Class _ 
 
 i)i!glitN?_C,.{ 
 
 CW^flilGlIT DEPOSm 
 
CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 Farmer — Mayor — Governor — President 
 
 HIS LIFE — ITS LESSON 
 
THE CORNERSTOXE 
 
 "Allured to brigiiter worlds, and led the way." 
 
 — Goldsmith. 
 
 THE MOTHER OF THE PRESIDENT 
 
 "About his cradle all was poor and mean save only the 
 source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When 
 she faded away in his tender years, from her death bed in humble 
 poverty she dowered her son with greatness. There can be no 
 proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother." 
 
 — Lincoln Day Proclamation — I'Jl'J — C. C. 
 
CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 His First Biography 
 
 From Cornerstone to Capstone 
 To the Accession 
 
 By R. M. WASHBURN 
 
 Author of "Smith's Barn" 
 
 BOSTON 
 SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 \i<y+5uj 1^ 
 
I f I K. 
 
 .V/31 
 
 COPTBIGHT, 1923 
 
 ROBERT M. WASHBURN 
 Boston 
 
 All lights reserved 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 THE MURRAY PKINTIKC COMPANT 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
 
 BOUND Br THE BOSTON B00KBIMDI;4C COMPANT 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
 
 C1A759434 
 
 OCT 17 1923 
 
0-^ 
 
 
 WITH AFFECTION 
 
 TO 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER BIRD 
 
 The First Political Layman in Massachusetts 
 
The Secret 
 
 Silence — Uncommon Sense — Wit — Mystery 
 
 Fidelity — Preparation — Two Allies — Fate 
 
 Omnia Procter Strepitum et Clamorem^ 
 
 Everything except noise. — Interpreted for outside of Boston. 
 
FATE 
 
 It was only a plain New England farm among 
 the folks of the hills of Vermont. There was 
 neither train nor telephone nor trolley. It was much 
 as God had made it. There lay a child, young and 
 weak and helpless, and a mother proud in the gift 
 of prophecy. And there stood by the child's cradle 
 one great and powerful, Fate. She had sought him 
 out in his simple atmosphere. Her protecting arm 
 she raised above him. She took him by the hand 
 and ever led him on. She saw in him virtue to be 
 recognized. Capacity was quick to see and to seize 
 opportunity. She commissioned into the service a 
 good and a great merchant of Boston. She cried 
 gangway to a creditable public servant, who stood 
 high and third on Beacon Hill, who blocked his 
 progress, who was then drafted into the grand army 
 of the politically dead. She commanded striking 
 policemen to open a path before him. A great Police 
 Commissioner gave wings to his feet. She led him 
 towards horizons as boundless as the seas, fame, 
 power and financial freedom. She set him in the 
 seats of the mighty. Even Death rode on before him 
 and cleared the way. 
 
IN EXPIATION? 
 
 I HAVE known him for sixteen years, since we were 
 in the House in Massachusetts in 1908. In 1913, 
 when he was Senate-Chairman of the Committee on 
 Railroads, I was House-Chairman. For five years 
 we were legislative colleagues. 
 
 His First Biography is an attempt to write of a 
 personal friend as he is. He has a marked indi- 
 viduality which appeals and stimulates an honest, 
 human story; history and romance, fact and fancy. 
 It seeks to cover the whole keyboard, setting out 
 cheerfully into the happy notes of the treble and 
 venturing at times among the gloomier notes of the 
 bass. It ventures to touch upon his particular indi- 
 vidualities, not only for the truth but also to lighten 
 the portrait with amusement, it is thought innocent. 
 It thus cinches its sincerity, sets off its praise. It 
 analyzes honestly his success and its causes. It also 
 attempts to respect the proprieties of the Presidency. 
 
 It drives at quality not quantity, symbolized by 
 the man and by his characteristic caution to the 
 Massachusetts Senate: 
 
 "Be Brief." 
 
 R. M. W. 
 
 236 Bay State Road, 
 
 Boston. 
 September 15, 1923. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 FACE 
 
 I. Calvin the Silent 3 
 
 11. Among the Hills ..... 7 
 
 III. Amherst '95 20 
 
 IV. Bar, Ballots and Babes .... 35 
 V. His Unofficial Life 47 
 
 VI. Up Beacon Hill 48 
 
 VII. The Two Allies ..... 73 
 
 VIII. A Profile 96 
 
 IX. Along the Potomac 101 
 
 X. Some High Tides 120 
 
 XL The Lesson 148 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Mother of the President . . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 FACE 
 
 Birthplace. The Cilley Store .... 6 
 
 Cow and Cal 16 
 
 Vacations on the Farm 20 
 
 "The Executive Mansion." Northampton . 34 
 
 Coolidge and His First Biographer ... 48 
 
 The Mock Session 50 
 
 The Governor. The Police Commissioner . 72 
 
 For Better for Worse 96 
 
 The Three Coolidge Men. Washington . . 100 
 
 The Place of the Accession 114 
 
 His Political Ladder 148 
 
CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Calvin the Silent 
 
 *7 have never been hurt by what I 
 have not said." — C. C. 
 
 On the fourth day of July, 1872, more than 
 fifty-one years ago, in the columns of a news 
 sheet. The Blueberry, which succeeded occasion- 
 ally in making its appearance in the town of 
 Plymouth, Vermont, appeared the laconic entry: 
 "Born, to Victoria Josephine Moor and John 
 Calvin Coolidge, a man-child, John Calvin 
 Coolidge, Junior." These tidings of great joy 
 did not cause banks to close or business to be 
 tied up, for that was a country of farmers only, 
 and those who read it were tillers of the soil 
 and not seers. However, the little stranger, with 
 a foresight sound and characteristic, had chosen 
 as the day of his advent one which the neighbors 
 were bound to celebrate. 
 
 The child, an auburn-haired, smooth-faced 
 
 3 
 
4 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 babe with a proboscis somewhat attenuated, was 
 as unique as he lay in his cradle as he was to 
 be as a man. He seemed troubled. The atmos- 
 phere of ambition enshrouded him. He seemed 
 restless and anxious for change and for prog- 
 ress. The baubles which divert and stimulate 
 the prosaic young seemingly had no charm for 
 him, nor did anything which tender hearts or 
 wise heads could plan. He lay in his new bed 
 and cried and when he had tired of crying, he 
 wept and then he cried again. All this appar- 
 ently with deliberation and for a purpose and 
 as a means to an end. 
 
 For the first effort of the child and 
 
 the man has been always^ not to play 
 
 but to think. 
 
 A mother solicitous through unselfish love 
 sat by his side, intent upon bringing him peace; 
 and a father with the more selfish purpose of 
 sleep. The family physician bent over the crib 
 with that rural versatility which had familiar- 
 ized him with the whole gamut of bodily afflic- 
 tions, from rheumatics to melancholia. Noted 
 psychologists too were added to the throng, not 
 alone for the advancement of medical science 
 
CALVIN THE SILENT 5 
 
 but with the hope of solving a problem which 
 seemed to baffle all. 
 
 These all followed his infant gaze as it swept 
 the plain walls of that Vermont farmhouse. 
 They watched his eyes as they rested and became 
 riveted upon the only decoration in that room, a 
 portrait of that Great Liberator of the Dutch, of 
 the low lands of Holland, a Prince and a Count 
 of Nassau, William the Silent. And they gave it 
 
 to the child. 
 
 Then peace came to that household and to its 
 mother. The father slept. The general practi- 
 tioner went his way and the noted specialists 
 returned to the great centers. And the child 
 studied the face and the features of the portrait 
 and then, placing the end of one of his small 
 fore-fingers upon the mouth of that great prince 
 and the other upon one of his ears, he too was 
 content and happy and he too slept, and peace 
 overwhelmed that small house and that small 
 
 family. 
 
 And those who sat about the child construed 
 the lessons of what they had seen to be: first, 
 that he would leave the hill country of his birth 
 and also live close to his adopted meadow lands 
 along the banks of the Connecticut; and second. 
 
6 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 that he fastened the hopes of the political suc- 
 cess that was to be his upon the determination, 
 not to talk but to listen, not upon the power of 
 speech but upon the possibilities of silence. 
 From that hour he then became and has since 
 continued, 
 
 Calvin the Silent.* 
 
 Title originated in His First Biography, First Edition, 1920. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 Among the Hills 
 
 **VermoTit is my birthright. Here, 
 one gets close to nature, in the moun- 
 tains, in the brooks, the waters of 
 which hurry to the sea; in the lakes, 
 shining like silver in their green set- 
 ting; fields tilled, not by machinery 
 but by the brain and hand of man. 
 My folks are happy and contented. 
 They belong to themselves, live within 
 their income, and fear 
 no many — C. C 
 
 Calvin Coolidge is proud of Vermont and 
 her nature, his folks and their simplicity. Their 
 praises he often sings. Otherwise, he seldom 
 praises things; or men, whether under obliga- 
 tion to them or not. Independent of praise him- 
 self, he cannot understand its sweet stimulus to 
 others. He knows the plain people. He thus 
 conserves their rights. He is one of them. It 
 has been said that God loves the plain people 
 most because he made so many of them. This 
 
 7 
 
8 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 story of the boyhood of the President among the 
 hills of Vermont is a story of a faithful and 
 industrious son. This is all. This is much. He 
 has always led an orderly life, of preparation 
 for tomorrow, lest the grasshopper become a 
 burden. There is an old adage: 
 
 ''The bee gains little from the floioer, 
 A stone a day will raise a tower. 
 Yet the hive is filled, the tower is 
 
 done 
 If steadily the work goes on." 
 
 The young are impatient of counsel from 
 those who have already walked the way. They 
 often insist upon burning their wings around 
 their own lamps. A young woman whom a 
 grandmother at an afternoon tea had ventured 
 to advise did not hesitate to say: "Grandmother, 
 you are wrong." Her grandmother then re- 
 plied as she handed the child a buttered scone: 
 "Mary, if you were about to climb the Matter- 
 horn and a guide should tell you that your shoes 
 should be cleated, would you say to him: 'You 
 are wrong.' He has climbed the Matterhom. 
 So have I, for life is but a series of summits to 
 be sought." What man is there who would not 
 
AMONG THE HILLS 9 
 
 live his life again if he could and would cap- 
 italize his experience and that of others. What 
 mental agony like the realization of mistakes, 
 irreparable, where the nail holes always remain. 
 History gives each one of us a blank page, a 
 fresh and clean page to write his history upon. 
 Calvin Coolidge has lived with his ears and 
 his eyes wide open for counsel. He has always 
 been a student of history because he believes it 
 has a lesson for today and for tomorrow. His 
 mind is always open. Should he be a candidate 
 for the Presidency in 1924 against the great 
 motor-maker, the Phoenix of Detroit, the issue 
 may well be Ford's creed: "All history is bunk." 
 Boy and man, small and great, he has always 
 had purpose, and determination enough to carry 
 it out. He has always done not only the day's 
 work but he has done it during the hours of the 
 day. To him, the hours of the evening have 
 been hours for forward thinking and forward 
 planning. The young man is too much content 
 with his comfort of today. He is too apt not to 
 look beyond the dinner and the dance of tonight. 
 He forgets the day when perhaps a cloud of 
 storks may complicate his situation. Hence his 
 lot, easy today, is a struggle tomorrow. Cool- 
 
10 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 idge then as now was never content simply to 
 contemplate the small single stickers securely 
 sheltered on the placid surface within the break- 
 water, but his glass has always been trained on 
 the rough outside sea, where he was to set sail. 
 Even today his crest is not the words: Je suis 
 arrive. Enough of philosophy. Tlieory is easy. 
 Practice is hard. It is easy to write a recipe 
 for the Presidency but hard to secure an elec- 
 tion to the Legislature. 
 
 This is another story of The Log Cabin 
 to The White House 
 
 It is true that our hero did not come from as 
 far back as Lincoln. He has gone as far, how- 
 ever, for while he may not have been bom in a 
 log cabin it must not be forgotten that the civili- 
 zation of his day has advanced. Relatively his 
 termini have been as far apart. 
 
 John Calvin Coolidge, the father of the Presi- 
 dent, is a farmer at Plymouth, Vermont, as his 
 ancestors have been before him. Plymouth, 
 also known as "The Notch," is in Windsor 
 County eleven miles north of Ludlow the nearest 
 railroad center for the town, on the Boston and 
 Maine Road. It is southeast from Rutland. 
 
AMONG THE HILLS 11 
 
 The family originally settled at Watertown in 
 Massachusetts in 1630. John Calvin Coolidge, 
 Senior, has earned the respect of the community, 
 for he has sat in the State Legislature, House 
 and Senate. He has also been Constable, Col- 
 lector, Superintendent of Schools, Deputy Sher- 
 iff, Notary Public, Selectman and State Asses- 
 sor. He has also served on the staff of former 
 Governor W. W. Stickney. The quantity of 
 these public trusts, which he has been unable to 
 resist, no one holds public office willingly, may 
 well be set off against the quality of the Presi- 
 dency and have led the boy Cal to look upon the 
 latter as a reasonable aspiration for a Coolidge. 
 Of such has been his atmosphere. 
 
 When Cal was born his father kept the village 
 store and he also shod horses and collected in- 
 surance premiums. There is little to be done 
 that he has not done. 
 
 His father is a dirt farmer and not a 
 
 so-called gentleman farmer, by which 
 
 is meant, that the farm supports him 
 
 and not he the farm. 
 
 It is a plain farm in its buildings. There never 
 was a telephone upon it until August 3, 1923. 
 
12 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 It was later removed. The hand of civilization 
 has hesitated before it. There are many like it 
 in Vermont. His father married, first, Vic- 
 toria Josephine Moor, the mother of the Presi- 
 dent, who died March 14, 1885, when he was 
 twelve years old. He later married Carrie G. 
 Brown, who died in 1920, and who was as much 
 of a mother to the boy in his maturer years as 
 any step-mother could be. The only other child 
 was a daughter, Abigail G. Coolidge, an own 
 sister of Calvin Coolidge, who died March 6, 
 1889, at the age of thirteen. 
 
 John Calvin Coolidge, Junior, our hero, first 
 met his father, July 4, 1872. He had not then 
 formed his later faculty of fixing faces and 
 names, even that of his father, a great asset in 
 politics. It's sweet to hear one's name, even 
 that of Jones. His name the boy wrote J. Cal- 
 vin Coolidge until he located in Northampton, 
 when he became simply Calvin Coolidge. With 
 characteristic foresight Cal had planned to 
 arrive in Plymouth independent of transporta- 
 tion facilities upon a national holiday, which 
 the family began to recognize with a double 
 propriety, of the strength of which they then 
 had small appreciation. He was born in the 
 
AMONG THE HILLS 
 
 1 
 
 Q 
 
 rear right hand room, as one faces the house, of 
 what is now known as "The Cilley Store." He 
 was a red-haired baby. 
 
 He is the first red-haired President of 
 the United States. 
 
 In his school days, he was known as "Red" 
 Coolidge. In the plain atmosphere of his birth 
 and in the individuality which he early devel- 
 oped, he came to suggest Abraham Lincoln. He 
 became known for his unique speech, that is, 
 when he spoke. Calvin the Silent he was and 
 always has been. When one says as little as he 
 says, it ought to be good. The opportunity to 
 concentrate is great. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge was good raw material. He 
 had an instinctive sense of right and character 
 enough to live it out. His father says that he 
 was a good and industrious boy, that he never 
 had to tell him what to do for it was done. "He's 
 always been that and I guess he always will be. 
 He wasn't extraordinary. He did his work at 
 school. He was a great hand on the farm. I 
 made no rules because then there's no chance to 
 break them." His teachers unite today in the 
 
14 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 testimony that he was a good student, quiet, 
 "'kind of stately," 
 
 dignified and not mischievous and that he kept 
 to himself. He was a faithful boy. He was 
 neither popular nor unpopular in the town, liked 
 or disliked. If the boy Cal ever looked upon 
 the hearts of the village maidens as citadels to 
 be taken, his campaigns must have been con- 
 ducted cunningly, for there is no justification, 
 even of a suspicion. If they in their turn did 
 not seek unduly to annex the scion of the leading 
 house in the town, forgetting a maidenly mod- 
 esty still indulged in by the old-fashioned, it 
 was because he had not confided in them his 
 accession to the Presidency, which Fate had de- 
 creed to him. 
 
 On one occasion, for some undetermined rea- 
 son, having been found at a village dance, where 
 he had refrained from leading The Quadrille, 
 The Ladies Chain or indulging in The Portland 
 Fancy, his grandmother, who was one of the old 
 school, whatever that may mean, rewarded his 
 virtue with one dollar. Cal never made a dollar 
 more easily, for he and the jazz have always 
 been strangers. He has always been immune 
 
AMONG THE HILLS 15 
 
 from the frailties which assail human beings. 
 
 He has never been spanked, boy or 
 
 man, either by hand in the nursery 
 
 or by machinery at the polls. 
 
 One night his aunt was sleeping at the house. 
 She heard steps on the first floor. Fearing the 
 loss of the Coolidge crown jewels, she donned 
 the kimono kept hanging in all well-appointed 
 houses, opened the door and went downstairs 
 where she found little Cal. He explained that 
 he was filling the wood-bin, which he had forgot- 
 ten. He declined to retire, in reply to her plea. 
 He would finish the job. He did. Calvin Cool- 
 idge never retires, he goes to bed. He is never 
 ill, sometimes sick. He was born, not in Boston, 
 but in Vermont. 
 
 One Sunday morning at church when the por- 
 tieres had been drawn back and the choir un- 
 covered, pursuant to the practice of the times, 
 and the minister was well under way, little Cal 
 fell asleep, it must be confessed with some 
 shame. Then a small boy, behind, forthwith 
 plunged a forefinger into Cal's warm-hued hair, 
 which finger he then rested upon the pew-top 
 and proceeded to tump, after the manner of the 
 
16 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 village smith. This caused much unholy mer- 
 riment in the congregation. Such homely hap- 
 penings as these have been harvested with some 
 difficulty, but with the hope of picturing the 
 human atmosphere in which our little plant was 
 nurtured. Cal first went to school in the little 
 red schoolhouse at Plymouth, the building now 
 having been succeeded by another. 
 
 He early took his place upon the farm. While 
 many of the boys of today are feverishly putting 
 on the golf green, Cal was happy in pursuing to 
 its lair the sportive potato. He early and always 
 has been an artist in the mowin', where he has 
 found physical strength, character and a pan- 
 ama hat vital. He early became an adept in 
 divorcing the lowing herd which winds slowly 
 o'er the lea from the raw material which makes 
 for butter and cheese. It is a rare distinction 
 which has come to the bovines of Plymouth, to 
 be milked by a President. He has always 
 adorned a hayrake with as much facility as a 
 reviewing stand. 
 
 In later years, a cloud-burst has broken upon 
 the people, portraits of Cal in smock frock and 
 cowhide boots, an inheritance from his grand- 
 father, his grandfather's legislative attire. The 
 
AMONG THE HILLS 17 
 
 sordid have been quick to suspect and have 
 looked upon them as a costume which Cal 
 assumes for effect upon the electorate. 
 
 These he wore when he was obscure. 
 These he wears when he is great. 
 
 According to the late Elihu Burritt: "It is as 
 much the uniform of the English farmer laborer 
 as is the red-coat that of the English soldier." 
 These suspicious ones do not know Cal, for his 
 essence is simplicity and sincerity. He is as 
 much himself at work in smock-frock and boots 
 as the sometimes effete children of Beacon 
 Street, when they loll in dinner jackets, or 
 decollete and lapis lazuli. 
 
 His life became early a series of but two 
 sensations, of work and recuperation for work. 
 This habit has so fastened itself upon him that 
 he has always gone home at vacation time to 
 take his place upon the farm. He has never 
 played, boy or man, marbles, baseball or any- 
 thing, except for a fortnight's lapse at golf, 
 when he was satisfied of the error of his way, re- 
 pented, reformed, retired and denied. His only 
 avocations have been the gratification of an 
 almost instinctive philosophical sense with the 
 
18 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 best books, a love of nature which shows in his 
 speeches, and the habit of walking. 
 
 Apparently he has ordered his life 
 wisely. 
 
 He prepared for college, graduating in 1890 
 at Black River Academy in Ludlow. On his 
 graduation he delivered an "Oration on His- 
 tory." Most of the orations in the country are 
 delivered by the young in the tepid days of 
 June, when "The boy stood on the burning 
 deck," and "Horatius at the bridge" are com- 
 mon echoes. Although qualified for college at 
 eighteen, Cal studied a year at the Academy at 
 St. Johnsbury, also in his native state. 
 
 When he had exhausted the educational re- 
 sources of the county, he said : "Father, do you 
 want me to take my place on the farm?" There 
 was no discussion at home, whether he should or 
 should not go to college. His father has always 
 been proud of his son; and silent, as all Cool- 
 idges and Vermonters. Fate had determined 
 that the boy should go. He went. This is the 
 whole story of the farm, of a faithful son, indus- 
 trious at home and at school. It is not a long 
 story because like the boy it is a story, not of 
 
AMONG THE HILLS 19 
 
 quantity but of quality. The story of the boy is 
 the story of the man, the whole story. It is a 
 good deal of a story. 
 
 Cal he was. Col he is. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 Amherst *95 
 
 ''TERRAS IRRADIE\r 
 
 For those some few of our readers who are 
 happier perhaps in some patois rather than in 
 lingua Latina these words, the Amherst motto, 
 are interpreted to read : Thou shalt enlighten the 
 earth. Surely Calvin Coolidge has already 
 removed his light from under a bushel, for his 
 Alma Mater. 
 
 September 20, 1891. stands high in the 
 annals of the burg of Plymouth. Then father 
 Coolidge hitched the old bay mare into the 
 Tilbury to drive Cal to Ludlow to take the 
 train for Amherst. It was an eventful day for 
 the town and for Cal. The boy spread upon 
 his cot bed his wardrobe preparatory to pack- 
 ing, with all the anxious care of one about to 
 take his first journey from home. There was 
 a full quota of linen of a type which could be 
 inverted, kno^vn familiarly as reversible cuffs. 
 A sampler not unknown in those days was last 
 considerately folded and enclosed by him in 
 
 20 
 
AMHERST '95 21 
 
 his reticule. Into this had been wrought words 
 to read: "The Notch," in squares, each by the 
 skilful and romantic hands of a maiden of 
 the hamlet, who thus sought to protect for them- 
 selves his heart, immune from the wiles of the 
 sirens at a seminary bearing the odd name of 
 Smith and lying adjacent to the academic 
 domains. Their little hearts would have rippled 
 and they would have qualified for sanitariums 
 could they have then known that Cal was about 
 to take the road which led towards Lake Cham- 
 plain and the house of Goodhue, by the way 
 of his college town and his adopted city of 
 Northampton. Worse than this he retains the 
 sampler. That great epochmarker of John T. 
 Wheelwright, Harvard '76, which blazed a trail 
 in literature and shrivelled Dickens, known as 
 "Rollo's Journey to Cambridge," looked upon 
 by Cal as a sort of Baedeker, he carefully 
 tucked inside his tunic. An "interlinear," to 
 interpret foreign languages, was unknown in 
 his library. At the last moment he delayed 
 a somewhat impatient father long enough to 
 run to the village store for a supply of "Wrig- 
 ley's P. K. Chewing Sweet," enough to safely 
 
22 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 carry* him through the fall term. His father 
 was later encouraged to look upon this as a 
 humanizing transition on the part of a boy who 
 had hitherto done few things like other boys. 
 Hence this homely incident is recited here for 
 their encouragement. 
 
 Then Plymouth had an Amherst man 
 and Cal become great in the town, 
 
 which now looks back with wonder and humili- 
 ation that it could have been so easily impressed. 
 In those days such a step as this was no small 
 distinction, when now it is not a matter for 
 notice. Then, it was a stake-buoy in the life 
 of father and son, for the boy was leaving 
 home for the valley of the Connecticut where 
 he was to study and to live. Cal left the smock- 
 frock hanging on a peg in the front entry at 
 home, touching evidence of his absence. The 
 cowhide boots stood in a corner of the barn 
 and Cal least feared that they would be pur- 
 loined for a village dance. There is strong 
 suspicion that the boy broke his usual rule of 
 taciturnity at the station long enough to inquire 
 
 * A deliberate and proud use of the only split infinitive 
 in Boston. Endorsed by C. C. To be noted and condoned by 
 the Hon. Robert Grant, Doctor of Letters, Harvard. 
 
AMHERST '95 23 
 
 the fare to Amherst. This exception was per- 
 haps justified. 
 
 Coolidge became a member of the class of 
 1895. He then as now was unassuming, he went 
 his own way. He was silent. What he said, 
 when if he said it, was good. When he had 
 unpacked his portmanteau, which travellers 
 carried in those days and had deposited it with 
 the reticule in the closet, and had spread about 
 his room the family photographs pursuant to 
 the practice of the times, not forgetting a pic- 
 ture of the farm on the wall, 
 
 he began immediately a methodical 
 
 order of life as has always been his 
 
 wont. 
 
 He took no part in athletics. Hence he was not 
 thus facilitated into the public notice. He 
 never tackled low nor did he ever know the 
 exhilaration of seeking to snare in the outer 
 garden the elusive fly. He was not alive to the 
 example of another Coolidge, William Henry, 
 who had adorned for seven long years the 
 pivotal bag at Cambridge. Only the disabili- 
 ties of old age forced his retirement. Calvin 
 might easily have trained down and qualified 
 
24 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 for the crew, if there was one, could he have 
 delegated the obligation to urge it on, or, in the 
 vernacular, to coach it, which goes with that 
 office. 
 
 He made friends slowly. When they knew 
 him, they came. While he appeared cold on 
 the outside, they found him warm on the inside. 
 There was nothing about him to impress im- 
 mediately any one. When he had acclimated 
 himself, however, and they on their part had got 
 used to him, they came to appreciate him, his 
 imcommon sense, his keen and terse wit and 
 comment on men and affairs. Sometimes in 
 a laughing group he would sit listening in 
 silence for a long time and then suddenly and 
 unexpectedly utter a monosyllable which would 
 convulse the house. He would come into the 
 room of a friend at eight in the evening, say, 
 
 ''Hello, William,"' never Bill, 
 
 produce a book which he read until eleven and 
 then retire with a "Good-night, William." It 
 was a stimulating communion. In short he was 
 then as he is now, quality not quantity. He 
 never spoke unless he had something to say. 
 Often then he was silent. The country needs 
 
AMHERST '95 25 
 
 more men like him, not men who can talk but 
 men who can listen and act, deeds, not words. 
 
 He was a faithful, good student, not bril- 
 liant or spectacular in any way, but what he 
 assimilated he held. The world's captains have 
 not always been its quick thinkers. Although 
 his father had always been able to support him 
 comfortably, Cal had none of the disabilities 
 of wealth and paid for his sustenance less than 
 two and one-half dollars a week. There was 
 no lower rate in the town, and a good rate even 
 in those days. He never could seek to qualify 
 for a cruise of the New York Yacht Club until 
 he came into the possession of The Mayflower 
 as President. 
 
 He was known in college as "Cooley." This 
 was suggested not only by his surname but 
 because when he sat with those who did not 
 know him well, they sought sanctuary in mittens 
 and mufflers and studied the methods of the 
 Eskimos for maintaining their circulations. As 
 they began to think they understood him, they 
 began to lay off their wraps. In his senior year at 
 college, there is a portrait of him extant when 
 he assumed a responsibility though only tem- 
 porarily, which only the Hon. Grafton Gushing 
 
26 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 has safely carried in politics, he wore a stick. 
 More than this and worse than this, he wore 
 gloves, a white cravat and a chapeau which 
 seemed to yearn for Broadway. 
 
 Any one who can secure and will 
 
 destroy this plate can have a seat 
 
 in the Cabinet. 
 
 This portrait was a distinct lapse for him. For 
 once and once only, Cal was not himself. 
 
 In the summer of 1892 on his return to 
 Plymouth with a full appreciation of the rank 
 of sophomore, which little can equal, he was 
 invited to deliver The Independence Day 
 Oration. It would have been a reflection on the 
 young man to have called it simply an address. 
 This distinction came naturally to him for he 
 could then speak more languages than any one 
 in the hamlet, or all combined. The old in- 
 habitants still talk of this day and this oration. 
 They say that Cal was profligate with all the 
 intellectual resources of the library at Amherst. 
 He walked upon the clouds. When he had 
 warmed up and struck his stride, he ventured 
 to emphasize the proposition: "The earth had 
 shook with the hurried retreat of the British 
 
AMHERST '95 27 
 
 regulars from Concord and Lexington." To 
 the form of this allegation Calvin may not now 
 be loyal. In its substance the earth no more 
 than teetered then as set off against the magni- 
 tude of the Great War. The youth may have 
 imbibed too freely at the academic fount. For 
 once he played upon the passions of an audi- 
 ence. Under the power of his oratory, eyes 
 were dimmed, throats choked and brakemen 
 collapsed like anemic women. 
 
 That day Cal pulled out every stop. 
 
 From that day, the natives came to look for his 
 vacation summers on the farm with a certain 
 mingled dread and joy, for home he always 
 came, for with him work was an avocation. 
 
 In his junior year Coolidge entered into the 
 college debates where his clear perception of 
 issues made a marked impression. In that year 
 a local bard in The Amherst Olio emphasizes 
 the unhappy fact that for once Cal was asleep 
 at the switch, in these lines: 
 
 "The class in Greek was going on; 
 Old Ty a lecture read — 
 And in the row in front there shone 
 Fair Coolidge's golden head. 
 
28 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 "His pate was bent upon the seat 
 In front of him; his hair 
 Old Tyler's feeble gaze did meet, 
 With fierce and ruddy glare. 
 
 "O'ercome by mystic sense of dread, 
 
 Old Ty his talk did lull — 
 'Coolidge, I wish you'd raise your head, 
 
 I can't talk through your skull!' " 
 
 In his senior year he entered a contest open 
 to seniors in all American colleges and uni- 
 versities and won a first prize of one hundred 
 dollars for an essay: "The Principles of the 
 Revolutionary War." During the summer eve- 
 nings his father had noticed him much at the 
 table in the sitting room, with books and papers. 
 
 When he wanted the lamp, Cal had it. 
 
 He did not ask him what he was doing. Cal 
 never told him. If he ever learned, it was 
 undoubtedly through the columns of The Blue- 
 berry. 
 
 Coolidge was asked to deliver the Grove 
 Oration, when he graduated. This was strong 
 recognition of his wit. This oration takes its 
 name because delivered in the college grove. 
 
AMHERST '95 29 
 
 Coolidge was always modest. He never sought 
 a place in the sun. Hence he was very happy 
 in the shade of the grove. He graduated with 
 the degree of A.B., cum laude, or, for our 
 little readers, with praise. When in June, 
 1919, President Meiklejohn for the college gave 
 him the honorary degree of LL.D., he spoke of 
 his essence as 
 
 "adequate brevity.^' 
 
 There is a distinct propriety in recording 
 here an estimate of Calvin Coolidge by George 
 D. Olds, A.M., LL.D., Acting President of 
 Amherst College. "The Class of 1895 is a class 
 of which the college is peculiarly proud. 
 Among his classmates and contemporaries were 
 Dwight W. Morrow of J. P. Morgan and Com- 
 pany; Herbert L. Pratt, Vice-President of the 
 Standard Oil Company of New York; Lucius 
 R. Eastman of Hills Brothers; Professor Allen 
 Johnson of Yale; Cornelius J. Sullivan, a well 
 known New York lawyer; Frank D. Blodgett, 
 President of Adelphi College, Brooklyn; the 
 late Charles D. Norton, banker and financier; 
 George D. Pratt, who was a conservation com- 
 missioner under Governor Whitman; Edward W. 
 
30 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 Capen, Dean of the Hartford Theological Semi- 
 nary; Professor Eugene W. Lyman of the Union 
 Theological Seminary; Harlan F. Stone, Dean 
 of the Columbia Law School ; Ex-Mayor Walter 
 R. Stone of Syracuse; Professor Archibald L. 
 Bouton of New York University; Howard Hal- 
 ligan, Vice-President of the Western Electric 
 Company; Professor Frederic B. Loomis of 
 Amherst; Roberts Walker, a former President 
 cff The Rock Island Railroad Company; Percy 
 Deering, Coolidge's roommate, prominent since 
 in the public life of Maine. 
 
 "Coolidge early revealed the characteristics 
 which have made his personality so marked in 
 public as well as private life. He was taciturn, 
 reticent, epigrammatic in his way of speaking, 
 with unusual poise for a first year man. Self- 
 control and will power were evident in his every 
 act. He was methodical in the extreme, always 
 in his place yet never in haste. 
 
 He seemed always to have time to 
 do the right things a man to whom 
 an emergency was an opportunity. 
 
 He was not what is called a good mixer. 
 Indeed it was in a way hard to know him in the 
 
AMHERST '95 31 
 
 early days of his college life. He did not 
 join a college fraternity at the outset of his 
 course, but, when an upper class man, became 
 a charter member of the Amherst Chapter of 
 the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity. His class- 
 mates did not wake up to the possibilities of 
 the man until late in his course when they sud- 
 denly became aware of his wisdom touched 
 with whimsical humor. At the close of his 
 course he won the distinction of being chosen 
 Grove Orator, the humorous speaker of Class 
 Day, and left the impression of having been 
 one of the best Grove Orators that Amherst had 
 known for years. 
 
 "There were few electives in Coolidge's day 
 and he enjoyed, shall we say, the advantages 
 of a rather rigid curriculum. The record shows 
 that he did good work in mathematics, English 
 and French. Unlike most of his college mates 
 he had the courage to carry his mathematics 
 through a second year. He was interested in 
 Greek and Latin, and it is a significant fact that 
 two of his important addresses since he entered 
 public life have been in advocacy of the clas- 
 sical curriculum. In the latter part of his 
 course there was some freedom of choice and 
 
32 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 he became especially interested in debating, 
 philosophy, history, and political science. 
 Amherst was at the time a college containing 
 less than four hundred students. Indeed, the 
 Class of 1895 entered less than one hundred 
 strong. There were, however, upon the Faculty 
 strong and inspiring teachers who, by their 
 scholarship and personality, had a profound 
 effect upon their pupils. It will not be invidi- 
 ous to name two of the teachers who had an 
 especially marked influence upon the man who 
 was to be their most distinguished pupil, Anson 
 D. Morse and Charles E. Garman. Morse was 
 a very learned, wise, and essentially judicial 
 man, and his open-minded, judge-like treatment 
 of the facts of history made a strong appeal to 
 a man of Coolidge's mental make-up. Morse's 
 teaching may have confirmed in him a tendency 
 that has characterized him all through life, 
 teaching him that if one can only use deliber- 
 ation, intellectual self-control, and a wise man's 
 balance, many serious difficulties of thought 
 and action vanish into thin air. 
 
 But it ivas Garman who had the most 
 profound effect upon Coolidge. 
 
AMHERST '95 33 
 
 Report has it that a volume containing teach- 
 ings of this, Amherst's most distinguished Pro- 
 fessor of Philosophy, has always been at hand 
 on Coolidge's table. Certain it is that Gar- 
 man's teachings entered into the very tissue of 
 the thought and life of the man who is now 
 guiding the destinies of the country. 
 
 ^'Coolidge always had in him some- 
 thing of the philosopher.'^ 
 
 He showed at the very outset of his college 
 course that he was of the reflective type, an 
 independent thinker; and Carman's chief object 
 was to develop this tendency in his pupils, to 
 make them handle great philosophical ques- 
 tions as real problems. Again and again in 
 Coolidge's addresses one finds evidence of 
 Carman in thought and expression. Consciously 
 or unconsciously, this teacher seems to be with 
 him at all times. One need only instance cer- 
 tain salient points in Carman's teaching to make 
 this clear to those who are familiar with "Have 
 Faith in Massachusetts" and other public utter- 
 ances of the President. "Weigh the evidence." 
 "Process not product." "Carry all questions 
 
34 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 back to fundamental principles." "The ques- 
 tion how answers the question what. 
 
 "Finally, if Coolidge's classmates could be 
 consulted, they would surely agree on one thing 
 about the man. 
 
 The basis of his philosophy of life 
 
 and of the way in which he has met 
 
 difficult situations in his public 
 
 career was ethical. 
 
 They would agree that faith was the keynote 
 of all that he has done. He had faith in his 
 college, in Massachusetts, in the Nation, in great 
 fundamental principles. He had faith that the 
 questions which divide men must be settled on 
 the basis of righteousness. In college, as since 
 graduation, he was true, straightforward, frank, 
 absolutely sure of only one thing, that truth is 
 mighty and will prevail." 
 
 Of such then was Calvin Coolidge. He was 
 about to plunge off the diving board of youth 
 into the strong currents of life which were to 
 carry him far. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 Bar, Ballots and Babes 
 
 ^'A wise old owl lived in an oak; 
 The more he saw, the less he spoke. 
 The less he spoke, the more he heard: 
 Why cant we be like that old bird?" 
 
 This is a story of bottles so far only as it 
 suggests old wine of a good vintage and of a 
 great value and of drinks of milk only, with a 
 high respect for the eighteenth amendment, law, 
 order and its great apostle. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge upon graduation from Am- 
 herst College returned to Plymouth, where 
 pursuant to his always fancy he took his place 
 upon the farm for the summer months for work 
 and recuperation. He had come to know North- 
 ampton towards which Amherst naturally turns 
 and fond of nature he had become attached to 
 the natural beauty of the Connecticut Valley so 
 that when he decided to begin the study of law 
 it was in Northampton. Its scholastic atmos- 
 phere unconsciously drew him. When asked at 
 
 35 
 
36 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 college where he was going to locate, he replied: 
 ^^Northampton, ifs nearest^ 
 
 He never went to a law school because he could 
 not afford to do so and he had character 
 enough to prosecute his studies in the atmos- 
 phere of a law office. In such an atmosphere, 
 the weak waver. 
 
 On September 23, 1895, he entered the office 
 of Hammond and Field, the leading lawyers of 
 the city. Curiously, the Hon. John C. Ham- 
 mond, a leader of the bar, had happened to be 
 passing through the grove at Amherst when 
 Coolidge was speaking. He stopped, sat down, 
 stayed, listened. He welcomed him into the 
 office. Coolidge's investments even then paid 
 him the sure rate of bonds. Strangely, Edward 
 A. Shaw registered in the office five days later. 
 Coolidge as Governor put him on the Superior 
 Bench. This meritorious appointment has a 
 sentimental charm. Calvin Coolidge was ad- 
 mitted to the bar, July 2, 1897, after a study of 
 twenty months, symbolic of his application. 
 Then he laid down a book of compelling plot, 
 Blackstone's Commentaries, seldom reopened. 
 Those were the days before the present high 
 
BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 37 
 
 fixed state standards. Each applicant for the 
 bar could come to Suffolk, where the examina- 
 tions were stiffest, or appear before his own 
 county examiners for an oral examination. 
 These varied with the counties and their exam- 
 iners. Some young men were qualified for prac- 
 tice and to jeopardize great property interests 
 after perhaps only diagnoses of their respira- 
 tion and pulse. In those days Coolidge pre- 
 sented himself in Hampshire County. Its stand- 
 ards stood high. 
 
 He never established himself as a leading 
 lawyer although 
 
 he was equipped with a fine legal 
 mind. 
 
 The opportunity was also his, under the patron- 
 age of such leaders as John C. Hammond and 
 Henry P. Field, but he followed his bent as all 
 young men should. A family once spent fifty 
 years to establish a son as a real estate operator 
 and failed when had he early been given his 
 head he would have led as a landscape gardener, 
 which trade they did not happen to fancy. 
 When Coolidge entered the office of Hammond 
 and Field, the former was elected District-Attor- 
 
38 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 ney and the latter Mayor. The political atmos- 
 phere apparently was contagious. Fate pointed 
 the path and the country lost a Chief -Justice but 
 found a President. 
 
 As a lawyer, Coolidge had a mind which 
 formed conclusions concisely and with original- 
 ity, not merely absorbing the current wave of 
 opinion. He did not necessarily do what 
 "they," a mighty word, said. When he bought 
 a hat he bought what he liked and not neces- 
 sarily what he was told "they" wore. Nine men 
 out of ten do otherwise. He was fitted for the 
 accurate work of a learned lawyer. His life, 
 however, so early went into the science of poli- 
 tics that he was not known much for his work as 
 a lawyer. 
 
 The philosophy of measures and men 
 held him most. 
 
 His thinking on all public questions brought 
 original, concise and accurate conclusions, 
 which found expression in apt and unique writ- 
 ten words. Northampton, without regard to 
 party, has always supported him and believed 
 in him. He early chose the science of politics 
 in its best sense, which means statesmanship, as 
 
BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 39 
 
 his study and career and from time to time ave- 
 nues have opened to him so that he has been able 
 to continue in that direction. There has been no 
 surprise at his each advance except perhaps the 
 last. There is a local confidence that Coolidge 
 can carry on in the high place to which he has 
 been called. He was always modest. When, in 
 the office of Hammond and Field, one of his 
 associates found, apparently mislaid in his 
 desk, a medal which he had won in college, he 
 asked him why he had not sent it home. He 
 replied: "I did not think it would interest my 
 folks." He later established the firm of 
 Coolidge and Hemenway. 
 
 Fancy and opportunity led Coolidge into poli- 
 tics. He took the first logical step for any 
 novitiate. In 1899 he served as a Councilman 
 in Northampton, the humblest office under our 
 form of government. This was an unpaid office 
 and he sou^t this kind of a political beginning 
 for what he could give and not for what he 
 could get, not for recognition but for service. 
 He established himseK in the confidence of his 
 fellow-citizens and they then proceeded to give 
 him all they had. He began to proceed surely 
 but steadily. He was City Solicitor in 1900 
 
40 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 and in 1901. To one belligerent Councilman, 
 apparently without the gift of prophecy, who 
 boasted that he had not voted for him, Coolidge 
 replied : 
 
 ^'Somebody did."' 
 
 His political horizon broadened, for in 1903 he 
 was appointed for a few months Clerk of Courts 
 for Hampshire County. He declined an election. 
 He was Chairman of the Republican City Com- 
 mittee in 1904. He was Mayor in 1910 and 
 1911, during a hiatus between his service as 
 Representative and Senator. He materially cut 
 down the municipal indebtedness. In his read- 
 ing. The Springfield Republican became to him 
 a Bible and, although a paper of editorial inde- 
 pendence, he one of its saints. The long time 
 guiding head of this paper, Solomon Bulkeley 
 Griffin, has now retired, a patriarch of journal- 
 ism of the best sort. He gave the paper a mo- 
 mentum which has carried it far. His ever 
 busy mind has contributed to literature, from 
 long years of experience with public men and 
 measures, an interesting and invaluable record 
 of comment and conclusion. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge met the woman who was later 
 
BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 41 
 
 to become his wife, Miss Grace Anna Goodhue, 
 when she was a teacher in The Clark School for 
 the Deaf at Northampton. Of this school he 
 later became a Patron, and some wag has sug- 
 gested that under him the school might with 
 much propriety establish a branch for the dumb. 
 When asked if she had ever been troubled by 
 his reluctance to speak, she replied, wittily, that 
 she had learned patience with those suffering 
 from physical disabilities. She was the daughter 
 of the late Andrew L Goodhue of Burlington, 
 Vermont, who died April 25, 1923, leaving a 
 widow, Elmira Goodhue, the mother of Grace 
 Anna Coolidge. He was a prominent man in 
 the town. He was a deacon in the College Street 
 Congregational Church and an inspector of 
 steamboats on Lake Champlain since 1886. 
 He had the cheer of his daughter. 
 
 Grace Goodhue was a graduate of the Burl- 
 ington High School in 1897, where she read a 
 paper on 
 
 ''The Tramp Instinct/' 
 
 which apparently reconciled her mind to the 
 trail for the White House. She graduated from 
 the University of Vermont in 1902. She is an 
 
42 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 admirable complement to the President. When 
 if he seeks to fuse with the people, she is his 
 vital link. She is a successful blender. She is 
 of attractive appearance. She has a bright 
 mind. She tactfully declines to commit herself 
 on public questions that she may not embarrass 
 her husband. 
 
 The courtship of Coolidge was unique. 
 Should he have sought letters patent on it, it 
 would not have been litigated. They must have 
 been drawn towards one another by their 
 apparently utter diversity. He laid much con- 
 fidence on the power of propinquity, sitting and 
 silence. In the stress of rivalry he bought a 
 pair of skates, but he wore them once only, as he 
 was unable to maintain the pace. When he 
 sought to bring the campaign to a climax, he 
 presented himself before Andrew Goodhue. 
 He said: "I've come to marry Grace." "Does 
 she know it," he was asked. "No," he replied, 
 "Not now, but she will." On this great ques- 
 tion, Andrew Goodhue and his wife Elmira, 
 after taking an inventory of the future Presi- 
 dent, preserved an attitude of strict neutrality 
 which would have thrilled even Woodrow 
 Wilson. Asked once by a representative of the 
 
BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 43 
 
 press for the romance of her marriage, Grace 
 Goodhue Coolidge replied: "Have you ever 
 seen my husband?" 
 
 There could have been, however, but one out- 
 come to the campaign. Calvin Coolidge had 
 never been repulsed. When the hour ripened 
 for action, he gently spread a kerchief upon 
 the carpeted floor on Maple Street. With char- 
 acteristic foresight even then he sought to pro- 
 tect his right pant, for trousers were not in those 
 days worn in Burlington, as he knelt before his 
 ideal. He put to her a question, great for him, 
 simple for her. He is a man of honor. He laid 
 before her his disabilities. 
 
 He confided to her alone that Fate 
 had pointed to the Presidency for him. 
 
 With rare tact, respecting his vagaries, she 
 replied in a monosyllable: "Yes." They were 
 married, October 4, 1905. If Grace Anna 
 Goodhue Coolidge has ever deplored her de- 
 cision, she has had too much loyalty to the 
 President to betray it. She is a woman of 
 charm, tact and efficiency. Although unrecog- 
 nized by public office, she has as large an 
 interest as any one in the Calvin Grace Coolidge 
 
44 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 Company, of which the President is, of course, 
 a silent partner. When Calvin Coolidge came 
 into the Presidency of the United States, he 
 came into his second greatest honor and respon- 
 sibility. He had for eighteen years been 
 already acclimated. 
 
 The Coolidges have two sons, John Coolidge, 
 born September 7, 1906, and Calvin Coolidge, 
 Junior, bom April 13, 1908. The boys have 
 been educated in a democratic atmosphere at 
 the public schools in Northampton and are now 
 at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania pre- 
 paring, of course, for Amherst College. John 
 is like his mother, Calvin like his father. John 
 was at the Devens Camp in August, 1923, 
 although he was under age. The father is 
 an admirable judge of capacity. John has 
 a high respect for his father and knows this. 
 In acknowledging a simple gift, John wrote the 
 donor: 
 
 ^'Father says you are a great man and 
 ought to be in Washington.'' 
 
 It would be improper to identify the donor 
 more than to say that he is his first biographer. 
 Calvin Coolidge, Junior, worked upon a tobacco 
 
BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 45 
 
 field at Hatfield in the summer of 1923 for 
 three dollars and one-half a day. He appar- 
 ently made a good trade for a boy. When 
 asked about his father, he said: "Yes, I sup- 
 pose he is President. Which shed shall I work 
 in?" He has not inherited garrulity. Both 
 boys have, however, inherited the spirit of prep- 
 aration. 
 
 The family are members of the Edwards 
 Congregational Church in Northampton. Be- 
 fore the Men's Club of this church, Coolidge 
 once asked one of his legislative colleagues 
 to speak. He is a wit and he lamented in his 
 opening that a college town should have sent 
 to the Senate, an office which is respected at 
 least in Boston, such a noisy and otherwise 
 undesirable man as Coolidge. One of his 
 audience, after the talk, who knew Coolidge, of 
 course, with a fine sense of humor, said to the 
 speaker: "Young man, seeing that Coolidge got 
 you this opportunity, I think you have spoken 
 of him in very poor taste." 
 
 The Coolidges have always lived simply. 
 The President continues to vote in Northamp- 
 ton, where the family have one-half of a double 
 wooden house at twenty-one Massasoit Street. 
 
46 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 His salary as President is seventy-five thousand 
 dollars a year. His Northampton house rental 
 is thirty-two dollars a month, recently raised 
 from thirty. He lives within his income, it is 
 thought, apparently with reason. 
 
 The family might with some reason 
 adopt as its crest a Cal-la lily. 
 
 His landlord is ready to evict his other tenant 
 for any one who can prove that he has been, is 
 or will be President of the United States. 
 
 Over the fireplace at Northampton are the 
 words which introduce this dissertation on 
 Bar, Ballots and Babes, 
 
 undoubtedly the inspiration of 
 our hero. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 His Unofficial Life 
 
 Calvin Coolidge became of age, July 4, 
 1893. He held no public office until 1899. He 
 was also in private life in 1902, 1905, 1906 and 
 1909. These years, after July 2, 1897, when he 
 was admitted to the bar, he practiced law exclu- 
 sively. He is now in his fourteenth consecutive 
 year as an office-holder. In thirty years, he has 
 held public office, twenty-one years. 
 
 Again, not a story of quantity. 
 
 47 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 Up Beacon Hill 
 
 ''And while the tired waves vainly 
 breaking 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain. 
 Far back through creek and inlet making 
 Comes silent flooding in the main." 
 
 — Clough. 
 
 This is a story of progress and of patience, 
 the story of the pendulum, one tick at a time, 
 the story of the ladder, one round at a time, 
 no jumps. It is a short story and a thrilling 
 story. It ought to stimulate the conviction in 
 the heart of every young American that 
 America is a democracy of the right sort, the 
 country of law, order and opportunity and that 
 the greatest office known to civilization is within 
 his grasp if only he shapes his course for the 
 stars. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge is essentially a politician, 
 a dangerous term which is much abused. 
 Augustus Peabody Gardner, Congressman and 
 soldier, A Pioneer for Preparedness, was a 
 politician and he boasted that he was. Where 
 
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UP BEACON HILL 49 
 
 he led, any one should hope to follow. A poli- 
 tician is one who seeks to live out the study 
 of government and of men. It is as high- 
 minded an aspiration to seek to save a country 
 in times of peace by the ballot as in times 
 of war by the bullet. The best estimate of 
 Calvin Coolidge is not as a farmer or as a 
 lawyer but as a politician, for this is his trade. 
 In January, 1907, Coolidge turned from the 
 half-mile track of city politics to the Grand 
 Circuit on Beacon Hill. He was in appear- 
 ance and inclinations much as he is today. He 
 was sparse of structure; and sparse of hair, 
 which with growing modesty had dulled into 
 a quieter shade. He was a well-read man. There 
 was nothing about him to startle or to draw any 
 one who simply looked at him. He was still 
 a Vermonter with a Yankee twang. This 
 apparently troubled him little, for he has never 
 attempted to revise it. His voice qualifies more 
 for an executive chamber than for the hustings. 
 It will never jeopardize in opera the memory 
 of the late Enrico Caruso. Some close to him 
 say that he is proud of it. The Lord loveth 
 whom He chasteneth and the Scriptures abound 
 not onlv in the virtues but also in the faults 
 
50 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 of the prophets. He is a tout ensemble, which, 
 while it might be looked upon with some sus- 
 picion at Lenox or at Newport, has proved 
 itself an asset at the ballot box. 
 
 Coolidge had come to sit in the Massachusetts 
 House for two years, 1907 and 1908, to be 
 stirred and stimulated by its traditions. Here 
 hangs the sacred codfish, symbolic curiously 
 of a State then great in its fisheries but now 
 great in its manufactures. There might well 
 also hang there in these days a spindle and 
 a bobbin. 
 
 Lord Bryce says that there is no 
 
 greater legislative body, in its dignity 
 
 and efficiency. 
 
 Strangely, the electorate are quick to spatter 
 it, forgetting that they only spatter themselves, 
 for they create it. It is as great and as small 
 as the people, for it represents the people, who 
 elect it. In it are the straight and the sinuous, 
 the bee and the sluggard, the pulchritudinous 
 and the plain, the scintillating and the stupid, 
 the well and the sick. The same men are found 
 inside as are found outside, and now more 
 than one woman, like pansies among weeds. 
 
The Herald. C. C. R. M. W. 
 
 THE MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE 
 
 The Mock Session, June 20, 1913 
 A Human Lapse 
 
UP BEACON HILL 51 
 
 An office, great or small, is what the man who 
 holds it makes it. The most forgotten blade 
 of grass in the most distant district has some 
 one to protect it. The incoming legislator is 
 awed by the atmosphere. When he is first 
 recognized by the Speaker, he stutters, stam- 
 mers and stumbles. He is overpowered by 
 the Speaker on his splendid dais. He forgets 
 that he is only human, and that towards even- 
 tide he sits perhaps in unprotected hose like 
 some other men. No one who has sat there 
 would have sat elsewhere. It is a hall of legis- 
 lation, primarily. It is a house of human 
 nature, anecdotes, friendships which abound 
 and long linger. It is a great clubhouse 
 maintained by the State at one-half million 
 dollars a year, where an audience always 
 awaits and more, a gallery. Those were 
 "halycon" days said one alumnus, careless of 
 his diction in his affectionate retrospection. 
 
 Coolidge on reaching Boston went from The 
 North Station on foot to The Adams House, 
 the Mecca of all west State politicians. When 
 he had superscribed the register and for the 
 first time had heard the word, 
 
 ''front;' 
 
52 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 no one watched him, crossed over to read his 
 name, pursuant to the practice of hostelries and 
 to look at him. He was assigned to an upper 
 inner chamber looking out, not onto Mount 
 Washington or the Atlantic but into an inner 
 area. He was not assigned to the Presidential 
 suite nor would he have been had he owned 
 the hotel. He was happier where he was in 
 an atmosphere of simplicity. Few sought him, 
 which welcome he was content to reciprocate 
 with even drooping warmth, this with no effort. 
 Had he found the print of a foot upon the mat 
 before his door, he would have experienced 
 emotions akin to those of the derelict Crusoe 
 when he found upon the sands the marks of the 
 savage. 
 
 He was then as he is today and he was not 
 elected President of the United States then 
 because he was not known. He had to be known 
 to be appreciated. He was taciturn then as 
 today but he spoke with a wise caution and 
 often what he said was touched up with a 
 Lincolnesque humor which gave much satis- 
 faction to those who sat about him, that is 
 when he was not alone as he often was. He 
 was less slow to respond to a question than 
 
 'A 
 
 ".' 
 
UP BEACON HILL 53 
 
 to initiate communion. When he lunched, it 
 was not at The Bellevue with Tom White and 
 other bon vivants. No one seemed to know 
 where he ate. When he ate, however, if he 
 ate, he was true to Vermont and its traditions, 
 for when the luncheon drew near to the tooth- 
 picks he was sure to order placed before him a 
 piece of pie and, not a demi-tasse but a large 
 cup of coffee. These are infallible tests of the 
 Vermont thoroughbred. 
 
 He moved then as now, always quietly 
 like a high-grade motor fresh from 
 the factory. There were no loose 
 bolts. There was no scarcity of 
 lubricant. 
 
 He was apparently indifferent as to whether 
 his name was displayed on the front pages of 
 the press or close to the mortuary column, and 
 perhaps happier when placed in the latter 
 space. When at rare intervals he was asked 
 to join a motor party, he sat in silence in the 
 "bin" over intervals of miles, recognizing no 
 obligation to light up his playmates, his intellect 
 fixed, apparently content in listening, thinking 
 and maintaining the draft in what by courtesy 
 
54 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 may be called a cigar, not a perfecto. He 
 simply flopped. In his own words, "I have not 
 been hurt by what I have not said." He was 
 seldom found supine upon the benches of the 
 rotunda which abounded in his colleagues, but 
 he could have been often located by any cour- 
 ageous explorer in his own boudoir, reading 
 a book or a paper, gazing in thought out of 
 the window, perhaps at a ventilator, or even 
 lying on the bed for recuperation. For he 
 never forgot the day that was to come, body 
 and mind. Had The League of Nations become 
 the power it was planned, he would not have 
 dallied with the Presidencv but he would have 
 stepped immediately to the head of that great 
 association. He was never emotional, always 
 stoical, never angry, always courteous. Such 
 he was. Such he is. As he grew in strength, 
 his constituency grew in versatility. 
 
 All men seemed to he with him and 
 there marched behind him an army. 
 High potentates of the church com- 
 manded one wing and ^'The Black 
 Horse Cavalry" the other. 
 
 In the same dilution in which Roosevelt said 
 
UP BEACON HILL 55 
 
 he digested Piatt, so our hero was never skit- 
 tish about his playmates whether they taught 
 Sunday school or not so long as they could 
 help in a cause which looked good to him. He 
 was a mystery then, even to those who thought 
 they knew him. 
 
 He is a mystery now. 
 
 This augments his political availability and he 
 probably knows, recognizes and values it. 
 
 When the Legislature convened, Calvin Cool- 
 idge was presented to Martin Lomasney, looked 
 upon as a fashionable procedure. It is popu- 
 lar to daub Lomasney in the back "deestricts" 
 as a dangerous citizen. His hair is wasted 
 enough, however, to show that he wears no horns 
 and his feet are shaped quite regularly. Mar- 
 tin looked upon the boy, attempting to classify 
 him as he does every one, wondering as he says 
 whether he was a school teacher or an under- 
 taker. If he diagnosed him wisely at that early 
 day, it was as a Ford car with a Pierce motor. 
 
 Coolidge did not come to Boston unarmed 
 but with a letter of introduction to the then 
 Speaker, John N. Cole. He was a great pre- 
 siding officer, so was the Hon. John L. Bates, 
 
56 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 none greater. This introduction was in the mat- 
 ter of his committee appointments, borne by 
 young legislators fresh from the egg, pursuant 
 to the practice of the times. It is to be hoped 
 that this letter was sealed when it was handed 
 to him by his fellow townsman, the Hon. Rich- 
 ard W. Irwin, now a Judge of the Superior 
 Court, for it read in this way, simply: 
 
 "^e'5 better than he looks, like a 
 singed cat." 
 
 In 1911 Irwin had no more sincere endorser 
 for his elevation to the bench than Calvin Cool- 
 idge. He became the first of his fellow citizens 
 to sleep in "the spare-room" at the White 
 House. This letter was read in the spirit in 
 which it was written, for John Cole later 
 appointed Coolidge to the Committee on Judici- 
 ary. This was the place he wanted, if he wanted 
 any place. With this place he was content as 
 he was always content, for he never forced a 
 controversy, although he was ever ready to take 
 a stand on the issues which came his way. 
 Hence he had bided his time for coming to the 
 House from Northampton, when he could come 
 
UP BEACON HILL 57 
 
 without opposition. And a Republican, he came 
 from a district which was then Democratic. 
 
 It is significant of the man that a member of 
 his capacity should have never received a House 
 Chairmanship, or have been put on Judiciary 
 until his second year. This was because his 
 nature could not impress, immediately, its vir- 
 tues on those around him, and he saw this and 
 he was content to wait for the time when they 
 would become known and recognized. 
 
 In his service in the House he was re- 
 spected. He showed his independence. 
 
 He took a firm stand for a small, independent 
 oil refiner named Hisgen of Springfield in a bill 
 which was strenuously opposed by the great 
 Standard Oil Company. He was instrumental 
 in getting on the books an anti-monopoly law 
 and his work in codifying the banking laws of 
 the State was also of far-reaching importance. 
 If any of his colleagues in those days had dared 
 to foretell that he would have been elected Gov- 
 ernor, he would have been retired to a retreat. 
 In his service he was content to do the day's 
 work. He did not seek the notice of the press 
 or of any one. He was not looked upon as a 
 
58 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 leader of the House, where such men as Gush- 
 ing, Norman White, Walker and now Congress- 
 man Luce were prominent. He was a child of 
 Vermont. He was proud of her although he had 
 a high respect for his step-mother, Massachu- 
 setts. When a Senator interested in legislation 
 ventured into the House, Coolidge lavished his 
 twang upon his seat-mate: 
 
 "What^s he maousin 'raound the 
 Haouse for?'^ 
 
 In his journeys between Northampton and the 
 Capitol, he always travelled the so-called back 
 way, not by Springfield but through Ware, Barre 
 and Holden. He looked out of the car windows, 
 not for factories but for farms. He became a 
 familiar figure on the trains. At the end of 
 1908 he retired to Northampton. 
 
 He had not yet churned his wake 
 white. 
 
 In 1912 Calvin Coolidge came to Beacon 
 Hill again and to stay. He served then in the 
 Senate for four years, the last two as President. 
 Pursuant to his policy of patience, he had de- 
 layed his candidacy and his return until his 
 
UP BEACON HILL 59 
 
 predecessor, the Hon. Allen T. Treadway, boni- 
 face and Congressman, had served his custom- 
 ary three years as President of the Senate and 
 voluntarily retired. Calvin Coolidge was un- 
 willing to crowd him or anybody. When some 
 one lamented to him the size of his district and 
 the difficulty of covering it, he replied: "It's 
 just as hard for my opponent." While a mem- 
 ber of the upper branch, he never made trouble 
 for his Senate President, his Governor or any 
 one. He looked upon himself as a cog in the 
 government, to do his part, to follow the leaders. 
 
 He never sought to make history for 
 himself. Most men seek to do little 
 else, their country second, if at all. 
 
 In 1912, his first year as Senator, he per- 
 formed a signal service as Chairman of the Spe- 
 cial Legislative Committee on Reconciliation. 
 This committee was formed to take jurisdiction 
 of the Lawrence strike. Coolidge met the sit- 
 uation with tact, efficiency and solution. Indus- 
 trial peace was reestablished. In 1913 the sec- 
 ond year of his service, he was made Chairman 
 of the Committee on Railroads, no more impor- 
 tant appointment. Again significantly this rec- 
 
60 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 ognition did not come to him immediately. 
 Nothing did. As a member of the Senate he 
 secured the passage of the anti-discrimination 
 law which has proved of great advantage. He 
 backed "the full crew bill" and since that time 
 has had the united support of the train men. In 
 those days the Railroad Committee had jurisdic- 
 tion over the great question of the legislative 
 year, the New Haven issue. He listened much. 
 He said little. His humor stood by him, like 
 Abraham Lincoln. At one of the hearings, a 
 feverish petitioner had suggested that Charles 
 Sanger Mellen be sent to jail, a popular pastime 
 in those days. It must bring the former Colos- 
 sus of Roads much innocent amusement to note, 
 that his great policies, which the government 
 opposed then, it favors now. At that hearing 
 a participant, who wore his hair pompadour in 
 his zeal as a child of the people, said: "Mr. 
 Mellen, if I were Governor you would not thrive 
 in Massachusetts five minutes." Then Mellen 
 replied, in his soft voice, and he was a master 
 
 with the rapier: "Perhaps, Mr. , that's the 
 
 reason you are not Governor." The art of irony 
 has a strong back-kick which did much to locate 
 permanently Mr. Mellen in Council Grove. He 
 
UP BEACON HILL 61 
 
 was ready to pay the price. All such artists are. 
 To go back, this feverish petitioner then said to 
 the Chairman that he would retire unless he 
 desired to interrogate him further. Then Cool- 
 idge said: "Retire, unless you are willing to 
 remain and protect the Committee from these 
 railroad lawyers present." One of his coarse 
 colleagues once approached him, irreverently: 
 "Cal," said he in the crude colloquial, "loosen 
 up, lapse, humanize yourself and lunch with 
 me, today." Coolidge simply nodded. No. About 
 noon he motioned to him to approach, with this 
 enthusiastic invitation, sotto vocie: "Mrs. 
 Coolidge and I lunch at The Bellevue at one. 
 
 Come, if you want." 
 
 It was impossible to resist. Invited to speak 
 at the opening of the Town Hall in Weston he 
 was asked what he was going to say. He replied : 
 "I do not know," and then later produced a 
 manuscript which he read. 
 
 He was always a student, always prepared, 
 always looking forward. He showed an unlim- 
 ited familiarity with the bills before his Com- 
 mittees, going in 1913 before The Ways and 
 Means Committee with an elaborate bill which 
 
62 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 his Committee on Railroads had reported, the 
 so-called Washburn Bill, and talking on it from 
 all angles as intelligently as the counsel who 
 had been hired to study it. To his then House- 
 Chairman of the Committee, with reference to an 
 attitude he had taken on a bill before them, he 
 wrote: 
 
 "Sand your tracks, you're slipping/* 
 
 He was Chairman of the Committee on Resolu- 
 tions at Worcester, at a Republican convention, 
 October 3, 1914, which nominated the Hon. 
 Samuel W. McCall for Governor. At one of 
 its hearings when he was asked a pointed ques- 
 tion, he twirled his chair towards the window 
 and looked out in silence. Some one said to 
 Governor McCall, who stood near by: "I could 
 take dictation from that man and in long hand." 
 The Governor often tells this story. Coolidge 
 did not remain to mix with the delegates at the 
 hotel and his host found him later in his bed, 
 the door ajar, with his trousers or rather 
 pants suspended thereupon, to maintain their 
 contour. 
 
 In 1914 and 1915 he was President of the 
 Senate. In 1913 the then President, the Hon. 
 
UP BEACON HILL 63 
 
 Levi Greenwood, a splendid political colt, was 
 unexpectedly defeated for reelection. Within 
 two days of his defeat, Coolidge was assured of 
 the succession. What he wanted he got, because 
 it came. When he was President of the State 
 Senate, he sought to soothe one Walter E, 
 McLane, also a Senator, it is thought by some 
 since his return from the War of 1812. He must 
 have been bom on Beacon Hill. Walter had 
 been told by a colleague to go where clothes are 
 bought last and ice first. Cal said : "Walter, I 
 have found time to examine the Constitution and 
 the Senate Rules. There's nothing in them to 
 compel you to go." 
 
 No lines are more significant in explaining 
 Calvin Coolidge than these which follow: 
 
 *^ Although I am Coolidge s friend, and have 
 been for years" he said, "I did not really 
 understand him, until about a year ago. One 
 day he came in here, and, after sitting where 
 you are for the longest time, he said, out of a 
 clear sky: 'Do you know, Vve never really 
 grown up? It's a hard thing for me to play this 
 game. In politics, one must meet people, and 
 that's not easy for me.' I expressed astonish- 
 
64 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 ment. "No,"' he went on, 'it's been hard for me 
 all my life. When I was a little fellow, as long 
 ago as I can remember, I would go into a panic 
 if I heard stranger voices in the house. I felt 
 I just couldn't meet the people and shake hands 
 with them. Most of the visitors would sit with 
 Mother and Father in the kitchen and the hard- 
 est thing in the world luas to have to go 
 through the kitchen door and give them a greet- 
 ing. I was almost ten before I realized I 
 couldnt go on that way. And by fighting hard 
 I used to manage to get through that door. I'm 
 all right with old friends, but every time I meet 
 a stranger, I've got to go through the old kitchen- 
 door, back home, and it's not easy.' He was 
 silent for a long time after that. Just sat look- 
 ing out of the window. Then he went away with- 
 out another word. He's never mentioned the 
 subject since. Nor have I, but I think I can say 
 I understand Calvin Coolidge now. Does it help 
 to explain him to you?" 
 
 When he appears cold, he is diffident. No 
 man understands Calvin Coolidge unless he rec- 
 ognizes his silence. No one understands his 
 silence unless he recognizes as its original cause 
 
UP BEACON HILL 65 
 
 his original diffidence. This silence he has been 
 slow to eliminate because his serious attitude 
 towards life has made him slow to interrupt a 
 life of much thought for a life of any chatter. 
 
 On the inside^ he is warm. 
 
 At a luncheon of Republican leaders at a coun- 
 try club, when the party was about to start for 
 Norumbega Park, the whole procession was held 
 up until Edward Horrigan, his bodyguard, 
 could locate in an obscure part of the house 
 an humble friend of the Governor to ride 
 with him. One day as the Governor was 
 starting from The Adams House for the Gover- 
 nor's Walk across the Common to the State 
 House with Horrigan, the former was pointed 
 out to a stranger in the town. "He's a fine look- 
 ing man," he commented, "but who's the little 
 red-headed feller with him?" It was Ed Horri- 
 gan's duty to protect the Governor from hunters. 
 Hence naturally a wit suggested that he ought 
 to be interested in a bill which was filed in the 
 Legislature for a permanent close season on red 
 foxes. 
 
 In 1916, 1917 and 1918, Calvin Coolidge was 
 Lieutenant-Governor. At three o'clock on the 
 
66 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 afternoon following his first election, when most 
 successful candidates were easily congratulated 
 in public places, he was found alone in that in- 
 side room at The Adams House, sitting by an 
 open window. In these days, the typical candi- 
 date who has reconciled his mind to holding 
 high public office continues to pursue the voter. 
 He effusively simulates a desire to share his 
 cross. He seeks to locate the strawberry-mark 
 which identifies the long lost brother. As against 
 him, the personality of Calvin Coolidge pre- 
 sents a marked, restful and delicious contrast. 
 He has never forgotten that if one would have 
 the respect of others he must respect himself. 
 He has taught the voter to recognize the value of 
 pursuing what is not pursuing him. Calvin 
 Coolidge was then, as later, loyal to his Chief, 
 the Governor, and sympathetic, and unlike some 
 of his predecessors he showed no impatience for 
 preferment. The Hon. Samuel Walker McCall 
 has the record of a scholarly statesman. He 
 has a fine literary capacity. His pen is a wand. 
 He is essentially a Doctor of Letters. He was 
 War Governor of the State. He was for years a 
 Congressman from a university district. He has 
 had a creditable record. He says that Coolidge 
 
UP BEACON HILL 67 
 
 as Lieutenant-Governor was loyal to him in let- 
 ter and in spirit. He adds: "He was with me in 
 the Council even when the votes stood seven to 
 two." 
 
 Coolidge was content to do, in his own 
 words, the day's work. 
 
 While most men in the public service starve 
 for public notice and recognition, he was con- 
 tent to keep the traces taut, and knee-action and 
 the spectacular appeal of the leader in the tan- 
 dem had no charm for him. He had estab- 
 lished his qualities, humor, sound sense, taci- 
 turnity, modesty and character. He had become 
 a statesman. According to that eminent divine, 
 the Reverend George Angier Gordon, D. D.: 
 
 "No man can be a statesman without 
 character." 
 
 Strangely, a unique specimen like Coolidge 
 has as many as two doubles and in one State, in 
 form if not in substance. The delusion they 
 betray by their comparative freedom of speech. 
 One is the Hon. Richard Bradford Coolidge, 
 Mayor of Medford. Since August 3, 1923, he 
 has been a student of genealogy-, hoping to dis- 
 cover a common branch with the President. The 
 
68 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 other is Robert Washburn Maynard, a son of the 
 late Rear- Admiral. Frank Stearns, uncon- 
 sciously attracted toward him, took him into the 
 bottom of his business. He has pushed him like 
 a son. He saw the replica. He has put him at 
 the top of his business. Since Maynard began 
 to write his name in full he has come fast. 
 
 Coolidge was nominated for Governor in the 
 fall of 1918, Samuel W. McCall having served 
 the customary three years. When he was ready 
 to retire, Coolidge was ready to proceed. 
 
 He had not sought to facilitate his 
 
 perferment by a critical attitude of his 
 
 superiors. 
 
 He believed in Republicanism and in harmony 
 and was content to go up or down with his party. 
 He was elected Governor and served as such in 
 1919 and 1920. He made an admirable record. 
 His first act was to appoint as his Secretary the 
 Hon. Henry F. Long, of capacity and tact. It 
 was almost a pleasure to burden him. When the 
 Governor retired, he did not forget to place 
 Henry Long in a comfortable official nest, after 
 the manner of all Governors. He showed sound 
 sense in his appointments. In his first year as 
 
UP BEACON HILL 69 
 
 Governor the business system of the Common- 
 wealth was reorganized and the Governor cut 
 one hundred and seventeen commissions down 
 to twenty, pursuant to the action of the Consti- 
 tutional Convention of 1918. This delicate 
 duty, involving many appointments and some 
 removals, was done as well as any human could 
 do it, though some good men fell by the way. 
 
 With characteristic loyalty, he 
 wrote his step-mother at Plym- 
 outh, regularly, 
 
 preoccupied as he was with his pressing public 
 duties and often sent her flowers. When the 
 police strike broke, he immediately wrote her 
 what course he should take, which he did take. 
 As Governor he was conservative and yet his 
 mind was always open to forward suggestions. 
 These were not "progressive," for progressive is 
 a tired term and should be retired to rest and 
 all Republicans should be known either as 
 Backward or Forward Republicans. 
 
 As to his personal characteristics as Governor, 
 for the public is always interested in the daily 
 lives of its servants, he brushed his hair regu- 
 larly and his teeth. He ate when hungry. He 
 
70 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 slept when tired. These concessions to an 
 electorate, hard to satiate in its scrutiny of the 
 great, who in many ways are much like them. 
 Of his toilets today when his wardrobe is 
 at the peak, he has three gowns, a blue and a 
 gray, business gowns, and a black morning coat 
 much worn by Coolidge inaugurals. These are 
 outside the smock-frock at Plymouth, which is 
 also worn outside, and in which he reviews the 
 live stock on the farm. He is vulnerable in the 
 raiment about the base of his head where it 
 meets the body, or in easy English, his neck. 
 Here it must be confessed the points of his collar 
 shun each other and the tie droops. Fifty cents 
 and a pin, a collar of the Welch-Margetson type 
 which meets and the pin deftly used to hold the 
 tie, high, would make him an ideal feature on 
 the landscape of society. Surely he ought to 
 respond, in the exigencies of The White House. 
 Representatives of the press who thought that 
 they interviewed him, interviewed themselves. 
 He has always apparently been indifferent as to 
 whether he was personally liked or not. It 
 would be a solace to a much pursued public if 
 more public men would emulate this character- 
 istic. His wit he has always sought to stifle, for 
 
UP BEACON HILL 71 
 
 he has seen this quality destroy many men who 
 would have been great. It has been a strange 
 sensation to a Legislature which has seen sur- 
 rounding it men with the personal charm of 
 Warren, Storrs and the late Ralph D. Gillette, 
 coming out of the West, to find in Coolidge one 
 whose qualifications were of merit only. He 
 never attacks men and seldom things. His creed 
 is that progress is best made by emphasizing 
 good policies and ignoring evil ones. 
 
 As Governor, Coolidge continued to live as he 
 always had, at The Adams House, with the same 
 panorama before the same windows of the same 
 inside upper chamber. When he last packed 
 his bag as retiring Governor and slammed that 
 door, he was much the same as when he first 
 came into the room as Representative Coolidge, 
 except that he had marked his qualities upon 
 Beacon Hill and they were recognized. 
 
 It was sweet praise of Calvin Coolidge when 
 his successor. His Excellency, Channing Harris 
 Cox, then set out to aspire not only to carry out 
 but even to perfect the policies of his predeces- 
 sor, Calvin the Silent. He then consecrated as 
 one of his Secretaries a young man surnamed 
 Stiller. While Coolidge is warm on the inside, 
 
72 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 Cox is warm on the outside. The last hope of 
 the former is to warm those who park close to 
 the official desk. It is the first realization of the 
 latter. Neither of them is Massachusetts bom. 
 It will be exceedingly unfashionable and diffi- 
 cult to elect in 1924 a Massachusetts-bom 
 Governor. 
 
 In 1919, Coolidge was honored with the 
 degrees of LL.D. by Amherst, Tufts and Wil- 
 liams; and in 1920 by Bates, University of Ver- 
 mont and Wesleyan. When he was welcomed to 
 Vermont on Commencement Day as a son-in- 
 law, he emphasized the untraditional warmth of 
 the relation. As an evidence of his versatility, 
 he is a member of the Corinthian Yacht and the 
 Tennis and Racquet Clubs, among other clubs. 
 
 He is the author of "Have Faith in Massachu- 
 setts." Calvin Coolidge should have faith in 
 Massachusetts for each is under an obligation to 
 the other. She has done much for him. 
 
 // Calvin Coolidge has not faith in 
 Massachusetts, who should have? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 The Two Allies 
 
 Capacity is quick to see and to 
 seize opportunity. 
 
 An analysis of the conditions which turned 
 
 Calvin Coolidge towards the Vice-Presidency is 
 
 vital in a consideration of his success and its 
 causes. 
 
 Boswell did much to make Johnson. Mark 
 Hanna, with the physical vigor and mental de- 
 termination which made him a leader in the 
 iron industry, did much to make McKinley. 
 To him he was a vital complement. The only 
 man who always honestly and cheerfully wor- 
 ships his creator is the self-made man. A 
 public servant who has been appointed to public 
 oflSce on the petition of strong endorsers is often 
 quick to evade the obligation and to nurse the 
 delusion that his is simply a recognition of 
 virtues which could not be evaded. Luck has 
 been defined as the capacity to seize oppor- 
 tunity. Opportunity knocks at some doors 
 often, at others once only, at others not at all. 
 
 73 
 
74 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 There are many able, even brilliant men who 
 have never sat in a motor of their own because 
 they have been unable to see and to seize that 
 market where their product may be best sold. 
 
 The President has always been quick 
 to seize opportunity with capacity. 
 He is the finished product of a tri- 
 umvirate: Calvin Coolidge, Frank 
 Waterman Stearns and Edwin Upton 
 Curtis, led by Fate. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge would have been President of 
 the United States had these two men never lived. 
 It had been decreed. They simply hurried his 
 feet. They were the hand-maidens of Fate. 
 
 One whole paragraph is here deservedly and 
 cheerfully conceded to Frank Waterman Steams. 
 He is a leading merchant of Boston and the 
 son of one. His capacity and loyalty are ex- 
 ceeded only by his modesty. He forgets only 
 himself. He has the respect and friendship of 
 men who have established themselves in busi- 
 ness, professional life and politics, and his 
 family has contributed a son to the ministry. 
 His business Mecca is an autographed gallery 
 where the first portrait placed and seen is of 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 75 
 
 Calvin Coolidge. Having made himself, his 
 delight is to make others. Calvin Coolidge and 
 he are both graduates of Amherst College, their 
 first bond, and both are now trustees. Frank 
 Stearns first fastened his eye on Calvin Coolidge 
 when a petitioner for legislation for Amherst 
 College he sought him on Beacon Hill 
 through another. Then the mercury of Coolidge 
 was poured upon his representative in its most 
 shrivelled form, a fine type as an emaciated 
 exhibit. Frank Steams wondered. He was 
 troubled. He retired. His curiosity was stimu- 
 lated. He studied him. He came to believe 
 in him and to admire and to worship him. 
 When he ponders him the first commandment 
 is in jeopardy. His faith in Calvinism was first 
 diagnosed by some as an obsession and then 
 accepted by them as a religion. He is the only 
 living American, if any one outside of the 
 Coolidge kin, to understand the President, for 
 he puzzles and appeals by the charm of mystery, 
 not the least of his assets. 
 
 Frank Waterman Stearns is the first of The 
 Two Allies who have done much to reveal 
 Calvin Coolidge into the Vice-Presidency. 
 
76 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 Frank Waterman Stearns in an interview with 
 Theodore G. Joslin, the accomplished Washing- 
 ton correspondent of The Boston Transcript, 
 says, in part: 
 
 "I first met the President in 1915, when he 
 was President of the Massachusetts Senate. 
 Some time later I sent a classmate of mine at 
 Amherst College to Mr. Coolidge to ask for his 
 help in getting through a bill to make it pos- 
 sible to connect the college power system with 
 the Amherst town system. Mr. Coolidge would 
 promise nothing, and we felt quite disappointed 
 that an Amherst man and a Senator from a 
 district next to that in which Amherst is should 
 show so little interest. When we went to have 
 the bill taken up the following year, we found 
 it had been passed and was law. Mr. Coolidge 
 did it. We learned afterwards that when we 
 first asked his aid it was too late in the session 
 to obtain action that year. What impressed me 
 was his refusal to promise, but his readiness 
 to act when the time came. 
 
 "This made me curious, and I made many 
 inquiries about him and learned all I could 
 about his record. 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 77 
 
 What I learned convinced me that he 
 
 was even then one of the ablest men 
 
 of our generation. 
 
 The thought came to me not then but when he 
 was Lieutenant-Governor, that here was a man 
 with all the qualities necessary to make a great 
 President, and I cannot tell exactly why or 
 how the conviction came to me that he would 
 some day be President. 
 
 "He once told me that when he was elected 
 to the Legislature in Massachusetts he was re- 
 garded as one who would work for reforms of 
 various kinds. He became quickly convinced 
 
 that 
 
 administration was far behind 
 legislation, 
 
 as he put it, and that it was his duty to be 
 conservative. I think he thought this may have 
 disappointed some, but he was resolved that 
 it was the right course, and held to it. I have 
 the feeling that it was the right course and 
 still hold to it. 
 
 "I persuaded him to be the guest of honor 
 at a dinner I gave about that time at The Algon- 
 quin Club in Boston. There were about forty 
 
78 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 or fifty men of standing in the community 
 present. This dinner was to enable those attend- 
 ing to express their appreciation of what Mr. 
 Coolidge had done up to that time, and he 
 was quite surprised to learn he had attracted 
 so much interest. 
 
 "After that dinner I began urging him to be 
 a candidate for the Republican nomination for 
 Lieutenant-Governor. It was a most difficult 
 task. The Legislature was in session and I got 
 no response. After the Legislature had ad- 
 journed I was with him one night at dinner. 
 He handed me a piece of paper on which was 
 written, 
 
 7 am a candidate for Lieutenant- 
 Governor, Calvin Coolidge.^ 
 
 He told me I could give it to the newspapers. 
 I asked him why he had delayed so long. I 
 recalled to him that a gentleman of high stand- 
 ing in the community had been a candidate 
 for almost a year and I felt that the delay had 
 injured us. 'Can't you see that any other course 
 would not have been the right one,' he said. 
 *The Legislature was in session, and if I had 
 announced my candidacy, then, every word and 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 79 
 
 action of mine would have been twisted. Legis- 
 lation would have been in a mess. The public 
 business would have suffered. I had to take 
 that chance.' 
 
 "When Mr. Coolidge was Lieutenant-Gov- 
 ernor 1 met him often at luncheon in the Parker 
 House in Boston. I arranged to have two or 
 three men there to meet him, so that they could 
 know him and appreciate him, as I did, and 
 so that he might have the benefit of their 
 ideas. 
 
 Some of them were puzzled at 
 Mr. Coolidge^s silence, 
 
 and I doubted if they made any impression upon 
 him. I mention this to bring out one of Mr. 
 Coolidge's principal characteristics. This is his 
 patience of investigation, his slowness of getting 
 the facts, but his quickness of action. A man 
 might tell him something, be disappointed or 
 puzzled at his reticence, go off to play golf 
 or do something else, and learn on his return 
 that Mr. Coolidge had acted. He had peculiar 
 ability to judge the effect of legislation, not 
 in the immediate future but in the time to come. 
 
80 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 His thought is for the long, the per- 
 manent good and not for the demand 
 of the present. 
 
 "Another thing that always impressed me 
 about Mr. Coolidge is that 
 
 he is a profound student. 
 
 He studies to improve himself, to obtain knowl- 
 edge with which to deal with questions coming 
 before him and to make his study effective in 
 government. 
 
 "I naturally know of Mr. Coolidge's prob- 
 lems in the Boston police strike, and should 
 like to say that he never thought his course 
 would win him any political advantage. It was 
 never in his mind. 
 
 / know that he wrote a private letter, 
 during those critical days, outlining 
 the course he intended to follow — 
 and did — and saying it would very 
 possibly mean his elimination from 
 politics. 
 
 The police strike did not make Mr. Coolidge, 
 as some have said, thoughtlessly. As the Rev. 
 Dr. Edward T. Sullivan of Newton said, in a ser- 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 81 
 
 mon at the time, the crisis did not make Mr. 
 Coolidge, it revealed him. He was able to 
 rise to and meet the emergency thrust upon him 
 
 because he had kept the faith in 
 small things. 
 
 Dr. Sullivan said: Those who know him best 
 realize that his action in this crisis was just 
 the working out of the character in him.' 
 
 "As I came to know Mr. Coolidge I began 
 to feel sure of certain things with regard to 
 him. 
 
 First, I found him splendidly honest. 
 
 He has been placed in a good many trying 
 positions, where, if there was a yellow streak 
 in him, it would almost certainly have come 
 out. Perhaps the best summary of Coolidge's 
 character, as I read it, is, that, among the clever 
 orators, eager reformers and shrewd politicians 
 by whom he is surrounded, he seems to me to 
 be the one man whose thought and work are all 
 constructive. That is what I, in common with 
 many others, have been looking for: that is what 
 I believe I have found in Mr. Coolidge. 
 
82 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 "Mr. Coolidge is a real progressive in 
 the best sense of the ivord. 
 
 A minister of my acquaintance once preached 
 a sermon in which he said that what appears 
 to be progress is quite often retrogression. He 
 cited an example of a man making great haste 
 toward the west when his real destination was 
 the east, and said that the faster this man went 
 the less progress he was making. Mr. Coolidge 
 once said to me that he knows the world moves, 
 and he wishes to move with it, but that he de- 
 sires to know where he is going and not retro- 
 gress by stepping off into a large puddle. 
 Another thing about Mr. Coolidge — he is able 
 to keep his mind on the actual question and 
 does not allow himself to become confused with 
 extraneous issues. 
 
 "I have always felt that, with very few ex- 
 ceptions, Mr. Coolidge is better known generally 
 throughout the country than any other man. It 
 is not that people know much about him but that 
 what they know suits them and gives them a 
 correct picture of the man. 
 
 "I think this was shown conclusively when 
 he became President, when there was so little 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 83 
 
 apprehension over his succession. There was, 
 on the other hand, widespread confidence in 
 him. Since he became President he has received 
 thousands of messages and the significant thing 
 about them is that so many declare they have 
 full confidence in him. 
 
 '7 think that one of the many causes for 
 the gratitude we owe Mr. Harding is that he 
 made Mr. Coolidge, in effect, a member of his 
 Cabinet, with the result, that Mr. Coolidge is 
 thoroughly posted on conditions as they standi 
 today." 
 
 One plain paragraph. This, gentle reader, 
 that you may understand some of the ways in 
 which Frank Waterman Stearns was an efficient 
 ally to Calvin Coolidge and how you may in- 
 telligently either shape your own political 
 course or retire to obscurity. He is a suc- 
 cessful business man, skilled in the art of 
 organization. Hence his counsel is wise. He 
 did much to spread through the country, "Have 
 Faith in Massachusetts." Further, he controls 
 a business which means much advertising in 
 the columns of the press. The press has never 
 sought to smother in its news and editorial 
 columns such men as he. Hence, when Steams 
 
84 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 spoke Coolidge, the press printed Coolidge. 
 Gentle reader, have you ever noted that when 
 you have made a speech, which, in your opinion 
 has shadowed Webster, and you have feverishly 
 searched the press, it has reported you some- 
 what in these words: "Percy Alwin also spoke." 
 Perhaps, when if you work, you are a member 
 of the bar or a veterinary. If you would pro- 
 ceed more rapidly, politically, then open a 
 garage or enter into some other business which 
 means advertising. If you will make your 
 commercial business profitable to the press, then 
 it is less unlikely to make political preferment 
 impossible for you. Is there not a political 
 son-rise now threatening in Massachusetts, nur- 
 tured in part by advertising in the columns of 
 the press. Ponder these sordid suggestions. 
 Incidentally, Coolidge often looked into the 
 business office of Stearns, where a sizeable cor- 
 respondence was typed ready for his signature. 
 These are some of the things Steams did for 
 Coolidge, on top of what he modestly admits. 
 Reader, do you now understand, in a way, what 
 Steams has done for Coolidge? Have you any 
 friends like him or even one like him? Can 
 you not understand why Calvin Coolidge has 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 85 
 
 faith, not only in Massachusetts, but also in 
 Frank Waterman Steams? Each has done 
 much for him. This is a plain paragraph. His 
 First Biography is an honest biography. A 
 biography which is not an honest biography 
 is no biography and valueless except perhaps 
 for the next of kin of whom it writes. 
 
 Edwin Upton Curtis, now dead, was a citizen 
 of Boston. He was a graduate of Bowdoin, a 
 great son and trustee of the college. He com- 
 manded his time, which he gave to the public 
 service. He was a stalwart Republican. He 
 had been Mayor of Boston, Collector of the 
 Port and a Metropolitan Park Commissioner. 
 His dominant virtues were a clear head, deter- 
 mination and efficiency. He knew not fear. 
 
 He did much to glorify the admin- 
 istration of Calvin Coolidge. 
 
 At 5.45 P.M., Tuesday, September 9, 1919, 
 Edwin Upton Curtis was Police Commissioner 
 of the City of Boston under appointment by 
 Samuel W. McCall, a former Governor. Two- 
 thirds of the police of the city had then union- 
 ized. Edwin Upton Curtis had issued an order 
 that all men in the service should not unionize. 
 
86 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 The order reads: 
 
 "19. No member of the force shall join or belong 
 to any organization, club or body composed of pres- 
 ent or present and past members of the force which 
 is affiliated with or a part of any organization, club 
 or body outside the department, except that a post of 
 the Grand Army of the Republic, the United Spanish 
 War Veterans and the American Legion of World's 
 War Veterans may be formed within the department." 
 
 This order was promulgated by him under an 
 authorization by the Legislature for the govern- 
 ment of the police in his discretion. This order 
 they had refused to respect. He had then tried 
 and suspended nineteen of the force who were 
 officers of the union. Then the police, this 
 fraction, went on strike. The men repudiated 
 the order and demanded reinstatement. The 
 Commissioner demanded that the order should 
 be respected and refused to reinstate the strik- 
 ing police. This was the issue. The fire of 
 the enemy was first fastened upon him. There 
 was no hesitation on his part from the first. 
 He established his position. He stood firm, to 
 his everlasting honor and in jeopardy of his 
 life, for to him in his condition any form of 
 excitement was fraught with danger. He was 
 the Belgium, and, with the Governor, the Marne 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 87 
 
 of the situation. A statue is to be erected on 
 The Esplanade in Boston, for which the people 
 have subscribed, in honor of Edwin Upton 
 Curtis. 
 
 Edwin Upton Curtis was the second 
 of The Tivo Allies ivho have done 
 much to reveal Calvin Coolidge into 
 
 the Vice-Presidency. 
 
 Then Calvin Coolidge led up the allies which 
 assured the victory. He set out to arouse the 
 will of the people without which law is not 
 law. In support of the Commissioner and for 
 the restoration of law and order and for the 
 reestablishment of the police force, he issued 
 one order and two proclamations. He wired 
 Samuel Gompers two messages as straight as 
 electricity ever carried from a public official 
 to labor, adding those words now tattooed into 
 history: 
 
 '''There is no right to strike against 
 the public service by anybody, any- 
 where, any time." 
 
 He set out to create and establish a public 
 sentiment behind the Commissioner which was 
 
88 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 invaluable. It took root. It sprouted. The 
 opposition began to waver. The men who de- 
 serted their posts and left the city helpless were 
 not reinstated. Law and order was reestab- 
 lished and a practically new police force. It 
 was a great victory. 
 
 The Commissioner and the Governor 
 each was vital to the other. 
 
 There is no man in a position to estimate 
 more intelligently the Police Commissioner and 
 the Governor in their attitudes towards the police 
 strike than the Hon. Herbert Parker. No one 
 stood closer to the crisis than he. He is a for- 
 mer Attorney-General, now a lawyer in Boston, 
 brilliant, with a fine sense of honor. He has 
 always shown a vivid public spirit. His un- 
 qualified commendation of the Governor is 
 particularly significant because he was then 
 counsel to the Commissioner. He gave his ser- 
 vices. His compensation was simply nominal, 
 necessary for his qualification under the statute 
 as counsel. He says: 
 
 ''The incidents of the so-called Police Strike 
 in the City of Boston, then engaging, as now 
 again engage the tense interest of the public. 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 89 
 
 Issues of vital significance in the administra- 
 tion of Governor Coolidge pass in review. In 
 the clearer light of passing time those qualities, 
 which brought him at once into deserved and 
 conspicuous national regard and admiration, are 
 more distinctly revealed. 
 
 "The controversy need not now be renewed, 
 which, at the time, found more or less intelli- 
 gent expression in the public prints and in the 
 hostile opinions of those whose sympathies were 
 with the members of the police force who 
 abandoned their duties; or of those who be- 
 lieved that credit for the ultimate vindication 
 of the law, with the nation-wide recognition 
 of its salutory and impressive influence and 
 example, should be ascribed either to the Gov- 
 ernor, Mr. Curtis, the Police Commissioner, or 
 to others in political life. 
 
 "The Police Commissioner, by provision of 
 law, is appointed by the Governor, and Mr. 
 Curtis was so appointed by a predecessor of 
 Governor Coolidge. His powers and duties, 
 conferred and imposed by statute, made him 
 solely responsible for the civil guardianship 
 of the City of Boston as executive head of the 
 Police Department. With the administration of 
 
90 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 his office no other authority could interfere, nor 
 could he divide or share his responsibility with 
 any other official of the City or State. 
 
 "Openly and defiantly members of the police 
 force had violated a lawful order and regula- 
 tion promulgated by the Commissioner, for- 
 bidding affiliation with outside organizations. 
 The Commissioner proceeded in lawful course 
 to enforce this regulation by formal trial of 
 those who had violated its provisions. The 
 obvious, inevitable, and expected adjudication 
 of their guilt, excited a sympathetic breach of 
 duty by their fellows, resulting in a secretly 
 organized desertion of their posts, and the 
 immediate, but brief outburst of lawlessness 
 and violence, which, for a time, the remaining 
 loyal police force was unable to wholly sup- 
 press. Supported by a universal approving 
 sentiment of the people of the Commonwealth, 
 the military forces of the State were immedi- 
 ately and lawfully called into service by the 
 Mayor and the Governor, and instantly order 
 was restored; and save for some isolated traces 
 of a night of lawlessness, and the presence of 
 militia men in the streets of Boston, the affairs 
 of the City proceeded in normal course, while 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 91 
 
 the depleted police force was in process of re- 
 organization. 
 
 "The Governor did not intervene, prior to 
 the exercise of his constitutional authority in 
 calling the military arm of the public service 
 into action, nor did he till then assume to in 
 any wise advise or direct the Commissioner in 
 the discharge of the duties of his own office as 
 defined by the statute. The Commissioner was 
 called upon to face, as he did, alone and with 
 full realization of its grave issue, the emer- 
 gency that confronted him. He knew that only 
 through the unfaltering enforcement of the 
 lawful requirements of the service that he had 
 established and must control, could he main- 
 tain the efficiency or the vital morale of the 
 police force in the maintenance of the law, and 
 the protection of the city which he had swoni 
 to preserve. Undeterred by threats, unaffected 
 by solicitations and timorous suggestions of 
 compromise with the offenders who had be- 
 trayed their trust, he maintained his steadfast 
 course, universally approved by the people of 
 the Commonwealth, who had discerned that the 
 issue was the survival or destruction of the 
 State itself. 
 
92 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 "When, and perhaps when first he could 
 intervene, the Governor did so, exercising his 
 own supreme authority under the law, super- 
 ceding the assumption by the Mayor of a sup- 
 posed authority to take over command of the 
 Police Department. The Governor directed the 
 Commissioner to act only under such direc- 
 tion as the State executive might prescribe, and 
 meanwhile to conduct his administration of the 
 Police Department in accordance with his own 
 vested authority, and thereafter no further order 
 or direction was communicated by the Governor 
 to the Commissioner. 
 
 "Thence forward, as before, Mr. Curtis di- 
 rected and conducted the affairs of his office, 
 exercised its every authority under the law in 
 his own sound discretion, and in resolute per- 
 formance of his duty. Had he faltered, had he, 
 seduced or persuaded by insidious suggestions 
 of compromise, yielded and given over the con- 
 trol of the city to those who had allied them- 
 selves with the evil doers who had betrayed 
 their pledge of service and had sought to gain 
 their own ends, by surrendering the city de- 
 prived of their protection to the terrors of the 
 mob; had the Commissioner, in fear, or misled 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 93 
 
 by the panic-stricken appeals of would-be ad- 
 visers, opened the gates of the citadel to its 
 invaders; upon what walls or towers could the 
 Governor have raised the standard of the 
 authority of the law, emblazoned with his own 
 matchless phrases proclaiming its supremacy? 
 "There need be no discussion as to the com- 
 parative distinction in exalted public service 
 between the Governor and the Police Commis- 
 sioner. Without either the great issue would 
 have passed, unrecognized, as one of the most 
 momentous incidents in the history of the State 
 
 or Nation. 
 
 "Mr. Curtis alone in the forefront of battle 
 held his lines unbroken till victory was attained. 
 
 "The Governor, instantly responding to the 
 call of a great occasion, which he at once per- 
 ceived, with consummate sagacity, with cour- 
 age and determination of supreme quality, 
 marshalled all the forces of the Commonwealth 
 to make the institutions of our law secure and 
 impregnable for all time against further assault, 
 by treachery or violence. No other chief magis- 
 trate has been gifted as he to touch and inspire 
 by both appeal and command the patriotic faith 
 of his people. Only his own faith, his senti- 
 ment and marvelous power of expression could 
 
94 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 have stirred, as he did, the people of Massachu- 
 setts and the nation itself to a recognition and 
 renewal of their pledge and service to the tri- 
 umphant maintenance of our law, inviolate, un- 
 moved, whether assaulted by its enemies within 
 or without our borders. 
 
 "Vigilant, deliberate, with inflexible courage, 
 the chief magistrate suffered no incident of the 
 impending crisis to escape his forecasting con- 
 sideration. He waited the just and appropriate 
 moment for his action, and then, with full force 
 of lawful authority and with overwhelming 
 weight of the people's will behind him, he struck, 
 and, with supreme mastery of the event, stood 
 revealed as a true leader of men, of patriotism, 
 courage and wisdom, proven through the trial of 
 faith and of conflict. 
 
 "He will meet, again, undaunted, with clear 
 vision and with the sure confidence of his coun- 
 trymen, the grave crises that may attend his de- 
 voted service in the highest field of endeavor 
 upon which man may enter, and to which he has 
 been called by the decree of tragic fate." 
 
 The Boston police strike of September, 1919, 
 made Calvin Coolidge known throughout the 
 country as the apostle of law and order. It gave 
 him an issue and an opportunity. It hurried 
 
THE TWO ALLIES 95 
 
 him into the Vice-Presidency. The importance 
 of this issue is fully recognized only by those 
 who lived in that city at that time, which, when 
 the police deserted their posts was open to the 
 possibilities of the mob. Boston only can under- 
 stand that type of helplessness. Such an issue, 
 or any issue, history is only too quick to forget. 
 The risks of life dwarf as they pass backwards, 
 for joy that a man is born into the world. They 
 are greatest when faced. The English jockey as 
 he turns into the stretch before the crowds and 
 the cheers and the music, hanging over the 
 withers of his thoroughbred, forgets the hurdle 
 he has topped and fastens his eyes only on the 
 hurdle that is before him, which he seeks safely 
 to negotiate, and which alone stands between the 
 blue ribbon and himself. 
 
 The Boston police strike, its issue and its de- 
 termination by the Police Commissioner and by 
 the Governor, ought to grow in realization and 
 recognition with each passing hour. It is sig- 
 nificant that steps which had begun in other 
 parts of the country for the unionizing of the 
 police were then abandoned. The issue died. 
 It was a great issue. It was greatly met. 
 Render therefore unto the Caesars the 
 things which are theirs. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A Profile 
 
 "Seest thou a man diligent in his busi- 
 ness, he shall stand before KingsJ' 
 
 The country has probably never seen a man 
 prominent in public life like him. No one 
 thinks of opposing him and his great strength 
 has come to him, he has not gone to it. He has 
 never been known to make the usual moves 
 towards political preferment. Most men im- 
 press one with trying to shape their own political 
 fortunes, he appears indifferent. He has been 
 content to rest his political hopes, if he has had 
 any, on the political duties he has had to per- 
 form, however humble. The great reason for 
 his political success is his own personality 
 which appeals to one not for what it appears to 
 be but for what it is. Unlike most politicians, 
 he does not play a part, he is himself. He 
 moves quietly and efficiently. He talks only 
 when he has something to say but he listens 
 respectfully whether there is something to hear 
 
 96 
 
FOR HETTEl? FOR WORSE 
 
A PROFILE 97 
 
 or not. He has humor. He can make a pleas- 
 antry and enjoy a pleasantry but he does not 
 use humor only to make for others amusement 
 or for himself votes. A nod from him upon the 
 street is better than an ebullition from another 
 and even this is unnecessary for he is known to 
 be a democrat. He has come surely. 
 
 He has uncommon sense. He is 
 always in preparation. 
 
 In his first year in the Massachusetts House in 
 1907 he was not regarded as a leader because 
 he had not been in political life long enough to 
 be known. Things went after him. He did not 
 go after them. In his second year in the State 
 Senate in 1913, when he was Chairman of the 
 important Committee on Railroads, he was a 
 Chairman who presided; a man who made only 
 the necessary motions of mind, mouth or of 
 body. He never writes when he can talk, and he 
 never talks when he can nod. He was never 
 opposed, personally; he has no enemies in the 
 usual sense. Few men have fewer critics. He 
 had as intelligent and as detailed a knowledge 
 of the bills he had to pass on as any man in the 
 State House. He sees only one side of a ques- 
 
98 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 tion, its merits. He has shown independence as 
 a legislator and 
 
 is as quick to stand by the weak when 
 
 they are right as to leave power when 
 
 it is wrong. 
 
 He has had as little newspaper notice as any 
 man of his prominence. This has been because 
 he has avoided it. His speeches are unique and 
 strong for their thought and for their epigram- 
 matic brevity. His political strength is largely 
 because the public have been curious to study 
 the personality of the only man of that kind 
 they have seen. The more of the man they 
 studied, the more of a man they found. He has 
 a maximum of business, a minimum of froth. 
 He has patience, tenacity, and self-control, 
 qualities which enable one to stand before 
 kings. As Lieutenant-Governor and as Vice- 
 President he was loyal to his Chiefs to a 
 degree too seldom found among his predeces- 
 sors. His life has enabled him to know and to 
 understand all sorts of men, for he has been of 
 them. These men made him Governor, for they 
 liked him for his originality, his modesty, his 
 democracy and his ability. Most men are con- 
 
A PROFILE 99 
 
 tent to be honored by the office they seek. He 
 gives a dignity to the many high honors which 
 have seemed naturally to come to him. He is 
 more of an asset to public office than public 
 office is an asset to him. He is a character ex- 
 ceeded by none in interest for study, still incom- 
 plete, probably always incomplete. He has the 
 charm of mystery which puzzles and appeals. 
 When, pursuant to a fine tradition, in early 
 January 1919, the cannon upon the Common 
 proclaimed to the people of Massachusetts that 
 the hills of her sister State, Vermont, had given 
 them a chief executive, those who would learn 
 to live knew that merit and fortune sometimes 
 walk hand in hand and that the Commonwealth 
 had again the sort of Governor she ought to 
 have, measuring up to her high ideals. 
 
 An issue hurried him into the Vice-Presidency. 
 Greater responsibilities stimulate further analy- 
 sis. He is a student of political economy. As 
 a servant of the people he is as careful of his 
 official as he is of his personal expenditures. 
 To him the public and the private pocket in this 
 way are the same. He is a student of philosophy. 
 He is led by logic and not by emotion, 
 by fidelity and not by ambition. 
 
100 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 He supplements leadership with cooperation. 
 He sets his compass not only for today but also 
 for tomorrow and for a course beyond the line 
 of the horizon. Those who study him, know 
 him, turn to him, rely on him. They, only, know 
 him, for his virtues he does not radio. The peo- 
 ple see in him one of their own. The powerful 
 turn to him because he is an intellectual aristo- 
 crat and the weak because he is also a plain 
 farmer. He is one of them all. He met the 
 great issue, law and order. He recognizes that 
 law is but the will of the people which he suc- 
 cessfully sets out to arouse. He has the strength 
 of a deep running river, powerful and placid. 
 He has an inset religious faith. 
 
 Of such is Calvin Coolidge. He has made his 
 five talents ten. Providence has led him on, 
 made strong allies his handmaidens, made his 
 path straight. Law and order revealed him into 
 the Vice-Presidency. 
 
 He noiv holds the highest office on 
 
 earth by virtue of a title greater than 
 
 that of any electorate. God made him 
 
 President. 
 
W(,rlil Wide Photos 
 
 THE THREE ( (K)LIUGE MEN. WASHINGTON 
 
 Calvin Coolidge, Jr. 
 
 The President John Coolidge 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 Along the Potomac 
 
 *'God moves in a mysterious way, 
 His wonders to perform.^^ 
 
 Particularly because of the issue, law and 
 order, it was natural that when the Presidential 
 storm of 1920 broke and men were named for 
 the Republican Presidential nomination, the 
 Governor was among them. Significantly, how- 
 ever, some of the Republican leaders of his own 
 State sulked in their tents. They were then 
 without a gift of prophecy which they now 
 lament. A determined effort was made to secure 
 for Leonard Wood the Massachusetts delegation. 
 The Governor, however, continued with his 
 duties in his own way, unrippled. When asked 
 if he were a candidate for the Presidency, he 
 said: 
 
 "/ am not a candidate for the Presi- 
 dency, I am Governor of Massachu- 
 setts and am content to do my only 
 duty, the days work as such.'' 
 101 
 
102 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 Again, in a characteristic whimsical vein, he 
 said: "If you are asked if I am a candidate 
 for the Presidency, tell the truth." 
 
 Coolidge had been reelected Governor in the 
 fall of 1919 on the issue of law and order by 
 the greatest vote to that time cast, which was 
 before women voted. In the spirit of these 
 statements he finished the old term and began 
 the new. In the Republican State Convention of 
 1919, strangely, there was some discussion over 
 the plank on The League of Nations, then the 
 great issue. The matter was compromised in a 
 way which met with satisfaction. The party how- 
 ever, should have stood without hesitation to the 
 letter logically behind Senator Lodge and his 
 position because his record was the party rec- 
 ord. He was the party. He had made it what it 
 was, whether it was good, whether it was bad. 
 
 The Coolidge sentiment for President in the 
 spring of 1920 began to grow. He, however, 
 did nothing to encourage it. It was not his way. 
 He was content to do the day's work. 
 
 Headquarters which ardent friends 
 
 had opened for him in Washington he 
 
 closed. 
 
ALONG THE POTOMAC 103 
 
 He was content to drift along in tlie Coolidge 
 current which he had always found to be a 
 strong tide. He knew that he lay in an advan- 
 tageous position on the political beach, to be 
 washed safely high on the shore. He knew that 
 his cause was strongest as an harmonizing sug- 
 gestion should the convention fail to nominate, 
 otherwise. His cause was thus unscarred by 
 contest. It was his way. His book, "Have 
 Faith in Massachusetts," was widely circulated 
 by his friends throughout the country by which 
 he became better known. The story is told that 
 a young woman went into an ill-equipped coun- 
 try store in Berkshire County and asked: "Have 
 you faith in Massachusetts?" The answer was 
 
 "Yes" and "No." 
 
 A notable delegation, in quality if not m 
 quantity, went to Chicago in June for Coolidge. 
 They had taken the bits into their own mouths 
 and would not be controlled by him. Notable 
 among them were then Lieutenant-Governor 
 Channing Cox, then Speaker Joseph Everett 
 Warner and the Hon. Benjamin Loring Young, 
 then reconciled to political preferment. Al- 
 though they recognized that advancement for 
 Coolidge and his retirement as Governor meant 
 
104 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 probable advancement for them, this did not 
 palsy their hands or chill the inside of their 
 footgear. No one at Chicago was more elo- 
 quent for Calvin Coolidge than they. 
 
 Their devotion and self-effacement is 
 
 one of the most touching and noblest 
 
 pages in the political history of the 
 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 There were others. The Hon. Charles L. 
 Burrill is a man of independence and vigor. He 
 is not in need of a tonic. When he is with you, 
 he is with you. He is now a Councillor, then 
 State Treasurer. He has a creditable public 
 record. Thomas W. White was a legislative col- 
 league of Coolidge. Tom knew him. Coolidge 
 had made him Supervisor of Administration, the 
 most important office in the State House. White 
 is a politician. A splendid quality of his as 
 such is that he recognizes the obligation of reci- 
 procity. This he cheerfully then did. William 
 F. Whiting of Holyoke is a member of a family 
 distinguished as manufacturers. These names 
 stand high on the roll of honor of those loyal to 
 Calvin Coolidge, not alone in 1923 when it is 
 
ALONG THE POTOMAC 105 
 
 easy, but particularly in 1920, when it was not 
 so easy. 
 
 Louis K. Liggett, a successful, respected man- 
 ufacturer and retailer of drugs in Boston, was 
 another leader in the Coolidge delegation. In 
 his zeal, the story is told, that he invaded even 
 the boudoir of the Senior Senator from Massa- 
 chusetts, when the clock had fought its course 
 half-way from caviar to shredded wheat, seek- 
 ing to enlist him in his army. A Cabot was 
 actually in bed. A Cabot never goes to bed 
 except perhaps furtively outside of Suffolk and 
 Essex Counties. He retires. "Senator," cried he, 
 when he had hardly closed the door, removed his 
 hat and gums, and a Cabot turning, had faced 
 him, "Calvin Coolidge is the greatest man in 
 this country since the days of Abraham Lin- 
 coln." The Senior Senator made an effort to 
 control himself long enough to reply: "Will you 
 kindly repeat, that is, the fifth word?" When 
 Henry Cabot Lodge had satisfied himself that 
 he had again heard the word, "greatest," he 
 turned languidly on his right side, facing the 
 wall, and reached for a soothing powder. His 
 forefinger hesitated at the push button which 
 hung over the bed to plunge the room in dark- 
 
106 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 ness only because of the obligation of a host, to 
 which a Cabot could not be dead. Calvin 
 Coolidge was placed before the convention for 
 President by the Speaker of the House, the Hon. 
 Frederick Huntington Gillett. He is a son of 
 Westfield, loyal to Calvin Coolidge, not only 
 now but also then, and of the Connecticut River 
 Valley, though well up on its western banks 
 beyond the reach of its highest tides. The nomi- 
 nation was seconded by Mrs. Alexandra Car- 
 lisle in an eloquent speech. Women then made 
 their political debut in her. On the first ballot, 
 Coolidge received 34 votes, including 1 from 
 Kentucky, 2 from New York, 2 from South 
 Carolina, 1 from Texas and 28 of the 35 Massa- 
 chusetts delegates. Massachusetts had been 
 hammered hard for Leonard Wood for six 
 months. Coolidge had done nothing, and his 
 adherents had been strangled by him so far as 
 he was able to do so. And yet, seven only fal- 
 tered. Curiously, Vermont's 8 votes went to 
 Leonard Wood for President but for Coolidge 
 for Vice-President, on the first ballots. 
 
 The Governor was nominated for the Vice- 
 Presidency at Chicago, June 12, 1920, at nine in 
 the evening by the Hon. Wallace MacCamant of 
 
ALONG THE POTOMAC 107 
 
 Portland, Oregon. It was enough to mention his 
 name to the convention and it swept with a spon- 
 taneity unexcelled in history. When the news 
 came to him at The Adams House in Boston, 
 where he was then living as Governor, he stood 
 at the telephone. He turned to his wife and 
 said, simply: 
 
 "Nominated.^' 
 
 He was as much Coolidge as when he heard that 
 he had been first politically uncrated and elected 
 a Councilman in Northampton in 1899. His 
 wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, could, would 
 and did betray human joy. The humblest serf 
 of the hotel, as he hurried up purely Volstedian 
 beverages to his adherents, was more exuberant 
 than the Governor and quicker to betray it. 
 Frank Stearns, who always aimed at the stars 
 for Coolidge, looked upon the Vice-Presidency 
 as a bauble. He contemplated retiring into a 
 monastery. Coolidge was formally notified of 
 his nomination at Northampton, July 27, 1920. 
 On that day. Senator Crane, one of the Gover- 
 nor's most sympathetic allies, showed signs of 
 his final illness. He was loved because he lived: 
 "It is more blessed to give than to receive." 
 
108 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 He gave to those in trouble freely of his money 
 but more than this freely of his time. No poli- 
 tician was closer to Calvin Coolidge than 
 
 Murray Crane, who drew all men to 
 him with hooks of steel. 
 
 To his place, the Hon. William M. Butler has 
 now succeeded. He stood closest to Crane. He 
 has won the respect of the people by his fore- 
 sight and thrift. 
 
 In the campaign which then began the 
 Governor made a number of political speeches 
 throughout the country which were of great 
 value to the ticket, although he was handicapped 
 by his onerous duties as Governor. These he 
 carefully prepared, for no one is less given 
 than he to extempore speaking. These speeches 
 he wrote out in long hand before they were 
 typed, as he does with all his speeches. He was 
 particularly successful among the farmers of 
 the West, for he had always been a farmer him- 
 self. When he saw a plough, he knew it. In 
 November, the ticket was elected by the greatest 
 plurality known in history. 
 
 January and February 1921 were welcome 
 days of comparative rest for Calvin Coolidge. 
 
ALONG THE POTOMAC 109 
 
 He had retired as Governor and had returned to 
 "The Executive Mansion" in Northampton. 
 There with his wife, and the boys at study in the 
 public schools of the town, he was happier than 
 he had been for years or was to be, for he likes 
 simplicity and the opportunity for study. For 
 the first time since the year 1909, the year 
 between his service as Representative and as 
 Mayor, he was in private life. He had become 
 the most distinguished son of the Connecticut 
 River Valley in its history. 
 
 Coolidge found much correspondence to keep 
 him busy and he was preparing for his duties in 
 the United States Senate as he always prepared. 
 The letters which came into Northampton for 
 him, and the post office became a busy one, were 
 longer naturally than those that went out. The 
 incoming and not the outgoing was the big mail. 
 To one loyal friend, then under attack, who 
 wrote him a real letter, congratulating the coun- 
 try on his elevation, Coolidge wrote simply: 
 
 ''Thanks. Matt. 5:10, 11. C. C." 
 
 He was never in finer form as Calvin the Silent, 
 for he denied the letter even a date. On August 
 3, 1923, this letter was framed and deposited in 
 
no CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 a safe deposit vault, and not in a trunk, backed, 
 "Correspondence, Calvin Coolidge." Strangely, 
 some few critics look upon a man who has twice 
 been President of the Massachusetts Senate, 
 three times Lieutenant-Governor, and twice Gov- 
 ernor, with suspicion. They suggest in substance 
 that in politics, in stature, he is a Tom Thumb, 
 and in his success, a casualty. 
 
 Massachusetts is a fairly intelligent 
 State and is not in the habit of digest- 
 ing for seven long years a peppered 
 chocolate. 
 
 On March 4, 1921, Coolidge became Vice- 
 President and by virtue of his office presided 
 over the Senate of the United States. He was 
 then forty-eight years old, one year for each star 
 in the flag. The seat in which he sat quietly, 
 Roosevelt had writhed in. Strangely, he had 
 turned from swinging the gavel over the Massa- 
 chusetts Senate and the Hon. George Bosworth 
 Churchill, also a great son of Amherst, to that of 
 maintaining order over her great sister and 
 Hiram Johnson. The Presidency has saved him 
 from Magnus. He was asked to sit in the Cabi- 
 net of the President. He was the first Vice- 
 
ALONG THE POTOMAC 111 
 
 President to face a proposition of this delicacy, 
 for The White House and The Senate had not 
 always been a symbol of sympathetic commun- 
 ion. This he did with great tact and profit to the 
 country then and later. 
 
 He lived with his wife at The New Willard and 
 with his boys when they were not at school or at 
 the top of the Washington Monument. He pur- 
 sued his duties quietly and efficiently as always 
 nor did he immediately seek to ally himself 
 with a press agency or subscribe to a clipping 
 bureau. It is not his first hope for the day, that 
 of most public servants restless for advance, to 
 read about himself, praise or even condemna- 
 tion. There is no easier way to jeopardize an 
 appetite for breakfast. He also faced other 
 hurdles, harder for one of his tastes if this word 
 may be properly used, the continuous dinners 
 which the Vice-President is paid his salary to eat. 
 Fortunately, The New Willard is maintained 
 on the European plan. Calvin paid for what he 
 ate only, and more than this he ate what he 
 paid for. Entertained often at luncheon at 
 noon by some Senator who hoped to be recog- 
 nized by The Chair later in the day and dining 
 at some Embassy in the evening, Calvin's board 
 
112 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 bill at the hotel could have easily been paid by 
 a parish priest. It is a matter of regret though 
 not of surprise to those who know our hero, 
 that, whether he ate much or ate little, he ate 
 more than he talked but less than he listened. 
 At one of these dinners, a Washington matron 
 sat beside him. She established herself then 
 and there as a raconteur of high order for there 
 also sat beside her Herbert Hoover. Hers was 
 an admirable background against which she was 
 set off. Her heart set on the biggest game within 
 her reach, she forgot the man who fed the Bel- 
 gians and concentrated her ingenuity on Calvin, 
 to tempt him to speak. He was noticed address- 
 ing her almost excitedly. When later she was 
 asked for the cause of her great triumph, she 
 replied: 
 
 "/ did not make much progress with 
 
 him until I reached the Northampton 
 
 post office."" 
 
 Here again this little anecdote is significant, 
 for Coolidge is preoccupied always with great 
 questions and when he found that he could work 
 his mouth and rest his mind on a familiar theme, 
 then he was ready to cooperate and happy. 
 
ALONG THE POTOMAC 113 
 
 A prominent man in Washington, a good judge 
 of men and a loyal friend of the President, says: 
 "I like him because I don't know why I like 
 him; because he don't seem to care whether I 
 like him or not; because he's the only one of 
 his species, which I didn't know existed; be- 
 cause he's not like other politicians, doesn't 
 give away cigars, kiss other babies than his own 
 or tell entertaining stories; because he gets by 
 on merit, not personal charm, because to him a 
 political job is a business opportunity; because, 
 in easy English, he F, 0. B's the freight." 
 
 Of such was the life of Calvin Coolidge in 
 Washington. More than this, when he was not 
 there or at home on the farm, he was speaking 
 for the administration throughout the country. 
 
 No one exceeded him in his loyalty to 
 Warren Harding and his administra- 
 tion. 
 
 At midnight after the day of August 2, a 
 motor and messengers hurried over the rough 
 road from Ludlow to Plymouth. They carried 
 a message of great sorrow and of high responsi- 
 bility. The President was dead. In a white 
 cottage close by the highway, Calvin Coolidge 
 
114 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 slept. From peace and simplicity and the 
 homely duties and pleasures about the farm, he 
 was aroused to face the high office of President. 
 No man has passed through a greater transition 
 than that of the loyal aide-de-camp and friend 
 of Warren Gamaliel Harding. 
 
 Never has greater distinction and 
 greater power come to any one among 
 more simple surroundings. It is a 
 symbol of the democracy of American 
 institutions which will always live in 
 American history ^ that opportunity 
 and honor are open to all. 
 
 The little white cottage will never die. It staged 
 a drama which will forever thrill every Ameri- 
 can citizen, from the powerful to the plough- 
 man. 
 
 In his great hour, Calvin Coolidge thought 
 first of his father. It was he who as Notary 
 Public administered to his son the oath of office 
 at seventeen minutes of three in the morning, 
 eastern standard time, in these words: "I, Cal- 
 vin Coolidge, do solemnly swear that I will 
 faithfully execute the office of President of the 
 United States, and that I will, to the best of 
 
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 NiLa 
 
 
 r^ 
 
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 2 
 
 * 
 
 w 
 
 
 O 
 
 "A 
 
 r/ 
 
 
 t^ 
 
 
 
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 ^ 
 
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 s^ 
 
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ALONG THE POTOMAC 115 
 
 my ability, preserve, protect and defend the 
 constitution of the United States. So help me 
 God." The only other words said were by the 
 President: "Grace, get another lamp." And 
 there was light. Calvin Coolidge became Presi- 
 dent of the United States. When the great test 
 came, official and personal, he showed the stoi- 
 cism of an Indian. He was himself. 
 
 In his first words to the American people, the 
 President said: 
 
 "Reports have reached me, which I fear are 
 correct, that President Harding has gone. The 
 world has lost a great and good man. I mourn 
 his loss. He was my chief and my friend. It 
 will be my privilege to carry out the policies 
 which he has begun for the service of the Ameri- 
 can people and for me to meet their responsi- 
 bilities whenever they may arise. For this pur- 
 pose I shall seek the cooperation of all those 
 who have been associated with the President 
 during his term of office. Those who have given 
 their efforts to assist him, I wish to remain in 
 office, that they may assist me. I have faith that 
 God will direct the destinies of our nation." 
 
 In his first act as President, he stood alone at 
 his mother's grave in Plymouth, for which he 
 
116 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 halted his progress to Washington. He was 
 true to those scriptural words, the only com- 
 mandment with promise: 
 
 '^Honour thy father and mother." 
 
 Mention is now reserved here for one who 
 is now dead, on August 2, 1923, and who by 
 his characteristic, kindly and wise foresight did 
 much to adapt at the Cabinet table Calvin 
 Coolidge for his responsibilities as President. 
 
 Warren Harding as a man was a Christian 
 gentleman. His was a faith which compre- 
 hended all, Protestant and Catholic, Gentile and 
 Jew, who recognized in him a spiritual aristo- 
 crat. In his death the people forgot the Presi- 
 dent for the man, for his personal charm could 
 not be augmented by the splendor of any office, 
 even the high one which he held. This they 
 showed at his death in expressions of sorrow and 
 respect unprecedented, marked first by silence 
 and second by numbers, the great and the small, 
 the young and the old, the strong and the weak. 
 His Christian qualities are best shown upon the 
 walls of The Marion Star by this, his newspaper 
 creed : 
 
 "Remember there are two sides to every 
 
ALONG THE POTOMAC 117 
 
 question. Get both. Be truthful. Get the facts. 
 Mistakes are inevitable, but strive for accuracy. 
 I would rather have one story exactly right than 
 a hundred half wrong. Be decent. Be fair. 
 Be generous. Boost — don't knock. There's 
 good in everybody. Bring out the good in 
 everybody, and never needlessly hurt the feel- 
 ing of anybody. In reporting a political gath- 
 ering, get the facts, tell the story as it is, not as 
 you would like to have it. Treat all parties 
 alike. If there's any politics to be played, we 
 will play it in our editorial columns. Treat all 
 religious matter reverently. If it can possibly 
 be avoided, never bring ignominy to an innocent 
 woman or child in telling of the misdeeds or 
 misfortune of a relative. Don't wait to be asked, 
 but do it without the asking. 
 
 And above all be clean. Never let a 
 dirty word or suggestive story get into 
 type. I want this paper so conducted 
 thai it can go into any home without 
 destroying the innocence of any child." 
 
 Warren Harding as President remembered 
 his country. He forgot himself and his own 
 life. He lost his life. He has found it. He fore- 
 
118 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 saw the stake which he did not seek to evade, 
 for he was not in sound physical condition. He 
 was a patriot. He came into the office of Presi- 
 dent at a period trying for the country, trying 
 for him. It was a period of reconstruction, 
 restlessness, when the people were impatient and 
 quick in comment and criticism. He was led, 
 not by ambition, but by duty. He had a kindly 
 heart and an unwillingness to pain. He had 
 sound sense. He had courage. He had fidelity. 
 He did not shrink from bristling issues even 
 where the leaders of his own party were divided. 
 He was insistent for the enforcement of the law 
 and the respect of the constitution. The Dis- 
 armament Conference for the peace of the 
 world, called by him, was his first great hope. 
 He will live in history not only as a great Peace 
 President, none greater, but more than this as a 
 Christian gentleman. 
 
 '"The strenuous day is past. 
 The march, the fight. 
 The bugle sounds at last: 
 Lights out. Good night." 
 
 Warren Harding is dead. The Presidency of 
 the United States, no higher, more honorable or 
 
ALONG THE POTOMAC 119 
 
 more powerful office on earth, never dies. 
 Calvin Coolidge succeeds to the command. 
 
 "Close up the ranks. March on." 
 
 To the people of the United States remains 
 the high duty: 
 
 Have faith in Calvin Coolidge. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 Some High Tides 
 
 "Let reverence of the law be 
 breathed by every mother to the 
 lisping babe that prattles on her lap; 
 let it be taught in schools, seminaries 
 and colleges; let it be written in 
 primers, spelling books and alma- 
 nacs; let it be preached from pulpits 
 and proclaimed in legislative halls 
 and enforced in courts of justice; let 
 it become the political religion 
 of the nation." — Lincoln. 
 
 On the Power of Religion 
 C. C. 
 
 "It was because religion gave the people a 
 new importance and a new glory that they 
 demanded a new freedom and a new Govern- 
 ment. We cannot in our generation reject the 
 cause and retain the result. If the institutions 
 they adopted are to survive, if the Government 
 which they founded is to endure, it will be 
 
 120 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 121 
 
 because the people continue to have similar 
 religious beliefs. It is idle to discuss free- 
 dom and equality on any other basis. It is 
 useless to expect substantial reforms from any 
 other motive. They cannot be administered 
 from without. They must come from within." 
 
 On the American Revolution 
 '94-'9S-C. C. 
 
 "When history looks beyond the immediate 
 causes of the American Revolution for the 
 justifying principles, it is very soon brought 
 back to the spirit of English liberty. It is the 
 same genius for freedom that has led the race 
 from the primeval forests of Germany to the 
 thirteenth amendment to the constitution. 
 
 "Such an honorable antiquity of political 
 ideas has made the race very conservative of 
 self-government. The idea is prehistoric. . . . 
 Although it is characteristic of Englishmen to 
 have great love for a king so long as he respects 
 the liberties of the people, yet the fact that 
 they drove out one king; rebelled against two; 
 and executed three shows clearly enough that 
 there was always a strong idea of the divine 
 right of the people as well as of kings. Prece- 
 
122 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 dents, then, are by no means wanting among 
 Englishmen for the successful resistance of 
 arbitrary despotism whenever it encroached 
 upon their liberties. 
 
 "Another fact that must be noted is the char- 
 acter of the colonists, and especially those of 
 Massachusetts. These were the Puritans who 
 had fought the wars of liberty in England. . . . 
 Of all the race they were the most tenacious 
 of their rights and the most jealous of their 
 liberties. 
 
 "The American Revolution was not, then, 
 any struggle for emancipation from slavery; 
 the colonists were free men. Nor was it at 
 first so much for gaining new liberties as pre- 
 serving the old. Nor can it, as is often thought, 
 be called a war between different nations. 
 
 "Both sides were Englishmen who gloried in 
 the name of England. . . . The ablest advo- 
 cates of the colonial cause were members of 
 Parliament, while the most ardent advocates of 
 the king were colonists. The real object of 
 resistance was to gain security from parliamen- 
 tary encroachments. This was the chief cause 
 for which the revolutionists contended, but by 
 no means all they attained . . . the war was a 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 123 
 
 struggle for the retention of those institutions 
 that check oppression and violence. 
 
 "The colonists were . . . struggling to 
 change the foundation of government from 
 force to equality. . . . Great Britain had re- 
 course to acts of coercion. . . . Free govern- 
 ment was destroyed. . . . Town meetings were 
 forbidden. . . . The form of government that 
 was thrust on Massachusetts was despotism such 
 as Englishmen would not have endured, even 
 in the days of Henry VIII. 
 
 "Though the injustice of taxation without 
 representation made a good war cry ... it 
 is, in the last analysis, a dangerous principle. 
 . . . The fact is, it is a duty to the State to 
 pay taxes, and it is equally a duty to vote. It 
 does not follow that because the State requires 
 one duty it shall require the other. 
 
 "It cannot be, then, that the American Revo- 
 lution was fought that colonists might escape 
 paying taxes. . . . The real principle was 
 not one of the right of the State or the duty of 
 citizens. It was a question of government, a 
 question of form and method. ... It was not 
 so much a revolution, a propagation of new 
 ideas, as the maintenance of the old forms of 
 
124 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 a representative government, of chartered rights 
 and constitutional liberty. England had fought 
 for this in 1688, and imagined it was secured. 
 But it was only so in name. . . . 
 
 "Sovereignty is always finally vested in the 
 people. . . . England had asserted it against 
 the Stuarts, but George III forgot it. . . . The 
 colonies were driven to assert by war what the 
 Commons of England partially gained by legis- 
 lation sixty years later. There was further 
 gained in the United States a recognition that 
 quality, not quantity, is the basis of the peer- 
 age of man, and accordingly all men were de- 
 clared free and equal. 
 
 "Still there is another factor that must in- 
 evitably have led to separation. The great land 
 of America had a part to play in the history 
 of the world that could best be performed by 
 making it an independent nation. England's 
 great work was to plant colonies. America 
 could not aid in that work. It was her place 
 to found a great nation on this side of the 
 Atlantic and to bring out the conception of 
 free government. And when this was done, 
 then America stretched out her hand over the 
 sea to aid the oppressed of Europe, to furnish 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 125 
 
 them a place of refuge, and, as soon as they 
 could assume the duties, make them citizens, 
 not alone of our United States, but of the 
 world." 
 
 On Wit 
 
 Grove Oration — Amherst College — 
 June, 1895, by "J. Calvin Coolidge" 
 
 "The mantle of truth falls upon the Grove 
 Orator on condition he wear it wrong side out. 
 For the Grove Oration is intended to give a 
 glimpse of the only true side of college life 
 — the inside. And how can this be displayed 
 but by turning things wrong side out? That is 
 the grove prerogative. We came out of doors 
 to have plenty of room. Reconstructed Amherst 
 has not yet decreed that "fools may not speak 
 wisely what wise men do foolishly." Yet let 
 no one expect that this is an occasion for feed- 
 ing the multitude — on small fishes. I only 
 bring the impressions that we gather by the 
 way, whether they be pleasant as the breath of 
 society roses from over the meadows of Old 
 Hadley, or disagreeable as the ancient odors 
 that filled Athenae Hall. 
 
 "Now college life has three relations — the 
 
126 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 relation to the class, the relation to the faculty, 
 and the relation to other things. The class 
 relation begins with a cane rush where the 
 undergraduates use Anglo-Saxon, and ends with 
 a diploma where the faculty use Latin — if it 
 does not end before by a communication from 
 the President in just plain English. When we 
 had our first rush the streets of Amherst were 
 lit with matches. We lost the rush, but we 
 found our class spirit. Those were the days 
 when we looked with envy at even Professor 
 Charlie, and cooled our fevered brows at the 
 college well. Let memory draw us back once 
 more to the college well! Deep as the wily 
 schemes of "Sleuth" Jaggar, the crafty man, 
 cool as the impudence of "Jeff" Davis, refresh- 
 ing as the sparkling wit of "Chipmunk" Hardy! 
 The freshman's first love! Many a man goes 
 home when he finds the college well is not dug 
 in Northampton. 
 
 "But sophomore year came at last. Probably 
 nearly every one would maintain that the only 
 proper thing to do when one comes to a descrip- 
 tion of sophomore year is to let the voice fall, 
 count four, and begin some other subject. In 
 fact, I have always been inclined to believe that 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 127 
 
 some impecunious sophomore, who may have 
 enticed him into buying a book on ornithology 
 or some kindred subject, first led Horace 
 Greeley to classify college men as horned cattle. 
 
 "But the great editor was a poor naturalist, 
 for even horned cattle would never try to steal 
 a railroad restaurant. Still we have to excuse 
 the sophomore worm, for he comes out of his 
 vacation cocoon a junior butterfly. Probably 
 it is better to be a junior than not to be. He 
 is the incarnation of all the attributes of a 
 college man. The plug hat is his. He goes 
 about "seeking the bubble reputation even in 
 his own mouth." Only last Decoration Day, 
 Lockwood delivered two addresses before peo- 
 ple. The only trouble with junior year is that 
 it leaves one a senior. He needs no description. 
 You have all been looking at him for the last 
 week. Here are some living pictures repre- 
 senting the senior in repose. 
 
 "There is connected with our Christian College 
 an institution of most honorable antiquity called 
 a faculty. Some of its members, like comets 
 with long hair, move in orbits of enormous 
 eccentricity. Some seem but satellites revolving 
 around that "tenebrific star" that "did ray out 
 
128 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 darkness" over the Amherst system. "All the 
 world's a stage, ... all men . . . merely 
 players . . . and one man in his time plays 
 many parts." But there are others. At the 
 head of one of the best departments in College 
 is Professor Frink. One man in the class 
 allowed him to be mentioned on several pages 
 of our Olio. That man had to send his regrets 
 to the class supper from a distant city. But 
 still the professor was not satisfied with our 
 production, and even expressed himself in terms 
 that were derogatory to its literary merit. It 
 has been said that DeQuincey was a creature 
 of the intellect. But though we would refuse 
 to offer the excuse of Mother Eve that this 
 serpent beguiled us, still the Board and the 
 class behind it is willing to fall back upon the 
 excuse of the late Adam that this woman gave 
 to us and we did eat. He has indeed furnished 
 us with fruit. There is a four years' course, 
 too, under Dr. Hitchcock. "The poor ye have 
 always with you." But not feeling at liberty 
 to make use of the choice indecencies that are 
 always so prevalent in the remarks of the ven- 
 erable tarrier, it is necessary to refer him to 
 Mr. Kelley. Was he the only member of the 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 129 
 
 faculty that was eminently fitted to hear Egan's 
 apology for talking French at the sophomore 
 supper, or had Egan infringed upon the domain 
 of the physical department? I recommend the 
 Olio Board to compile statistics showing the 
 original sources of Dr. Tuttle's stories, and the 
 number of times he uses his favorite phrase 
 the "pierced hand." There are some who argue 
 that what the good Doctor took for a call to 
 the pulpit was in reality some other noise. But 
 your grove orator does not think so, though it 
 may have been a subjective sensation. The only 
 professor who seems positively disappointed 
 when a man does not flunk is Professor Wood. 
 But some men do disappoint him. To a man 
 standing at the back of his class it must resemble 
 the circuit races. Then there is the new labora- 
 tory, where Professor Harris delights to lecture 
 upon various, diverse, promiscuous and other 
 oratorical subjects, except chemistry. He has 
 a lecture on the faculty in two sub-divisions 
 — Christians and gorillas — that actually sur- 
 passes the ordinary effort of a superintendent of 
 schools. To a man who does not take geology 
 Professor Emerson looks like a kind old gen- 
 tleman with a little of the good free wool 
 
130 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 growing on his countenance; but the combined 
 vocabularies of Kingsland and Sampson could 
 not express the mind of a man trying to make 
 up a cut in that department. Professor Neill 
 seems to be trying to color himself with nico- 
 tine like a meerschaum pipe. He has partially 
 succeeded with his whiskers. To attain perfec- 
 tion he needs to send himself away, and get 
 himself boiled. Then if he came back at all 
 he would come back a nice dark brown. But 
 these are only a few snapshots from the side 
 lines. In such departments as calculus, his- 
 tory, philosophy and many others, are men who 
 teach. It is such men that have made Amherst 
 what it is. I believe every Amherst man may 
 point with pride at our faculty. 
 
 "I have said that there are other things. One 
 of these is the town. It is largely made up 
 of beautiful scenery and a kindly regard for 
 a college man's money. But not so with all the 
 townspeople. James Davis deserves a word of 
 commendation, but I cannot give it to him, be- 
 cause he sent me word that whenever he was 
 mentioned in this connection his wife made 
 home life a misery to him. It seemed also at 
 the opening of the year as if it would be neces- 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 131 
 
 sary to mention The Student, but ever since 
 Editor Law came back from Christmas vaca- 
 tion, wearing an engagement smile, and hum- 
 ming some ditty about "over the river," the 
 organ has taken a more readable standard. But 
 I cannot leave out the other classes. The fresh- 
 men still have more links than golf suits in 
 spite of the fact that Henry Clews may be 
 afflicted with only the eccentricities of genius. 
 The less one says about the sophomores, of 
 course the better one describes them. The 
 juniors have some musicians and little Johnnie 
 Pratt for a football captain. 
 
 "Gentlemen of the Class of '95: Oh! you 
 need not look so alarmed. I am not going to 
 work off any song and dance about the cold, 
 cruel world. It may not be such a misfortune 
 to be out of college. It is not positive proof 
 that a diploma is a wolf because it comes to 
 you in sheep's clothing. No one in business 
 will have to pay Professor Tyler, him of the 
 nest-egg pate, two dollars for an extra exami- 
 nation. Of course we are not all stars. Post, 
 like the man in the moon, seems to have come 
 too soon to find his way to knowledge. Compton 
 has sometimes been unfortunate — when he 
 
132 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 could not read between the lines. And there is 
 Charlie Little in his own specialty of drawing 
 himself into his shell like a turtle to exist solely 
 to and for self. In looking over the class book, 
 I see that the statistics committee made the mis- 
 take of not taking the opinion of the class to 
 see, whether, from present indications, Fiske's 
 failure to make the commencement stage was 
 due more to subjective causes than to objective 
 obstacles. But we have also such men as Colby, 
 who at Chicago, sacrificed the brightest athletic 
 prospects of any man in the class for the sake 
 of Amherst, and every man in college knows 
 what reward he had for his loyalty. Wherever 
 we go, whatever we are, scientific or classical, 
 conditioned or unconditioned, degreed or dis- 
 agreed, we are going to be Amherst men. And 
 whoever sees a purple and white button marked 
 with '95 shall see the emblem of a class 
 spirit that will say, "Old Amherst, doubtless 
 always right, but right or wrong. Old Amherst!" 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 133 
 
 On Political Philosophy 
 
 First Inaugural 
 
 Massachusetts Senate, 1914 
 
 C. C. 
 
 "Honorable Senators: — I thank you — 
 with gratitude for the high honor given, with 
 appreciation for the solemn obligations assumed 
 — I thank you. 
 
 "This Commonwealth is one. We are all mem- 
 bers of one body. The welfare of the weakest 
 and the welfare of the most powerful are insep- 
 arably bound together. Industry cannot flourish 
 if labor languish. Transportation cannot pros- 
 per if manufactures decline. The general wel- 
 fare cannot be provided for in any one act, but 
 it is well to remember that the benefit of one is 
 the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the 
 neglect of all. The suspension of one man's 
 dividends is the suspension of another man's 
 pay envelope. 
 
 "Men do not make laws. They do but dis- 
 cover them. Laws must be justified by something 
 more than the will of the majority. They must 
 rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. 
 That state is most fortunate in its form of gov- 
 ernment which has the aptest instruments for 
 
134 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 the discovery of laws. The latest, most modem, 
 and nearest perfect system that statesmanship 
 has devised is representative government. Its 
 weakness is the weakness of us imperfect human 
 beings who administer it. Its strength is that 
 even such administration secures to the people 
 more blessings than any other system ever pro- 
 duced. No nation has discarded it and retained 
 liberty. Representative government must be 
 preserved. 
 
 "Courts are established, not to determine the 
 popularity of a cause, but to adjudicate and 
 enforce rights. No litigant should be required 
 to submit his case to the hazard and expense of 
 a political campaign. No judge should be re- 
 quired to seek or receive political rewards. The 
 courts of Massachusetts are known and honored 
 wherever men love justice. Let their glory suf- 
 fer no diminution at our hands. The electorate 
 and judiciary cannot combine. A hearing means 
 a hearing. When the trial of causes goes out- 
 side the court-room, Anglo-Saxon constitutional 
 government ends. 
 
 "The people cannot look to legislation gen- 
 erally for success. Industry, thrift, character, 
 are not conferred by act or resolve. Govern- 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 135 
 
 ment cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no 
 substitute for the rewards of service. It can, 
 of course, care for the defective and recognize 
 distinguished merit. The normal must care for 
 themselves. Self-government means self-support. 
 
 "Man is born into the universe with a person- 
 ality that is his own. He has a right that is 
 founded upon the constitution of the universe 
 to have property that is his own. Ultimately, 
 property rights and personal rights are the same 
 thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other 
 be violated. Each man is entitled to his rights 
 and the rewards of his service be they never so 
 large or never so small. 
 
 "History reveals no civilized people among 
 whom there were not a highly educated class, 
 and large aggregations of wealth, represented 
 usually by the clergy and the nobility. Inspira- 
 tion has always come from above. Diffusion 
 of learning has come down from the university 
 to the common school — the kindergarten is 
 last. No one would now expect to aid the com- 
 mon school by abolishing higher education. 
 
 "It may be that the diffusion of wealth works 
 in an analogous way. As the little red school- 
 house is builded in the college, it may be that 
 
136 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 the fostering and protection of large aggrega- 
 tions of wealth are the only foundation on 
 which to build the prosperity of the whole peo- 
 ple. Large profits mean large pay rolls. But 
 profits must be the result of service performed. 
 In no land are there so many and such large 
 aggregations of wealth as here; in no land do 
 they perform larger service; in no land will the 
 work of a day bring so large a reward in mate- 
 rial and spiritual welfare. 
 
 "Have faith in Massachusetts. In some unim- 
 portant detail some other States may surpass 
 her, but in the general results, there is no place 
 on earth where the people secure, in a larger 
 measure, the blessings of organized government, 
 and nowhere can those functions more properly 
 be termed self-government. 
 
 "Do the day's work. If it be to protect the 
 rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it 
 be to help a powerful corporation better to serve 
 the people, whatever the opposition, do that. 
 Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don't be 
 a stand-patter. Expect to be called a dema- 
 gogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesi- 
 tate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't 
 hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplica- 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 137 
 
 tion table. Don't expect to build up the weak by 
 pulling down the strong. Don't hurry to legis- 
 late. Give administration a chance to catch up 
 with legislation. 
 
 "We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in 
 the people — a faith that men desire to do right, 
 that the Commonwealth is founded upon a right- 
 eousness which will endure, a reconstructed 
 faith that the final approval of the people is 
 given not to demagogues, slavishly pandering to 
 their selfishness, merchandising with the clamor 
 of the hour, but to statesmen, ministering to 
 their welfare, representing their deep, silent, 
 abiding convictions. 
 
 "Statutes must appeal to more than material 
 welfare. Wages won't satisfy, be they never so 
 large. Nor houses; nor lands; nor coupons, 
 though they fall thick as the leaves of autumn. 
 Man has a spiritual nature. Touch it, and it 
 must respond as the magnet responds to the 
 pole. To that, not to selfishness, let the laws of 
 the Commonwealth appeal. Recognize the 
 immortal worth and dignity of man. Let the 
 laws of Massachusetts proclaim to her humblest 
 citizen, performing the most menial task, the 
 recognition of his manhood, the recognition that 
 
138 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 all men are peers, the humblest with the most 
 exalted, the recognition that all work is glori- 
 fied. Such is the path to equality before the 
 law. Such is the foundation of liberty under the 
 law. Such is the sublime revelation of man's 
 relation to man — Democracy." 
 
 Second Inaugural 
 Massachusetts Senate, 1915 
 
 C. C. 
 [Shortest inaugural in history.] 
 
 "Honorable Senators: — My sincerest 
 thanks, I offer you. Conserve the firm foun- 
 dations of our institutions. Do your work with 
 the spirit of a soldier in the public service. 
 Be loyal to the Commonwealth and to your- 
 selves. And be brief; above all things, 
 
 Be Brief." 
 
 On Law and Order 
 
 The Police Strike 
 
 "r/te Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
 By His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, Governor 
 
 "A Proclamation 
 "The entire State Guard of Massachusetts has 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 139 
 
 been called out. Under the Constitution the 
 Governor is the Commander-in-Chief thereof by 
 an authority of which he could not if he chose 
 divest himself. That command I must and will 
 exercise. Under the law I hereby call on all 
 the police of Boston who have loyally and in 
 a never-to-be-forgotten way remained on duty 
 to aid me in the performance of my duty of 
 the restoration and maintenance of order in the 
 city of Boston, and each of such officers is 
 required to act in obedience to such orders as 
 I may hereafter issue or cause to be issued. 
 
 "I call on every citizen to aid me in the 
 maintenance of law and order. 
 
 "Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, 
 this eleventh day of September, in the year of 
 our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nine- 
 teen, and of the Independence of the United 
 States of America the one hundred and forty- 
 fourth. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge. 
 
 "By His Excellency the Governor, 
 
 Albert P. Langtry 
 Secretary of the Commonwealth 
 
 God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 
 
140 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 "An Order 
 
 Boston, September 11, 1919 
 
 "To Edwin U. Curtis, 
 
 As you are Police Commissioner of the City 
 of Boston, 
 
 Executive Order No. 1 
 "You are hereby directed, for the purpose of 
 assisting me in the performance of my duty, 
 pursuant to the proclamation issued by me this 
 day, to proceed in the performance of your 
 duties as Police Commissioner of the City of 
 Boston under my command and in obedience 
 to such orders as I shall issue from time to time, 
 and obey only such orders as I may so issue 
 or transmit. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge 
 Governor of Massachusetts^'^ 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 141 
 
 (The only literature, of this sort, 
 in political history.) 
 
 (Copy) 
 
 Western Union Telegram 
 
 September 13, 1919. 
 
 Mr. Samuel Gompers, President, 
 American Federation of Labor, 
 New York City, N. Y. 
 
 Under the law the suggestions contained in 
 your telegram are not within the authority of 
 the Governor of Massachusetts but only of the 
 Commissioner of Police of the city of Boston. 
 With the maintenance of discipline in his de- 
 partment I have no authority to interfere. He 
 has decided that the men here abandoned their 
 sworn duty and has accordingly declared their 
 places vacant. I shall support the Commissioner 
 in the execution of law and maintenance of 
 order. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge, Governor. 
 
142 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 Western Union Telegram 
 (Copy) 
 
 Sunday, September 14, 1919. 
 
 Mr. Samuel Gompers, President, 
 American Federation of Labor, 
 New York City, N. Y. 
 
 Replying to your telegram. I have already 
 refused to remove the Police Commissioner of 
 Boston. I did not appoint him. He can assume 
 no position which the Courts would uphold 
 except what the people have by the authority 
 of their law vested in him. He speaks only with 
 their voice. The right of the police of Boston 
 to affiliate has always been questioned, never 
 granted, is now prohibited. The suggestion of 
 President Wilson to Washington does not apply 
 to Boston. There the police have remained on 
 duty. Here the Policemen's Union left their 
 duty, an action which President Wilson charac- 
 terized as a crime against civilization. Your 
 assertion that the Commissioner was wrong can- 
 not justify the wrong of leaving the city un- 
 guarded. That furnished the opportunity, the 
 criminal element furnished the action. There 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 143 
 
 is no right to strike against the public safety 
 by anybody, anywhere, any time. You ask that 
 the public safety again be placed in the hands 
 of these same policemen while they continue 
 in disobedience to the laws of Massachusetts 
 and in their refusal to obey the orders of the 
 Police Department. Nineteen men have been 
 tried and removed. Others having abandoned 
 their duty their places have under the law been 
 declared vacant in the opinion of the Attorney 
 General. I can suggest no authority outside 
 the Courts to take further action. I wish to 
 join and assist in taking a broad view of every 
 situation. A grave responsibility rests on all 
 of us. You can depend on me to support you 
 in every legal action and sound policy. I am 
 equally determined to defend the sovereignty 
 of Massachusetts and to maintain the authority 
 and jurisdiction over her public officers where 
 it has been placed by the Constitution and Laws 
 of her people. 
 
 Calvin Coolidge, Governor." 
 
144 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 "r^e Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
 By His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, Governor 
 
 A Proclamation 
 
 "There appears to be a misapprehension as 
 to the position of the police of Boston. In the 
 deliberate intention to intimidate and coerce 
 the Government of this Commonwealth a large 
 body of policemen, urging all others to join 
 them, deserted their posts of duty, letting in the 
 enemy. This act of theirs was voluntary, against 
 the advice of their well wishers, long discussed 
 and premeditated, and with the purpose of ob- 
 structing the power of the Government to protect 
 its citizens or even to maintain its own existence. 
 Its success meant anarchy. By this act through 
 the operation of the law they dispossessed them- 
 selves. They went out of office. They stand as 
 though they had never been appointed. 
 
 "Other police remained on duty. They are 
 the real heroes of this crisis. The State Guard 
 responded most efficiently. Thousands have vol- 
 unteered for the Guard and the Militia. Money 
 has been contributed from every walk of life by 
 the hundreds of thousands for the encourage- 
 ment and relief of these loyal men. These acts 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 145 
 
 have been spontaneous, significant, and decisive. 
 I propose to support all those who are support- 
 ing their own Government with every power 
 which the people have entrusted to me. 
 
 "There is an obligation, inescapable, no less 
 solemn, to resist all those who do not support 
 the Government. The authority of the Common- 
 wealth cannot be intimidated or coerced. It 
 cannot be compromised. To place the mainte- 
 nance of the public security in the hands of a 
 body of men who have attempted to destroy it 
 would be to flout the sovereignty of the laws the 
 people have made. It is my duty to resist any 
 such proposal. Those who would counsel it 
 join hands with those whose acts have threatened 
 to destroy the Government. There is no middle 
 ground. Every attempt to prevent the formation 
 of a new police force is a blow at the Govern- 
 ment. That way treason lies. No man has a 
 right to place his own ease or convenience or the 
 opportunity of making money above his duty to 
 the State. 
 
 "This is the cause of all the people. I call on 
 every citizen to stand by me in executing the oath 
 of my office by supporting the authority of the 
 Government and resisting all assaults upon it. 
 
146 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 "Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, 
 this twenty-fourth day of September, in the year 
 of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and 
 nineteen, and of the Independence of the United 
 States of America the one hundred and forty- 
 fourth. 
 
 Calvin Coolii>ge. 
 
 By His Excellency the Governor: 
 Herbert H. Boynton, 
 
 Deputy, Acting Secretary 
 of the Commonwealth. 
 
 God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 
 
 ON HUMANITY 
 
 [Copy] 
 
 The White House 
 Washington 
 
 My dear Mr. Lucey: 
 
 Not often do I see you or write you but I 
 want you to know that if it were not for you I 
 should not be here and I want to tell you how 
 
SOME HIGH TIDES 147 
 
 much I love you. Do not work too much now 
 and try to enjoy yourself in your well-earned 
 hours of age. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Calvin Coolidge. 
 August 6, 1923. 
 
 [Mr. James Lucey is a cobbler at North- 
 ampton.] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Lesson 
 
 **A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, 
 A banner, with the strange device, 
 'Excelsior'." 
 
 It is not the first hope of His First Biography 
 simply to amuse nor even simply to interest. An 
 hour of laughter, only, is an hour lost except as 
 it implies necessary relaxation and recuperation 
 for serious progress. His First Biography is a 
 lesson, a hope to stimulate. 
 
 The first ambition of all the earth is happi- 
 ness, its best ambition and its easiest ambition 
 when founded, not on the hope of getting but on 
 the power of giving. A motor sweeps up Beacon 
 Street with the aristocratic purr of the Pierce, 
 passing some one struggling towards the city 
 on his feet. He, in his turn, is indifferent to the 
 car, to wealth and to its display, to money and to 
 what it will buy. His hopes do not lead him 
 that way. His aspirations are not fixed on ken- 
 nels and racing stables, deer parks and houses 
 
 148 
 
The Capfifone 
 
 12 PRESIDENT. 102;? 
 
 11 VICE-PRESIDENT, ]})^21-2;? 
 
 10 GOVERNOR, 1919-20 
 
 LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR. 1916-18 
 
 PRESIDENT OF STATE SENATE. 1914-1.5 
 
 STATE SEN.\TOR. 191-2-15 
 
 MAYOR, 1910-11 
 
 STATE REPRESENTATIVE, 1907-8 
 
 CHAIRMAN — CITY COMMITTEE, 1904 
 
 CLKRK OF COURTS. 190.S 
 
 CITY SnUCITOlL 19()l»-l 
 
 COUNCILMAN. 1S99 
 
 HIS POLITICAL LADDER 
 
THE LESSON 149 
 
 and lands. He is not only indifferent, he is con- 
 tent, for he knows that happiness can not be 
 bought in that way. More than this, he is happy 
 and almost proud, not for what he has not, 
 material possessions, but for what he can do, for 
 he can write a great poem, paint a great picture 
 or control a great audience. Likewise, Calvin 
 Coolidge has found happiness, not in what he 
 has had but in the day's work, in what he has 
 done, in the development of the science of gov- 
 ernment for the advancement of the cause of 
 civilization. 
 
 The story of Calvin Coolidge is an amazing 
 story, none more so. A red-haired, freckled boy 
 on a plain farm, who was not a leader even 
 among the boys of a small Vermont village, has 
 become President of the United States. He 
 always kept on going, from the farm, on the 
 farm, up and on and always. He has become a 
 second "rail-splitter." Like Niagara, his is a 
 story which grows on one, and, as it is studied, 
 it overwhelms. And yet, while Roosevelt was a 
 torrent, Coolidge is a steady stream. His is a 
 story for every father and mother and child, a 
 story of responsibilities for the first, and of 
 opportunity for the last. 
 
150 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 The story of Calvin Coolidge is a lesson for 
 every American and for those across the seas, of 
 hope and realization; that America is a country 
 of law, order and opportunity; that success and 
 happiness come to one, not because of what is 
 around him, family, fashion and fortune, but 
 because of what is in him, not for what he has, 
 but for what he is; and that there is no end to 
 the path upwards when uncommon sense, 
 fidelity, preparation and Providence walk hand 
 in hand. 
 
 His First Biography is a short lesson. It is 
 a strong lesson. It is a stimulating lesson. It 
 symbolizes the force of those great words of the 
 Scriptures: 
 
 "Thou hast been faithful over a feiv 
 things. 
 I will make thee ruler over many.'* 
 
 The End. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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