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John Calvin Coolidge was the thirtieth president of the United States.
Background
Calvin Coolidge (he dropped the John after college) was born July 14, 1872, at Plymouth Notch, United States, a tiny, isolated village in southern Vermont; he was descended from colonial New England stock. He was the elder of the two children of John Calvin Coolidge Sr. (1845–1926) and Victoria Josephine Moor (1846–85). His father was a thrifty, hard-working, self-reliant storekeeper and farmer, active in local politics. Calvin was a shy and frail boy, sober, frugal, industrious, and taciturn. But he acquired from his mother, whom he remembered as having "a touch of mysticism and poetry, " a yearning for something better than Plymouth Notch.
Education
Coolidge entered Amherst College in 1891 and graduated cum laude. While there he became an effective debater, and his professors imbued him with the ideal of public service.
Career
Unable to afford law school, he read law and clerked in a law office in Northampton, Massachussets In 1897 he was admitted to the bar and the following year opened an office in Northampton. He built a modestly successful local practice.
Coolidge became active in local Republican politics, serving as a member of the city council, city solicitor, clerk of the Hampshire County courts, and chairman of the Republican city committee. He spent two terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and two terms as mayor of Northampton.
In 1911 he was elected to the state senate and 2 years later - thanks to luck, hard work, and cautious but skillful political maneuvering - he became president of the state senate. This was a traditional stepping-stone to the lieutenant governorship; he was elected to this post in 1915 and reelected in 1916 and 1917. Meanwhile, he gained a reputation as a loyal party man and follower of the powerful U. S. senator W. Murray Crane. And Coolidge won the friendship of Boston department store owner Frank W. Stearns, who became his enthusiastic political booster.
At the Republican National Convention the rank-and-file delegates rebelled against the party leaders' choice for the vice-presidential nominee and named Coolidge on the first ballot. Coolidge found the vice presidency frustrating and unrewarding. He presided over the Senate and unobtrusively sat in on Cabinet meetings at President Warren G. Harding's request but took no active role in administration decision making, gaining the nickname "Silent Cal. "
Harding's death in 1923 catapulted Coolidge into the White House. The new president's major problem was the exposure of the corruption that had gone on under his predecessor. But his own reputation for honesty and integrity, his early appointment of special counsel to investigate the Teapot Dome oil-lease scandal and prosecute wrongdoers, and his removal of Attorney General Harry Daugherty when Daugherty refused to open Justice Department files to Senate investigators, effectively defused the corruption issue. Simultaneously, he smoothed the path for his nomination in 1924 through skillful manipulation of patronage. The Republican themes in the 1924 election were prosperity, governmental economy, and "Keep Cool with Coolidge. " He won decisively.
Coolidge was handicapped by the split in Republican congressional ranks between the insurgents and regulars; furthermore, he was not a strong leader and remained temperamentally averse to making moves that might lead to trouble. He was also handcuffed by his conviction that the executive's duty was simply to administer the laws Congress passed.
Coolidge's domestic program was in line with his philosophy. He strongly backed Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon's proposals for tax cuts to stimulate investment, and the Revenue Act of 1926 cut the maximum surtax from 40 to 20 percent, abolished the gift tax, and halved the estate tax. He vetoed the World War I veterans' bonus bill (1924), but Congress overrode his veto. He packed the regulatory commissions with appointees sympathetic to business. He twice vetoed the McNary-Haugen bills for the subsidized dumping of agricultural surpluses abroad in hopes of bolstering domestic prices. Coolidge unsuccessfully urged the sale or lease of Muscle Shoals to private enterprise and in 1928 pocket-vetoed a bill providing for government operation. He succeeded in limiting expenditures for flood control and Federal development of water resources. He resisted any reductions in the protective tariff. And he not only failed to restrain, but encouraged, the stock market speculation that was to have such disastrous consequences in 1929.
Coolidge left foreign affairs largely in the hands of his secretaries of state, Charles Evans Hughes and then Frank B. Kellogg. But he rejected American membership in the League of Nations as then constituted and, whatever his personal feelings, regarded the League as a dead issue. He felt bound by Harding's prior commitment to support American membership on the World Court, but he never fought for its approval and dropped the issue when other members balked at accepting the reservations added by the Senate anti-internationalists. Although Coolidge did exert his influence to secure ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) outlawing war, his hand was forced by public opinion and he had no illusions about its significance. He supported Hughes's efforts to resolve the reparations tangle; but he was adamant against cancellation of the World War I Allied debts, reportedly saying, "They hired the money, didn't they?" His major effort in behalf of disarmament, the Geneva Conference of 1927, was a failure.
Yet Coolidge was popular and could have been reelected in 1928. But on Aug. 2, 1927, he publicly announced, "I do not choose to run for president in 1928. " The death of his son Calvin in 1924 had dimmed his interest in politics; both he and his wife felt the physical strain of the presidency, and he had doubts about the continued soundness of the economy. He left the White House to retire to Northampton, where he died on Jan. 5, 1933, of a coronary thrombosis.
Achievements
He has become symbolic of the smug and self-satisfied conservatism that helped bring on the Great Depression. Coolidge was not a leader of foresight and vision. But whatever his shortcomings as seen in retrospect, he fitted the popular yearning of his day for stability and normalcy. Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration and left office with considerable popularity. Coolidge signed the act granting citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States. 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. Coolidge signed the Radio Act of 1927, which assigned regulation of radio to the newly created Federal Radio Commission.
He supported woman's suffrage, popular election of U. S. senators, establishment of a public service commission, legislation to prohibit the practice of undercutting competition by charging less than cost, protection of child and woman workers, maternity aid legislation, and the state's savings-bank insurance system.
Elected governor in 1918, Coolidge pushed through a far-reaching reorganization of the state government, supported adoption of legislation against profiteering, and won a reputation for fairness as a mediator in labor disputes. But what brought him national fame was the Boston police strike of 1919. He avoided involvement in the dispute on the ground that he had no legal authority to interfere. Even when the police went out on strike, Coolidge failed to act until after Boston's mayor had brought the situation under control.
Most important, he was limited by his devotion to governmental economy, his belief in allowing the widest possible scope for private enterprise, his faith in business self-regulation, his narrow definition of the powers of the national government under the Constitution, and his acceptance of the "trickle-down" theory of prosperity through the encouragement of big business.
Views
Coolidge had a vague, idealistic desire to promote international stability and peace.
Quotations:
"We must humanize the industry, or the system will break down. "
Personality
He was a man who said very little, although having a rather dry sense of humor. Coolidge was no narrow-minded standpatter. His credo was the promotion of stability and harmony through the balancing of all legitimate interests.
Quotes from others about the person
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".
Connections
In 1905 he married Grace Goodhue, a charming and vivacious teacher. They had two sons: John, born 1906, and Calvin, born 1908. Calvin's death at age 16 from blood poisoning brought on by an infected blister "hurt him terribly, " according to son John. John became a railroad executive, helped to start the Coolidge Foundation, and was instrumental in creating the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site.
