Coolidge (73 page)

Yet now came two changes that did cheer the Coolidges. The first was their own concession to reality: the crowds would never go away. Massasoit Street, dear as it was, no longer suited them. In its place the Coolidges bought a house not far away on Hampton Terrace: the Beeches, a comfortable structure with several acres of grounds and a gate. The acreage at the Beeches provided enough room “for the doggies to run,” as Coolidge told the press. There was also a brook. The Coolidges had discovered that while freedom was not possible, one could create the illusion of freedom on a private property, if it was large enough. Even their move, of course, earned disconcerting amounts of press; Elsa Comey, the prior owner, found that fifty cars an hour tried to enter her driveway once word of the famous purchase got out. The price was $45,000, a high amount for Northampton and a thousand times their monthly rent on Massasoit Street. Coolidge paid cash.

The second cause for cheer was a writing opportunity that made it possible to move beyond Borglum. McClure, a large syndicate, admired the brief autobiography he had published just after the presidency—indeed many admired the slim book. Now the syndicate invited Coolidge to publish a short daily column, 150 to 200 words. The pay was alluring, $3,000 a week, which alone raised his salary well above the $75,000 a year he had earned in the White House. And Coolidge might earn even more, 60 percent of any revenues from syndicating papers, of which there were hundreds across the nation. But the rules in the contract about the column were stiff: “It should be filed not later than three o’clock Eastern Standard Time. An hour earlier would be advantageous while Daylight Saving Time is in effect.”

Coolidge had decided to ignore Barton and compete with Rogers. Indeed, he was eager to do so. His health was not improving, but he readied a secretary and took up the project at the end of June. He wrote out his first draft on trade, the area in which he had been most attacked, in pencil, and edited it in pencil, trying out sentences. “Largely because trade has declined we have set about finding fault with nearly everything,” he wrote. Then he changed that: “Largely because of some decline in trade, we have set about finding fault with nearly everybody and everything.” In such a column, he would be forced to reaffirm his positions, wrong or right, and take new ones. He would have to decide if and when to criticize the White House or others. But that was also the fun. In these columns he spoke to his Northampton church acquaintances, or Amherst alumni, or the townsmen of Rapid City, not to the salons of Massachusetts Avenue: “My countrymen, it is time to stop criticizing and quarreling and begin sympathizing and helping.” The columns spoke so simply that some newspapers laughed at them. One magazine, the
Outlook and Independent
, made up a mocking ad:

Americans!

Start the Day Right!

Take Dr. Coolidge’s Simple Faith Tablets

And Smile at Hard Times

But from the start Coolidge the columnist also addressed policy and how it might improve the increasingly alarming conditions of the country. The downturn was remarkable; jobs were scarce, but prices were also low. In his July 9 column, Coolidge turned to history—today Americans were distressed about price declines, but drops in prices were not always a bad thing. There had been price declines in the recessions of 1812 and between the 1870s and 1890s, yet “population and wealth increased greatly.” That was Coolidge’s suggestion that low prices might not be fatal. As Barton might have predicted, he found himself caught between the impulse to describe what he saw and to serve the nation or the party. On July 12, he sought to identify what had impeded recovery after the autumn crash. The answer, he concluded, was the uncertainty he had feared while still president. Now he made his opinion explicit: “Business can stand anything better than uncertainty.” But Coolidge also suggested that uncertainty might now be passing. The new tariff was not perfect, but it was better to have it done than looming ahead. Oversubscription to a German loan had reduced uncertainty throughout Europe, and the recess of Congress, in Coolidge’s view, reduced the possibility of counterproductive action over the summer. The country seemed to do better when Congress was on holiday; that had been the problem with Harding’s perpetual extra sessions.

In those first weeks Coolidge allowed himself to complain that Congress was spending far more than he had predicted; Hoover was not stopping the flow of cash. The new annual budgets were going to be closer to $4 billion than the now-impossible target of $3 billion. On July 4, his birthday, Coolidge’s column warned quietly, “The expenditure of money has been too large.” He blamed senators, “whose work had been too much impaired by a petty spirit of factionalism and obstruction.” He tried to encourage Washington to place parts of the government in the private sector when it could. “The post office ought to be self-supporting,” he wrote on August 4, 1930.

What had been missing in his life since the presidency had been the old rhythm of meetings with Lord. Now Coolidge found a new rhythm with his column secretary, Herman Beaty. Coolidge arrived at the office at eight in the morning, ready to sort the mail and talk over topics of the day. Beaty, eager to beat his boss, tried to arrive a little earlier, only to find that Coolidge was onto him, and arrived earlier still. When they got closer to seven than eight, Coolidge called a draw and told Beaty, “Been here first twenty-odd years and I guess I’ll have to keep on. You needn’t come until 9.”

The morning might begin when Coolidge reclined back in his chair, rested a foot on the half-open drawer of his desk, and prepared the cigar for insertion in the famous Coolidge paper cigar holder. Next, a conversation might ensue. Coolidge let Beaty choose the topic. Some days it was Nicaragua: Amherst might send experts to lecture him on Nicaragua; Coolidge told Beaty he had let them know he trusted the State Department more. There was a vacant New Jersey seat in the U.S. Senate that Morrow decided to run for; Coolidge, penned a praiseful introduction for a short biography of his friend. But Coolidge also worried aloud to Beaty about Morrow; the friend who had made his way in the wilds of Mexico might not make it in the snake pit that was the U.S. Senate. After the discussion, Coolidge sat down with his pencil and composed his short items, warning Beaty that his columns had to be short. If he spilled extra words, Coolidge said, that “might put them out,” them being the editors at the syndicating papers.

Beaty was as keen an observer of men as Starling. He too noticed the paradox of Coolidge. At times the man seemed selfish. There were reports from Vermont that someone was taking wood from the limekiln lot, and to Beaty’s astonishment, Coolidge flew into a rage, at once writing to his attorney, who happened to be Sargent, the former attorney general. Yet Coolidge was also capable of great magnanimity. Beaty one day discovered Coolidge wrapping up a hundred gold coins in a Christmas package, a gift for James Lucey. Coolidge’s partner, Ralph Hemenway, also saw that generous streak. In Northampton one of the many local banks in which Coolidge had money, the Hampshire County Trust, closed after finding itself short $285,000. Hemenway was more deeply involved in the bank. As Hemenway contemplated the possibilities of ruin, a slip of paper was placed on his blotter. Hemenway looked at the document: it was a check from Coolidge for $5,000. He looked up to see Coolidge moving away and heard his colleague say quietly, “And as much more as you want.”

Beaty and others could see considerable achievement when they looked at Coolidge’s legal record. While president, Coolidge had appointed not only Harlan Stone to the Supreme Court but seventy-eight other federal judges. Days after Coolidge left office, the Supreme Court upheld the pocket veto, the president’s ability to kill a bill during the congressional recess. That key power, now ensured, would enable a president to veto not only Indian land claims or the nationalization of Muscle Shoals but also other congressional spending programs. Hoover might not activate the Budget Bureau, but the Budget Law of 1921 remained on the books, a tool for other presidents; the pocket veto was another valuable device. Though Coolidge was no Murray Crane, he did count some successors in politics. One was Morrow, who did earn a seat in the Senate. Morrow won surprising support by taking a realistic position on Prohibition that others dared not take: repeal the Eighteenth Amendment so that the states might decide whether to be dry or wet. As a senator, he sat in an inconspicuous seat and listened. “A baby senator should be seen and not heard,” he told others. One of Morrow’s first acts as a lawmaker was to change the standard line in senators’ correspondence: “I shall be glad to do all I possibly can for you.” Now that read, in Coolidge-esque style, “I shall be glad to do all I properly can.” Another Coolidge successor was Bruce Barton, who would eventually run for Congress. Garman and Morse would have been proud.

As Beaty noticed, Coolidge still tried to live by example. Gifts arrived often at the Main Street law office. Singed by the bonfire of the Harding scandals, Coolidge remained extremely careful not to accept anything inappropriate. Grace’s health was better now, and one day a diamond bracelet arrived, the sort of thing that would have glowed against her olive skin. The owner had sent it to Coolidge for safekeeping. People did things like that with Coolidge, viewing him as if he were a bank.

“Coolidge treated the bracelet as if it were a scorpion,” Beaty later recalled. The former president asked where the bracelet had come from, saw to it that the item was repacked, and shipped the package back to the sender with “ample witnesses.”

Another story, told by Richard Scandrett, Morrow’s brother-in-law, caught Coolidge demonstrating how to handle a contract. Scandrett described a meeting at the Vanderbilt involving a deal between
Collier’s
and Coolidge. The magazine had asked him to write ten articles for the high sum of $2,000 each, but the magazine had published only six. Summoned by the ex-president to meet at the hotel, the editor knew what question would come, and it did: “I made a contract with you to write ten articles at $2,000 each and I wrote them and you published six, and you haven’t published the other four.” Yes, came the editor’s reply, with the predictable response: the magazine had paid for all ten. “But if they aren’t worth publishing,” Coolidge said, “they oughtn’t to be paid for,” and he pulled out a check for $8,000. The move was deliberate, and deliberately Coolidge: somehow he had not pleased the other party. He gave the money back even though the contract did not say that he had to. The point, for him, was a simple one: it was important to show people that you cared about what they expected, so that they would want to do business with you again.

In his columns Coolidge asked readers whether the market’s troubles would enlarge the government in a fashion that would prove irreversible once prosperity returned. Until then, the main work, in his view, was to endure bravely and ensure that the government not do too much damage. On August 20, he welcomed news of increases in sales of life insurance “when sales in so many other directions have been decreasing.” Purchasing insurance, especially life insurance that paid pensions, annuities, would keep Americans independent: “It is a long step toward abolishing poverty.” Here he was explaining the logic behind the New York Life directorship. Life insurance wasn’t merely safe; it was the alternative to speculation, a protection during recessions.

But that fall of 1930, unemployment stayed high, and Coolidge’s columns took on an edge. “When people are bewildered, they tend to become credulous,” Coolidge reminded his readers on November 28. That was the danger now, he said, as was expecting too much from Washington. “A large expenditure of public money to stimulate trade is a temporary expedient which begs the question,” he added. “Many local governments are already taxing the people too much. Business does not need more burdens than less.” “One of the hardest problems the Congress has to meet is the constant pressure of outside influences,” Coolidge went on in his December 1 column. On December 3, he praised Hoover’s message to Congress for its “sanity and restraint.”

The same December, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded its prize in literature to Sinclair Lewis, the author who had published
The Man Who Knew Coolidge
. Now Coolidge came closer than he had since the days of the shabby
Delineator
articles to losing his temper in print. “Presentation of a Nobel prize to Sinclair Lewis has aroused considerable discussion,” Coolidge wrote on December 15. “Whether his books will survive as literature remains to be seen,” added Coolidge tartly. Then he defended the United States generally from Lewis, and himself in the process. “The world waits in our anteroom for our advice and assistance. The name Mr. Lewis gives us is unimportant. The record of our deeds will surpass all books.”

In fact Coolidge wasn’t merely criticizing the eminent writer for political reasons. He was competing with Lewis as an author, along with Will Rogers. Coolidge had long taken pride in his speeches. When Ercole Cartotto came to visit, they spoke about Cartotto’s art. Then Coolidge gestured to the books on his wall, so lovingly assembled by Frank Stearns, and said, “Those are
my
works of art.” But now Coolidge was enjoying this new career as a journalist, codifying the Coolidge philosophy, inditing after all. The great fact about the columns, whether they were homilies or critiques, was their popularity. The sixty papers that initially subscribed were joined later by others, even though the rates for Coolidge copy were higher than those to which they were accustomed. In 1930, Coolidge had liquidated his Standard Brands stock. On January 2, 1931, his account at J. P. Morgan had a cash balance of $137,099.38. In addition, his records show that his daily articles brought in much more money on top of the $3,000 that McClure paid. From the
Tokyo Japanese Advertiser
to the
Richmond Palladium
of Indiana to the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
and the
New York Herald Tribune
, papers bought his column; the author’s share of the syndicating revenues as of September 27, 1930, totaled $49,725.61. Coolidge’s autobiography, written in a rush just as he left the presidency, was doing fine in print. Not every reader appreciated its spare language, but the short book would stand up well to the self-centered narratives other statesmen produced, especially those who relied on dictation and, in their vanity, failed to revise. In the autobiography, readers who for many months had been guessing finally learned what Coolidge had meant when he said, “I do not choose”: