Coolidge
It is the last Sunday of the month….and of the year for that matter, but the relevant point is it’s the last Sunday, meaning it’s time for another president, making this weeks book Coolidge, by Amity Shlaes.
John Calvin Coolidge Jr. was born July 4, 1872 in Plymouth Notch, VT to John Calvin Coolidge Sr and Victoria Josephine Moor Coolidge. His mother died when he was 12 and his younger sister Abigail died when he was 18. Coolidge himself was not the healthiest of kids, but healthy enough that when he finished school, they had to decide where he was going to college, ultimately settling on Amherst College in Massachusetts.
Now, from his earliest time, Coolidge was a shy, quiet kid, which did not serve him well during his initial time in college, as others of his classmates found fraternities to join, but Coolidge was left out, become an “ouden” which means “nothing.” And he was nothing for the first three years of college. He almost didn’t make it past his first semester, but Coolidge Sr insisted he see it through, and once he finished his first year, he was comfortable enough in his surroundings to finish the course.
Between his sophomore and junior years, Coolidge found his voice and became quite a skilled debater, and also found that his quiet, sly sense of humor, could win people to his side more than anything, and by the time he was a senior, he was accepted to a fraternity Phi Delta Gamma. Amherst was formative for Coolidge for another reason: he formed many life long friendships, would help out Amherst men frequently throughout his career, and he took a philosophy class with Charles Edward Garman, who exhorted his students to join the stream of life through service, not just observe from the sideline. It’s that last one that really launched Coolidge on his path.
Now, after finishing college, Coolidge had to figure out his next step. He had sort of determined to study law, and really wanted to go to law school at Harvard; however, the expense of it determined him to go the old fashioned route, which was to study with a lawyer. He then set himself the goal of becoming a lawyer in two years, versus the usual three, and to get married, both of which he accomplished, becoming a lawyer in 1897, and marrying Grace Anna Goodhue on October 5, 1905. The two of them quickly had two children, John born in 1906, and Calvin Jr born in 1908.
From the time Coolidge finished his clerkship and opened his own practice, he became involved in local politics, moving up the ranks of the local Republican party, and becoming known as a man who could win votes. But not in the usual way. Usually the vote winning was done by joining social clubs. Coolidge, was not a social guy though. So he earned votes through one on one conversation, and good service. Like literally, he took his philosophy instructors words to heart, and believed in giving good service, which earned him loyalty. Additionally, he earned a reputation as a one who’s silence masked an excellent mind, and when he did speak, he was right. Pretty much always right.
Through his skills as an orator, his persistent and excellent service, and knowledge of law, Coolidge eventually became governor of Massachusetts, in which capacity he was serving in 1919 when the Boston Police Department staged a union walkout. Coolidge, in the intervening years and through his service, had also earned a reputation as a negotiator, and one who excelled at finding the middle ground and compromise between two opposing view points. And so when BPD walked out en masse, the nation watched with baited breathe to see how Coolidge would react. And how he reacted was not what anyone was expecting. There were mass riots in the wake of the strike. Looting, burning, deaths, rapes. And Coolidge, whose knowledge of law was acknowledged to be superior, determined that the police had no right to strike to the detriment of public safety. And fired the entire police force, using national guard to restore order while new officers were hired.
And he had no pity on the officers who came back after tyring to get their jobs back. Or rather, he did pity them, he assisted them in finding work where he could, but not as police officers. But this unflinching, unblinking reaction in the interest of the people of Massachusetts as a whole, not just for one special interest group, brought him to national attention. And his name, among certain groups, started being floated for president, not vice-president. But Coolidge wasn’t actually looking for such a spotlight, and when he was offered VP by Warren G Harding, he gladly accepted, and was flattered when invited to sit in on cabinet meetings.
And as he silently sat in the cabinet meetings, he paid attention to the secretary of treasury Andrew Mellon, and agreed with Harding that the budget needed to be brought under control. And he agreed with Mellon’s cutting of tax rates. And when Harding died on August 2, 1923, Coolidge knew that the best way forward was to ensure that nothing changed while he took the helm. When he received word that Harding had died, he was visiting with his father, and his father, who was both a public notary and a justice of the peace, swore him in in front of gathered reporters.
And then he kept Harding’s cabinet exactly the same throughout the end of Harding’s term. And while he had been learning from the cabinet meetings and listening to everything Mellon said, he also knew he needed to learn more. So he set up weekly meetings with the director of the bureau of budget, Herbert Mayhew Lord. And he kept those meetings up through the rest of Harding’s term, and throughout his own term from March 4, 1925 til he stepped down March 4, 1929.
So he spent his entire four years learning intensely about budgeting a national economy and high finance. This went hand in hand with his own tendency towards a tight budget, but over the four years he sat his own presidency, Coolidge learned to make pennies scream for mercy. He and Lord got government agencies to cut their spending, then cut again. Additionally, Coolidge had immediate proof that Mellon’s tax plan of slashing rates worked. Tax revenues in 1923 were $1,691,089,534.56. Tax revenues in 1924 were $1,841,759,316.80. Turns out Mellon was right. If you leave people more of their own money to spend, they will spend it. And the tax revenues poured into the budget.
But as Lord and Mellon pointed out, the budget was a fraction, with government expenditures as the numerator, and commerce as the denominator. As long as commerce was allowed to blossom, unfettered by government regulations, then it could outpace government spending. But only if the government actually reigned in it’s own spending. And to that effect, Coolidge and Lord encouraged all government agencies to slash their own spending, offering incentives to cut spending by 2%, then cut it more. And Coolidge didn’t just talk the talk. He insisted the White House budget and live within that budget. When the head housekeeper failed to fall in line with this, he replaced her with someone who would budget as he demanded.
On June 30, 1924, Coolidge’s younger son Calvin Jr, when playing tennis on the White House lawn, developed a blister. This in turn became infected. To the point that the infection turned to blood poisoning, which resulted in Calvin’s death within a week of blood poisoning. The nation mourned with the Coolidge’s, and Calvin and Grace never quite recovered. This, along with Coolidge’s time in the White House, strained the marriage, never to the point of divorce, but Coolidge, always quiet, became more reserved and withdrawn, and prone to snapping when irritated, which, as all introvert’s know, being around people is extremely irritating. Unfortunately, as President, Coolidge had no choice but to be around people, constantly, throughout his tenure as president.
The constant austerity measures, the death of their son, the sniping press, all of this weighed on Coolidge. And during their summer retreat in 1927 to South Dakota, Coolidge called a press conference, wherein he handed out pieces of paper to all the newspaper men that read “I do not choose to run for president in 1928.” Now, the entire nation thought this was a political feint, and read the message as
“I do not CHOOSE to run for president in 1928.” With the emphasis on choose. Meaning, if Coolidge was nominated at the republican convention, he would run again, based on the people’s choice. However, they placed the emphasis on the wrong word. Cooledge meant what he wrote, and the emphasis was on “I do not choose to run for president in 1928.” He had no intention of running again.
The problem with making that announcement in 1927, is that this effectively made him a lame duck president. Congress stopped playing ball with him. The press started ripping into him. And Coolidge didn’t really care. Except for one thing. In his final year in the White House, he did manage to work quite closely with Secretary of State Frank B Kellogg in crafting and drafting the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, aka the Pact of Paris, aka General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy. This was an international agreement in which the signing nations agreed not to use war to solve disputes.
This treaty was passed almost unanimously by the senate in 1928. In addition to France and Germany signing this, many smaller nations, who were aware of their own vulnerabilities, signed, including Ethiopia, which was feeling very threatened by the political machinations of Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Cuba, which Coolidge visited in early 1928, and he was offered this week’s cocktail, El Presidente, which he declined to accept based on the United States current law of prohibition. He did not believe that the laws that applied to the people did not also apply to the elected officials.
Now, Coolidge learned many things from Mellon and Lord, including how to read the markets. But he combined this with his own political knowledge and made the statement to his Secret Service body guard, Edmund Starling, that “Well, they’re going to elect that superman Hoover, and he’s going to have some trouble. He’s going to have to spend money.” He went on, “But he won’t spend enough. Then the Democrats will come in and they’ll spend money like water. But they don’t know anything about money.”
And by the time Hoover was sworn in on March 4, 1929, Coolidge knew a market crash was coming. One of his own family quirks was to literally not put all their eggs in one basket, meaning the family savings were spread out over many banks, in amounts of several hundred to several thousand dollars in individual accounts over more than 20 banks. This resulted in the Coolidge’s weathering the early years of the great depression quite well, as not all banks failed during this event. So that Coolidge always had money to hand, and was able to help friends out when needed.
Additionally, he was offered a job writing a column for a paper, plus part of the proceeds from any syndication of that column, which resulted in a consistent payday for Coolidge from 1930 to 1931, when he stopped writing the column. But he earned a significant sum during that time, like $2 or $3,000 per column, PLUS syndication royalties, which kept the family quite comfortable up until Coolidge’s death at home on January 5, 1933, just before Roosevelt was sworn into office. But his prediction was 100% accurate. Because Coolidge knew men, and he knew how to read political currents.
I admire his absolute integrity. He never insisted the nation do something that he himself was not willing to do. When the Mississippi caused massive flooding along her length, he knew that the federal government had no business doing anything, that the damage and recovery was up to the individual states effected by the flooding. And when his own home state of Vermont was later flooded due to heavy rains, he kept that consistency, leaving Vermont to fix herself, which she did quite capably. He never signed a law that he was unwilling to follow himself, and used pocket vetoes to tremendous effect.
When Coolidge stepped up as VP in 1921, unemployment had been at 5.7 million Americans. When he left the office in 1929 unemployment was at 1.8 million. Manufacturing output, steel and iron production, had all increased dramatically in the intervening 8 years. The national debt had decreased from $28billion to 17.65 billion, meaning Coolidge’s tax cuts and revenue acts had decreased national debt by 1/3. Additionally, the budget had a surplus every year. National debt decrease, budget surplus….These are terms that are obsolete in today’s political landscape. Yet just 100 years ago, Cooldige managed both.
I think he was a remarkable man. He accomplished much in the short time he was in office, and effectively predicted the great Depression, and the catastrophe that would be Roosevelt’s response to the depression. I’m not quite sure where I’m ranking him yet. Somewhere near the center top, but he hasn’t beat out Cleveland.
This book was quite good. Some of it took a bit to slog through, but that is also my personal preference for shorter chapters, which does not impact the writing at all….just makes it easier to find a decent stopping spot in the evening. Overall, Shlaes demonstrated a thorough knowledge of her subject matter, and expressed the key points quite well.
