Coolidge (97 page)

A FATHER’S WISDOM.
From his father, John Calvin Coolidge, Sr., the president learned what he called the “fundamental idea of both private and public business.” Over the course of his life John Coolidge served as merchant, town tax collector, general store operator, notary, selectman, sheriff, and member of both the Vermont House of Representatives and the State Senate. Wrote Coolidge: “If there was any physical requirement of country life which he could not perform, I do not know what it was.”

THE OUDEN.
At Amherst College in Massachusetts, an institution founded for impoverished Protestant clergy, the Vermonter initially attracted little notice and failed, at first, to be admitted to one of the numerous fraternities. Senior year, however, his debate skills drew the attention of more popular students such as Dwight Morrow. Amherst alumni, including his future employers, began to notice Coolidge as well.

A SIMPLE RENTAL.
The Coolidges’ home at 21 Massasoit Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. Home ownership was the rage when the Coolidges married in 1905. Yet the Coolidges rented their home, half of a two-family house. Their linens were purchased secondhand from the Norwood Hotel.

LOOMING FIGURES.
Senator Murray Crane, from Coolidge’s own Western Massachusetts, helped Coolidge from his early days in Northampton politics. The reticent Crane became Coolidge’s mentor. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Boston and Nahant, Massachusetts, treated Coolidge as a parvenu, even when Coolidge presided over the U.S. Senate as vice president.

A STRIKE TO END ALL STRIKES.
In 1919, when Coolidge was serving as Massachusetts governor, the Boston Police affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and went on strike. Many expected the new governor to negotiate with the strikers. Their pay was low and their station houses infested with vermin.

THE ALLY.
Coolidge stood by Edwin Curtis, the Boston Police commissioner, and supported his decision to discharge the striking policemen.

“THERE IS NO RIGHT TO STRIKE AGAINST THE PUBLIC SAFETY BY ANYBODY, ANYWHERE, ANY TIME.”
Coolidge at his desk during the 1919 Boston Police strike. In standing up against the strikers, Coolidge upstaged President Woodrow Wilson, who was waffling on labor unrest. Coolidge’s steely resolve during the strike calmed a nervous nation. “No doubt, it was the police strike of Boston that brought me into national prominence,” Coolidge later wrote.

AN EDUCATED FIRST LADY
. Coolidge and his wife, Grace, casting their ballots in the 1920 presidential election shortly after the passage of the nineteenth amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Grace, who trained to teach the deaf at the Clarke School after college, was the first first lady to have graduated from a coed university.

AN ELECTION TO END UNCERTAINTY.
In a time of enormous budget deficits and high taxes, Warren Harding and Coolidge campaigned on the theme of “normalcy.” After Harding’s 1920 election, Congress passed a landmark budget law and tax cuts. When Harding died, Coolidge vowed to carry out Harding’s policies “to perfection.”

A NOTARY’S INAUGURATION.
Upon hearing that Harding had died suddenly on a summer trip out west, Coolidge was sworn into office in the early hours of August 3, 1923. Coolidge’s father, a notary public, administered the oath of office. The plainness of the village inaugural reinforced the Coolidge message: American democracy starts at the local level.
Above
is one of the many re-creations of the swearing in.

“I AM FOR ECONOMY. AFTER THAT I AM FOR MORE ECONOMY.”
From his first days in office, Coolidge met regularly with General Herbert Lord, the director of the Bureau of the Budget. In sustained sessions, they trimmed and cut the expenditures of the federal government. This was Coolidge’s way of telling the country he would not relent until the war debts were reduced.