Top 29 How Were The Presidential Administrations Of Harding And Coolidge Similar Trust The Answer

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Contents

How were the presidential administrations of Harding and Coolidge similar quizlet?

Terms in this set (2)

How were the presidential administrations of Harding and Coolidge similar? Both supported big business.

What was the Harding administration known for?

Harding also signed the Budget and Accounting Act, which established the country’s first formal budgeting process and created the Bureau of the Budget. Another major aspect of his domestic policy was the Fordney–McCumber Tariff, which greatly increased tariff rates.

What was president Coolidge known for?

Throughout his gubernatorial career, Coolidge ran on the record of fiscal conservatism and strong support for women’s suffrage. He held a vague opposition to Prohibition. During his presidency, he restored public confidence in the White House after the many scandals of his predecessor’s administration.

Who was the 30th president of the United States?

As America’s 30th President (1923-1929), Calvin Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts of frugality amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying during the 1920s era.

What were Coolidge’s policies quizlet?

Terms in this set (11)

limit international involvement for the us.
no permanent ore telling alliances.
keep US at peace.
international agreements based on laws not military force.

What was a major problem during the Harding administration quizlet?

biggest scandal of Harding’s administration; Secretary of Interior Albert Fall illegally leased government oil fields in the West to private oil companies; Fall was later convicted of bribery and became the first Cabinet official to serve prison time (1931-1932).

What party was Coolidge?

How old do you have to be to be president?

Requirements to Hold Office

According to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the president must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years old, and have been a resident of the United States for 14 years.

What president died on July 4th?

It is a fact of American history that three Founding Father Presidents—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe—died on July 4, the Independence Day anniversary.

Who’s the 100th President?

Benjamin Harrison | The White House.

What President was born on July 4th?

John Calvin Coolidge—he would later drop the John completely—was born on July 4, 1872. Coolidge was a conservative’s conservative. He believed in small government and a good nap in the afternoon.

Who was the 50th President?

Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas. He is the son of William Jefferson Blythe Jr., a traveling salesman who had died in an automobile accident three months before his birth, and Virginia Dell Cassidy (later Virginia Kelley).

What was the primary difference in the economic policies of Presidents Warren G Harding and Calvin Coolidge quizlet?

What was the primary difference in the economic policies of presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge? Coolidge continued the pro-business policies of Harding’s administration. What accounted for the high rate of automobile sales in the 1920s?

What did the presidential election of 1924 in which Calvin Coolidge defeated John W Davis and Robert La Follette reveal about American voters quizlet?

What did the presidential election of 1924, in which Calvin Coolidge defeated John W. Davis and Robert La Follette, reveal about the priorities of American voter? The election results revealed voters’ lack of support for labor unions, the regulation of business, and the protection of civil liberties.

What were some of the issues and beliefs that rural and urban America clashed over in the 1920s?

what were some of the issues and beliefs that rural and urban america clashed over in the 1920’s? education was less important than the farm. bible was literally true. opposed modernism which opposed science.

What was the impact of the American plan and union related court rulings on unions in the 1920s?

What was the impact of the American Plan and union-related court rulings on unions in the 1920s? Union membership dropped by 2 million and became about 10 percent of the labor market. What factors caused the Great Depression? What explains the strong growth of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s?

Harding and Coolidge

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Contents

1920 election[edit]

Inauguration[edit]

Administration[edit]

Judicial appointments[edit]

Domestic affairs[edit]

Foreign affairs[edit]

Administration scandals[edit]

Life at the White House[edit]

Western tour and death[edit]

Historical reputation[edit]

Presidency of Warren G. Harding

U.S. presidential administration from 1921 to 1923

Warren G. Harding’s tenure as the 29th president of the United States lasted from March 4, 1921 until his death on August 2, 1923. Harding presided over the country in the aftermath of World War I. A Republican from Ohio, Harding held office during a period in American political history from the mid-1890s to 1932 that was generally dominated by his party. He died of an apparent heart attack and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge.

Harding took office after defeating Democrat James M. Cox in the 1920 presidential election. Running against the policies of incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, Harding won the popular vote by a margin of 26.2 percentage points, which remains the largest popular-vote percentage margin in presidential elections since the end of the Era of Good Feelings in the 1820s. Upon taking office, Harding instituted conservative policies designed to minimize the government’s role in the economy. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon won passage of the Revenue Act of 1921, a major tax cut that primarily reduced taxes on the wealthy. Harding also signed the Budget and Accounting Act, which established the country’s first formal budgeting process and created the Bureau of the Budget. Another major aspect of his domestic policy was the Fordney–McCumber Tariff, which greatly increased tariff rates.

Harding supported the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, which marked the start of a period of restrictive immigration policies. He vetoed a bill designed to give a bonus to World War I veterans but presided over the creation of the Veterans Bureau. He also signed into law several bills designed to address the farm crisis and, along with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, promoted new technologies like the radio and aviation. Harding’s foreign policy was directed by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes. Hughes’s major foreign policy achievement was the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–1922, in which the world’s major naval powers agreed on a naval disarmament program. Harding appointed four Supreme Court justices, all of whom became conservative members of the Taft Court. Shortly after Harding’s death, several major scandals emerged, including the Teapot Dome scandal. Harding died as one of the most popular presidents in history, but the subsequent exposure of the scandals eroded his popular regard, as did revelations of several extramarital affairs. In historical rankings of the U.S. presidents, Harding is often rated among the worst.

1920 election [ edit ]
Republican nomination [ edit ]
By early 1920, General Leonard Wood, Illinois governor Frank Lowden, and Senator Hiram Johnson of California had emerged as the frontrunners for the Republican nomination in the upcoming presidential election.[1][2] Some in the party began to scout for such an alternative, and Harding’s name arose, despite his reluctance, due to his unique ability to draw vital Ohio votes.[3] Harry Daugherty, who became Harding’s campaign manager, and who was sure none of these candidates could garner a majority, convinced Harding to run after a marathon discussion of six-plus hours.[4] Daugherty’s strategy focused on making Harding liked by or at least acceptable to all wings of the party, so that Harding could emerge as a compromise candidate in the likely event of a convention deadlock.[5] He struck a deal with Oklahoma oilman Jake L. Hamon, whereby 18 Oklahoma delegates whose votes Hamon had bought for Lowden were committed to Harding as a second choice if Lowden’s effort faltered.[6][7]
By the time the 1920 Republican National Convention began in June, a Senate sub-committee had tallied the monies spent by the various candidates, with totals as follows: Wood – $1.8 million; Lowden – $414,000; Johnson – $194,000; and Harding – $114,000; the committed delegate count at the opening gavel was: Wood – 124; Johnson – 112; Lowden – 72; Harding – 39.[8] Still, at the opening, less than one-half of the delegates were committed,[9] and many expected the convention to nominate a compromise candidate like Pennsylvania Senator Philander C. Knox, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, or 1916 nominee Charles Evans Hughes.[10] No candidate was able to corral a majority after nine ballots.[11] After the convention adjourned for the day, Republican Senators and other leaders, who were divided and without a singular political boss, met in Room 404 of the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. After a nightlong session, these party leaders tentatively concluded Harding was the best possible compromise candidate; this meeting has often been described as having taken place in a “smoke-filled room.”[12] The next day, on the tenth ballot, Harding was nominated for president. Delegates then selected Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge to be his vice-presidential running mate.[13]
General election [ edit ]
Harding’s home in Marion, Ohio , from which he conducted his 1920 “front porch” campaign. (c.1918–1921)

Harding’s opponent in the 1920 election was Ohio governor and newspaperman James M. Cox, who had won the Democratic nomination in a 44-ballot convention battle. Harding rejected the Progressive ideology of the Wilson administration in favor of the laissez-faire approach of the McKinley administration.[14] He ran on the promise of a “return to normalcy,” calling for the end to an era which he saw as tainted by war, internationalism, and government activism.[15] He stated:

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.[16]
The 1920 election was the first in which women could vote nationwide, as well as the first to be covered on the radio.[17] Led by Albert Lasker, the Harding campaign executed a broad-based advertising campaign that used modern advertising techniques for the first time in a presidential campaign.[18] Using newsreels, motion pictures, sound recordings, billboard posters, newspapers, magazines, and other media, Lasker emphasized and enhanced Harding’s patriotism and affability. Five thousand speakers were trained by advertiser Harry New and sent across the country to speak for Harding. Telemarketers were used to make phone conferences with perfected dialogues to promote Harding, and Lasker had 8,000 photos of Harding and his wife distributed around the nation every two weeks. Farmers were sent brochures decrying the alleged abuses of Democratic agriculture policies, while African Americans and women were given literature in an attempt to take away votes from the Democrats.[19] Additionally, celebrities like Al Jolson and Lillian Russell toured the nation on Harding’s behalf.[20]
1920 electoral vote results

Harding won a decisive victory, receiving 404 electoral votes to Cox’s 127. He took 60 percent of the nationwide popular vote, the highest percentage ever recorded up to that time, while Cox received just 34 percent of the vote.[21] Campaigning from a federal prison, Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs received 3% percent of the national vote. Harding won the popular vote by a margin of 26.2%, the largest margin since the election of 1820. He swept every state outside of the “Solid South”, and his victory in Tennessee made him the first Republican to win a former Confederate state since the end of Reconstruction. In the concurrent congressional elections, the Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House of Representatives.[23] The incoming 67th Congress would be dominated by Republicans, though the party was divided among various factions, including an independent-minded farm bloc from the Midwest.

Inauguration [ edit ]
Inauguration of Warren G. Harding, March 4, 1921.

Harding was inaugurated as the nation’s 29th president on March 4, 1921, on the East Portico of the United States Capitol. Chief Justice Edward D. White administered the oath of office. Harding placed his hand on the Washington Inaugural Bible as he recited the oath. This was the first time that a U.S. president rode to and from his inauguration in an automobile.[25] In his inaugural address Harding reiterated the themes of his campaign, declaring:

My Countrymen: When one surveys the world about him after the great storm, noting the marks of destruction and yet rejoicing in the ruggedness of the things which withstood it, if he is an American he breathes the clarified atmosphere with a strange mingling of regret and new hope. … Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much from the government and at the same time do too little for it.[26]
Literary critic H.L. Mencken was appalled, announcing that:

He writes the worst English I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights.[27]
Administration [ edit ]
Cabinet [ edit ]
From left: Harding, Andrew W. Mellon, Harry M. Daugherty, Edwin Denby, Henry C. Wallace, James J. Davis, Charles Evans Hughes, Calvin Coolidge, John W. Weeks, Will H. Hays, Albert Fall, Herbert Hoover Harding and his first Cabinet, 1921From left: Harding, Andrew W. Mellon, Harry M. Daugherty, Edwin Denby, Henry C. Wallace, James J. Davis, Charles Evans Hughes, Calvin Coolidge, John W. Weeks, Will H. Hays, Albert Fall, Herbert Hoover

Harding selected numerous prominent national figures for his ten-person Cabinet. Henry Cabot Lodge, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggested that Harding appoint Elihu Root or Philander C. Knox as Secretary of State, but Harding instead selected former Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes for the position. Harding appointed Henry C. Wallace, an Iowan journalist who had advised Harding’s 1920 campaign on farm issues, as Secretary of Agriculture. After Charles G. Dawes declined Harding’s offer to become Secretary of the Treasury, Harding assented to Senator Boies Penrose’s suggestion to select Pittsburgh billionaire Andrew Mellon. Harding used Mellon’s appointment as leverage to win confirmation for Herbert Hoover, who had led the U.S. Food Administration under Wilson and who became Harding’s Secretary of Commerce.[5]
Rejecting public calls to appoint Leonard Wood as Secretary of War, Harding instead appointed Lodge’s preferred candidate, former Senator John W. Weeks of Massachusetts. He selected James J. Davis for the position of Secretary of Labor, as Davis satisfied Harding’s criteria of being broadly acceptable to labor but being opposed to labor leader Samuel Gompers. Will H. Hays, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, was appointed Postmaster General. Grateful for his actions at the 1920 Republican convention, Harding offered Frank Lowden the post of Secretary of the Navy. After Lowden turned down the post, Harding instead appointed former Congressman Edwin Denby of Michigan. New Mexico Senator Albert B. Fall, a close ally of Harding’s during their time in the Senate together, became Harding’s Secretary of the Interior.[5]
Although Harding was committed to putting the “best minds” on his Cabinet, he often awarded other appointments to those who had contributed to his campaign’s victory. Wayne Wheeler, leader of the Anti-Saloon League, was allowed by Harding to dictate who would serve on the Prohibition Commission.[28] Harding appointed Harry M. Daugherty as Attorney General because he felt he owed Daugherty for running his 1920 campaign. After the election, many people from the Ohio area moved to Washington, D.C., made their headquarters in a little green house on K Street, and would be eventually known as the “Ohio Gang”.[29] Graft and corruption charges permeated Harding’s Department of Justice; bootleggers confiscated tens of thousands cases of whiskey through bribery and kickbacks.[30] The financial and political scandals caused by the Ohio Gang and other Harding appointees, in addition to Harding’s own personal controversies, severely damaged Harding’s personal reputation and eclipsed his presidential accomplishments.[31]
Press corps [ edit ]
According to biographers, Harding got along better with the press than any other previous president, being a former newspaperman. Reporters admired his frankness, candor, and his confessed limitations. He took the press behind the scenes and showed them the inner circle of the presidency. In November 1921, Harding also implemented a policy of taking written questions from reporters during a press conference.[32]
Judicial appointments [ edit ]
Harding appointed four justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. After the death of Chief Justice Edward Douglass White, former President William Howard Taft lobbied Harding for the nomination to succeed White. Harding acceded to Taft’s request, and Taft joined the court in June 1921. Harding’s next choice for the Court was conservative former Senator George Sutherland of Utah, who had been a major supporter of Taft in 1912 and Harding in 1920. Sutherland succeeded John Hessin Clarke in September 1922 after Clarke resigned. Two Supreme Court vacancies arose in 1923 due to the death of William R. Day and the resignation of Mahlon Pitney. On Taft’s recommendation, Harding nominated railroad attorney and conservative Democrat Pierce Butler to succeed Day. Progressive senators like Robert M. La Follette unsuccessfully sought to defeat Butler’s nomination, but Butler was confirmed. On the advice of Attorney General Daugherty, Harding appointed federal appellate judge Edward Terry Sanford of Tennessee to succeed Pitney.[34] Bolstered by these appointments, the Taft Court upheld the precedents of the Lochner era and largely reflected the conservatism of the 1920s.[35]
The Justice Department in the Harding Administration selected 6 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, 42 judges to the United States district courts, and 2 judges to the United States Court of Customs Appeals.

Domestic affairs [ edit ]
Revenue Act of 1921 [ edit ]
Harding assumed office while the nation was in the midst of a postwar economic decline known as the Depression of 1920–21. He strongly rejected proposals to provide for federal unemployment benefits, believing that the government should leave relief efforts to charities and local governments. He believed that the best way to restore economic prosperity was to raise tariff rates and reduce the government’s role in economic activities. His administration’s economic policy was formulated by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon, who proposed cuts to the excess profits tax and the corporate tax.[38] The central tenet of Mellon’s tax plan was a reduction of the surtax, a progressive income tax that only affected high-income earners. Mellon favored the wealthy holding as much capital as possible, since he saw them as the main drivers of economic growth. Congressional Republican leaders shared Harding and Mellon’s desire for tax cuts, and Republicans made tax cuts and tariff rates the key legislative priorities of Harding’s first year in office. Harding called a special session of the Congress to address these and other issues, and Congress convened in April 1921.

Despite opposition from Democrats and many farm state Republicans, Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1921 in November, and Harding signed the bill into law later that month. The act greatly reduced taxes for the wealthiest Americans, though the cuts were not as deep as Mellon had favored. The act reduced the top marginal income tax rate from 73 percent to 58 percent, lowered the corporate tax from 65 percent to 50 percent, and provided for ultimate elimination of the excess profits tax.[44][45] Revenues to the treasury decreased substantially.[46]
Wages, profits, and productivity all made substantial gains during the 1920s, and economists have differed as to whether Revenue Act of 1921 played a major role in the strong period of economic growth after the Depression of 1920–21. Economist Daniel Kuehn has attributed the improvement to the earlier monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, and notes that the changes in marginal tax rates were accompanied by an expansion in the tax base that could account for the increase in revenue.[47] Libertarian historians Schweikart and Allen argue that Harding’s tax and economic policies in part “… produced the most vibrant eight year burst of manufacturing and innovation in the nation’s history,”[48] Recovery did not last long. Another economic contraction began near the end of Harding’s presidency in 1923, while tax cuts were still underway. A third contraction followed in 1927 during the next presidential term.[49] Some economists have argued that the tax cuts resulted in growing economic inequality and speculation, which in turn contributed to the Great Depression.

Fordney–McCumber Tariff [ edit ]
Like most Republicans of his era, Harding favored protective tariffs designed to shield American businesses from foreign competition. Shortly after taking office, he signed the Emergency Tariff of 1921, a stopgap measure primarily designed to aid American farmers suffering from the effects of an expansion in European farm imports.[52] The emergency tariff also protected domestic manufacturing, as it included a clause to prevent dumping by European manufacturers. Harding hoped to sign a permanent tariff into law by the end of 1921, but heated congressional debate over tariff schedules, especially between agricultural and manufacturing interests, delayed passage of such a bill.

In September 1922, Harding enthusiastically signed the Fordney–McCumber Tariff Act.[55] The protectionist legislation was sponsored by Representative Joseph W. Fordney and Senator Porter J. McCumber, and was supported by nearly every congressional Republican. The act increased the tariff rates contained in the previous Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act of 1913, to the highest level in the nation’s history. Harding became concerned when the agriculture business suffered economic hardship from the high tariffs. By 1922, Harding began to believe that the long-term effects of high tariffs could be detrimental to national economy, despite the short-term benefits.[56] The high tariffs established under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover have historically been viewed as a contributing factor to the Wall Street Crash of 1929.[44][57]
Bureau of the Budget [ edit ]
Harding believed the federal government should be fiscally managed in a way similar to private sector businesses. He had campaigned on the slogan, “Less government in business and more business in government.”[59] As the House Ways and Means Committee found it increasingly difficult to balance revenues and expenditures, Taft had recommended the creation of a federal budget system during his presidency. Businessmen and economists coalesced around Taft’s proposal during the Wilson administration, and by 1920, both parties favored it. Reflecting this goal, in June 1921, Harding signed the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921.

The act established the Bureau of the Budget to coordinate the federal budgeting process.[61] At the head of this office was the presidential budget director, who was directly responsible to the president rather than to the Secretary of Treasury. The law also stipulated that the president must annually submit a budget to Congress, and all presidents since have had to do so.[62] Additionally, the General Accounting Office (GAO) was created to assure congressional oversight of federal budget expenditures. The GAO would be led by the Comptroller General, who was appointed by Congress to a term of fifteen years. Harding appointed Charles Dawes as the Bureau of the Budget’s first director. Dawes’s first year in office saw government spending reduced by $1.5 billion, a 25 percent reduction, and he presided over another 25 percent reduction the following year.[64]
Immigration restriction [ edit ]
In the first two decades of the 20th century, immigration to the United States had increased, with many of the immigrants coming from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe rather than Western Europe. Many Americans viewed these new immigrants with suspicion, and World War I and the First Red Scare further heightened nativist fears. The Per Centum Act of 1921, signed by Harding on May 19, 1921, reduced the numbers of immigrants to 3 percent of a country’s represented population based on the 1910 Census. The act, which had been vetoed by President Wilson in the previous Congress, also allowed unauthorized immigrants to be deported. Harding and Secretary of Labor James Davis believed that enforcement had to be humane, and Harding often allowed exceptions granting reprieves to thousands of immigrants.[66] Immigration to the United States fell from roughly 800,000 in 1920 to approximately 300,000 in 1922. Though the act was later superseded by the Immigration Act of 1924, it marked the establishment of the National Origins Formula.[66]
Veterans [ edit ]
Many World War I veterans were unemployed or otherwise economically distressed when Harding took office. To aid these veterans, the Senate considered passing a law that gave veterans a $1 bonus for each day they had served in the war. Harding opposed payment of a bonus to veterans, arguing that much was already being done for them and that the bill would “break down our Treasury, from which so much is later on to be expected.” The Senate sent the bonus bill back to committee, but the issue returned when Congress reconvened in December 1921. A bill providing a bonus, without a means of funding it, was passed by both houses in September 1922. Harding vetoed it, and the veto was narrowly sustained.

In August 1921, Harding signed the Sweet Bill, which established a new agency known as the Veterans Bureau. After World War I, 300,000 wounded veterans were in need of hospitalization, medical care, and job training. To handle the needs of these veterans, the new agency incorporated the War Risk Insurance Bureau, the Federal Hospitalization Bureau, and three other bureaus that dealt with veteran affairs.[70] Harding appointed Colonel Charles R. Forbes, a decorated war veteran, as the Veteran Bureau’s first director. The Veterans Bureau later was incorporated into the Veterans Administration and ultimately the Department of Veterans Affairs.[71]
Farm acts [ edit ]
Farmers were among the hardest hit during the Depression of 1920–21, and prices for farm goods collapsed. The presence of a powerful bipartisan farm bloc led by Senator William S. Kenyon and Congressman Lester J. Dickinson ensured that Congress would address the farm crisis. Harding established the Joint Commission on Agricultural Industry to make recommendations on farm policy, and he signed a series of farm- and food-related laws in 1921 and 1922. Much of the legislation emanated from President Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 Federal Trade Commission report, which investigated and discovered “manipulations, controls, trusts, combinations, or restraints out of harmony with the law or the public interest” in the meat packing industry. The first law was the Packers and Stockyards Act, which prohibited packers from engaging in unfair and deceptive practices. Two amendments were made to the Farm Loan Act of 1916 that President Wilson had signed into law, which had expanded the maximum size of rural farm loans. The Emergency Agriculture Credit Act authorized new loans to farmers to help them sell and market livestock. The Capper–Volstead Act, signed by Harding on February 18, 1922, protected farm cooperatives from anti-trust legislation. The Future Trading Act was also enacted, regulating puts and calls, bids, and offers on futures contracting. Later, on May 15, 1922, the Supreme Court ruled this legislation unconstitutional,[44] but Congress passed the similar Grain Futures Act in response. Though sympathetic to farmers and deferential to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, Harding was uncomfortable with many of the farm programs since they relied on governmental action, and he sought to weaken the farm bloc by appointing Kenyon to a federal judgeship in 1922.

Highways and radio [ edit ]
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover listening to a radio

During the 1920s, use of electricity became increasingly common, and mass production of the automobile stimulated industries such as highway construction, rubber, steel, and construction. Congress had passed the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 to aid state road-building programs, and Harding favored a further expansion of the federal role in road construction and maintenance. He signed into law the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921, which allowed states to select interstate and intercounty roads that would receive federal funds. From 1921 to 1923, the federal government spent $162 million on America’s highway system, infusing the U.S. economy with a large amount of capital.

Harding and Secretary of Commerce Hoover embraced the emerging medium of the radio. In June 1922, Harding became the first president that the American public heard on the radio, delivering a speech in honor of Francis Scott Key.[17] Secretary of Commerce Hoover took charge of the administration’s radio policy. He convened a conference of radio broadcasters in 1922, which led to a voluntary agreement for licensing of radio frequencies through the Commerce Department. Both Harding and Hoover believed that something more than an agreement was needed, but Congress was slow to act, not imposing radio regulation until 1927. Hoover hosted a similar conference on aviation, but, as with the radio, was unable to win passage of legislation that would have provided for regulation air travel.

Labor issues [ edit ]
Union membership had grown during World War I, and by 1920 union members constituted approximately one-fifth of the labor force. Many employers reduced wages after the war, and some business leaders hoped to destroy the power of organized labor in order to re-establish control over their employees. These policies led to increasing labor tension in the early 1920s. Widespread strikes marked 1922, as labor sought redress for falling wages and increased unemployment. In April, 500,000 coal miners, led by John L. Lewis, struck over wage cuts. Mining executives argued that the industry was seeing hard times; Lewis accused them of trying to break the union. Harding convinced the miners to return to work while a congressional commission looked into their grievances. He also sent out the National Guard and 2,200 deputy U.S. marshals to keep the peace.[82] On July 1, 1922, 400,000 railroad workers went on strike. Harding proposed a settlement that made some concessions, but management objected. Attorney General Daugherty convinced Judge James H. Wilkerson to issue a sweeping injunction to break up the strike. Although there was public support for the Wilkerson injunction, Harding felt it went too far, and had Daugherty and Wilkerson amend it. The injunction succeeded in ending the strike; however, tensions remained high between railroad workers and management for years.

By 1922, the eight-hour day had become common in American industry. One exception was in steel mills, where workers labored through a twelve-hour workday, seven days a week. Hoover considered this practice barbaric, and convinced Harding to convene a conference of steel manufacturers with a view to ending it. The conference established a committee under the leadership of U.S. Steel chairman Elbert Gary, which in early 1923 recommended against ending the practice. Harding sent a letter to Gary deploring the result, which was printed in the press, and public outcry caused the manufacturers to reverse themselves and standardize the eight-hour day.

African Americans [ edit ]
Harding spoke of equal rights in his speech when accepting the Republican nomination in 1920:

“No majority shall abridge the rights of a minority […] I believe the Black citizens of America should be guaranteed the enjoyment of all their rights, that they have earned their full measure of citizenship bestowed, that their sacrifices in blood on the battlefields of the republic have entitled them to all of freedom and opportunity, all of sympathy and aid that the American spirit of fairness and justice demands.”[85]
In June 1921, three days after the massive Tulsa race massacre President Harding spoke at the all-black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. “Despite the demagogues, the idea of our oneness as Americans has risen superior to every appeal to mere class and group,” Harding declared. “And so, I wish it might be in this matter of our national problem of races.” He honored Lincoln alumni who had been among the more than 367,000 black soldiers to fight in the Great War. One Lincoln graduate led the 370th U.S. Infantry, the “Black Devils.” Col. F.A. Denison was the sole black commander of a regiment in France. The President called education critical to solving the issues of racial inequality, but he challenged the students to shoulder their shared responsibility to advance freedom. The government alone, he said, could not magically “take a race from bondage to citizenship in half a century.” He spoke about Tulsa and offered up a simple prayer: “God grant that, in the soberness, the fairness, and the justice of this country, we never see another spectacle like it.”[86]
Notably in an age of severe racial intolerance during the 1920s, Harding did not hold any racial animosity, according to historian Carl S. Anthony.[87] In a speech on October 26, 1921, given in segregated Birmingham, Alabama Harding advocated civil rights for African Americans, becoming the first president to openly advocate black political, educational, and economic equality during the 20th century.[87] In the Birmingham speech, Harding called for African Americans to have equal educational opportunities and greater voting rights in the South. The white section of the audience listened in silence while the black section of the segregated audience cheered.[88] Harding, however, openly stated that he was not for black social equality in terms of racial mixing or intermarriage.[89] Harding also spoke on the Great Migration, stating that blacks migrating to the North and West to find employment had actually harmed race relations between blacks and whites.[89]
The three previous presidents had dropped African Americans from several government positions they had previously held, and Harding reversed this policy.[90] African Americans were appointed to high-level positions in the Departments of Labor and Interior, and numerous blacks were hired in other agencies and departments.[91] Trani and Wilson write that Harding did not emphasize appointing African Americans to positions they had traditionally held prior to Wilson’s tenure, partly out of a desire to court white Southerners. Harding also disappointed black supporters by not abolishing segregation in federal offices, and through his failure to comment publicly on the Ku Klux Klan.

Harding supported Congressman Leonidas Dyer’s federal anti-lynching bill, known as the Dyer Bill, which passed the House of Representatives in January, 1922.[94] When it reached the Senate floor in November 1922, it was filibustered by Southern Democrats, and Senator Lodge withdrew it so as to allow a ship subsidy bill Harding favored to be debated. Many blacks blamed Harding for the Dyer bill’s defeat; Harding biographer Robert K. Murray noted that it was hastened to its end by Harding’s desire to have the ship subsidy bill considered.

Sheppard–Towner Maternity Act [ edit ]
On November 21, 1921, Harding signed the Sheppard–Towner Maternity Act, the first major federal government social welfare program in the U.S. The law was sponsored by Julia Lathrop, America’s first director of the U.S. Children’s Bureau. The Sheppard–Towner Maternity Act funded almost 3,000 child and health centers, where doctors treated healthy pregnant women and provided preventive care to healthy children. Child welfare workers were sent out to make sure that parents were taking care of their children. Many women were given career opportunities as welfare and social workers. Although the law remained in effect only eight years, it set the trend for New Deal social programs during the 1930s.[96][97]
Deregulation [ edit ]
As part of Harding’s belief in limiting the government’s role in the economy, he sought to undercut the power of the regulatory agencies that had been created or strengthened during the Progressive Era. Among the agencies in existence when Harding came to office were the Federal Reserve (charged with regulating banks), the Interstate Commerce Commission (charged with regulating railroads) and the Federal Trade Commission (charged with regulating other business activities, especially trusts). Harding staffed the agencies with individuals sympathetic to business concerns and hostile to regulation. By the end of his tenure, only the Federal Trade Commission resisted conservative domination. Other federal organizations, like the Railroad Labor Board, also came under the sway of business interests. In 1921, Harding signed the Willis Graham Act, which effectively rescinded the Kingsbury Commitment and allowed AT&T to establish a monopoly in the telephone industry.

Release of political prisoners [ edit ]
Eugene Debs after release from prison by President Harding, visits the White House

On December 23, 1921 Harding released Socialist leader Eugene Debs from prison. Debs had been convicted under sedition charges brought by the Wilson administration for his opposition to the draft during World War I.[101] Despite many political differences between the two candidates, Harding commuted Debs’ sentence to time served, though he did not grant Debs an official presidential pardon. Debs’ failing health was a contributing factor for the release. Harding granted a general amnesty to 23 prisoners, alleged anarchists and socialists, who had been active during the First Red Scare.[44][102]
1922 mid-term elections [ edit ]
Entering the 1922 midterm congressional election campaign, Harding and the Republicans had followed through on many of their campaign promises. But some of the fulfilled pledges, like cutting taxes for the well-off, did not appeal to the electorate. The economy had not returned to normalcy, with unemployment at 11 percent, and organized labor was angry over the outcome of the strikes. In the 1922 elections, Republicans suffered major losses in both the House and the Senate. Though they kept control of both chambers, they retained only a narrow majority in the House at the start of the 68th Congress in 1923. The elections empowered the progressive wing of the party led by Robert La Follette, who began investigations into Harding administration.

Foreign affairs [ edit ]
European relations [ edit ]
Harding took office less than two years after the end of World War I, and his administration faced several issues in the aftermath of that conflict. Harding made it clear when he appointed Hughes as Secretary of State that the former justice would run foreign policy, a change from Wilson’s close management of international affairs. Harding and Hughes frequently communicated, and the president remained well-informed regarding the state of foreign affairs, but he rarely overrode any of Hughes’s decisions. Hughes did have to work within some broad outlines; after taking office, Harding hardened his stance on the League of Nations, deciding the U.S. would not join even a scaled-down version of the League.

With the Treaty of Versailles unratified by the Senate, the U.S. remained technically at war with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Peacemaking began with the Knox–Porter Resolution, declaring the U.S. at peace and reserving any rights granted under Versailles. Treaties with Germany, Austria and Hungary, each containing many of the non-League provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, were ratified in 1921. This still left the question of relations between the U.S. and the League. Hughes’ State Department initially ignored communications from the League, or tried to bypass it through direct communications with member nations. By 1922, though, the U.S., through its consul in Geneva, was dealing with the League. The U.S. refused to participate in any League meeting with political implications, but it sent observers to sessions on technical and humanitarian matters. Harding stunned the capital when he sent to the Senate a message supporting the participation of the U.S. in the proposed Permanent Court of International Justice (also known as the “World Court”). His proposal was not favorably received by most senators, and a resolution supporting U.S. membership in the World Court was drafted and promptly buried in the Foreign Affairs Committee.[109]
By the time Harding took office, there were calls from foreign governments for the reduction of the massive war debt owed to the United States, and the German government sought to reduce the reparations that it was required to pay. The U.S. refused to consider any multilateral settlement. Harding sought passage of a plan proposed by Mellon to give the administration broad authority to reduce war debts in negotiation, but Congress, in 1922, passed a more restrictive bill. Hughes negotiated an agreement for Britain to pay off its war debt over 62 years at low interest, effectively reducing the present value of the obligations. This agreement, approved by Congress in 1923, set a pattern for negotiations with other nations. Talks with Germany on reduction of reparations payments would result in the Dawes Plan of 1924.

During World War I, the U.S. had been among the nations that had sent troops to Russia after the Russian Revolution. Afterwards, President Wilson refused to provide diplomatic recognition to Russia, which was led by a Communist government following the October Revolution. Commerce Secretary Hoover, with considerable experience of Russian affairs, took the lead on Russian policy. He supported aid to and trade with Russia, fearing U.S. companies would be frozen out of the Soviet market. When famine struck Russia in 1921, Hoover had the American Relief Administration, which he had headed, negotiate with the Russians to provide aid. According to historian George Herring, the American relief effort may have saved as many as 10 million people from starvation. U.S. businessman such as Armand Hammer invested in the Russian economy, but many of these investments failed due to various Russian restrictions on trade and commerce. Russian and (after the 1922 establishment of the Soviet Union) Soviet leaders hoped that these economic and humanitarian connections would lead to recognition of their government, but Communism’s extreme unpopularity in the U.S. precluded this possibility.[112]
Disarmament [ edit ]
At the end of World War I, the United States had the largest navy and one of the largest armies in the world. With no serious threat to the United States itself, Harding and his successors presided over the disarmament of the navy and the army. The army shrank to 140,000 men, while naval reduction was based on a policy of parity with Britain.[113] Seeking to prevent an arms race, Senator William Borah won passage of a congressional resolution calling for a 50 percent reduction of the American Navy, the British Navy, and the Japanese Navy. With Congress’s backing, Harding and Hughes began preparations to hold a naval disarmament conference in Washington.[114] The Washington Naval Conference convened in November 1921, with representatives from the U.S., Japan, Britain, France, Italy, China, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal. Secretary of State Hughes assumed a primary role in the conference and made the pivotal proposal—the U.S. would reduce its number of warships by 30 if Great Britain decommissioned 19 ships and Japan decommissioned 17 ships.[115] A journalist covering the conference wrote that “Hughes sank in thirty-five minutes more ships than all of the admirals of the world have sunk in a cycle of centuries.”[116]
The conference produced six treaties and twelve resolutions among the participating nations, which ranged from limiting the tonnage of naval ships to custom tariffs.[117] The United States, Britain, Japan, and France reached the Four-Power Treaty, in which each country agreed to respect the territorial integrity of one another in the Pacific Ocean. Those four powers as well as Italy also reached the Washington Naval Treaty, which established a ratio of battleship tonnage that each country agreed to respect. In the Nine-Power Treaty, each signatory agreed to respect the Open Door Policy in China, and Japan agreed to return Shandong to China.[118] The treaties only remained in effect until the mid-1930s, however, and ultimately failed. Japan eventually invaded Manchuria and the arms limitations no longer had any effect. The building of “monster warships” resumed and the U.S. and Great Britain were unable to quickly rearm themselves to defend an international order and stop Japan from remilitarizing.[119][120]
Latin America [ edit ]
Intervention in Latin America had been a minor campaign issue; Harding spoke against Wilson’s decision to send U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic, and attacked the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, for his role in the Haitian intervention. Secretary of State Hughes worked to improve relations with Latin American countries who were wary of the American use of the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervention; at the time of Harding’s inauguration, the U.S. also had troops in Cuba and Nicaragua. The troops stationed in Cuba to protect American interests were withdrawn in 1921, but U.S. forces remained in the other three nations through Harding’s presidency. In April 1921, Harding gained the ratification of the Thomson–Urrutia Treaty with Colombia, granting that nation $25,000,000 as settlement for the U.S.-provoked Panamanian revolution of 1903. The Latin American nations were not fully satisfied, as the U.S. refused to renounce interventionism, though Hughes pledged to limit it to nations near the Panama Canal and to make it clear what the U.S. aims were.

The U.S. had intervened repeatedly in Mexico under Wilson, and had withdrawn diplomatic recognition, setting conditions for reinstatement. The Mexican government under President Álvaro Obregón wanted recognition before negotiations, but Wilson and his final Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby, refused. Both Hughes and Secretary of the Interior Fall opposed recognition; Hughes instead sent a draft treaty to the Mexicans in May 1921, which included pledges to reimburse Americans for losses in Mexico since the 1910 revolution there. Obregón was unwilling to sign a treaty before being recognized, and he worked to improve the relationship between American businesses and Mexico, reaching agreement with creditors and mounting a public relations campaign in the United States.[124] This had its effect, and by mid-1922, Fall was less influential than he had been, lessening the resistance to recognition. The two presidents appointed commissioners to reach a deal, and the U.S. recognized the Obregón government on August 31, 1923, just under a month after Harding’s death, substantially on the terms proffered by Mexico.

Administration scandals [ edit ]
When Harding assembled his administration following the 1920 election, he appointed several longtime allies and campaign contributors to prominent political positions in control of vast amounts of government money and resources. Some of the appointees used their new powers to exploit their positions for personal gain. Although Harding was responsible for making these appointments, it is unclear how much, if anything, Harding himself knew about his friends’ illicit activities. No evidence to date suggests that Harding personally profited from such crimes, but he was apparently unable to prevent them. “I have no trouble with my enemies”, Harding told journalist William Allen White late in his presidency, “but my damn friends, they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!”[109] The only scandal which was openly discovered during Harding’s lifetime was in the Veteran’s Bureau.[126] Yet gossip about various scandals became rampant after the suicides of Charles Cramer and Jess Smith. Harding responded aggressively to all of this with a mixture of grief, anger and perplexity.[citation needed]
Teapot Dome [ edit ]
Albert B. Fall , Harding’s first Secretary of the Interior and the first former Cabinet member sent to prison

The most notorious scandal was Teapot Dome, most of which came to light after Harding’s death. This affair concerned an oil reserve in Wyoming that was covered by a teapot-shaped rock formation. For years, the country had taken measures to ensure the availability of petroleum reserves, particularly for the navy’s use.[127] On February 23, 1923, Harding issued Executive Order # 3797, which created the Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4 in Alaska. By the 1920s, it was clear that petroleum was important to the national economy and security, and the reserve system was designed to keep the oil under government jurisdiction rather than subject to private claims.[128] Management of these reserves was the subject of multi-dimensional arguments—beginning with a turf battle between the Secretary of the Navy and the Interior Department.[129] The strategic reserves issue was also a debate topic between conservationists and the petroleum industry, as well as those who favored public ownership versus private control.[130] Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall brought to his office significant political and legal experience, in addition to heavy personal debt, incurred in his obsession to expand his personal estate in New Mexico. He also was an avid supporter of the private ownership and management of reserves.[131]
Fall contracted Edward Doheny of Pan American Corporation to build storage tanks in exchange for drilling rights. It later came to light that Doheny had made significant personal loans to Fall.[132] The secretary also negotiated leases for the Teapot Dome reserves to Harry Ford Sinclair of the Consolidated Oil Corporation in return for guaranteed oil reserves to the credit of the government. Again, it later emerged that Sinclair had personally made concurrent cash payments of over $400,000 to Fall.[131] These activities took place under the watch of progressive and conservationist attorney, Harry A. Slattery, acting for Gifford Pinchot and Robert La Follette.[133] Fall was ultimately convicted in 1931 of accepting bribes and illegal no-interest personal loans in exchange for the leasing of public oil fields to business associates.[134] In 1931, Fall was the first cabinet member in history imprisoned for crimes committed while in office.[135] Paradoxically, while Fall was convicted for taking the bribe, Doheny was acquitted of paying it.[136]
Justice Department [ edit ]
Harding’s appointment of Harry M. Daugherty as Attorney General received more criticism than any other. As Harding’s campaign manager, Daugherty’s Ohio lobbying and back room maneuvers with politicians were not considered the best qualifications.[137] Historian M. R. Werner referred to the Justice Department under Harding and Daugherty as “the den of a ward politician and the White House a night club”. On September 16, 1922, Minnesota Congressman Oscar E. Keller brought impeachment charges against Daugherty. On December 4, formal investigation hearings, headed by congressman Andrew J. Volstead, began against Daugherty. The impeachment process, however, stopped, since Keller’s charges that Daugherty protected interests in trust and war fraud cases could not be substantially proven.[138]
Daugherty, according to a 1924 Senate investigation into the Justice Department, authorized a system of graft between aides Jess Smith and Howard Mannington. Both Mannington and Smith allegedly took bribes to secure appointments, prison pardons, and freedom from prosecution. A majority of these purchasable pardons were directed towards bootleggers. Cincinnati bootlegger George L. Remus, allegedly paid Jess Smith $250,000 to not prosecute him. Remus, however, was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to Atlanta prison. Smith tried to extract more bribe money from Remus to pay for a pardon. The prevalent question at the Justice Department was “How is he fixed?”[139] Another alleged scandal involving Daugherty concerned the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corp., which supposedly overcharged the federal government by $2.3 million on war contracts.[140] Captain Hazel Scaife tried to bring the company to trial, but was blocked by the Department of Justice. At this time, Daugherty was said to have owned stock in the company and was even adding to these holdings, though he was never charged in the matter.[141]
Daugherty hired William J. Burns to run the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation.[142] A number of inquisitive congressmen or senators found themselves the object of wire taps, rifled files, and copied correspondence.[143] Burns’ primary operative was Gaston B. Means, a reputed con man, who was known to have fixed prosecutions, sold favors, and manipulated files in the Justice Department.[144] Means, who acted independently, took direct instructions and payments from Jess Smith, without Burn’s knowledge, to spy on congressmen. Means hired a woman, Laura Jacobson, to spy on Senator Thaddeus Caraway, a critic of the Harding administration. Means also was involved with “roping” bootleggers.[138]
Daugherty remained in his position during the early days of the Calvin Coolidge administration, then resigned on March 28, 1924, amidst allegations that he accepted bribes from bootleggers. Daugherty was later tried and acquitted twice for corruption. Both juries hung—in one case, after 65 hours of deliberation. Daugherty’s famous defense attorney, Max Steuer, blamed all corruption allegations against Daugherty on Jess Smith, who by then had committed suicide.[145]
Jess W. Smith [ edit ]
Daugherty’s personal aide, Jess W. Smith, was a central figure in government file manipulation, paroles and pardons, influence peddling—and even served as bag man.[146] During Prohibition, pharmacies received alcohol permits to sell alcohol for medical purposes. According to Congressional testimony, Daugherty arranged for Jess Smith and Howard Mannington to sell these permits to drug company agents who really represented bootleggers. The bootleggers, having obtained a permit could buy cases of whiskey. Smith and Mannington split the permit sales profits. Approximately 50,000 to 60,000 cases of whiskey were sold to bootleggers at a net worth of $750,000 to $900,000. Smith supplied bootleg whiskey to the White House and the Ohio Gang house on K Street, concealing the whiskey in a briefcase for poker games.[30][147]
Eventually, rumors of Smith’s abuses—free use of government cars, going to all night parties, manipulation of Justice Department files—reached Harding. Harding withdrew Smith’s White House clearance and Daugherty told him to leave Washington. On May 30, 1923, Smith’s dead body was found at Daugherty’s apartment with a gunshot wound to the head. William J. Burns immediately took Smith’s body away and there was no autopsy. Historian Francis Russell, concluding this was a suicide, indicates that a Daugherty aide entered Smith’s room moments after a noise awoke him, and found Smith on the floor with his head in a trash can and a revolver in his hand. Smith allegedly purchased the gun from a hardware store shortly before his death, after Daugherty verbally abused him for waking him up from a nap.[148][149]
Veterans’ bureau [ edit ]
Charles R. Forbes, the energetic Director of the Veterans Bureau, disregarded the dire needs of wounded World War I veterans to procure his own wealth.[150] After his appointment, Forbes convinced Harding to issue executive orders that gave him control over veterans’ hospital construction and supplies.[126] To limit corruption in the Veterans’ Bureau, Harding insisted that all government contracts be by public notice, but Forbes provided inside information to his co-conspirators to ensure their bids succeeded.[71] Forbes’ main task at the Veterans bureau, having an unprecedented $500 million yearly budget, was to ensure that new hospitals were built around the country to help the 300,000 wounded World War I veterans.[151] Forbes defrauded the government of an estimated $225 million by increasing construction costs from $3,000 to $4,000 per hospital bed.[152]
In early 1922, Forbes went on tours, known as joy-rides, of new hospital construction sites around the country and the Pacific Coast. On these tours, Forbes allegedly received traveling perks and alcohol kickbacks, took a $5,000 bribe in Chicago, and made a secret code to ensure $17 million in government construction hospital contracts with corrupt contractors.[153] Intent on making more money, on his return to the U.S. Capitol Forbes immediately began selling valuable hospital supplies under his control in large warehouses at the Perryville Depot.[154] The government had stockpiled huge amounts of hospital supplies during the first World War, which Forbes unloaded for a fraction of their cost to the Boston firm of Thompson and Kelly.[155][156] Charles F. Cramer, Forbes’ legal council to the Veterans Bureau, rocked the nation’s capital when he committed suicide in 1923.[157][158] Cramer, at the time of his death, was being investigated by a Senate committee on charges of corruption.[159][160]
Forbes faced resistance in the form of General Charles E. Sawyer, chairman of the Federal Hospitalization Board, who represented controlling interests in the valuable hospital supplies.[161] Sawyer, who was also Harding’s personal physician, told Harding that Forbes was selling valuable hospital supplies to an insider contractor.[162] After issuing two orders for the sales to stop, Harding finally summoned Forbes to the White House and demanded Forbes’ resignation, since Forbes had been insubordinate in not stopping the shipments.[163] Harding, however, was not yet ready to announce Forbes’ resignation and let him flee to Europe on the “flimsy pretext” that he would help disabled U.S. Veterans in Europe.[164][165] Harding placed a reformer, Brigadier General Frank T. Hines, in charge of the Veterans Bureau. Hines immediately cleared up the mess left by Forbes. When Forbes returned to the U.S., he visited Harding at the White House in the Red Room. During the meeting, Harding angrily grabbed Forbes by the throat, shook him vigorously, and exclaimed “You double-crossing bastard!”[166] In 1926, Forbes was brought to trial and convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. He received a two-year prison sentence and was released in November 1927.[167]
Other agencies [ edit ]
On June 13, 1921, Harding appointed Albert D. Lasker chairman of the United States Shipping Board. Lasker, a cash donor and Harding’s general campaign manager, had no previous experience with shipping companies. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 had allowed the Shipping Board to sell ships made by the U.S. Government to private American companies. A congressional investigation revealed that while Lasker was in charge, many valuable steel cargo ships, worth between $200 and $250 a ton, were sold for as low as $30 a ton to private American shipping companies without an appraisal board. J. Harry Philbin, a manager in the sales division, testified at the congressional hearing that under Lasker’s authority U.S. ships were sold, “…as is, where is, take your pick, no matter which vessel you took.” Lasker resigned from the Shipping Board on July 1, 1923.[168]
Thomas W. Miller, head of the Office of Alien Property, was convicted of accepting bribes. Miller’s citizenship rights were taken away and he was sentenced to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine. After Miller served 13 months of his sentence, he was released on parole. President Herbert Hoover restored Miller’s citizenship on February 2, 1933.[169] Roy Asa Haynes, Harding’s Prohibition Commissioner, ran the patronage-riddled Prohibition bureau, which was allegedly corrupt from top to bottom.[170] The bureau’s “B permits” for liquor sales became tantamount to negotiable securities, as a result of being so widely bought and sold among known violators of the law.[171] The bureau’s agents allegedly made a year’s salary from one month’s illicit sales of permits.[170]
Life at the White House [ edit ]
Harding’s lifestyle at the White House was fairly unconventional compared to his predecessor. Upstairs at the White House, in the Yellow Oval Room, Harding allowed bootleg whiskey to be freely served to his guests during after-dinner parties at a time when the President was supposed to enforce Prohibition. One witness, Alice Longworth, stated that trays, “…with bottles containing every imaginable brand of whiskey stood about.”[172] Some of this alcohol had been directly confiscated from the Prohibition department by Jess Smith, assistant to U.S. Attorney General Harry Daugherty. Mrs. Harding, also known as the “Duchess”, mixed drinks for the guests.[147] Harding played poker twice a week, smoked and chewed tobacco. Harding allegedly won a $4,000 pearl necktie pin at one White House poker game.[173] Although criticized by Prohibitionist advocate Wayne B. Wheeler over Washington, D.C. rumors of these “wild parties”, Harding claimed his personal drinking inside the White House was his own business.[174] Though Mrs. Harding did keep a little red book of those who had offended her, the executive mansion was now once again open to the public for events including the annual Easter egg roll.[175]
Western tour and death [ edit ]
Western tour [ edit ]
Harding aboard the presidential train in Alaska, with secretaries Hoover, Wallace, Work, and Mrs. Harding

Though Harding wanted to run for a second term, his health began to decline during his time in office. He gave up drinking, sold his “life-work,” the Marion Star, in part to regain $170,000 previous investment losses, and had Daugherty make him a new will. Harding, along with his personal physician Dr. Charles E. Sawyer, believed getting away from Washington would help relieve the stress of being president. By July 1923, criticism of the Harding Administration was increasing. Prior to his leaving Washington, the president reported chest pains that radiated down his left arm.[176][177] In June 1923, Harding set out on a journey, which he dubbed the “Voyage of Understanding”. The president planned to cross the country, go north to Alaska Territory, journey south along the West Coast, then travel by navy ship through the Panama Canal, to Puerto Rico, and to return to Washington at the end of August. The trip would allow him to speak widely across the country in advance of the 1924 campaign, and allow him some rest away from Washington’s oppressive summer heat.

Harding’s political advisers had given him a physically demanding schedule, even though the president had ordered it cut back. In Kansas City, Harding spoke on transportation issues; in Hutchinson, Kansas, agriculture was the theme. In Denver, he spoke on Prohibition, and continued west making a series of speeches not matched by any president until Franklin Roosevelt. In addition to making speeches, he visited Yellowstone and Zion National Parks, and dedicated a monument on the Oregon Trail at a celebration organized by venerable pioneer Ezra Meeker and others. On July 5, Harding embarked on USS Henderson in Washington state. The first president to visit Alaska, he spent hours watching the dramatic landscapes from the ship’s deck. After several stops along the coast, the presidential party left the ship at Seward to take the Alaska Central Railway to McKinley Park and Fairbanks, where he addressed a crowd of 1,500 in 94 °F (34 °C) heat. The party was to return to Seward by the Richardson Trail but due to Harding’s fatigue, it went by train.

Arriving via Vancouver Harbor on July 26, Harding became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Canada. He was greeted dock-side by the premier of British Columbia John Oliver and the mayor of Vancouver. Thousands lined the streets of Vancouver to watch as the motorcade of dignitaries moved through the city to Stanley Park, where Harding spoke to an audience estimated at over 40,000. In his speech he proclaimed, “You are not only our neighbor, but a very good neighbor, and we rejoice in your advancement and admire your independence no less sincerely than we value your friendship.”[186] Harding also visited a golf course, but completed only six holes before being fatigued. He was not successful in hiding his exhaustion; one reporter deemed him so tired a rest of mere days would not be sufficient to refresh him.

Death [ edit ]
The funeral procession for President Harding passes by the front of the White House

Upon returning to the U.S. on July 27, Harding participated in a series of events in Seattle. After reviewing the navy fleet in the harbor and riding in a parade through downtown, he addressed a crowd of over 30,000 Boy Scouts at a jamboree in Woodland Park and then addressed 25,000 people at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium. That evening, in what would be his last official public event, Harding addressed the Seattle Press Club.[188] By the end of the evening Harding was near collapse, and he went to bed early. The next day, all tour stops scheduled between Seattle and San Francisco were cancelled, and the presidential entourage proceeded directly there.[186] Arriving in the city on the morning of July 29, Harding felt well enough that he insisted on walking from the train to the car. However, shortly after arriving at the Palace Hotel he suffered a relapse. Upon examining him, doctors found that not only was Harding’s heart causing problems, but he also had a serious case of pneumonia. All public engagements were cancelled.[citation needed]
When treated with caffeine and digitalis, Harding seemed to improve.[186] Reports that the released text of his July 31 speech had received a favorable reception also buoyed his spirits, and by the afternoon of August 2, doctors allowed him to sit up in bed. That evening, around 7:30 pm, while Florence Harding was reading a flattering article to the president from The Saturday Evening Post titled “A Calm Review of a Calm Man”,[190] he began twisting convulsively and collapsed. Doctors attempted stimulants, but were unable to revive him, and President Harding died at the age of 57. Although initially attributed to a cerebral hemorrhage, the president’s death was most likely the result a heart attack.[191][192]
Harding’s death came as a great shock to the nation. The president was liked and admired, and the press and public had followed his illness closely, and been reassured by his apparent recovery. Harding was returned to his train in a casket for a journey across the nation followed closely in the newspapers. Nine million people lined the tracks as Harding’s body was taken from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., and after services there, home to Marion, Ohio, for burial. In Marion, Warren Harding’s body was placed on a horse-drawn hearse, which was followed by President Coolidge and Chief Justice Taft, then by Harding’s wife and father. They followed it through the city, past the Star building where the presses stood silent, and at last to the Marion Cemetery, where the casket was placed in the cemetery’s receiving vault.

Immediately after Harding’s death, Mrs. Harding returned to Washington, D.C. and, according to historian Francis Russell, burned as much of President Harding’s correspondence and documents, both official and unofficial, as she could get.[198] However, most of Harding’s papers survived because Harding’s personal secretary, George Christian, disobeyed Florence Harding’s instructions.[199]
Historical reputation [ edit ]
Energized by his 1920 landslide victory, Harding felt the “pulse” of the nation and for the 28 months in office he remained popular both nationally and internationally.[202] Herbert Hoover, while serving in Harding’s cabinet, was confident the president would serve two terms and return the world to normalcy. Later, in his own memoirs, he stated that Harding had “neither the experience nor the intellect that the position needed.”[202] Historians Eugene Trani and David Wilson describe Harding as “an ineffective leader who suffered both personal and political scandal.” Harding was the last of eight presidents from Ohio with less than distinguished White House legacies

Harding has historically been ranked as one of the worst U.S. presidents. In a 1948 poll conducted by Harvard University historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., the first notable survey of scholars’ opinions of the presidents, Harding ranked last among the 29 presidents considered. In a 1962 poll conducted by Schlesinger, he was ranked last again, 31 out of 31. His son, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., conducted another poll in 1996; once again, Harding was last, ranked 39 out of 39. In 2010, a Siena College Research Institute survey of 238 presidential scholars ranked Harding 41 out of 43, above only James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.[204] More recently, a 2017 C-SPAN poll of historians ranked Harding as the fourth-worst president,[205] as did a 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section.[206]
Various historians have defended Harding, with many arguing that he was merely below average rather than a total failure. Historian Robert K. Murray wrote that, “in establishing the political philosophy and program for an entire decade, [Harding’s] 882 days in office were more significant than all but a few similar short periods in the nation’s existence.” Authors Marcus Raskin and Robert Spero, in 2007, also believed that Harding was underrated, and admired Harding’s quest for world peace after World War I and his successful naval disarmament among strongly armed nations, including France, Britain, and Japan.[208] In his 2010 book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game, presidential historian Alvin S. Felzenberg, ranking presidents on several criteria, ranked Harding 26th out of 40 presidents considered.[209]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Works cited [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
Graff, Henry F., ed. The Presidents: A Reference History (3rd ed. 2002) online

(3rd ed. 2002) online Payne, Phillip. “Instant History and the Legacy of Scandal: the Tangled Memory of Warren G. Harding, Richard Nixon, and William Jefferson Clinton”, Prospects , 28: 597–625, 2003 Issn: 0361-2333

, 28: 597–625, 2003 Issn: 0361-2333 Rhodes, Benjamin D. United States Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918-1941: The Golden Age of American Diplomatic and Military Complacency (Greenwood, 2001).

Sibley, Katherine A.S., ed. A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover (2014); 616pp; essays by scholars stressing historiography

(2014); 616pp; essays by scholars stressing historiography Walters, Ryan S. The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G. Harding (2022) excerpt also online review

Primary sources [ edit ]

Calvin Coolidge

President of the United States from 1923 to 1929

This article is about the president of the United States. For his grandfather, see Calvin Galusha Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge[1] (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Born in Vermont, Coolidge was a Republican lawyer from New England who climbed up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming the 48th governor of Massachusetts. His response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. The next year, he was elected the 29th vice president of the United States, and he succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative and also as a man who said very little and had a dry sense of humor, receiving the nickname “Silent Cal”.[2][3] He chose not to run again in 1928, remarking that ten years as president was (at the time) “longer than any other man has had it – too long!”

Throughout his gubernatorial career, Coolidge ran on the record of fiscal conservatism and strong support for women’s suffrage. He held a vague opposition to Prohibition. During his presidency, he restored public confidence in the White House after the many scandals of his predecessor’s administration. He signed into law the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which granted US citizenship to the indigenous peoples of the United States, and oversaw a period of rapid and expansive economic growth in the country, known as the “Roaring Twenties”, leaving office with considerable popularity. He was known for his hands-off governing approach and pro-business stances. As a Coolidge biographer wrote: “He embodied the spirit and hopes of the middle class, could interpret their longings and express their opinions. That he did represent the genius of the average is the most convincing proof of his strength.”

Scholars have ranked Coolidge in the lower half of U.S presidents. He gains almost universal praise for his stalwart support of racial equality during a period of heightened racial tension in the United States, and is highly praised by advocates of smaller government and laissez-faire economics, while supporters of an active central government generally view him far less favorably. His critics argue that he failed to use the country’s economic boom to help struggling farmers and workers in other flailing industries.[8] There is also still much debate among historians as to the extent Coolidge’s economic policies contributed to the onset of the Great Depression. However, it is widely accepted, including by his own Presidential Foundation, that the Federal Reserve System under his administration was partly responsible for the stock market crash of 1929 that occurred soon after he left office, which signaled the beginning of the Depression.[9]
Early life and family history

John Calvin Coolidge Jr. was born on July 4, 1872, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, the only U.S. president to be born on Independence Day. He was the elder of the two children of John Calvin Coolidge Sr. (1845–1926) and Victoria Josephine Moor (1846–1885). Although named for his father, John, from early childhood Coolidge was addressed by his middle name, Calvin. His middle name was selected in honor of John Calvin, considered a founder of the Congregational church in which Coolidge was raised and remained active throughout his life.[10]
Coolidge Senior engaged in many occupations and developed a statewide reputation as a prosperous farmer, storekeeper, and public servant. He held various local offices, including justice of the peace and tax collector and served in the Vermont House of Representatives as well as the Vermont Senate. Coolidge’s mother was the daughter of Hiram Dunlap Moor, a Plymouth Notch farmer and Abigail Franklin. She was chronically ill and died at the age of 39, perhaps from tuberculosis, when Coolidge was 12 years old. His younger sister, Abigail Grace Coolidge (1875–1890), died at the age of 15, probably of appendicitis, when Coolidge was 18. Coolidge’s father married a Plymouth schoolteacher in 1891, and lived to the age of 80.

Coolidge’s family had deep roots in New England; his earliest American ancestor, John Coolidge, emigrated from Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, England, around 1630 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. Coolidge’s great-great-grandfather, also named John Coolidge, was an American military officer in the Revolutionary War and one of the first selectmen of the town of Plymouth. His grandfather Calvin Galusha Coolidge served in the Vermont House of Representatives. Coolidge was also a descendant of Samuel Appleton, who settled in Ipswich and led the Massachusetts Bay Colony during King Philip’s War.

Early career and marriage

Education and law practice

Coolidge attended Black River Academy and then St. Johnsbury Academy, before enrolling at Amherst College, where he distinguished himself in the debating class. As a senior, he joined the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta and graduated cum laude. While at Amherst, Coolidge was profoundly influenced by philosophy professor Charles Edward Garman, a Congregational mystic, with a neo-Hegelian philosophy.

Coolidge explained Garman’s ethics forty years later:
[T]here is a standard of righteousness that might does not make right, that the end does not justify the means, and that expediency as a working principle is bound to fail. The only hope of perfecting human relationships is in accordance with the law of service under which men are not so solicitous about what they shall get as they are about what they shall give. Yet people are entitled to the rewards of their industry. What they earn is theirs, no matter how small or how great. But the possession of property carries the obligation to use it in a larger service…

At his father’s urging after graduation, Coolidge moved to Northampton, Massachusetts to become a lawyer. To avoid the cost of law school, Coolidge followed the common practice of apprenticing with a local law firm, Hammond & Field, and reading law with them. John C. Hammond and Henry P. Field, both Amherst graduates, introduced Coolidge to law practice in the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts. In 1897, Coolidge was admitted to the Massachusetts bar, becoming a country lawyer. With his savings and a small inheritance from his grandfather, Coolidge opened his own law office in Northampton in 1898. He practiced commercial law, believing that he served his clients best by staying out of court. As his reputation as a hard-working and diligent attorney grew, local banks and other businesses began to retain his services.

Marriage and family

In 1903, Coolidge met Grace Goodhue, a University of Vermont graduate and teacher at Northampton’s Clarke School for the Deaf. They married on October 4, 1905, at 2:30 p.m. in a small ceremony which took place in the parlor of Grace’s family’s house, having overcome her mother’s objections to the marriage. The newlyweds went on a honeymoon trip to Montreal, originally planned for two weeks but cut short by a week at Coolidge’s request. After 25 years he wrote of Grace, “for almost a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities and I have rejoiced in her graces”.

The Coolidges had two sons: John (1906–2000) and Calvin Jr. (1908–1924). Calvin Jr. died at age 16 from blood poisoning. On June 30, 1924, Calvin Jr. had played tennis with his brother on the White House tennis courts without putting on socks and developed a blister on one of his toes. The blister subsequently degenerated into sepsis and Calvin Jr. died a little over a week later.[23] The President never forgave himself for Calvin Jr’s death.[24] His eldest son John said it “hurt [Coolidge] terribly”, and psychiatric biographer Robert E. Gilbert, author of The Tormented President: Calvin Coolidge, Death, and Clinical Depression, said that Coolidge “ceased to function as President after the death of his sixteen-year-old son”. Gilbert explains in his book how Coolidge displayed all ten of the symptoms listed by the American Psychiatric Association as evidence of major depressive disorder following Calvin Jr.’s sudden death.[25] John later became a railroad executive, helped to start the Coolidge Foundation, and was instrumental in creating the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site.

Coolidge was frugal, and when it came to securing a home, he insisted upon renting. He and his wife attended Northampton’s Edwards Congregational Church before and after his presidency.[28]
Local political office (1898−1915)

City offices

The Republican Party was dominant in New England at the time, and Coolidge followed the example of Hammond and Field by becoming active in local politics. In 1896, Coolidge campaigned for Republican presidential candidate William McKinley, and the next year he was selected to be a member of the Republican City Committee. In 1898, he won election to the City Council of Northampton, placing second in a ward where the top three candidates were elected. The position offered no salary but provided Coolidge with invaluable political experience. In 1899, he declined renomination, running instead for City Solicitor, a position elected by the City Council. He was elected for a one-year term in 1900, and reelected in 1901. This position gave Coolidge more experience as a lawyer and paid a salary of $600 (equivalent to $19,543 in 2021). In 1902, the city council selected a Democrat for city solicitor, and Coolidge returned to private practice. Soon thereafter, however, the clerk of courts for the county died, and Coolidge was chosen to replace him. The position paid well, but it barred him from practicing law, so he remained at the job for only one year. In 1904, Coolidge suffered his sole defeat at the ballot box, losing an election to the Northampton school board. When told that some of his neighbors voted against him because he had no children in the schools he would govern, the recently married Coolidge replied, “Might give me time!”

Massachusetts state legislator and mayor

Coolidge as a State Representative in 1908

In 1906, the local Republican committee nominated Coolidge for election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He won a close victory over the incumbent Democrat, and reported to Boston for the 1907 session of the Massachusetts General Court. In his freshman term, Coolidge served on minor committees and, although he usually voted with the party, was known as a Progressive Republican, voting in favor of such measures as women’s suffrage and the direct election of Senators. While in Boston, Coolidge became an ally, and then a liegeman, of then U.S. Senator Winthrop Murray Crane who controlled the western faction of the Massachusetts Republican Party; Crane’s party rival in the east of the commonwealth was U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Coolidge forged another key strategic alliance with Guy Currier, who had served in both state houses and had the social distinction, wealth, personal charm and broad circle of friends which Coolidge lacked, and which would have a lasting impact on his political career. In 1907, he was elected to a second term, and in the 1908 session Coolidge was more outspoken, though not in a leadership position.

Instead of vying for another term in the State House, Coolidge returned home to his growing family and ran for mayor of Northampton when the incumbent Democrat retired. He was well liked in the town, and defeated his challenger by a vote of 1,597 to 1,409. During his first term (1910 to 1911), he increased teachers’ salaries and retired some of the city’s debt while still managing to effect a slight tax decrease. He was renominated in 1911, and defeated the same opponent by a slightly larger margin.

In 1911, the State Senator for the Hampshire County area retired and successfully encouraged Coolidge to run for his seat for the 1912 session; Coolidge defeated his Democratic opponent by a large margin. At the start of that term, he became chairman of a committee to arbitrate the “Bread and Roses” strike by the workers of the American Woolen Company in Lawrence, Massachusetts.[b] After two tense months, the company agreed to the workers’ demands, in a settlement proposed by the committee. A major issue affecting Massachusetts Republicans that year was the party split between the progressive wing, which favored Theodore Roosevelt, and the conservative wing, which favored William Howard Taft. Although he favored some progressive measures, Coolidge refused to leave the Republican party. When the new Progressive Party declined to run a candidate in his state senate district, Coolidge won reelection against his Democratic opponent by an increased margin.

“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 demagogue, but don’t be a demagogue. Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don’t hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.” “Have Faith in Massachusetts” as delivered by Calvin Coolidge to the Massachusetts State Senate, 1914

In the 1913 session, Coolidge enjoyed renowned success in arduously navigating to passage the Western Trolley Act, which connected Northampton with a dozen similar industrial communities in western Massachusetts. Coolidge intended to retire after his second term as was the custom, but when the president of the state senate, Levi H. Greenwood, considered running for lieutenant governor, Coolidge decided to run again for the Senate in the hopes of being elected as its presiding officer. Although Greenwood later decided to run for reelection to the Senate, he was defeated primarily due to his opposition to women’s suffrage; Coolidge was in favor of the women’s vote, won his re-election, and with Crane’s help, assumed the presidency of a closely divided Senate. After his election in January 1914, Coolidge delivered a published and frequently quoted speech entitled Have Faith in Massachusetts, which summarized his philosophy of government.

Coolidge’s speech was well received, and he attracted some admirers on its account; towards the end of the term, many of them were proposing his name for nomination to lieutenant governor. After winning reelection to the Senate by an increased margin in the 1914 elections, Coolidge was reelected unanimously to be President of the Senate. Coolidge’s supporters, led by fellow Amherst alumnus Frank Stearns, encouraged him again to run for lieutenant governor. Stearns, an executive with the Boston department store R. H. Stearns, became another key ally, and began a publicity campaign on Coolidge’s behalf before he announced his candidacy at the end of the 1915 legislative session.

Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Massachusetts (1916−1921)

Coolidge with his family

Coolidge entered the primary election for lieutenant governor and was nominated to run alongside gubernatorial candidate Samuel W. McCall. Coolidge was the leading vote-getter in the Republican primary, and balanced the Republican ticket by adding a western presence to McCall’s eastern base of support. McCall and Coolidge won the 1915 election to their respective one-year terms, with Coolidge defeating his opponent by more than 50,000 votes.

In Massachusetts, the lieutenant governor does not preside over the state Senate, as is the case in many other states; nevertheless, as lieutenant governor, Coolidge was a deputy governor functioning as an administrative inspector and was a member of the governor’s council. He was also chairman of the finance committee and the pardons committee. As a full-time elected official, Coolidge discontinued his law practice in 1916, though his family continued to live in Northampton. McCall and Coolidge were both reelected in 1916 and again in 1917. When McCall decided that he would not stand for a fourth term, Coolidge announced his intention to run for governor.

1918 election

Coolidge was unopposed for the Republican nomination for Governor of Massachusetts in 1918. He and his running mate, Channing Cox, a Boston lawyer and Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, ran on the previous administration’s record: fiscal conservatism, a vague opposition to Prohibition, support for women’s suffrage, and support for American involvement in World War I. The issue of the war proved divisive, especially among Irish and German Americans. Coolidge was elected by a margin of 16,773 votes over his opponent, Richard H. Long, in the smallest margin of victory of any of his statewide campaigns.

Boston Police Strike

In 1919, in reaction to a plan of the policemen of the Boston Police Department to register with a union, Police Commissioner Edwin U. Curtis announced that such an act would not be tolerated. In August of that year, the American Federation of Labor issued a charter to the Boston Police Union. Curtis declared the union’s leaders were guilty of insubordination and would be relieved of duty, but indicated he would cancel their suspension if the union was dissolved by September 4. The mayor of Boston, Andrew Peters, convinced Curtis to delay his action for a few days, but with no results, and Curtis suspended the union leaders on September 8. The following day, about three-quarters of the policemen in Boston went on strike.[c] Coolidge, tacitly but fully in support of Curtis’ position, closely monitored the situation but initially deferred to the local authorities. He anticipated that only a resulting measure of lawlessness could sufficiently prompt the public to understand and appreciate the controlling principle – that a policeman does not strike. That night and the next, there was sporadic violence and rioting in the unruly city. Peters, concerned about sympathy strikes by the firemen and others, called up some units of the Massachusetts National Guard stationed in the Boston area pursuant to an old and obscure legal authority, and relieved Curtis of duty.

“Your assertion that the Commissioner was wrong cannot justify the wrong of leaving the city unguarded. That furnished the opportunity; the criminal element furnished the action. There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time. … 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.” “Telegram from Governor Calvin Coolidge to Samuel Gompers”, September 14, 1919

Coolidge, sensing the severity of circumstances were then in need of his intervention, conferred with Crane’s operative, William Butler, and then acted. He called up more units of the National Guard, restored Curtis to office, and took personal control of the police force. Curtis proclaimed that all of the strikers were fired from their jobs, and Coolidge called for a new police force to be recruited. That night Coolidge received a telegram from AFL leader Samuel Gompers. “Whatever disorder has occurred”, Gompers wrote, “is due to Curtis’s order in which the right of the policemen has been denied…” Coolidge publicly answered Gompers’s telegram, denying any justification whatsoever for the strike – and his response launched him into the national consciousness. Newspapers across the nation picked up on Coolidge’s statement and he became the newest hero to opponents of the strike. Amid of the First Red Scare, many Americans were terrified of the spread of communist revolutions, like those that had taken place in Russia, Hungary, and Germany. While Coolidge had lost some friends among organized labor, conservatives across the nation had seen a rising star. Although he usually acted with deliberation, the Boston police strike gave him a national reputation as a decisive leader, and as a strict enforcer of law and order.

1919 election

Coolidge inspects militia in Boston police strike

Coolidge and Cox were renominated for their respective offices in 1919. By this time Coolidge’s supporters (especially Stearns) had publicized his actions in the Police Strike around the state and the nation and some of Coolidge’s speeches were published in book form. He faced the same opponent as in 1918, Richard Long, but this time Coolidge defeated him by 125,101 votes, more than seven times his margin of victory from a year earlier.[d] His actions in the police strike, combined with the massive electoral victory, led to suggestions that Coolidge run for president in 1920.

Legislation and vetoes as governor

By the time Coolidge was inaugurated on January 2, 1919, the First World War had ended, and Coolidge pushed the legislature to give a $100 bonus (equivalent to $1,563 in 2021) to Massachusetts veterans. He also signed a bill reducing the work week for women and children from fifty-four hours to forty-eight, saying, “We must humanize the industry, or the system will break down.” He signed into law a budget that kept the tax rates the same, while trimming $4 million from expenditures, thus allowing the state to retire some of its debt.

Coolidge also wielded the veto pen as governor. His most publicized veto prevented an increase in legislators’ pay by 50%. Although Coolidge was personally opposed to Prohibition, he vetoed a bill in May 1920 that would have allowed the sale of beer or wine of 2.75% alcohol or less, in Massachusetts in violation of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. “Opinions and instructions do not outmatch the Constitution,” he said in his veto message. “Against it, they are void.”

Vice presidency (1921−1923)

1920 election

An original Harding-Coolidge campaign button

At the 1920 Republican National Convention, most of the delegates were selected by state party caucuses, not primaries. As such, the field was divided among many local favorites. Coolidge was one such candidate, and while he placed as high as sixth in the voting, the powerful party bosses running the convention, primarily the party’s U.S. Senators, never considered him seriously. After ten ballots, the bosses and then the delegates settled on Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio as their nominee for president. When the time came to select a vice presidential nominee, the bosses also made and announced their decision on whom they wanted – Sen. Irvine Lenroot of Wisconsin – and then prematurely departed after his name was put forth, relying on the rank and file to confirm their decision. A delegate from Oregon, Wallace McCamant, having read Have Faith in Massachusetts, proposed Coolidge for vice president instead. The suggestion caught on quickly with the masses starving for an act of independence from the absent bosses, and Coolidge was unexpectedly nominated.

The Democrats nominated another Ohioan, James M. Cox, for president and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, for vice president. The question of the United States joining the League of Nations was a major issue in the campaign, as was the unfinished legacy of Progressivism. Harding ran a “front-porch” campaign from his home in Marion, Ohio, but Coolidge took to the campaign trail in the Upper South, New York, and New England – his audiences carefully limited to those familiar with Coolidge and those placing a premium upon concise and short speeches. On November 2, 1920, Harding and Coolidge were victorious in a landslide, winning more than 60 percent of the popular vote, including every state outside the South. They also won in Tennessee, the first time a Republican ticket had won a Southern state since Reconstruction.

“Silent Cal”

President Harding and Vice President Coolidge with their wives

The U.S. vice-presidency did not carry many official duties, but Coolidge was invited by President Harding to attend cabinet meetings, making him the first vice president to do so. He gave a number of unremarkable speeches around the country.

As vice president, Coolidge and his vivacious wife Grace were invited to quite a few parties, where the legend of “Silent Cal” was born. It is from this time that most of the jokes and anecdotes involving Coolidge originate, such as Coolidge being “silent in five languages”.[86] Although Coolidge was known to be a skilled and effective public speaker, in private he was a man of few words and was commonly referred to as “Silent Cal”. An apocryphal story has it that a person seated next to him at a dinner said to him, “I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you.” He replied, “You lose.” However, on April 22, 1924, Coolidge himself said that the “You lose” quotation never occurred. The story about it was related by Frank B. Noyes, President of the Associated Press, to their membership at their annual luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, when toasting and introducing Coolidge, who was the invited speaker. After the introduction and before his prepared remarks, Coolidge said to the membership, “Your President [referring to Noyes] has given you a perfect example of one of those rumors now current in Washington which is without any foundation.”[88]
Coolidge often seemed uncomfortable among fashionable Washington society; when asked why he continued to attend so many of their dinner parties, he replied, “Got to eat somewhere.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a leading Republican wit, underscored Coolidge’s silence and his dour personality: “When he wished he were elsewhere, he pursed his lips, folded his arms, and said nothing. He looked then precisely as though he had been weaned on a pickle.” Coolidge and his wife, Grace, who was a great baseball fan, once attended a Washington Senators game and sat through all nine innings without saying a word, except once when he asked her the time.

As president, Coolidge’s reputation as a quiet man continued. “The words of a President have an enormous weight,” he would later write, “and ought not to be used indiscriminately.” Coolidge was aware of his stiff reputation; indeed, he cultivated it. “I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President,” he once told Ethel Barrymore, “and I think I will go along with them.” Some historians suggest that Coolidge’s image was created deliberately as a campaign tactic, while others believe his withdrawn and quiet behavior to be natural, deepening after the death of his son in 1924. Dorothy Parker, upon learning that Coolidge had died, reportedly remarked, “How can they tell?”

Presidency (1923−1929)

On August 2, 1923, President Harding died unexpectedly from a heart attack in San Francisco while on a speaking tour of the western United States. Vice President Coolidge was in Vermont visiting his family home, which had neither electricity nor a telephone, when he received word by messenger of Harding’s death. Coolidge dressed, said a prayer, and came downstairs to greet the reporters who had assembled. His father, a notary public and justice of the peace, administered the oath of office in the family’s parlor by the light of a kerosene lamp at 2:47 a.m. on August 3, 1923, whereupon the new President of the United States returned to bed.

Coolidge returned to Washington the next day, and was sworn in again by Justice Adolph A. Hoehling Jr. of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, to forestall any questions about the authority of a state official to administer a federal oath. This second oath-taking remained a secret until it was revealed by Harry M. Daugherty in 1932, and confirmed by Hoehling. When Hoehling confirmed Daugherty’s story, he indicated that Daugherty, then serving as United States Attorney General, asked him to administer the oath without fanfare at the Willard Hotel. According to Hoehling, he did not question Daugherty’s reason for requesting a second oath-taking but assumed it was to resolve any doubt about whether the first swearing-in was valid.

President Coolidge signing appropriation bills for the Veterans Bureau on the South Lawn during the garden party for wounded veterans, June 5, 1924. General John J. Pershing is at left. The man at right, looking on, appears to be Veterans Bureau Director Frank T. Hines

The nation initially did not know what to make of Coolidge, who had maintained a low profile in the Harding administration; many had even expected him to be replaced on the ballot in 1924. Coolidge believed that those of Harding’s men under suspicion were entitled to every presumption of innocence, taking a methodical approach to the scandals, principally the Teapot Dome scandal, while others clamored for rapid punishment of those they presumed guilty. Coolidge thought the Senate investigations of the scandals would suffice; this was affirmed by the resulting resignations of those involved. He personally intervened in demanding the resignation of Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty after he refused to cooperate with the congressional probe. He then set about to confirm that no loose ends remained in the administration, arranging for a full briefing on the wrongdoing. Harry A. Slattery reviewed the facts with him, Harlan F. Stone analyzed the legal aspects for him and Senator William E. Borah assessed and presented the political factors.

Coolidge addressed Congress when it reconvened on December 6, 1923, giving a speech that supported many of Harding’s policies, including Harding’s formal budgeting process, the enforcement of immigration restrictions and arbitration of coal strikes ongoing in Pennsylvania. The address to Congress was the first presidential speech to be broadcast over the radio. The Washington Naval Treaty was proclaimed just one month into Coolidge’s term, and was generally well received in the country. In May 1924, the World War I veterans’ World War Adjusted Compensation Act or “Bonus Bill” was passed over his veto. Coolidge signed the Immigration Act later that year, which was aimed at restricting southern and eastern European immigration, but appended a signing statement expressing his unhappiness with the bill’s specific exclusion of Japanese immigrants. Just before the Republican Convention began, Coolidge signed into law the Revenue Act of 1924, which reduced the top marginal tax rate from 58% to 46%, as well as personal income tax rates across the board, increased the estate tax and bolstered it with a new gift tax.

On June 2, 1924, Coolidge signed the act granting citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States. By that time, two-thirds of them were already citizens, having gained it through marriage, military service (veterans of World War I were granted citizenship in 1919), or the land allotments that had earlier taken place.

1924 election

1924 electoral vote results

The Republican Convention was held on June 10–12, 1924, in Cleveland, Ohio; Coolidge was nominated on the first ballot. The convention nominated Frank Lowden of Illinois for vice president on the second ballot, but he declined; former Brigadier General Charles G. Dawes was nominated on the third ballot and accepted.

The Democrats held their convention the next month in New York City. The convention soon deadlocked, and after 103 ballots, the delegates finally agreed on a compromise candidate, John W. Davis, with Charles W. Bryan nominated for vice president. The Democrats’ hopes were buoyed when Robert M. La Follette, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, split from the GOP to form a new Progressive Party. Many believed that the split in the Republican party, like the one in 1912, would allow a Democrat to win the presidency.

After the conventions and the death of his younger son Calvin, Coolidge became withdrawn; he later said that “when he [the son] died, the power and glory of the Presidency went with him.” Even as he mourned, Coolidge ran his standard campaign, not mentioning his opponents by name or maligning them, and delivering speeches on his theory of government, including several that were broadcast over the radio. It was the most subdued campaign since 1896, partly because of Coolidge’s grief, but also because of his naturally non-confrontational style. The other candidates campaigned in a more modern fashion, but despite the split in the Republican party, the results were similar to those of 1920. Coolidge and Dawes won every state outside the South except Wisconsin, La Follette’s home state. Coolidge won the election with 382 electoral votes and the popular vote by 2.5 million over his opponents’ combined total.

Industry and trade

“[I]t is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.” [emphasis added] “President Calvin Coolidge’s address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors”, Washington D.C., January 25, 1925

During Coolidge’s presidency, the United States experienced a period of rapid economic growth known as the “Roaring Twenties”. He left the administration’s industrial policy in the hands of his activist Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, who energetically used government auspices to promote business efficiency and develop airlines and radio. Coolidge disdained regulation and demonstrated this by appointing commissioners to the Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission who did little to restrict the activities of businesses under their jurisdiction. The regulatory state under Coolidge was, as one biographer described it, “thin to the point of invisibility”.

Historian Robert Sobel offers some context of Coolidge’s laissez-faire ideology, based on the prevailing understanding of federalism during his presidency: “As Governor of Massachusetts, Coolidge supported wages and hours legislation, opposed child labor, imposed economic controls during World War I, favored safety measures in factories, and even worker representation on corporate boards. Did he support these measures while president? No, because in the 1920s, such matters were considered the responsibilities of state and local governments.”

Taxation and government spending

Coolidge adopted the taxation policies of his Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, who advocated “scientific taxation” – the notion that lowering taxes will increase, rather than decrease, government receipts. Congress agreed, and tax rates were reduced in Coolidge’s term. In addition to federal tax cuts, Coolidge proposed reductions in federal expenditures and retiring of the federal debt. Coolidge’s ideas were shared by the Republicans in Congress, and in 1924, Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1924, which reduced income tax rates and eliminated all income taxation for some two million people. They reduced taxes again by passing the Revenue Acts of 1926 and 1928, all the while continuing to keep spending down so as to reduce the overall federal debt. By 1927, only the wealthiest 2% of taxpayers paid any federal income tax. Federal spending remained flat during Coolidge’s administration, allowing one-fourth of the federal debt to be retired in total. State and local governments saw considerable growth, however, surpassing the federal budget in 1927. By 1929, after Coolidge’s series of tax rate reductions had cut the tax rate to 24 percent on those making over $100,000, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income taxes, of which 65 percent was collected from those making over $100,000. In 1921, when the tax rate on people making over $100,000 a year was 73 percent, the federal government collected a little over $700 million in income taxes, of which 30 percent was paid by those making over $100,000.[128]
Opposition to farm subsidies

Perhaps the most contentious issue of Coolidge’s presidency was relief for farmers. Some in Congress proposed a bill designed to fight falling agricultural prices by allowing the federal government to purchase crops to sell abroad at lower prices. Agriculture Secretary Henry C. Wallace and other administration officials favored the bill when it was introduced in 1924, but rising prices convinced many in Congress that the bill was unnecessary, and it was defeated just before the elections that year. In 1926, with farm prices falling once more, Senator Charles L. McNary and Representative Gilbert N. Haugen – both Republicans – proposed the McNary–Haugen Farm Relief Bill. The bill proposed a federal farm board that would purchase surplus production in high-yield years and hold it (when feasible) for later sale or sell it abroad. Coolidge opposed McNary-Haugen, declaring that agriculture must stand “on an independent business basis”, and said that “government control cannot be divorced from political control.” Instead of manipulating prices, he favored instead Herbert Hoover’s proposal to increase profitability by modernizing agriculture. Secretary Mellon wrote a letter denouncing the McNary-Haugen measure as unsound and likely to cause inflation, and it was defeated.

After McNary-Haugen’s defeat, Coolidge supported a less radical measure, the Curtis-Crisp Act, which would have created a federal board to lend money to farm co-operatives in times of surplus; the bill did not pass. In February 1927, Congress took up the McNary-Haugen bill again, this time narrowly passing it, and Coolidge vetoed it. In his veto message, he expressed the belief that the bill would do nothing to help farmers, benefiting only exporters and expanding the federal bureaucracy. Congress did not override the veto, but it passed the bill again in May 1928 by an increased majority; again, Coolidge vetoed it. “Farmers never have made much money,” said Coolidge, the Vermont farmer’s son. “I do not believe we can do much about it.”

Flood control

Coolidge has often been criticized for his actions during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the worst natural disaster to hit the Gulf Coast until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Although he did eventually name Secretary Hoover to a commission in charge of flood relief, scholars argue that Coolidge overall showed a lack of interest in federal flood control. Coolidge did not believe that personally visiting the region after the floods would accomplish anything, and that it would be seen as mere political grandstanding. He also did not want to incur the federal spending that flood control would require; he believed property owners should bear much of the cost. On the other hand, Congress wanted a bill that would place the federal government completely in charge of flood mitigation. When Congress passed a compromise measure in 1928, Coolidge declined to take credit for it and signed the bill in private on May 15.

Civil rights

Osage men with Coolidge after he signed the bill granting Native Americans U.S. citizenship

According to one biographer, Coolidge was “devoid of racial prejudice”, but rarely took the lead on civil rights. Coolidge disliked the Ku Klux Klan and no Klansman is known to have received an appointment from him. In the 1924 presidential election his opponents (Robert La Follette and John Davis), and his running mate Charles Dawes, often attacked the Klan but Coolidge avoided the subject. During his administration, lynchings of African-Americans decreased and millions of people left the Ku Klux Klan.

Coolidge spoke in favor of the civil rights of African-Americans, saying in his first State of the Union address that their rights were “just as sacred as those of any other citizen” under the U.S. Constitution and that it was a “public and a private duty to protect those rights.”[143]
Coolidge repeatedly called for laws to make lynching a federal crime (it was already a state crime, though not always enforced). Congress refused to pass any such legislation. On June 2, 1924, Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted U.S. citizenship to all American Indians living on reservations. (Those off reservations had long been citizens.) On June 6, 1924, Coolidge delivered a commencement address at historically black, non-segregated Howard University, in which he thanked and commended African-Americans for their rapid advances in education and their contributions to U.S. society over the years, as well as their eagerness to render their services as soldiers in the World War, all while being faced with discrimination and prejudices at home.

In a speech in October 1924, Coolidge stressed tolerance of differences as an American value and thanked immigrants for their contributions to U.S. society, saying that they have “contributed much to making our country what it is.” He stated that although the diversity of peoples was a detrimental source of conflict and tension in Europe, it was peculiar for the United States that it was a “harmonious” benefit for the country. Coolidge further stated the United States should assist and help immigrants who come to the country and urged immigrants to reject “race hatreds” and “prejudices”.[page needed]
Foreign policy

Official portrait of Calvin Coolidge

Coolidge was neither well versed nor very interested in world affairs.[147] His focus was directed mainly at American business, especially pertaining to trade, and “Maintaining the Status Quo”. Although not an isolationist, he was reluctant to enter into foreign alliances. While Coolidge believed strongly in a non-interventionist foreign policy, he did believe that the United States was exceptional.[149]
Coolidge considered the 1920 Republican victory as a rejection of the Wilsonian position that the United States should join the League of Nations. While not completely opposed to the idea, Coolidge believed the League, as then constituted, did not serve American interests, and he did not advocate U.S. membership. He spoke in favor of the United States joining the Permanent Court of International Justice (World Court), provided that the nation would not be bound by advisory decisions. In 1926, the Senate eventually approved joining the Court (with reservations). The League of Nations accepted the reservations, but it suggested some modifications of its own. The Senate failed to act and so the United States did not join the World Court.

Coolidge authorized the Dawes Plan, a financial plan by Charles Dawes, to provide Germany partial relief from its reparations obligations from World War I. The plan initially provided stimulus for the German economy.[154] Additionally, Coolidge attempted to pursue further curbs on naval strength following the early successes of Harding’s Washington Naval Conference by sponsoring the Geneva Naval Conference in 1927, which failed owing to a French and Italian boycott and ultimate failure of Great Britain and the United States to agree on cruiser tonnages. As a result, the conference was a failure and Congress eventually authorized for increased American naval spending in 1928.[155] The Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928, named for Coolidge’s Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, and French foreign minister Aristide Briand, was also a key peacekeeping initiative. The treaty, ratified in 1929, committed signatories – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan – to “renounce war, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another”. The treaty did not achieve its intended result – the outlawry of war – but it did provide the founding principle for international law after World War II. Coolidge also continued the previous administration’s policy of withholding recognition of the Soviet Union.

Efforts were made to normalize ties with post-Revolution Mexico. Coolidge recognized Mexico’s new governments under Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles, and continued American support for the elected Mexican government against the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty during the Cristero War, lifting the arms embargo on that country; he also appointed Dwight Morrow as Ambassador to Mexico with the successful objective to avoid further American conflict with Mexico.[159]
Coolidge’s administration would see continuity in the occupation of Nicaragua and Haiti, and an end to the occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1924 as a result of withdrawal agreements finalized during Harding’s administration. In 1925, Coolidge ordered the withdrawal of Marines stationed in Nicaragua following perceived stability after the 1924 Nicaraguan general election, but redeployed them there in January 1927 following failed attempts to peacefully resolve the rapid deterioration of political stability and avert the ensuing Constitutionalist War; Henry L. Stimson was later sent by Coolidge to mediate a peace deal that would end the civil war and extend American military presence in Nicaragua beyond Coolidge’s term in office.[159]
To extend an olive branch to Latin American leaders embittered over America’s interventionist policies in Central America and the Caribbean, Coolidge led the U.S. delegation to the Sixth International Conference of American States, January 15–17, 1928, in Havana, Cuba, the only international trip Coolidge made during his presidency. He would be the last sitting American president to visit Cuba until Barack Obama in 2016.

For Canada, Coolidge authorized the St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of locks and canals that would provide large vessels passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes.[166][159]
Cabinet

Although a few of Harding’s cabinet appointees were scandal-tarred, Coolidge initially retained all of them, out of an ardent conviction that as successor to a deceased elected president he was obligated to retain Harding’s counselors and policies until the next election. He kept Harding’s able speechwriter Judson T. Welliver; Stuart Crawford replaced Welliver in November 1925. Coolidge appointed C. Bascom Slemp, a Virginia Congressman and experienced federal politician, to work jointly with Edward T. Clark, a Massachusetts Republican organizer whom he retained from his vice-presidential staff, as Secretaries to the President (a position equivalent to the modern White House Chief of Staff).

Perhaps the most powerful person in Coolidge’s Cabinet was Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, who controlled the administration’s financial policies and was regarded by many, including House Minority Leader John Nance Garner, as more powerful than Coolidge himself. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover also held a prominent place in Coolidge’s Cabinet, in part because Coolidge found value in Hoover’s ability to win positive publicity with his pro-business proposals. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes directed Coolidge’s foreign policy until he resigned in 1925 following Coolidge’s re-election. He was replaced by Frank B. Kellogg, who had previously served as a senator and as the ambassador to Great Britain. Coolidge made two other appointments following his re-election, with William M. Jardine taking the position of Secretary of Agriculture and John G. Sargent becoming Attorney General. Coolidge did not have a vice president during his first term, but Charles Dawes became vice president during Coolidge’s second term, and Dawes and Coolidge clashed over farm policy and other issues.

Judicial appointments

Coolidge appointed Harlan F. Stone first as Attorney General and then as a Supreme Court Justice.

Coolidge appointed one justice to the Supreme Court of the United States, Harlan F. Stone in 1925. Stone was Coolidge’s fellow Amherst alumnus, a Wall Street lawyer and conservative Republican. Stone was serving as dean of Columbia Law School when Coolidge appointed him to be attorney general in 1924 to restore the reputation tarnished by Harding’s Attorney General, Harry M. Daugherty. It does not appear that Coolidge considered appointing anyone other than Stone, although Stone himself had urged Coolidge to appoint Benjamin N. Cardozo. Stone proved to be a firm believer in judicial restraint and was regarded as one of the court’s three liberal justices who would often vote to uphold New Deal legislation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt later appointed Stone to be chief justice.

Coolidge nominated 17 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals and 61 judges to the United States district courts. He appointed judges to various specialty courts as well, including Genevieve R. Cline, who became the first woman named to the federal judiciary when Coolidge placed her on the United States Customs Court in 1928. Coolidge also signed the Judiciary Act of 1925 into law, allowing the Supreme Court more discretion over its workload.

1928 election

Collection of video clips of President Coolidge

In the summer of 1927, Coolidge vacationed in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where he engaged in horseback riding and fly fishing and attended rodeos. He made Custer State Park his “summer White House”. While on vacation, Coolidge surprisingly issued a terse statement that he would not seek a second full term as president: “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.” After allowing the reporters to take that in, Coolidge elaborated. “If I take another term, I will be in the White House till 1933 … Ten years in Washington is longer than any other man has had it – too long!” In his memoirs, Coolidge explained his decision not to run: “The Presidential office takes a heavy toll of those who occupy it and those who are dear to them. While we should not refuse to spend and be spent in the service of our country, it is hazardous to attempt what we feel is beyond our strength to accomplish.” After leaving office, he and Grace returned to Northampton, where he wrote his memoirs. The Republicans retained the White House in 1928 with a landslide by Herbert Hoover. Coolidge had been reluctant to endorse Hoover as his successor; on one occasion he remarked that “for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice – all of it bad.” Even so, Coolidge had no desire to split the party by publicly opposing the nomination of the popular commerce secretary.

Post-presidency (1929–1933)

After his presidency, Coolidge retired to a modest rented house on residential Massasoit Street in Northampton before moving to a more spacious home, “The Beeches”. He kept a Hacker runabout boat on the Connecticut River and was often observed on the water by local boating enthusiasts. During this period, he also served as chairman of the Non-Partisan Railroad Commission, an entity created by several banks and corporations to survey the country’s long-term transportation needs and make recommendations for improvements. He was an honorary president of the American Foundation for the Blind, a director of New York Life Insurance Company, president of the American Antiquarian Society, and a trustee of Amherst College.

Coolidge published his autobiography in 1929 and wrote a syndicated newspaper column, “Calvin Coolidge Says”, from 1930 to 1931. Faced with looming defeat in the 1932 presidential election, some Republicans spoke of rejecting Herbert Hoover as their party’s nominee, and instead drafting Coolidge to run, but the former president made it clear that he was not interested in running again, and that he would publicly repudiate any effort to draft him, should it come about. Hoover was renominated, and Coolidge made several radio addresses in support of him. Hoover then lost the general election to Coolidge’s 1920 vice presidential Democratic opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide.

Coolidge died suddenly from coronary thrombosis at “The Beeches”, at 12:45 p.m., January 5, 1933, at age 60. Shortly before his death, Coolidge confided to an old friend: “I feel I no longer fit in with these times.” Coolidge is buried in Plymouth Notch Cemetery, Plymouth Notch, Vermont. The nearby family home is maintained as one of the original buildings on the Calvin Coolidge Homestead District site. The State of Vermont dedicated a new visitors’ center nearby to mark Coolidge’s 100th birthday on July 4, 1972.

Radio, film, and commemorations

Coolidge with reporters and cameramen

Despite his reputation as a quiet and even reclusive politician, Coolidge made use of the new medium of radio and made radio history several times while president. He made himself available to reporters, giving 520 press conferences, meeting with reporters more regularly than any president before or since. Coolidge’s second inauguration was the first presidential inauguration broadcast on radio. On December 6, 1923, his speech to Congress was broadcast on radio, the first presidential radio address.[190] Coolidge signed the Radio Act of 1927, which assigned regulation of radio to the newly created Federal Radio Commission. On August 11, 1924, Theodore W. Case, using the Phonofilm sound-on-film process he developed for Lee de Forest, filmed Coolidge on the White House lawn, making “Silent Cal” the first president to appear in a sound film. The title of the DeForest film was President Coolidge, Taken on the White House Grounds.[192] When Charles Lindbergh arrived in Washington on a U.S. Navy ship after his celebrated 1927 trans-Atlantic flight, President Coolidge welcomed him back to the U.S. and presented him with the Medal of Honor;[193] the event was captured on film.[194]
Coolidge was the only president to have his portrait on a coin during his lifetime: the Sesquicentennial of American Independence Half Dollar, minted in 1926.

Coolidge on a 1938 postage stamp

See also

Notes

^ Coolidge was Vice President under Warren G. Harding and became president upon Harding’s death on August 2, 1923. As this was prior to the adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967, a vacancy in the office of vice president was not filled until the next ensuing election and inauguration. ^ See also the main article, Lawrence textile strike , for a full description. ^ The exact total was 1,117 out of 1,544 ^ The tally was Coolidge 317,774, Long 192,673.

References

Works cited

Calvin Coolidge

As America’s 30th President (1923-1929), Calvin Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts of frugality amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying during the 1920s era.

At 2:30 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was President. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible.

Coolidge was “distinguished for character more than for heroic achievement,” wrote a Democratic admirer, Alfred E. Smith. “His great task was to restore the dignity and prestige of the Presidency when it had reached the lowest ebb in our history … in a time of extravagance and waste….”

Born in Plymouth, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, Coolidge was the son of a village storekeeper. He was graduated from Amherst College with honors, and entered law and politics in Northampton, Massachusetts. Slowly, methodically, he went up the political ladder from councilman in Northampton to Governor of Massachusetts, as a Republican. En route he became thoroughly conservative.

As President, Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying. He refused to use Federal economic power to check the growing boom or to ameliorate the depressed condition of agriculture and certain industries. His first message to Congress in December 1923 called for isolation in foreign policy, and for tax cuts, economy, and limited aid to farmers.

He rapidly became popular. In 1924, as the beneficiary of what was becoming known as “Coolidge prosperity,” he polled more than 54 percent of the popular vote.

In his Inaugural he asserted that the country had achieved “a state of contentment seldom before seen,” and pledged himself to maintain the status quo. In subsequent years he twice vetoed farm relief bills, and killed a plan to produce cheap Federal electric power on the Tennessee River.

The political genius of President Coolidge, Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent for effectively doing nothing: “This active inactivity suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably. It suits all the business interests which want to be let alone…. And it suits all those who have become convinced that government in this country has become dangerously complicated and top-heavy….”

Coolidge was both the most negative and remote of Presidents, and the most accessible. He once explained to Bernard Baruch why he often sat silently through interviews: “Well, Baruch, many times I say only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to people. Even that is too much. It winds them up for twenty minutes more.”

But no President was kinder in permitting himself to be photographed in Indian war bonnets or cowboy dress, and in greeting a variety of delegations to the White House.

Both his dry Yankee wit and his frugality with words became legendary. His wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, recounted that a young woman sitting next to Coolidge at a dinner party confided to him she had bet she could get at least three words of conversation from him. Without looking at her he quietly retorted, “You lose.” And in 1928, while vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, he issued the most famous of his laconic statements, “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.”

By the time the disaster of the Great Depression hit the country, Coolidge was in retirement. Before his death in January 1933, he confided to an old friend, “. . . I feel I no longer fit in with these times.”

The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.

Learn more about Calvin Coolidge’s spouse, Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge.

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