Coolidge

by Robert Sobel

  This was high praise from the man known as “the scholar in politics.” Coolidge couldn’t have helped but be flattered by the apparent seriousness with which Lodge took the speech. He sent this letter on to his stepmother too, adding that when she finished reading it, she should return it.

  Coolidge remained as discreet as ever, and his instinct for correct behavior, reinforced by his strongly held sense of what was right, remained intact. When the Massachusetts government set about naming a delegation to attend the San Francisco Exposition, a clear example of a political junket, Coolidge was named as a member. It was a chance to see the country from a first class train, and might have been exciting for someone who had travelled so little. “Well, Calvin, you have a very enjoyable trip in prospect,” said one of his colleagues. “Not going” was the reply. “Not going? How unfortunate. It would really be one of the opportunities of a lifetime.” Coolidge reflected, and then said, “See Massachusetts first.” As it happened, the news of the frivolous trip hit the newspapers, and embarrassed those who had gone.

  The following year Coolidge did travel to Washington for the first time. He saw the usual sights, and met with several politicians, Lodge among them. Once more, the senator was gracious to his “country cousin,” and patronized and flattered him during their meeting. Coolidge, by now a seasoned politician, realized what was happening, and took it all in as part of the game.

  John Coolidge had probably been quite accurate in observing the extent of his son’s power. Coolidge was the leader of the senate, and the highest elected Republican in the state, but at the time he seemed like most other senate presidents. Governor Walsh, on the other hand, was quite novel. Like Curley, he was a man of modest means, the son of a combmaker, in a period when such individuals weren’t elected to any but local positions. He appeared a true reformer, moreover, pushing for many progressive programs. For instance, Walsh called for a state constitutional convention to consider adopting the initiative, referendum, and recall of elective officers; he favored greater home rule for the cities; he spoke out for women’s suffrage, the expansion of workmen’s compensation, and even a line item veto. And Walsh managed to get many of his recommendations accepted during his first term. The newspapers wrote that Walsh and Curley represented the new spirit in Massachusetts.

  Meanwhile, quietly, often behind the scenes, Coolidge accumulated power and influence. Walsh’s victories were due in part to Coolidge’s successful attempts to work with the Democrats, his willingness to accept Walsh’s agenda when he could, to modify bills when he felt this necessary, and to reject them occasionally and then with reluctance.

  Coolidge devoted much of his time to party business, especially the problems of bringing the Progressives back into the GOP and lining up candidates for the 1914 election. The party selected Samuel McCall to run for governor. McCall, who had earlier lost the senatorial nomination to Weeks, was a retired congressman who had been a Mugwump—a bolter from the party—when the Republicans divided over the nomination of James G. Blaine in 1884, and was generally considered a reformer. After a stint as a newspaper editor he served in the General Court, and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1893 to 1913, after which he opened a law office. McCall remained in the party in 1912—he did not desert to the Progressives—and so he won the support of the regulars. Clearly, McCall was nominated as a unity candidate.

  The platform was quite progressive, due largely to Coolidge, who was chairman of the Resolutions Committee. It called for wages and hours legislation, health and safety measures in the workplaces, and safeguards for child welfare. In a section written by Coolidge, the platform called for continued support[of] every means of compulsory and public education, vocational and technical; merited retirement pensions, aid to dependent mothers, healthful housing and fire protection, reasonable hours and conditions of labor, and amplest protection to the public health, workingmen’s compensation and its extension to interstate railroads, official investigation of the price of necessities, pure food and honest weight and measure, homestead commission, city planning, the highest care and efficiency in the administration of all hospital and penal institutions, probation and parole, care and protection of children and the mentally defective, rural development, urban sanitation, state and national conservation and reclamation, and every other public means for social welfare consistent with the sturdy character and resolute spirit of an independent, self-supporting, self-governing, and free people.

  This amounted to an endorsement of the Progressive platform. It was political prudence at the time—and Coolidge was ever prudent.

  Walsh, who was a popular governor, won by only a narrow margin, indicating that the breach with the Progressives within the GOP was healing, with some of the dissidents returning. Republican Grafton Cushing was elected lieutenant governor, and did better than McCall among the voters. On good terms with the former Progressives, Cushing was considered a potential nominee for higher office sometime later on. Coolidge won reelection in 1914 against Democrat Ralph Staab by a vote of 6,381 to 3,596, his largest margin yet. Once again he was to be senate president, this time by a unanimous vote. Those who recalled his first address gathered to hear the second. They were disappointed, even though it concluded with a typical example of Coolidge humor:My sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundations of our institutions. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to the commonwealth and to yourselves and be brief; above all things, be brief.

  Coolidge was involved in a bit of business that would help alter his life. It was to bring him into contact with a man who could not be considered his next mentor—no, by now Calvin Coolidge had become a mature thinker in his own right. Rather, this man became an associate with whom Coolidge would have an unusual and fruitful relationship.

  In the spring of 1912, Frank Stearns, an Amherst trustee, had been asked to see Coolidge regarding a bill dealing with sewage disposal in the town. Stearns arrived at Coolidge’s office the following year, only to be told by the senator, “I’m sorry. It’s too late.” Stearns departed, angered at being so rudely treated by a fellow alumnus. Coolidge, however, did not forget, and in 1915 he used his influence to have the measure passed, without telling Stearns.

  Versions of what happened next differ. According to one, Dwight Morrow, by then a coming man on Wall Street, spoke with Stearns about Coolidge. “I have a classmate in Boston who is quite a fellow—named Coolidge. Do you know him?” Stearns said he did not, to which Morrow replied, “You ought to—I will tell him that he ought to know you.”

  A group of Amherst men soon met to consider whether to back one of their classmates for higher office, in the hope of countering Harvard’s influence in the state house. Judge Field, Coolidge’s legal mentor, mentioned him to Stearns as a man the Amherst contingent should get behind. Stearns was displeased. “Well, if you say Coolidge, it’s Coolidge. But the only time I ever met him he insulted me.” Field then told of Coolidge’s role in the bill’s passage, and of the unusual way Coolidge got things done. They met again, and at first Coolidge was uncommunicative, but then he approached Stearns and said, “Ever anything you want up on the Hill come up and see me.” And Stearns did come see Coolidge in the senate chamber.

  While I sat there, three different senators, one after another, stuck their heads in the opening in the portieres, saying, “Mr. President, I think we ought to do so-and-so.” In each case he answered, “No,” and the senator simply said, “All right, just as you say.” This entire absence of effort to impress me was different from the action of any politician that I had ever met, and it finally interested me so much that I began to look him up.

  Stearns was hooked, and quickly became Coolidge’s most important confidant and aide. After Coolidge became president of the United States, Stearns wrote to Grace Coolidge:You and I have one thing in common, at any rate. You picked out Calvin Coolidge some years ago and gave him your endorsement; more recently I picked him out and gave him the
most emphatic endorsement I know how to. Of course many others can claim to have picked him out, but amongst them all I think we can shake hands over the proposition that yours was the most important endorsement and mine comes next.

  In 1915 some within the Coolidge circle thought he might go all the way to the State House. Stearns believed that Coolidge—then only president of the Massachusetts senate, and barely known anywhere outside the state—was the greatest contemporary American political figure and was destined to wind up in the White House. To anyone but Stearns, the thought was preposterous at the time, but to him, it was inevitable. In all matters concerning Calvin Coolidge, he was a true believer.

  Frank Stearns was an intelligent, able man, but, to casual acquaintances, he seemed by no means exceptional. He was fifty-nine years old in 1915, with a head of grey hair and a moustache to match. Of medium height, thick-set, and generally grave, he looked like the prosperous Boston merchant that he was. The dry goods store of R.H. Stearns and Company had been founded by his father in 1847. After graduating from Amherst in 1878, Stearns went to New York, where he worked for a year in the wool business. Stearns returned to Boston in 1880, and soon became president of the family store. In 1905 Stearns began work on a large department store in Boston Common, which opened in 1909 and quickly became the most popular in the city. In the years that followed he divided his time between expanding the store and tending to his family, and to Amherst, to which he was devoted.

  Until he met Coolidge, Stearns had next to nothing to do with politics. Then he plunged into it with gusto. It must have seemed strange to professionals like Murray Crane and William Butler, who saw Stearns laboring away for Coolidge, providing him with funds and raising more from others, and never asking for favors in return. This was not the way political sponsors were supposed to behave. They had memories of Mark Hanna, William McKinley’s chief operative, who took his payment in the form of favorable legislation, power within the party, and recommendations for appointments, and who eventually wound up in the Senate. In his time Hanna was one of the most commanding figures in the GOP, and he relished the role of kingmaker. Stearns, on the other hand, did not yearn for public office. He shrank from power. He was unique—a man wholly and completely devoted to the career of another man, for reasons of civic pride and patriotism.

  Although Stearns would offer advice and ideas, he almost never volunteered his thoughts on legislation or political appointments. Once, however, while Coolidge was governor, Stearns was approached by a friend who asked his help in obtaining a judicial appointment. Stearns replied, “I have never made a recommendation for an appointment to the governor, and I never shall,” but later that day he did mention the applicant’s name to Coolidge.

  “Mr. Stearns, what do you know of this gentleman’s legal and judicial training?”

  “I’m afraid that I don’t know very much about it except that he’s a fine man and a staunch supporter of yours.”

  “Mr. Stearns, I don’t think that you ought to interfere in matters about which you are so badly informed.”

  And that was that. Stearns did not repeat the mistake. Later, another supplicant approached him, saying, “You have great influence with the governor.” Stearns replied, “Yes, perhaps more even than you think, but it will last just as long as I don’t try to use it, and not one minute longer.”

  Some historians have suggested, without offering evidence, that Stearns was a sort of surrogate older brother for Coolidge. However, neither man ever talked about their relationship in more than generalities, so the idea is mere conjecture. Much has been made of a statement by Stearns that one of Coolidge’s earliest biographers quoted: “In a social way I feel a father to Calvin Coolidge. In a political way I feel a son to him.” Others thought Stearns was a Machiavellian who preferred to operate behind the scenes, manipulating Coolidge for his own ends—but they neglect to indicate what those ends might be.

  Clearly Stearns, like Coolidge, was a rarity. The urge among historians to ascribe selfish motivations to him is understandable, for other presidents besides McKinley have had their amanuenses and close associates—Wilson had his Colonel House; Harding had Harry Daugherty; Franklin D. Roosevelt had a host of them, starting with Louis Howe and Harry Hopkins; and of course, there were the Kennedy brothers. But these men, and many others, were quite visible figures in their own right, for they wanted it that way. Even Clark Clifford, who remained in the background while he assisted Harry Truman, emerged as a public figure in his own right. Likewise, Bill Moyers was a dutiful detail man for Lyndon Johnson, but after he left the White House he became an important media figure.

  This visibility did not appeal to Stearns. He was utterly without public conceit. He would have fallen on a sword for Coolidge, and not asked anything concrete in return from his idol or posterity. After Coolidge died, he faded away. He was not a politician or public figure. Stearns was a close friend of this one man, and when he left the scene, there was no role he cared to play. He assisted others in their writings on Coolidge, but he would not make his own contribution. Instead, he joined the boards of many philanthropic organizations, remained out of the spotlight, and died barely noticed in 1939. Suffice it to say, Frank Stearns was an enigma, much like the man to whom he was devoted.

  In 1931, after receiving copies of the president’s collected letters, Stearns wrote a letter expressing his devotion to Coolidge. Their political careers apparently over, Coolidge inscribed the volumes to the man “who really brought me to the position making this book possible.” To which Stearns replied, “I cannot think of anyone in the history of this country who had anything so much to be prized, unless by chance either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln saw fit to say something of a similar kind to some devoted friend of his.” This was nothing new; almost from the time he got to know Coolidge in 1915, Stearns told all who would listen of his virtues.

  Could it have been that Stearns, who was not a simpleton, truly believed Coolidge belonged in the pantheon of American saints? Clearly he admired Coolidge, and considered him an exceptional individual—honest, forthright, and intelligent. But there was another quality Coolidge possessed that attracted Stearns: Coolidge was an Amherst man, and Stearns loved the school. On July 23, 1915, in a letter to Dr. George Olds, one of Coolidge’s classmates and a member of the Amherst faculty, Stearns revealed his ambition for Coolidge:Just for a minute it does not seem best to push him for anything higher than lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, but later, of course, he must be governor and still later president. Just think what a time we will have at commencement when the president of the United States, a graduate of your Class, ’95, comes back to commencement!” [emphasis added].

  In that time, the loyalties graduates felt for their colleges and fraternities ran deep. Stearns’s dedication to Coolidge may have derived, in part at least, from his passion for his school.

  In 1935 Grace Coolidge asked a group of those who had known her by-then deceased husband to write their recollections of him, to which she appended comments. Stearns provided anecdotes, but little else. In her notes, Mrs. Coolidge said:Mr. Stearns knew and understood the president as no other man knew and understood him. He stood by in his quiet, self-effacing way, eager to help, but never offering advice unless it was sought. Sometimes they had long talks together in the president’s study, at other times days would pass in which few words were exchanged.

  In the early days the newspaper correspondents thought Mr. Stearns might prove to be a source of ready information, but they soon learned that as a contact man he was an excellent Boston merchant; they welcomed him when he came upon a group of them gathered in an outer room of the executive offices not as a man who had great secrets locked within his breast, but as a friend who trusted them.

  Coolidge himself wrote this of Stearns in his Autobiography:While Mr. Stearns always overestimated me, he nevertheless was a great help to me. He never obtruded or sought any favor for himself or any other person, but his whole effect was a
lways disinterested and entirely devoted to assisting me when I indicated I wanted him to do so. It is doubtful if any other public man ever had so valuable and unselfish a friend.

  So, in 1915, after falling under Coolidge’s sway, Stearns set about organizing the Amherst alumni for his candidate, and a series of fundraising events followed. Coolidge must have been aware of just how important such funds and connections could be for his political future. In a letter to his father after one of these affairs, he wrote, “I think you would have been proud of the character of the men who came to honor me.”

  Although Stearns was a conservative Republican, he refused to talk about the specific details of his ideology. Clause Fuess, one of the most astute Coolidge biographers, suggested that Coolidge’s public utterances became more conservative after he met Stearns. The man who earlier had shown compassion for workers, the unemployed, child and women labor, now told reporters, “If a man is out of a job it’s his own fault”; “The state is not warranted in furnishing employment for anybody so that that person may have work”; and “Anybody who is not capable of supporting himself is not fit for self-government.” But his progressive statements continued as well. Overall, Coolidge was consistent throughout this period—there was no dramatic change in philosophy. In a letter to a friend, he said, “I think I have a reputation of being conservative, which I am, because I do not make so loud a noise as some others. [But] I think I have been in sympathy with practically all legislation intended to improve living conditions.”