system was by no means new, it was then being expanded into new fields with extraordinary rapidity and assumed such large proportions that it aroused considerable alarm. Some thought it might be undermining our whole credit structure. No definite and separate figures were obtainable as to the extent to which banks were involved and this raised the question of what funds were tied up in it. The developments of the past few months have demonstrated that there was nothing unsound in the movement. The percentage of losses has been insignificant. Probably of all commercial credits this form stands well toward the top in satisfactory results. Because installments have been paid, most of the fear of it as a breeder of extravagance has been dispelled. Probably conducted, it is no more subject to that criticism than the open account.

  But the great lesson is the honesty and integrity of the people. The consuming public pay their debts. It is another powerful demonstration of the justification of faith and confidence in each other.

  As it became more evident that the country was sliding into bad economic times, Coolidge wrote a few words about proper public policy:Some confusion appears to exist in the public mind as to the proper function of the national government in the relief of distress, whether caused by disaster or unemployment.

  Strictly construed, the national government has no such duties. It acts purely as a volunteer. President Cleveland was much opposed to such measures. When the disaster is very great, federal aid has sometimes been extended.

  In case of unemployment, relief is entirely the province of the local government which has agencies and appropriations for that purpose. We have no few if any municipalities and certainly no state that cannot take care of all their unemployed.

  Every government should spend its own money. Otherwise the appropriating agency has no control over the disbursing agency and no check on extravagances.

  What the Congress properly is attempting is not direct relief for unemployed but indirect relief by a general stimulation of business by the expenditure of money on public works. The law properly can specify the purposes for which such money is to be spent. No doubt the federal executive departments already in existence are the most available agencies for the administration of such national appropriation.

  And so it went.

  The combination of Coolidge’s new wealth—added to the old—and the need for privacy and more room led the family to move from Massasoit Street. In the spring of 1930, the Coolidges purchased a twelve-room house called “the Beeches” on Munroe Street, one of the better sections of Northampton, with nine wooded acres, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.

  There was one slight hitch in Coolidge’s personal affairs in this time. In the autumn of 1931 Coolidge delivered a radio address for New York Life Insurance, prepared by the public relations department, in which he warned policyholders against agents who might try to convince them to change their policies in order to obtain another commission. It was an innocent enough talk, hardly contentious, but an agent, Lewis Tebbetts, sued Coolidge and New York Life for $100,000 each, asserting they had slandered innocent agents. But nothing much came of it: Tebbetts agreed to settle out of court for $2,500, and Coolidge sent Tebbetts a letter saying he had not intended to offend him or any other agent.

  Coolidge remained well-liked in the early years of the Great Depression. During the summer of 1932 there was even talk of a Coolidge nomination for the presidency, but it was nostalgia more than anything else. Coolidge clearly had no intention to run for any office. Those who yearned for a return to the Arcadian days of 1928 couldn’t help wanting to believe that with him back in the White House, it would be possible to turn back the clock. He even received letters criticizing him for not running in 1928, from people who thought there would have been no depression if he had been in the White House. In 1936, with Coolidge in his grave, the Republicans nominated Alf Landon for the presidency, calling the rather bland but honest Landon the “Kansas Coolidge.” This hardly would have been so unless there was a large reservoir of good will for “Silent Cal.”

  Despite Coolidge’s continued popularity, Hoover apparently never consulted Coolidge during his administration, and Coolidge did not offer advice to Hoover. Richard Waldo, Coolidge’s editor at McClure, wrote, “But he was a very lonely man. The failure of his successor to consult with him at all, and the consciousness that close contact of political friends with him would not be well received at the White House, made for a certain disturbance of mind….”

  In the fall of 1932 Coolidge wrote three articles supporting Hoover’s reelection. The Depression, he said, was due to matters beyond Hoover’s control. “In the late winter of 1930 there were many indications of a business revival,” he wrote in the September 10, 1932, issue of the Saturday Evening Post. “About this time there came a worldwide crash in agricultural products. As the season advanced, a large part of the country found itself suffering from a lack of rainfall, which extended over a wide area reaching from the Atlantic seaboard to the Rocky Mountains.” Then the USSR dumped agricultural products on the world market, followed by banking crises in central Europe, then the rest of Europe, and eventually the United States.

  Coolidge presented a situation that was beyond the capacity of government to resolve. “When men in public office have to meet a crisis which they themselves did not in any way create, the measure of credit or blame which should attach to such officeholders is not the intensity of the crisis, nor the danger or damage that results from it, but the manner in which they may meet it and the remedies which they apply to it.” He approved of Hoover’s relief efforts, which went beyond any attempted by previous administrations in similar circumstances. This was surprising: the president who had called for minimal government was supporting aggressive governmental programs to alleviate distress.

  True, Coolidge also called for a balanced budget, lower costs of government, and a sharp reduction in military spending, but the key element was his support for governmental intervention to ease suffering. He did not, moreover, advocate piecemeal approaches, but rather wide and broad strategies and tactics:When a person is suffering from hunger, the commonsense method of relief is to put food into the stomach, whence it is sent to all parts of the body. Under the method of relief that is proposed for the body politic by the critics, instead of providing food in this way to nourish the hands and feet, I suppose that the needle would be used to inject nourishment into the fingers and toes. Under such a treatment the whole body would soon perish and the fingers and toes would become useless. The policy of the president has been to place nourishment in the digestive organs of society in order that through the natural distribution of the channels already in existence the whole body would be strengthened and able to function in the usual way.

  Many have considered Coolidge indifferent to human suffering and unwilling to use government powers to alleviate it, but he demonstrated that he was far from immune to the calamity.

  Coolidge was asked to campaign for Hoover, but was not certain he should. Writing to Everett Sanders, who was the new Republican party chairman and wanted Coolidge on the stump, he said:You know I should be glad to do anything I can to help. My throat, you will remember, always bothers me, and it is in such shape that I do not think I could do much of anything in the way of speaking. Just at present I am having some trouble with my breathing again. I am going to Vermont tomorrow for an indefinite stay, whe
re I can be out of doors, and think I shall be all right when I get a little exercise.

  Coolidge did deliver an address on radio from Madison Square Garden in New York on October 11. He began with, “When I was in Washington…” and the crowd roared with laughter. But according to an associate, Congressman John Tilson, “he had not meant to say anything funny, and was in fact displeased over it.” He delivered another radio address in Hoover’s behalf on the night prior to the election. It did no good. Franklin Delano Roosevelt swamped Hoover.

  On December 14, 1932, Coolidge traveled to New York for the New York Life meeting. There he and his secretary, Harry Ross, met with newsman Henry Stoddard. Not surprisingly, they reminisced and reflected on how the world had changed, during which Coolidge demonstrated a remarkable clarity of political thought. The following year, after discussions with Ross, Everett Sanders set down what Coolidge had said:I have been out of touch so long with political activities that I feel I no longer fit in with these times. Great changes can come in four years. These socialistic notions of government are not of my day. When I was in office, tax reduction, tariff stability, and economy were the things to which I gave attention. We succeeded on those lines. It has always seemed to me that common sense is the real solvent for the nation’s problems at all times—common sense and hard work. When I read of these newfangled things that are now so popular I realize that my time in public affairs is past. I wouldn’t know how to handle them if I were called upon to do so.

  That is why I am through with public life forever. I shall never again hold public office. I shall always do my part to help elect Republican candidates, for I am a party man, but in no other way shall I have anything to do with political matters.

  Coolidge then turned to talk that the Republicans wished to nominate him in 1936. “That cannot be. There is no way I can decline something not yet offered, but I am embarrassed by the discussion of my name.” And he continued:We are in a new era to which I do not belong, and it would not be possible for me to adjust to it.

  These new ideas call for new men to develop them. That task is not for men who believe in the only kind of government I knew anything about. We cannot put everything up to the government without overburdening it. However, I do not care to be criticizing those in power. I’ve never been much good attacking men in public office. If they succeed, the criticism fails; if they fail, the people find it out as quickly as you can tell them.

  By “socialistic notions of government” Coolidge was not referring to the New Deal, which had not yet come to power. He was talking about the activities of his successor, Herbert Hoover.

  While Coolidge and Stoddard spoke in his rooms at the Vanderbilt Hotel, elsewhere in the city the future New Dealers were conferring on the changes they planned to bring to Washington in little more than three months. They intended to alter the relationship of government to the people, to initiate a more activist administration than Hoover’s, who himself had been far more vigorous in applying federal power than Coolidge had been. Nevertheless, Coolidge, while not sharing their vision, seemed to understand the way the world was changing at least as well as they did. Toward the ends of their lives men such as Woodrow Wilson, Robert La Follette, Hiram Johnson, and even Theodore Roosevelt were men of the past, but they still hoped to propagate the visions of their youth. Coolidge, who was soon to die, understood that his times were over; he had no place in the new world. Hoover soon left the White House, and for the rest of his long life would relive the period from 1914 to 1933, arguing and rearguing the past. The Republican Party of the 1930s would do the same, and, although Republicans nominated fairly progressive candidates during the next two decades, the heart of the party would belong to men who remembered Coolidge fondly.

  In a December 21 letter to his former secretary, Ted Clark, Coolidge said, “The fact is I feel worn out,” but he then added, “No one can tell these days what a short time or three or four years may bring forth, but, of course, I know my work is done.”

  On New Year’s Day, 1933, Charles Andrews, who had entered Amherst with Coolidge in 1891 and had gone on to become treasurer of the college, made a call on the Coolidges at the Beeches. Andrews wanted to know how the former president felt. Coolidge said:I am very comfortable because I am not doing anything of any account; but a real effort to accomplish anything goes hard with me. I am too old for my years. I suppose the carrying of responsibilities as I have done takes its toll. I’m afraid I’m all burned out. But I am very comfortable.

  After a while the talk turned to public affairs, and Coolidge returned to themes he had struck in his conversation with Stoddard: In other periods of depression it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground for hope—nothing of man. But there is still religion, which is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That continues as a solid basis for hope and courage.

  That was all he could offer.

  Andrews thought Coolidge looked tired. Grace Coolidge later remarked that he was easily fatigued and walked slowly. In December he had seen his physician, and he took his pulse more often than before.

  On Wednesday, January 4, 1933, Coolidge left the office earlier than usual, and told Harry Ross, “I have an idea that we might stop going down to the office each day and do our work up here. Then we can go out and walk in the open air whenever we choose.”

  The following day he arose early after a bout of indigestion, and after breakfast went to the office and read some newspapers. The larger newspapers carried a story about President-elect Roosevelt’s forthcoming trip to Muscle Shoals; Senator Norris and others, including Chairman Frank Walsh of the New York State Power Authority, would accompany FDR. The trip was a clear sign that the incoming president intended to follow Norris’s suggestion that the government retain Muscle Shoals and use it as the basis for regional development. The government would do just that with the Tennessee Valley Authority. That morning, Coolidge would have realized his efforts to privatize Muscle Shoals had failed. Another news story dealt with Roosevelt’s intention to ask for a tax increase, which he felt was necessary in order to balance the budget. Under the plan, married taxpayers with no children earning $2,500, who previously had not paid taxes, would be assessed $30, and it went up from there, until those earning $1 million would go from $571,100 to $610,980. Coolidge cherished balanced budgets, but this tax increase went against everything he stood for.

  Many newspapers carried news that the American Association for the Advancement of Science had awarded a prize of $1,000 to Henry Eyring of Princeton University, for his pioneering work on quantum mechanics and subatomic physics. During his post-presidential years Coolidge advocated teaching Latin and Greek in colleges, and in general maintaining the kind of curriculum he had experienced at Amherst. Now he was reading of the dawn of the atomic age. That day the papers also reported that Yale Law School would drastically revise its curriculum; students would have complete freedom from formal courses in their first two years of study. Calvin Coolidge’s world was indeed fading.

  At 10:00 AM Coolidge called for Ross, and said he wanted to return home. Grace Coolidge was about to leave, and the president asked whether she wanted the car. “No,” she replied, “it’s such a fine day I think I’ll walk.” Coolidge and Ross entered the house, and after a while Coolidge went to the kitchen for a glass of water. He walked outside and spoke to the gardener for a moment, and then went upstairs. Coolidge took off his jacket and vest and prepared to shave. Then he keeled over and fell to the floor. He was dead, at the age of sixty-one.

  The news spread over the front pages of the next day’s newspapers. President Hoover declared a thirty-day mourning period. Congress adjourned. Newspaper reporters contacted many prominent people for their reactions, and unsurprisingly, virtually all had kind words for Coolidge. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called the loss “irreparable.” Secretary of State Henry Stimson was “shocked and grieved.” Se
nator Hiram Johnson, who rarely had anything positive to say of the president, said, “His passing will be a matter of exceeding regret to all Americans, and the whole country will sorrow.” Reporters contacted even Jim Lucey, Coolidge’s shoemaker acquaintance from Northampton, who said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. He was the best friend I ever had.” Gifford Pinchot, his old political foe, told a reporter, “The loss that millions feel so deeply is not merely the loss of an ex-president, it is not merely the loss of America’s first private citizen, it is the loss of Calvin Coolidge the man,” and he went on to praise “his simplicity, his homely wisdom, his quiet personal courage—these are the things for which he will be best remembered.” Then he added, “As president he typified an era. That era is passing or has passed. Coolidge will be remembered as its symbol. And his passing is the symbol of its passing also.”

  The newspaper editorials chimed in, but were understandably more circumspect. “Few presidents have had a more individual quality of speech, of manner, of thought,” wrote the New York Herald Tribune. The Atlanta Constitution offered, “He was a unique figure in the annals of American public life, possessing public confidence in his sincerity and uprightness of character.” The New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote: “Calvin Coolidge’s stature as president will grow with the years.” The verdict of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was: “Probably no other president, not even Theodore Roosevelt, was as personally popular with all classes of his fellow citizens as was Calvin Coolidge.” The Los Angeles Times wrote: “It is too early to anticipate the verdict of history upon either Coolidge or the Coolidge administration, but it does seem probable the future will regard him as a man who was wiser than his generation.” And the Portland Oregonian echoed many editorials in saying, “History will record that Coolidge was just the kind of president that his time called for.”