Coolidge

by Robert Sobel

  CHAPTER 9

  In addition to the aforementioned basic Coolidge biographies, see Duff Gilfond’s fanciful The Rise of Saint Calvin. Harding’s reaction to the ship collision is in Russell, Shadow of Blooming Grove, p. 588. The incidents regarding the Coolidge swearing in can be found in Vrest Orton, Calvin Coolidge’s Unique Vermont Inauguration (Rutland, VT: Academy, 1970). Bruce Barton’s discussion of Coolidge in the White House is in Grace Coolidge, “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” March, 1935, p. 221. Gilbert Fite, George N. Peek and the Fight for Farm Policy (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1954), Chapter 1, contains a good analysis of the farm problem. Tax policies during the 1920s are covered in W. Elliot Brownlee, Federal Taxation in America: A Short History (New York: Cambridge, 1996). For the Coolidge press conferences and other valuable material, see Sheldon Stern, “The Struggle to Teach the Whole Story: Calvin Coolidge and American History Education,” in The New England Journal of History, Fall 1996, p. 38–52. Coolidge’s first thought on learning of Harding’s death is in Pepper, Philadelphia Lawyer, p. 195. Press reaction to Coolidge’s accession to the presidency are in Bruce Barton, “Calvin Coolidge As Seen Through the Eyes of His Friends,” American Review of Reviews, September 1923, p. 273–78; “The New President Calvin Coolidge,” Outlook, August 15, 1923, p. 580–81; Sullivan, “Coolidge and Congress,” p. 202–3. A profile on C. Bascom Slemp is in Clinton Gilbert, “You Takes Your Choice” (New York: Putnam, 1924). Coolidge’s speech writing is in Everett Sanders, “Calvin Coolidge: A Profile,” Saturday Evening Post, December 6, 1930, p. 5. Fuess on Coolidge’s speeches is in Arthur Fleser, A Rhetorical Study of the Speaking of Calvin Coolidge (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990), p. 29. John Coolidge’s observations are in Lathem, Your Son, Calvin Coolidge, Introduction. Coolidge’s outreach to La Follette is in Murray, The Harding Era, p. 502. His relations with the congressional Republicans is from McCoy, p. 197. Coolidge’s statement to Christian regarding the coal strike is in Pepper, Philadelphia Lawyer, p. 196. The story about Walsh and the river is in Sullivan, Our Times, p. 282–83. The Daugherty dismissal is in Giglio, H.M. Daugherty, Chapter 13. The story of the Montana road is in Burton K. Wheeler, Yankee from the West (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), p. 205. The New Republic’s remarks on McAdoo are in the March 5, 1924, issue.

  CHAPTER 10

  McCoy, Fuess, and White are the basic sources for this chapter, with White a trifle better than the others. The standard biography of Dwight Morrow is by Harold Nicolson, Dwight Morrow. The tax statistics are from the 1929 World Telegram Almanac and Book of Facts (New York: World Telegram, 1929), p. 199. Thomas Silver, Coolidge and the Historians (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1982), Chapter 4, is a remarkable dissection of the tax issue during the 1920s and a good corrective for the conventional wisdom on the subject. See also Andrew Mellon, Taxation: The People’s Business (New York: Macmillan, 1924). The Lowden candidacy in 1924 is in Hutchinson, Lowden, Chapter 22. For the 1924 conventions, see Robert K. Murray, The 103rd Ballot (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); Kenneth McKay, The Progressive Movement of 1924 (New York: Octagon, 1972); and Bascom Timmons, Portrait of An American: Charles G. Dawes (New York: Henry Holt, 1953), Chapters 13–17. The Klan issue is best covered in John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1955). A good general work on the events that year is William Allen White, Politics: The Citizen’s Business (New York: Macmillan, 1924). For the death of Calvin Coolidge, Jr., see Gilbert, The Mortal Presidency, Chapter 2, which also has material on Coolidge’s subsequent health problems. The Brown statement is in Grace Coolidge, ed., “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” Good Housekeeping, May, 1935, p. 248. Coolidge on the radio is in Fleser, A Rhetorical Study… of Calvin Coolidge, p. 63. His ranking in the poll is from the New York Times of September 4, 1927. The Davis campaign is covered in William Harbaugh, Lawyer’s Lawyer: The Life of John W. Davis (New York: Oxford, 1973), Chapter 15. The Starling story is in Edmund Starling, Starling of the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946), p. 224.

  CHAPTER 11

  The basic sources again are Fuess, White, and McCoy. Lippmann on Coolidge frustrating politicians is in Lippmann, Men of Destiny, p. 15. The Coolidge speech to the editors is in Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic, p. 183–90. Silver’s Coolidge and the Historians is a scathing attack on historians who denigrate Coolidge, especially Schlesinger, Jr., and contains a presentation and analysis of such matters. The Lane letters are in Anne Lane and Louise Wall, The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), p. 448–54, 464–65. Coolidge’s views on education and business are in Calvin Coolidge, The Price of Freedom , p. 9. For Mellon’s analysis of the impact of the Coolidge tax plan, see Mellon, Taxation, p. 56 ff. The 1927 tax data can be found in the New York Times, January 2, 1928. Coolidge’s speech on the economy is in Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic, p. 39–47. The “Toleration and Liberalism” speech is there as well, on p. 287–304. His speech on the need for government, and the desirability of a separation of government and business, “Government and Business,” is to be found on p. 317–32. For Coolidge and the negroes and the Sargent statement, see Grace Coolidge, “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” June, 1935, p. 202–3, and “Coolidge and Colored Candidates,” Literary Digest, August 30, 1924, p. 13. The best study of the Mississippi River flood is John Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997). Fuess covers the Warren nomination well, but see also Timmons, Portrait of an American, p. 246–7, and Harry Barnard, Independent Man: The Life of Senator James Couzens (New York: Scribner, 1958), p. 175–77. For Lane’s views on Warren, see Lane and Wall, Letters of Franklin K. Lane, p. 367. The Lippmann analysis is in Walter Lippmann, Men of Destiny, p. 15. The president’s views on spending are in Quint and Ferrell, The Talkative President, p. 111–12. Coolidge’s radio experiences are in Robert Sobel, The Manipulators: America in the Media Age (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p. 151. The selections from the Coolidge press conferences are to be found in Quint and Ferrell, The Talkative President, p. 28. The Coolidge quotations regarding the press can be found in Editor and Publisher, August 11, 1923, and the Coolidge Autobiography, p. 183–84. The Hoover quotation is in Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920–1933 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 55–56.

  CHAPTER 12

  Of the general biographies, McCoy covers foreign affairs better than do Fuess and White. The Root remarks are from Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root (New York: Dodd Mead, 1938), II, 433. Herbert Feiss, The Diplomacy of the Dollar: First Era, 1919–1932 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1950) is most useful. For Coolidge’s reading habits, see “Books the President Reads,” Outlook, September 1, 1923, p. 33. Fears of running out of oil are discussed in Hoover, The Cabinet and the Presidency, p. 69–70. Mexican history in this period is well covered in Robert Quirk, The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1910–1929 (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1973); Ramon Ruiz, The Great Rebellion: Mexico, 1905–1924 (New York: Norton, 1980); and James Wilkie, Revolution in Mexico: Years of Upheaval, 1910–1940 (New York: Knopf, 1969). For Coolidge’s attitudes toward Mexico, see C. Bascom Slemp, The Mind of the President as Revealed by Himself in His Own Words, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Doran, 1926), p. 46, 47. Coolidge’s views toward Mexico are also in White, p. 282. Borah and Mexico are in Claudius Johnson, Borah of Idaho (New York: Longmans, Green, 1936), p. 338. The Stoddard statement is in Grace Coolidge, “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” June 1935, p. 250. The best source for Morrow’s ambassadorship is Nicolson, Dwight Morrow. The Kellogg statement regarding Bolshevism in Mexico is on p. 307. For China policy, see Wesley Fishel, The End of Extraterritoriality in China (Berkeley: University of California, 1952). The Wilbur speech is in Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930), Vol. 2, p. 705. American banks and Germany business are covered in Robert Sobel, The Life and Times of Dil
lon Read (New York: Dutton, 1991), Chapter 6. Kellogg’s foreign policy actions and attitudes are from David Bryn-Jones, Frank B. Kellogg: A Biography (New York: Putnam, 1937). The Kellogg statement regarding China is in McCoy, p. 341. For U.S. business’s foreign investments, see Cleona Lewis, America’s Stake in International Investments (Washington: Brookings, 1938), and the statistics on American petroleum investments are on p. 588. Material on criticisms of government–bank–corporation relations is found in Joseph Brandes, Herbert Hoover and Economic Diplomacy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1962), especially Chapter 10. Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1974), offers an excellent account of American business’s overseas activities in the 1920s. For further information on American investment overseas, see Robert Sobel, ITT: The Management of Opportunity (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1982), and the same author’s RCA (New York: Stein & Day, 1986).

  CHAPTER 13

  Fuess and McCoy are the background sources for Coolidge’s last year in office. White has fanciful interpretations marred by second guessing, but it is generally good. The Lippmann quotes are from Lippmann, Men of Destiny, p. 18–34, 24–25. The Ripley story is in Fuess, McCoy, and White. See also William Z. Ripley, From Main Street to Wall Street (Boston: Little Brown, 1927). The recitation of the Coolidge decision not to run is best handled by Fuess, and unless otherwise indicated, so are the quotations. The Clark recollections are in Grace Coolidge, “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” April 1935, p. 198–99. Coolidge’s letters dealing with securities are from Laphem, Your Son, Calvin Coolidge, p. 86–108. The Hoover material is in Hoover, The Cabinet and the Presidency, p. 190–93. Quint and Ferrell, The Talkative President, p. 135–38, is the source for Coolidge’s statements on Fed actions and brokers’ loans in early 1928. For the market itself, see George Soule, Prosperity Decade (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1947); Robert Sobel, The Great Bull Market (New York: Norton, 1968); and Alexander Dana Noyes, The Market Place (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938). The allegations against Coolidge and Mellon come from Anonymous, The Mirrors of 1932 (New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1931), p. 66–67. The Cole story is in White, p. 406–7.

  CHAPTER 14

  The account of Coolidge’s last days in office is derived from Fuess and McCoy. Fuess is particularly valuable for Coolidge’s retirement and last days. The New York Times was used for the securities markets and the economic news of the period. The business scene was well covered in the old but still useful George Soule, Prosperity Decade. See also Alexander Dana Noyes’s memoir, The Market Place, for the views of the New York Times financial editor on the late 1920s. The Shotwell analysis is in the 1929 World Telegram Almanac and Book of Facts, p. 129. The Cook quotation is from Torchlight Parade: Our Presidential Pageant (New York: Minton Balch, 1929), p. 247–48. Edward Lathem, Calvin Coolidge Says (Plymouth, VT: Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, 1972) is good for Coolidge’s last years, and in addition is a collection of his newspaper columns. James C. Clark, Faded Glory: Presidents Out of Power (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1985) supplements Lathem. Ralph Waldo’s comments are in Grace Coolidge’s article, “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” in Good Housekeeping, February, 1935, p. 21, 181. The Sanders article is in the Saturday Evening Post, March 25, 1933. Andrews’s meeting with Coolidge is in Grace Coolidge, “The Real Calvin Coolidge, Good Housekeeping, June, 1935, p. 209. The Mencken quotes are from A Carnival of Buncombe, p. 61–64. The Day selection was widely reprinted, but is most accessible in Lathem, Meet Calvin Coolidge.

  Selected Bibliography

  1929 World Telegram Almanac and Book of Facts. New York: World Telegram, 1929.

  Abels, Jules. In the Time of Silent Cal. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1969.

  Abrams, Richard M. Conservatism in a Progressive Era: Massachusetts Politics 1900–1912. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1964.

  Adams, Samuel Hopkins. Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939.

  Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday. New York: Harper, 1931.

  Anonymous. Boudoir Mirrors of Washington. Philadelphia: Winston, 1923.

  Anonymous. The Mirrors of Washington. New York: Putnam, 1921

  Anonymous. The Mirrors of 1932. New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1931.

  Anonymous. Studies in Philosophy and Psychology, by Former Students of Charles Edward Garman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906.

  Bagby, Wesley M. The Road to Normalcy.

  Bailey, Thomas A. Presidential Greatness: The Image and the Man from George Washington to the Present. New York: Appleton-Century, 1966.

  ———. Presidential Saints and Sinners. New York: Free Press, 1981.

  ———. The Pugnacious Presidents: White House Warriors on Parade. New York: Free Press, 1980.

  Barnard, Harry. Independent Man: The Life of Senator James Couzens. New York: Scribner, 1958.

  Barrett, Laurence I. Gambling With History. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983.

  Barry, John. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

  Beard, Charles and Mary. The Rise of American Civilization. London: Jonathan Cape, 1930.

  Blaisdel, Donald. Government and Agriculture. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1940.

  Blumenthal, Sidney. Our Long National Daydream. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

  Booraem, Hendrik, V. The Provincial: Calvin Coolidge and His World, 1885–1895. Lewisberg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1994.

  Booth, Edward T. Country Life in America as Lived by Ten Presidents of the United States. New York: Knopf, 1947.

  Bowden, Robert. Boies Penrose: Symbol of an Era. New York: Greenberg, 1937.

  Boylan, James, ed. The World and the ’20s. New York: Dial, 1973.

  Bradford, Gamaliel. The Quick and the Dead. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.

  Brandes, Joseph. Herbert Hoover and Economic Diplomacy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1962.

  Brownlee, W. Elliot. Federal Taxation in America: A Short History. New York: Cambridge, 1996.

  Bryn-Jones, David. Frank B. Kellogg: A Biography. New York: Putnam, 1937.

  Burner, David. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life. New York: Knopf, 1979.

  Butler, Nicholas Murray. Across the Busy Years. New York: Scribner, 1939.

  Cannon, Lou. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

  Carpenter, Ernest C. The Boyhood Days of President Calvin Coolidge. Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1925.

  Clark, James C. Faded Glory: Presidents Out of Power. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1985.

  Colman, Edna M. White House Gossip: From Andrew Johnson to Calvin Coolidge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1927.

  Combs, James. The Reagan Range: The Nostalgic Myth in American Politics. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993.

  Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Messages to the General Court, Official Addresses, Proclamations, and State Papers of His Excellency, Governor Calvin Coolidge for the Years 1919 and 1920. Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1920.

  Cook, Sherwin L. Torchlight Parade: Our Presidential Pageant. New York: Minton Balch, 1929.

  Coolidge, Calvin. Foundations of the Republic. New York: Scribner, 1926.

  ———. The Price of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses. New York: Scribner, 1924.

  ———. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge. New York: Cosmopolitan, 1931.

  ———. Have Faith in Massachusetts. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1919.

  Coolidge, Grace. An Autobiography. Worland, WY: High Plains, 1992.

  Curtis, Jane and Will and Frank Lieberman. Return to These Hills: The Vermont Years of Calvin Coolidge. Woodstock, VT: Curtis-Lieberman, 1985.

  Daba, John Cotten. Plymouth: Story of the Old Home of President Coolidge. Woodstock, VT: Elm Tree, 1925.

  Daugherty, Harry, with Thomas Dixon. The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy. New York: Churchill, 193
2.

  Davenport, Walter. Power and Glory: The Life of Boies Penrose. New York: Putnam, 1931.

  Dawes, Charles. Notes as Vice President, 1928–1929. Boston: Little Brown, 1935.

  Dennis, Alfred. Gods and Little Fishes. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931.

  Derbyshire, John. Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996.

  Dubofsky, Melvyn and Van Tine, Warren. John L. Lewis: A Biography. New York: Quadrangle, 1971.

  Dugger, Ronnie. On Reagan: The Man & His Presidency. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983.