USA in the Time of John Calvin Coolidge
1923-1929
by Mike Donovan
‘Go See Cal’ Vermont Gave America 2 Presidents
The Serendipity President - Silent Cal - “Coolidge Prosperity” - VP none first term - Charles G. Dawes 1925-1929 - Coolidge liked to take a nice long nap every afternoon at the White House – “Keep Cool With Coolidge” – Could ride a horse standing up - Sworn in as President in the house he grew up in – The Roaring Twenties
There is a legendary story that Calvin Coolidge was at a formal event and a young woman said to him, “I just bet someone 50 dollars that I can get you to say three words to me.” Without even looking at her he said, “You lose,” and walked away.
“The chief business of this country is business.”
Contemporary journalists and historians put him down just because he was a curt and surly interview and worse, a Republican. I don't see anything wrong with either of these two things.
In the election of 1924 Coolidge beat Democrat Wall St. Lawyer John W. Davis. The final in that one was 382-186.
The incumbent Coolidge refused to come out and fight. He just let the booming economy, the commonly-called “Coolidge Prosperity” do the talking for him. Its hard to defeat an incumbent in tough times. In good times, forget it.
“I Have Never Been Hurt by What I Have Not Said.”
On the Progressive ticket, Fighting Bob Lafollette gave one of the best third party showings of all time with 13 electoral and 4 million popular votes. The Communists under William Z. Foster had renamed themselves the Workers Party and got most of the votes in Greenwich Village.
Popular vote 1924-------------------------Coolidge R) 15,725,000
Davis D) 8,386,000
La Follette P) 4,822,000
Foster C) 33,000
Icy cold. His re-election slogan was "Keep cool with Coolidge." – More like “Arctic Cold with Coolidge.”
Cal Coolidge is another of our "bad" presidents. Every time we don't have a war and the economy grows it seems to be under a "bad" president; The Golub thesis in action.
Historians talk of the crash of 1929 as though it completely invalidates all of the boom years before the crash. They were good times for a lot of people a decade of fun and prosperity. The quality of our life doubled. Our cars, planes, movies, radios, washing machines, and a hundred other items lunged foreword in quality.
Coolidges' cabinet;
Secretary of State--------Charles Evans Hughes-1923-1925
Frank B. Kellogg-----------1925-1929
Frank B. Kellogg of the Kellogg-Briand Pact which made war illegal forever.
Sec. of War-----------John W. Weeks-----------1923-1925
Dwight F. Davis------------1925-1929
$$$$$$$$$$$-------Andrew W. Mellon--------1923-1929
Att. General--------H. M. Daugherty-----------1923-1924
Harlan F. Stone------------1924-1925
John W. Sargent-----------1925-1929
Coolidge is described as as a forgettable mediocrity by millions of forgettable mediocrities. One historian writes that he “did not make a great president and there are many reasons for saying he did not make a good one.” Probably wrong. But either way Calvin certainly did not make a happy one. He is one of the few presidents facing a strong re-election prospect with his party’s support who chose not to run again.
The serendipity president. Gets the VP spot without seeking or expecting it; Inherits the White House without seeking it; Gets re-nominated by acclaim and wins re-election; Then chooses not to run when he could have won and escapes being the super-goat for the Great Depression.
Coolidge was quiet, but not humorless. He just wasn’t loud. When he was introduced to Red Grange of the Chicago Bears he said he was happy to meet him because, “I’ve always been fond of animal acts.”
BIO:
John Calvin Coolidge could hardly have lived up much better to his namesake, the stern John Calvin of history. He was vermont Yankee to the core. As President he was criticized for his silence, but they might have been more tolerant if they understood Vermont Yankees in general.
John was born on the Fourth of July 1872 in Plymouth Notch Vermont, a Grant baby.
Calvin's father was a farmer, a cop, and a politician. He was stern but kind to the boy. The father wasn't much of a scholar, but was so wise and mature that people from miles around always sought his social and legal advice on important matters. He more or less drifted towards politics by the respect he continually earned in the community.
When John Calvin was two months old, his father was elected to the Vermont State Legislature at Montpelier. By coincidence, Cal's own son was two years old when daddy made Massachusetts State Legislature.
Calvin's mother died when she was only 39. The boy was but 12.
His first high schooling came when he attended Black River Academy at the age of 13. This was his first taste of life in the big city. The big city was Ludlow Vermont. By my standards, a place to stop for gas on the way to someplace important, but to young Cal, it was a big step up from Plymouth.
Cal got along well with the other boys. He was not considered taciturn when surrounded by other taciturn folk; Only in the world of big-city glad-handers later in life would his personality come under brutal criticism.
Calvin had little passion for sports although he was actually fairly good at them when he played. The boy did not find hitting a baseball to be a particularly daunting challenge. JCC wasn't beefcake, but he was tall and very well coordinated. Although Coolidge could take you deep, home runs didn't excite him and he preferred to line doubles down the lines. In fact he was so good at hitting the ball where he wanted to that he got the nickname “double-trouble” and he had a time of it explaining the nickname to his father.
John Calvin had a healthy desire to get into typical adolescent mischief. He led an escapade at BRA that was straight out of Animal House. The teachers arrived at the Academy one Monday and smelled something funny in the hallway on the second floor. Then they heard a commotion and loud braying. The students had placed a donkey in the classroom. Calvin Coolidge was the leader of the prank.
CC graduated BRA in 1890. He was accepted at Amherst College and enrolled for the fall semester. But Cal became ill and had to postpone the beginning of his education. He missed the fall classes and was too far behind to start in the middle. Then he attended preppy St Johnsbury Academy for one semester. A teacher realized the boy's superior qualifications for higher education and greased the doorway back to Amherst. With the teacher's strong recommendation, Coolidge entered Amherst mid-stream without a problem. Calvin studied Calvin, and many other religions. An Amherst teacher named Chuck Garman had a tremendous influence on young Calvin. Garman taught Coolidge that expedience was not a practical working principle, that sacrificing principle for power or progress temporarily, will backfire and inevitable do more harm than good, more wrong than right. Coolidge brought that thinking into his White House years. Cal was the king of less government is good government.
Coolidge graduated with top honors. By request, Coolidge gave a speech at graduation ceremonies in which he was invited to poke fun at a few people in his subtle witty way. He did. A few people were mad at him and he learned the lesson that, unless you are a stand-up comedian where it is part of the job, it is unwise to viciously ridicule people in public with a microphone.
Coolidge planned on going to law school, but soon got a letter in the mail from a friend with a job offer. the law office of Hammond and Field in Northampton was ready to hire him immediately. He could study law while working with experienced lawyers as their all around assistant. He wrote them quick with a clear yes. Calvin soon got another letter from a law office in Montpelier Vermont. The Honorable Billy Dillingham wanted him there too. Calvin had to write him back and say he already taken the job in Massachusetts so he had to decline. In either case Coolidge preferred on the job training to law school.
If Bill Dill had written that letter a little faster, Calvin Coolidge never wold have become the 30th President of the United States. It was by a chain of events in Massachusetts politics that he made national fame and from there made the presidency.
The first thing Calvin did when he went to work at Hammond-Field was get a haircut. The college guys were wearing their hair pretty long those days, but it was time to square up and get square. Both lawyers moved up in local politics while he was there, one becoming Mayor of Northampton. Cal got a close look at politics in practice.
Calvin passed the bar on his 25th birthday (I did not pass the bar on my 21st birthday.) The next year Cool opened his own law office on Main St. Northampton where he would maintain his practice until he became Governor.
CC was elected to the Northampton City Council (the 'Common Council”) in December of 1898. But first there was some unfinished business.
Because John C. Coolidge had the same first name as his dad he had long been called by his middle of Calvin. After graduation, he officially dropped the John. Thusly history has given us a President Calvin Coolidge instead of President John Coolidge.
The Common Council job paid nothing but it was hands on political experienced that he made the most out of.
In 1899 Prez 30 made $1,400 as a lawyer, up from only $500 in his first year.
Coolidge had his eye on a slightly higher political position, largely because it had a salary and he needed the dough. So he ran for City Solicitor and won that $600 a year job and stayed there until 1902.
In November of 1899 ex-John won a case in the State Supreme Court versus his old lawyer boss, Mr Hammond. The case wasn't important but the confidence booster was immense, like the son who finally realizes he can take his old man.
Calvin's client list expanded. He was good. From his mentors he learned to try his cases as if he were the 13th juror and to see himself as advisor to the judge. He was especially proficient at getting both parties to agree to out of court settlements.
In 1903 Coolidge was appointed Clerk of the Courts of Massachusetts. It's a boring job title but it meant a lot of Calvin's pride. This was a job he never sought. The judges of Massachusetts Supreme Court had a job to fill, and they collectively chose him. And it paid well. He could have stayed there for the rest of his life as a successful man, but the ladder had more rungs to climb. Cal later wondered if his life might not have been better if he had stayed on as Clerk of the Courts. It was just false modesty over the stresses of the Presidency. As if he really regretted leaving that job and becoming the President.
In 1905 he lost his cool and took the plunge. He married Grace Anna Goodhue on October 4. They had two children.
Calvin continued his political climb in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he served two terms before being elected mayor of Northampton in 1909 and 1910. Cool made Mass State Senator in 1911 and moved up to Lieutenant Governor on 1915.
Campaigning on the slogan that if you have a problem, “Go See Cal,” Coolidge won the Governor’s seat in Boston in 1918. Then on September 9, 1919 the Boston Police went on strike for more money and permission to use flamethrowers.
After several days of high crimes and misdemeanors all over the city, Coolidge called out the National Guard. The strike was stopped. Governor Coolidge issued a stern explanation for his actions, asserting that no one has the right to strike against the public safety. FDR later took that stand during the Second Great War. Reagan would cite the same principle when the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike in the 1980’s.
Without planning on it, Coolidge had made himself nationally famous for his handling of the Bean-town cop strike. In an era when crime was a major issue, Calvin Coolidge had unwittingly set himself up as the law and order candidate for president in 1924.
EVENTS
DEATH OF HARDING
ELECTION OF 1924
SHENANDOAH
BILLY MITCHELL COURTS MARTIAL
DAWES PLAN
YOUNG PLAN
KELLOGG BRIAND PACT
PROHIBITION CONTINUES
STEPHENSON KLAN TRIAL
HARDING’S BAGGAGE
5,000 TROOPS SENT TO NICARAGUA
NUNGESSER AND LINDBERGH 1927
RISING FASCISM OVERSEAS
THE INHERITED TERM, 1923-1915
Calvin Coolidge was at the old homestead at Plymouth Vermont on the night of August 2, 1923 visiting his father. Cal was asleep in the upstairs bedroom with Gracie when they were woken up by the sound of his father calling his name.
“Calvin, wake up son! Wake up! This is urgent!.”
“It had darned well better be,” grumbled the VP as he put on his night-robe and lit a candle.
The old man's voice was trembling as he came up the stairs and announced, “Harding is dead, son.” Then he entered the room and said with deliberate drama, “Or should I say, Harding is dead, ... Mr. President.”
Calvin returned his father's stern stare and said “Don't worry Dad, I think I can swing it.”
The two political men dug up a Bible and a copy of the Constitution. They read the document closely to make sure there was no legal reason why the father, a legal magistrate, could not administer the oath.
An emissary from Washington arrived and asked Coolidge to come to D.C. to take the oath, but father and son declined. They both agreed that it would not be wise or proper to go to Washington and take the oath of office there. The country would be two days without a President.
A few phone calls later a little group of witnesses gathered at the Coolidge household, including Senator Dale who happened to have been visiting.
And so, by gaslight in his father’s living room at 2:27 a.m. on August 3, 1923, Coolidge became the only President sworn into office by a family member, the only president who took the oath in New England There is an accurate drawing of the event, but it was not photographed. After the ‘so help me God’ he turned to his wife Gracie and hugged her. She had been shedding quiet tears through the ceremony. There were eight witnesses including one member of the US Congress, James Thatch Hutt. (Calvin only mentions Senator Dale in his memoirs, but another account says that Hutt was there too.)
Coolidge served without a Vice-President for the remaining 20 months of the Harding term.
The USA has been somewhat lucky that every time the nation has ruled without a Vice-President, the new sitting Prez has remained alive. Tyler, Johnson, Arthur, and Teddy Roosevelt and now Coolidge were collectively veepless for all or a part of 22 years (1841-45, 1865-69, 1881-1885, and 1901-1905, 1923-1925.)
THE ELECTION OF 1924
The Election of 1924 was a kinder, gentler campaign. Coolidge did not make campaign tours of the nation, and he did not attack his opponent Johnny Davis personally in a single utterance, unlike McCain and Obama who are slinging it out with both fists flying as I write in the fall of 2008. Johnny Davis didn't really attack the incumbent Coolidge either. The nation was at peace and seemed prosperous. It wasn't going to be easy to “go negative” on the incumbent even if the Democrats wanted to.
Even if Davis had begun to attack Coolidge, it might not have done any good. Coolidge would have still remained silent. He knew that Davis was an unknown and there was no point advertising an opponent by striking back with headline counter-punches. Coolidge always said that there was nothing to worry about from untruths said or printed about you. But if negative stories that were true began to circulate, you would be in big trouble.
The Democrats bungled the ‘24 election by fighting amongst themselves for two weeks at their summer convention in New York City. The two leading candidates were William Robert McAdoo who favored the continuation of prohibition, and Al Smith who wanted “booze now.” Bob McAdoo was the Secretary of Treasury under Wilson and had married one of Woody’s daughters.
Part of the problem for the Democrats in 24 was the Ku Klux Klan. Supporters like these can be hazardous to your political health. The Democratic party was always the Party of choice for the Ku Klux.
McAdoo was never a member of the Klan. But he couldn't stop their support, and this was not helping him. Many Klansmen supported the Democratic Party and many in the Party supported the Klan. Some Democratic legislators were in the Klan. The Klan supported McAdoo, so what should he do? Rejecting the Klan would cost the party millions of racist votes. Accepting the endorsement would cost the party the votes of millions of people with a heart and a conscience. It was a lose-lose situation for McAdoo.
The issue of whether to reject all Klan support as a matter of party policy was one of the ugly issues that held up the 1924 NY Democratic Convention. A motion to condemn the Ku Klux Klan was defeated at the Convention by one vote, 542 to 541. Evil always thrives off of the silence of good people. The nation was treated to the debate over racism within the party and racism won.
After all the bad publicity the convention broke away from McAdoo. The Democrats finally chose New York Lawyer Johnny Davis.
In the 'Veepstakes' the D's nominated Charles Bryan the brother of William Jennings Bryan. Charles hadn’t done much on his own and was living off his brothers’ name. Charlie Bryan was the Jim Belushi of his time. Chuck Bryan was on the ticket because Presidential candidate John Davis was so much an eastern conservative that an agrarian liberal was needed to balance the ticket.
In July 24 the revived Progressive Party met in Cleveland. This third party made a strong showing and won a medium sized state. The Progressives had their usual diverse collection. They had socialists, the angry farm lobby, a good chunk of labor and what was left of the old Bull Moose Party. Fighting mad Bob LaFollette was their candidate, and their leader. The La Follette platform included government ownership of railroads and a curtailing of the power of the Supreme Court. The Progressives wanted Congress to have the power to overturn the decisions of the Supreme Court, rather than vice-verse. In other words they wanted an Unsupreme Court. We should all be glad this idea never saw the light of day. I trust the average judge over the average politician any day.
For Vice President the Progressives found a party-jumper in Senator Burton Wheeler. BW was a Montana Democrat who had made something of a name for himself while prosecuting the Warren G. Harding scandals. Wheeler explained his party disloyalty by saying that he was so opposed to the Democrats reaching out to a Wall Street Lawyer for president that he was willing to take the VP spot of another party.
At their Cleveland Convention the Republicans nominated Coolidge for re-election on the first ballot . Coolidge took 1,165 delegates to 34 for ‘fighting Bob’ LaFollette the Populist Republican Senator from the always politically active state of Wisconsin. LaFollette was only one or two letters removed from the Progressive Party.
Coolidge Knew When (24) to Get in, and (28) Get Out
The election was a re-enactment of Civil War on a poll booth battlefield.. The Democrats ruled the South and no more. The Progressives won Wisconsin. It was the last hurrah for the angry left wing dairy farmers.
Without a doubt the Progressives helped to win the election for the Republicans. This decidedly leftist party siphoned off much of the vote from center/left. The Progs didn’t take much bite out of Republican votes. This fact was not lost on the Progressives who hit Wall Street Lawyer Davis the Democrat harder than they hit Governor Coolidge the Republican because that’s where their potential votes were. The Republican Party sat back and watched while it’s true opponent was shredded by its left wing.
Bobby La Follette was an old man and in fact he died within a year of Election Day ending what faint hope was left for the revival of that progressive Progressive party.
DAWES PROBLEM
Coolidge served out the remainder of Harding's term with no VP, a situation corrected in the 1960's with a Congressional Amendment. The new Cool Veep was Charles Dawes and he upset the apple cart from day one by criticizing the members of his own party way too much for a sitting VP. Dawes gave his Inauguration speech inside the Senate, and in keeping with the Andrew Johnson tradition, created a stir with that speech before the President even got a chance to give his.
Coolidge had his hands full with the egoist Dawes.
One day Dawes decided to go home to take a nap and an important vote for a new Attorney general finished in a tie. Since he had the tie-breaking vote, Dawes tried to rush back to the Capitol building in a cab. But he was too late. The next person legally allowed to sit as president of the Senate voted against the appointment and one man's chance for greatness was gone forever because another man needed a nap.
I've missed a gig or two because I get up at 3 in the afternoon and missed a phone call, but my legendary vampire sleep schedule never cost another man the office of Attorney General.
JOHNSON IMMIGRATION ACT 1924
The JIA of 1924 was a racist tragedy. The United States closed its doors to immigration and did it with openly racist reasons.
You have to understand, it was ok to openly believe in racial superiority and inferiority back in the day. That's how Hitler rose to glory. It was only when Hitler and the camps were exposed in 1945 that racism became passe. It was a normal choice in thinking. People were writing famous best-sellers explaining racist theories. Today, an openly racist person couldn't even function in society. In 1924 it was a popular choice.
One openly racist Congressman was Albert Johnson. He didn't like Jews very much and didn't like Asians either. His Bill was nicknamed the Asian Exclusion Act.
WHITE HOUSE TRAGEDY
Tennis can be a very deadly game.
On June 30, 1924, Calvin Coolidge Jr. played tennis on the White House grounds. In a hurry to get to the court he forgot his socks. During the long day of playing he opened up a severe blister. Blood poisoning set it. The antibiotics of today would take care of it as a minor incident. The boy became very sick and on July 7, 1924, Calvin Coolidge lost his son.
At the time of his death he was employed on a tobacco farm in Vermont as a laborer. A workmate told him, “If my dad was president, I wouldn't be working in a tobacco field.” “To which Calvin replied “If your dad was my dad, you certainly would.”
In his last mailed letter Calvin wrote that some of the boys were calling him the #1 son in the country. Calvin told them “No. I have done nothing. The first boy in the land is one who has done something great by his own merit.”
President Coolidge said that he stopped enjoying the Presidency from that time on. He felt that it was his fault because if he hadn't invited his son to the White House and let him play tennis, this never would have happened.
The death of Calvin Jr. took a slow campaign and slowed it down a lot more. The President was in mourning and J. Davis respectfully stopped campaigning for a spell.
DAWES PLAN FOR GERMANY
The US wanted it’s war loans paid back by the old Allies. These payments were dependent on Germany first being able to make its reparations payments to England, France and others.
But Germany could not pay. Germany, when Coolidge was sworn in at Plymouth, was in political turmoil as well as economic collapse. So the whole chain of payments was dead at the German starting gate.
The Allies had occupied the Ruhr. Germany’s currency was inflated to the point of comedy. A loaf of bread cost a million dollars (six million marks.). German businessmen were sending their gold to foreign banks to avoid confiscation. Germany had nothing to pay with. It didn't matter that it was willing.
At this point a group of money wizards convened under the leadership of American investor named Charlie Dawes. The UK, France, Italy and Belgium were also represented in the Dawes think tank. This brain squad would study the reparations problem and recommend a solution.
The Dawes report was published in April of 1924. It recommended that the occupation of the Ruhr should end, and Germany should get a foreign loan of $200 million to kick-start its economy. A new German bank should be formed, and for 50 years must have sole control over the printing of German paper currency. Germans and foreigners would share the operation of this bank.
The yearly reparations payment from Germany should start at a lenient 250 million (on a 33 billion dollar debt) and increase over the next four years to 625 million. Future sums for reparations payments would be determined by study groups based on Germany’s ability to pay.
The Dawes Plan went into operation in September of 1924 and in July of 1925 the Allied Armies of WWI left the Ruhr.
SCOPES TRIAL IN TENNESSEE 1925
The state legislature in Tennessee passed a law in 1925 making it a crime to teach anything that contradicted the Bible in a public school.
The law was aimed at stopping the growing newfangled belief in “evolution,” the bizarre idea that the human race evolved gradually and scientifically, perhaps from apes, and not as an instant act of miraculous divine creation as described in the Bible.
The popularity of Charles Darwin and his theories was more than the Tennessee titans could handle.
The state arrested a high school biology teacher named Tommy Scopes and brought him to trial for teaching evolution in Dayton TN.
The Scopes Trial trial lasted more than a year and was a national spectacle. Headlines in every city in the country followed the courtroom drama. Darrow and Bryan, two of the country's most famous lawyers fought the case. There was such a crowd that most of the trial actually had to be conducted in an outdoor facility.
William Jennings Bryan, three time losing candidate for President of the United States argued the case for the prosecution. In 1898 Bryan had become famous for shouting to the DNC that “you shall not hang this country upon a cross of gold!” Now William Jennings was shouting that it was a great idea to hang this country up on a cross of ignorance.
The defense was led by Clarence Darrow, the most famous trial lawyer of his generation.
The teacher was found guilty after a spectacular trial.
Scopes was convicted of the crime of teaching something that disagreed with the Bible. This in a nation whose Constitution dictates the separation of church and state. Tennessee made a complete fool of itself in front of the entire world. Tom Scopes was fined a hundred dollars for having a brain in his head.
To call off the dogs of embarrassment, Tennessee dismissed the charge on the specious grounds that the judge had imposed the sentence of the $100 dollar fine whereas the TN law stated that it was up to the jury to impose the fine. But the conviction itself was upheld in principle. The Tennessee courts upheld the conviction itself, just not the imposed penalty. The national reaction had forced Tennessee to back off.
MARCUS GARVEY JAILED 1925
Charismatic Black leader Marcus Garvey was sent to federal prison in Atlanta in 1925 for false advertising. The leader of the Back to Africa movement ran a ship line that transported black people from the USA and the Caribbean to Liberia on the southwest coast of Africa.
Two setbacks ruined him. First the Liberian government changed its mind about welcoming his passengers. Then it was revealed that the ship on the brochure was far bigger and better than any ship he actually owned. This led to indictments against Marcus for false advertising.
Garvey was being singled out as an act of political harassment. Other practices by big business far worse than this were regularly overlooked in 50 states and the District of Columbia every day, while Garvey was prosecuted to the letter of the law. It wasn’t a case of false charges, but it was selective law enforcement. When MG was released in 1927 he went home to his native Jamaica and was given a hero’s welcome including a rolling paper parade.
Garvey is a very likeable person to read about, and he had a red-hot writer’s feud with W.E.B Du Bois in which Marcus accused W.E.B. of being half-European. Whoa!
KLAN RISE AND KOLLAPSE
The racist hate organization the Ku Klux Klan was at the peak of its power in the beginning of 1925. By now they regularly held massive parades in northern cities, impressing whites and intimidating blacks far from their southern power base. The Klan was now as big in Indiana as it was in Alabama.
But in March of 1925 Justice Department lynched the Klan. The Ku Klux chief, the Grand Wizard, a Mr. Stephenson, got the foxy secretary of one of his friends drunk and took advantage of her. It was a severe case of date rape. She killed herself the next day. The Klan tried to hide her body, but it was discovered. Stephenson was convicted of manslaughter.
What was worse for the Klan was that he sang an opera in prison. He talked extensively about the influence the Klan had in all levels of politics. It was a disaster for both the Klan and the politicians they were in bed with.
The Klan was enervated. It ceased to be a national political power for some years. It would not gain a real revival until the 1950's.
SHENANDOAH
The USA had it's own Hindenberg disaster in 1925 when the huge blimp Shenandoah crashed and burned taking 14 people down. There were 29 survivors.
It happened on September 3 near Dayton Ohio. The Shenandoah was on a cross-country tour of state fairs and cities, promoting aviation. The tour was a flop.
AIR COMMERCE ACT OF 1926
The railroads had long been regulated, but the airplane was so novel and untested that it began do develop as an industry with no government rules whatsoever. Coolidge helped to instigate the Air Commerce Act of 1926 which regulated air travel and put the power of the federal government up in the clouds. Coolidge and Congress decided it was time to get crackin' in airplane regulation and safety laws. The first chief of air regulations was William MacCracken.
THE ECONOMY
The over speculation in the stock market and excessive credit spending from all quarters did lead to a famous catastrophe at the end of the decade, the Great Depression. But historians treat the booming times of the 20's as if it was of no consequence, a Potemkin Village, just because it came crashing down in 1929.
Nine years of prosperity is nothing to scoff at. The Republican administrations of the 1920's are held responsible for the famous Great Depression, but never get any credit for the Roaring Twenties. Do the historians believe that if the Republicans hadn't been in power in the 1920's, there never would have been a Great Depression? Would a Wilson clone have been able to avoid the Great Depression? I doubt it.
The hands off big business policy of Coolidge actually worked worked for years. The nine years that the economy boomed was a pretty good chunk out of a person's life. You can graduate college in 1920 and have a large family and a successful business by 1929. The roaring 20's were not a false spring. They were spring and summer, and the fall came too soon.
TOO MUCH FOOD
Another problem facing America in the Coolidge era was the farm surplus. There were simply too many ripe crops and not enough demand. Prices fell and never made a comeback.
World War One had driven up US farm prices rise but peace made farm prices fall. Depression hit the farmers of America throughout the 'roaring twenties.' Europe had grown its own food supply again and no longer had to send for take-out. Europe's recovery created our farm depression, which later in turn helped to spawn the Great Depression.
LINDY
The Spirit of St. Louis was the first solo flight across the Atlantic. It is a testimony to the publicity that surrounded the flight that to this day most people think that Lindbergh was the first human to fly across the ocean. It’s not fair to the other guys, Read, Alcock and Arthur Brown, who were the first to fly the Atlantic.
Charles Lindbergh wasn't tying to cross the Atlantic entirely for noble reasons of humanity and progress. A big newspaper had put up a $25,000 reward for the first person to fly the Atlantic non-stop. It didn't even have to solo. It just had to be non-stop.
In early May 1927 a team of Frenchmen tried to do it and failed, adding to the drama for Lindbergh later. The French pilots were Chuck Nungesser and Frank E. Coli, both veterans of World War I. Charles Nungesser was the third best French fighter ace of World War I, a national hero. His rivalry with Lindy for the $25,000 prize was being closely followed by many people all over the world. If Nungesser had made it it would have been a great cause for celebration in Paris and Tours.
Nungessen and Coli left the safety of the French coast on May 8 destined for New York City. The boys got soon got a wave from three peasants in Ireland and then disappeared to ocean skies. The men disappeared forever like Amelia Erhart. No one knows what happened, but some people think they might have crashed into the wilderness of Maine. So for all we know, Lindbergh was not the first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. Lindy was definitely the first to fly the ocean solo, even if Coli and Nungessen did make it to Maine.
Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field NY at 7:15 a.m. on May 20th 1927. He had four tuna sandwiches (with chopped pickels) to live on between NY and Paris. He first sighted Dingle Bay on the east shore of Ireland and he knew he had crossed the Ocean, but there was still a ways to go.
When Lindbergh landed in Paris alone, the French graciously celebrated at least a tenth as much as they would have if one of theirs had done it first. Lindy had won the battle of the two Charlies and the French gave him scene of adulation partly to honor the noble try of their own.
The flight of Charles Lindbergh (who later went on to become an isolationist leader with anti-Semitic leanings)) was portrayed rather poorly by Jimmy Stewart in a major motion picture in the 1950’s. Stewart is usually good, but not in this one. No way.
INTERVENTION NICARAGUA 1926
The American puppet, President Adolfo Diaz was in dire straits. Revolution in Nicaragua (what a shocker) threatened to overthrow him and Johnny Cal would have none of it.
Coolidge sent 5,000 US Marines to the Central American nation. End of revolt. Other nations and the US left criticized America and its President bitterly. One sniper said that Coolidge was fighting “to make the world safe for American bankers.” A truce was arranged and new elections were held in volcano country.
CELLULOID HEROES
The motion picture industry, or “the movies’ for childish short, was booming with each passing year. The dummying down of America was in full swing in Calvin's time, with simplistic emotional dramas replacing the intellectually stimulating and provocative medium of books as the lynchpin of popular entertainment. Our country runs on the movies now. Its way out of control. This was when it all began.
By 1927 100,000,000 Americans went to the movies each week. Sad then, sad now. With the release of “The Jazz Singer” in 27 the talkie was introduced. Now we could hear the overrated actors instead of just looking at them. To give some idea of the progressivism of movies as opposed to the rest of society, the Jazz Singer featured scenes of star Al Jolsen in blackface, a white pretending to be a black guy.
Progressive writers promoting advanced racial understanding were buried under the mass media of dumbbell movies with their ‘step ‘n fetch it’ black stereotypes.
SACCO AND VANZETTI
Someone robbed a bank in 1920 in South Braintree Massachusetts and in the process shot and killed two security guards. The two men arrested for the crime were two Italian immigrants named Sacco and Vanzetti.
S&V were tried and sentenced to die. Many important people, however, thought these men were innocent. There was a widespread public opinion that racism and xenophobia was really on trial, not Sac and Vanzetti. Most Americans were prejudiced against the political ideas of most European foreigners in the USA, an extension of the fear of 'anarchism.' Was that the real reason for their convictions?
These men were being painted as victims, as political prisoners. Famous liberals clamored for a new trial. They wanted their convictions overturned, the men released. But the appeals ran out and in July of 1927 Sacco and Vanzetti were given the hot seat.
It's fairly certain now that the two men were indeed innocent of murder. Its fairly certain too that this is one of the favorite stories cited by liberal historians. It makes America look cruel and fascist so its a very important story to them. Lefties still cry out about the state crime that was committed against the poor devils. Governor Mike Dukakis issued a proclamation in 1977 stating that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.
I gotta be honest with ya, I've never lost a minute's sleep over the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti. Somebody made a mistake, it was a long time ago, all countries have instances of injustice, and that doesn't mean these aren't still good nations with good track records overall. Why judge our country only by its isolated failures? The celebrity status of this double execution is the exception that proves the rule. If the United States was the reactionary state that the left claims it was as they cite S&V as proof, then why is the case so famous? If the USA was such a terrible place, their execution would have been page three column four near the bottom, another day at the office, as it would have been under Sadaam's Iraq, Stalin's Russia or Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam. The Sacco and Vanzetti case pleases liberals.
KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT AUGUST 1928 -
KB was the biggest hot-air balloon of all time, a treaty of words declaring for international peace. with no means to enforce it. John Lennon wouldn't have signed it with a straight face.
It all started when a Columbia professor wrote to the French Foreign Minister Aristide with a clever play on words. The Professor proposed that today there existed laws of war but for the next step why not make laws against war? Out of this came a proposal for a pact of eternal peace between the USA and France. This led to a proposal to expand the pact to as many nations as wanted to join. And it all ended up as the Kellogg Briand Pact.
In Paris on August 28, 1928 Mr. Briand of England and Secretary of State Frank Kellogg ('Special K', as he was known to his friends) of the USA signed the document along with 10 other countries. It was the silliest treaty of all time. The Kellogg-Briand Pact was a declaration of all signatories that never again would war be the chosen manner with which to solve international disputes.
Doyeeee!
There were no instruments to enforce the agreement, nor agreements to even try to enforce the agreements. Who fell for this? Kellogg Briand was just pitiful pathetic pompous public pious paper pact of paper peace paraded before the world in mockery of common sense.
The ‘Pact of Paris’ (the official name - Kellogg-Briand is the one preferred by history) was a substitute for the concrete arms reductions long sought by genuine liberal progressives. Instead of outlawing weapons the pact outlawed war. The Kellogg-Briand pact was like a sign in the bank that says “No Bank Robbing Allowed.”
Yeah, that’ll work.
Harvard historian H. Stuart Hughes calls Kellogg Briand 'revived Wisonianism.' One US senator who voted for it said he hoped no one was stupid enough to think that he took it seriously. Missouri Senator Reed called it an “international kiss.”
Germany, Japan, Italy, and the USSR were among the nations who signed, thereby definitely agreeing to never resort to war. Ho ho ho hee hee hee ha ha ha. The exact wording was that they,
“condemn recourse to war for the solution of
international controversies, and renounce it
as an instrument of national policy in their
relations with one another.”
From Article One
One contemporary cracked that the KB Pact had all the effectiveness of “a letter to Santa Claus.”
How could anyone have signed it without bursting out laughing?
Less than one month later President Coolidge made a mockery out of the Pact of Paris by authorizing 270 million dollars to build 15 new large battle cruisers. (270 million might not seem like a lot today but back then 50 cents could buy a tuxedo and a tractor.)
ITALY SHAPED LIKE A BOOT – A FASCIST BLACK BOOT
In 1928 the Fascists of Italy took over the government. The fascists under Mussolini, the bombastic bully had been the most powerful political force in Italy since 1922. The Fascists had ruled the streets and had intimidated the government and King for some time, but they had not actually taken over the government.
All that changed in the last year of Coolidge.
Mussolini and the fascists believed that the age of the individual was dead. The twentieth century was the rule of the state, of discipline, of authority. Freedom, democracy, and individualism were no longer what was needed for a nation to advance. This sort of extreme liberalism was national suicide in this new age or power. The Marxists were just as foolish as the liberals. The fascists respected and understood the Marxist philosophy of class struggle and the dialectic materialist interpretation of events. After all the fascists themselves were socialists in their own minds. The black shirts were not ignorant about Marx and Engels. many of theme came from those ideas, but had evolved into a superior disciplined form of socialism. Their idea of socialism was that, yes, everything is indeed divided by class, and things do run according to Marxist class division principles. But we new socialists of power are going to destroy and change that system.
There will be no more class divisions because the power of the state will be used to level the field for everybody. A nationalized and controlled economy cannot have any injustice because everyone has a first duty to the state and that duty will be performed on an equality basis whether anyone likes it or not. The rich will be demoted, the poor will be promoted, and a noble cause will be served, through strength.
For example, labor unions were very welcome in Fascist Italy. No one could oppress a worker and get away with it because the Labor Unions could protest to he government and the workers will be heard and respected.
The only problem was that the Italian labor unions were led by government appointed fascists, the capitalist bosses were controlled by government appointed fascists, and all the regulatory boards were composed of government controlled fascists.
The image of fascist Italy being controlled by thugs and fascist bullies is an illusion. The Italian people would not have signed on for that and cheered about it. There were ways in which the system seemed attractive and even righteous at times. The Italian economy was having a rough time of it throughout the 1920's. As the USA had its roaring 20's, in Italy there wasn't a lot to roar about.
How any nation could embrace anything so obviously bad a s fascism? Easy. When the Italian fascists took over the word fascist wasn't an evil term yet. The Italians didn't know that they were embracing a movement that would lead them into the losing end of a world war, and they didn't know that the term fascist would become synonymous with evil itself. Today a grounded teen-ager will grumble that “my parents are fascists.” Now its just a rank, a catch-all epithet to be hurled at anyone you're mad at. Fascist can mean something heavy and political, or it can be employed as a polite substitute for some simple rough curse words. But in the 1920's, Italians were proud to be “fascists.”
Italy was under the heel of street fascist armies from 1922-1927, but in 1928 the were finally invited in to join the government, which of course meant take it over.
WAR CLOUDS IN JAPAN
Japan and the United States were on a collision course, but no one knew how long it would take for the two armed trains to meet.
Emperor Hirohito was determined to annex Manchuria for the new Japanese Empire, but it would take a lot of intrigue and planning to set it up so Japan could get away with it.
Manchuria was an autonomous extension of China ruled by a warlord named Chang Tso Lin. The border of China proper and Manchuria was the good ol Great Wall.
South of the Wall, the bulk of China proper was ruled by Chiang Kai Shek, one of the truly famous names of the Twentieth Century. But Chiang was involved in a protracted civil war with the Chinese Communists. Chiang was winning his war with the Chinese Communists, but Chang Tso-Lin was going to be a difficult challenge north of the wall. It wasn't going to be just a matter of destiny to unite Manchuria with China proper. Today, of course, Manchuria is part of China and we take that for granted, but that issue was undecided in the Coolidge era.
Chiang would have loved to take Manchuria for China, but he was more than ready to compromise if it would a- insure his consolidation of China proper, and b- insure that Japan would not interfere with his control of China proper.
Chiang went to Japan for three months, ostensibly to marry his new wife in Nagasaki, but in reality to work out a devilish deal with the devilish Japanese. The militarist clique in Japan agreed to give Chiang a free hand in China below the Great Wall if he would give the Japanese a free hand in China above the Great Wall.
Japan already had some control of Manchuria, so the four armies of Chiang, the Cho En Lai (Communist), the Japs, and the Manchurian warlords had to work out a decision on the field.
In Japan there was plenty of young liberal protest to all the wicked planning of the conquest of Manchuria. But hippie protesters were arrested by the thousands and thrown into jail for long periods of time. This was an option LBJ and Nixon didn't have in the 1960's. Emperor Hirohito, Prince Konoye, and Prince Higashikuni could wipe their hands and say “heh heh, that takes care of that.”
The monkey-wrench for everyone was the power of warlord Chang in the north. Tso-lin even marched south of the Great Wall and tried to slug it out with Chiang in central China and almost won. The Kuomintang Army of Chiang re-gained the offensive and pushed Chiang's army back to the wall.
Japan controlled most of the railroads in Manchuria and made if almost impossible for Chang to make a safe retreat back into Manchuria. The warlord had his back against the Wall.
Emperor Hirohito meanwhile, decided that the simplest way to solve all this was to order the murder of Chang the warlord. With their leader dead, the Manchurians would submit shortly thereafter to a determined Japanese invasion.
The Prime Minister of Japan was Billy Joe Tanaka. He was a dupe for Japanese militarism. The Emperor and his militarist cabal used Tanaka as a moderate front for all their plans of conquest, which Tanaka never endorsed or even privately approved. The whole idea of setting him up as Prime Minister in the first was insurance against failure. If things went well with the neo conquests, Tanaka could be forced to go along passively. If anything went wrong, the very people who did the dirty deeds could very publicly scream and yell at Tanaka and force him to resign. It was clever. Many people not in the know had been surprised at the choice of Tanaka in the first place. He was a member of the Choshu clan, and the rising power of Japanese militarists were enemies of the Choshu clan. Why would they choose a member of the enemy clan to lead their government at a time when they were winning the rivalry and could choose one of their own clan? The fall-guy insurance scheme explains Tanaka.
NAVAL AFFAIRS
Japan led the world in developing aircraft carriers, party lecause it lied about the tonnage. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 placed strict limitations on the number and size of all capital ships allowed for Japan the USA and the UK. Liars have a big advantage in agreements that can't be strictly monitored, and Japan built two super-sized carriers, the Kaga and Akagi, and simply lied to the world about the tonnage. These two mighty carriers were completed in 1927 and were much larger than the American Lexington or Saratoga, and larger than the HMS Courageous and Vindictive.
OFF THE HOOK
The United States finally defeated an opponent that had plagued the nation for decades. By 1927 hookworm disease was for all practical purposes eradicated.
I had heard the term here and there but never really delved into it, and now that I have, I wish I hadn't. It is gross.
The hookworm is a tiny parasite that gets into the body through the sole of the foot. Then it journeys its way up to the intestines and begins to expand to other parts of the body. Then when some hillbilly defecates outdoors the eggs multiply into the soil and some other barefoot person comes along and picks up some more hookworms.
Most of the hookworm problem was in the South because of the poverty and the primacy of primitive agriculture. For a long time people in the North had looked down on the typical poor southerner as being very lazy. No one realized that it was because they were sick. Chronic fatigue is a major symptom of the hookworm. There are many other symptoms but let's not go there. Look it up if you want to, if you dare. The hookworm makes the boll weevil look like a butterfly.
The hero of the story is Wardwell Grady Stiles of the Health Service of the USA. Ward traversed a lot of the South and was the first person to recognize that something really bad was going on and someone had to get to the bottom of it. WS worked hard to identify the disease and the cure, or at least the prevention.
Stiles pleaded with politicians to get some funding for a massive prevention and treatment program, but those worms on the Hill ignored him for years.
The breakthrough came when President Ted appointed a Commission on Country Life in 1908. Stiles was on the CCL and met a rich and influential progressive Southerner named Walter Hines Page. Stiles told Page all about hookworm and showed him some pictures until Page vomited. As he was wiping himself clean, Page told Hines he would personally talk to John D. Rockefeller and promised, “Ward, you shall have a million dollars by next ..... (vomit) ...week.”
Sure enough, Stiles got his million and over the next 18 years conducted a war on the worm. The first step was to provide free shoes for all poor Southerners. That cut the problem in half straight away. Another step was to make sure that Southerners got out of the habit of defecating at random places outdoors.
Many Southern men drafted into the First World War were still not off the hook. However in 1927 the Health Service declared the hookworm problem solved in the United States.
I was all smiles about Stiles when I read that hookworm was a thing of the past. But then I read that it is still a massive problem in poor parts of the world today, so I cancelled my upcoming vacation trip to Bangladesh.
Always buy travel insurance.
READ MY TIGHT LIPS - NO THIRD TERM
The country expected him to run. The Republicans expected and wanted him to run. But Coolidge was cool to a third term. In the summer of 1928 while vacationing in Redstone South Dakota he issued a public statement that “I will not put my name in nomination for president in the Election of 1928.” And that was that. If another politician had said it, it might have been seen as sly posturing. But coming from Coolidge, it was a done deal.
Coolidge later explained that he did not feel that any president is effective after too much time in office. He knew that technically, the partial term of 1923-24 made it all right for him to run for a second full term without violating the American two-term tradition. But Cool Cal also felt that running in 1928 was violating that tradition in principle if not in technical fact.
Coolidge pointed out that any study of American history would reveal that two-term presidents are consistently powerless and ineffective in the last two years in office. Hmm.
THE ROARING TWENTIES
The six years of Coolidge were the heart and soul of the Roaring Twenties. Part of it was the change in mores. Women wore short skirts and smoked cigarettes, and some even engaged in premarital sex without being completely ostracized by their peers.
The inventions that were just coming into their own when Coolidge took office in 1923, were expanding at fantastic rates when he turned over the keys to Hoover.
The roads were the road to prosperity. There were 5.9 million automobiles in the United States in 1920. In 1929 there were 27 million. A zillion miles of paved roads had to be built everywhere. Towns and industries sprang up along the new highways. It was a repeat of the railroad boom of the 1880's, except this time it was everywhere. Cities gained as much from the new roads as country, which wasn't the case in the railroad boom. The petroleum industry became a giant alongside the roads.
Speculation in construction contracts and real estate along the roads became a national game.
Another new trend in the Roaring Twenties was the birth of the Sun Belt phenom. Americans began migrating to the old country Florida and California as if they were another country. The city of Miami tripled in population in one decade. The entire state of California doubled.
Installment buying was another twenties feature. People were buying everything “on time,” slang for I can't pay for it on time so I'll pay for it over time.
That system is still in place today of course, but it was quite the innovation in the Coolidge era. Buy now pay later over monthly installments. This enabled Americans to afford the new inventions. The car was the first prized. But a close second was the refridgerator. The third prize was the radio. Today a radio goes for five bucks, but it was an expensive bulky box back in the day.
America certainly dummied down in the Coolidge era. Books came out about the decline of books.
AFTER OFFICE
In retirement Coolidge became a familiar face around the streets of Northampton, Massachusetts. It was as though he had never been President of the United States. Cal seemed healthy and, relative to him, happy. But fate struck him down at his home on January 5, 1933. It was the “big H.' The Vermont Yankee president was dead of a heart attack at the age of 99.
His wife Grace found his body in the kitchen. The neighbors heard her scream in horror. Mrs. Coolidge denied requests to have Calvin's body sent to Washington to lie in state. President Coolidge was buried in Plymouth Vermont beside his late son Calvin and his father who had sworn him in as president.
When Coolidge died it left the United States without a living ex-president.
SOURCES
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
It should be subtitled, The Pageant of Hatred Towards Republicans – I read this one cover to cover and slowly, enjoying every prejudiced and enlightening minute of it. This guy is a redneck liberal who obviously doesn't perceive his inconsistencies.
The American People, a History, by Pauline Maier – On Coolidge, “He brought no great strength of mind to the White House.” Pauline wishes LaFollette had won in 1924, “Fighting Bob was against child labor. He favored conservation, greater taxes for the rich, and the rights of labor.” I guess Coolidge was in favor of child labor. Pauline teaches at MIT, but this is a textbook for 8th graders.
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, From George Washington to George W. Bush, by William A. DeGregorio – c) 2002 – A great source of quotes - H.L. Mencken wondered what Coolidge would have done if the Great Depression had somehow broken out on his watch, “Cal would have responded to bad times precisely as he responded to good ones – that is, by pulling down the blinds, stretching his legs upon his desk, and snoozing away the lazy afternoons.”
Contemporary Europe by H. Stuart Hughes, c)1961 – I consulted this one for European-American relations from the far side of the Atlantic perspective.
A Diplomatic History of the American People, by Thomas A. Bailey – c) 1958 – Bailey is the master. He's very opinionated and I'd bet one trillion dollars if I had it that he did not once vote for a Republican President unless he was old enough to vote for TR in 1904. Bailey is erudite and easy to read, and sometimes sarcastic.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, Farnam Professor of Diplomatic History in Yale University – c) 1934 Henry Holt.
A fifth edition of this well-known masterpiece was published in 1965. Bemis died in 1973. He is wonderful on secondary foreign policy controversies that the general histories skip entirely.
The Enduring Vision, by Boyer, Kett, Purvis, and Nancy Woloch
The book should be titled, the Enduring Politically Correct Vision
Here is Enduring on the 1920’s growth of public hero worship,
The girl uncertainly trying to define a role for herself
in a period of confusing social change could find in
the beauty pageant one kind of ideal to which she
could aspire. For the man whose sense of mastery
had been shaken by numerous developments from
feminism to Fordism, the experience of cheering
himself hoarse for a towering sports hero like Dempsey,
Grange, or Ruth could momentarily restore a sense of
personal importance and self-assurance.
Women aspire to a goal per se, but men have low reasons for their aspirations. Men needed to cheer for Babe Ruth’s 500 foot game winning home runs because they were insecure, and felt threatened by the newfound freedom of women. Wow. You learn something absurd every day!
My wife is trying to get a part in a movie. By these authors I surely hope she doesn’t get it because I would then have to buy a season ticket to the New England Patriots games, to restore my self-esteem.
Europe Since 1914, In its World Setting, by F. Lee Benns – Easily one of the best books of all time. Indiana University professor Benns is a perfect writer and scholar. He seems to have a depth of understanding of so many subjects that it is simply awesome. Why didn't this guy teach at a higher University is a mystery to me.
From Versailles to the New Deal, A Chronicle of the Harding-Coolidge-Hoover Era, by Harold Faulkner, c) 1941 Yale U. Press – Harold worships Wilson like a rock fan in the opening chapter then spends the rest of the book condemning conservative for their blind bias.
Growth of the American Republic, by Samuel Eliot Morison of Harvard, and Henry Steele Commager of Columbia – c) 1940 – I feel the same way about this masterpiece of American History that I feel about what are considered today's masterpieces. You can have them. I can name many general histories that are more readable, more fair and balanced, more decent, and just as well researched as this one. I think this book is a nasty racist polemic disguised as a general history. At least Howard Zinn on the left and John T Flynn on the right own up.
Don't take my word for it. These two men are still considered Gods in the world of the university historians. I hate these guys. And I read both volumes cover to cover, slowly with my own marginal notes and cross referencing. They were my constant companions for more than two months. Again, I hate these guys. In addition to being out and out white supremacists, they are pro-Democrat and anti-Republican to the same degree of emotional add-ons that I used to describe my feelings towards them. They're a little more subtle of course.
Hats in the Ring, An Illustrated History of American Presidential Campaigns, by Evan Cornog – c) 2000 - History of Presidential campaigns - Well written (partisan lib) with many illustrations.
History of a Free People, by Henry W. Bragdon of Phillips Exeter Academy, and Samuel P. McCutchen of NYU's School of Education – c) 1954
This high school history book has a chauvinist slant, but I like it. Hopefully that is not why I like it.
A History of the United States of America, by Henry Elson – This fine book has been reprinted and revised so many times that it's almost pointless to give it a copyright date. My library edition was published in 1945, but the first edition goes all the way back to 1903!
A History of United States Foreign Policy, Second Edition, by Julius Pratt – c) 1965 – Fabulous book. I've taken trips where I can only pack one hardcover and this is the one.
A History of Soviet Russia, by Georg von Rauch – c) 1957 Praeger
This book gets better as it moves along, but the first 50 pages
were awful. I read the first 400 so far.
The March of Democracy: Vol II, From Civil War to World Power – c) 1933 Scribner
I think it's pretty safe to say that James Truslow Adams doesn't like Calvin Coolidge. It's also pretty safe to say that I do not like James Truslow Adams.
My Autobiography, by Calvin Coolidge – Write, so that I may see thee. My Auto is a pretty big hardcover but there is a lot of blank filler. You can read half of this book on a NYC subway ride from Co-op City to Coney Island.
But as Coolidge himself writes, “The quantity of the truth we know may be small but it is the quality that is important.”
This is a fine little book and is conveys the quality of the man. It should be required reading in our high schools, since its short length would not even put a bump in the road to a year of American History studies. Puritan in Babylon is so much more quantity, as Joe writer White gets flowery and excessive in detail for 400 pages. But Coolidge speaking for himself is far more valuable in 160 pages fattened up with blank space to make it 234 official pages.
The National Experience, by Stampp, Woodward, Blum, Rose, Schlesinger and Morgan, c)1981 (1st edition 1961), These guys put Coolidge in the stocks and whip him for about 25 paragraphs. If they had listened to their moms who told them, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all,” then the book would have skipped the years 1924-28 entirely. They call Coolidge ‘smug’ in the caption beneath his photo!
On the Hill, A History of the American Congress, by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. - c) 1979 – Not my favorite writer, but I only mean in style. Alvin's research is certainly superb, and he is not viciously biased.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – This is the Bible of PC outrageous liberal pseudo-history, and its rough on Coolidge..
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison of Harvard - c) 1965
When he rips people I don't like, I feel that Sam is a fine historian. When he rips people I like, I think he's a pompous condescending Harvard square.
I'm on his side when he singed Charles Beard the wildly popular heterodox historian of the 1930's. I never hear the end of the greatness of 'The Beards,' Charles and Mary. I have read them extensively and find them boring and disagreeable, and that's not an easy combo to achieve. Samuel also drags W. E. Woodward into his U.S. Navy gunsights, and good for him. Woodward has a special place on by list of bad historians, and by that I mean their inner import, not the quality of their scholarship or writing. Until this passage, I never even knew W. E.'s first name.
The only point I think he's missing is that Woodward's mean-spiritedness doesn't come from any grand intellectual-lefty hatred of the United States, but really is motivated by bitterness about race and how his home team lost the the Civil War. Woodward is simply a racist redneck white supremacist southerner who hides behind a beard of historian to disguise his Klan heart. His biography of Grant includes a story of how the author, as a boy, threatened a carpetbagger with a death threat from the Ku Klux Klan. He laughs at how much he scared the guy. W. E. thinks the story is harmless just because he was only a boy and in fact wasn't a member of the Klan, and therefore it was just a practical joke he could tell as an historian later in life.
Here's my main man Sam on the historians,
“Charles A. Beard in his Economic Origins of the Constitution (1913) paved the way for a host of writers who maintained that the Federal Constitution was the work of wealthy tricksters to keep democracy down; and in 1927 he produced his Rise of American Civilization to prove that there were no heroes or even leaders in American history, only economic trends. Debunking (the word was coined by William E. Woodward in his novel Bunk, 1923) became a literary mode; every American hero from Columbus to Coolidge was successfully 'debunked' – Woodward himself did it to Washington, Grant, and Lafayette. After the war, almost every American writer who had the price fled to Europe; on cold find scores of them in certain Parisian cafes declaring to anyone who would listen, that America was 'finished.' ”
Wow, is he writing about the 1930's or the early 1970's?
I'm with Sam in spirit here, but who is he to claim that other historians debunked heroes like Coolidge? SEM rips Coolidge like Cal shot his cat. This from page 933,
“President Coolidge was a mean, thin-lipped little man, a respectable mediocrity, he loved parsimoniously, but respected men of wealth, and his political principles were those current in 1901. People thought Coolidge was brighter than he was because he seldom said anything.”
And Mo's mad at Woodward for debunking Coolidge? With friends like Morison, Coolidge could use a few more Woodwards.
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn – I have the 1992 paperback edition, a gift from my niece who had to read it for college. This book has an interesting message. The United States is very bad.
A Puritan in Babylon, by William H. White, a hatchet job on the man from Northampton Mass. White is one of those backstabber interviewers who pretends to befriend his subject and then rips them at the typewriter later. He is very condescending. White thinks he is a much better person than this President is.
On the other hand it’s hard for me to dislike White too much because he was one of the leaders in the late 1930’s of the military preparedness movement, the antidote to the America First crowd. In the face of a lot of left pacifism, White saw Germany and Japan as a menace that we would have to fight sooner or later and the sooner we faced up to it the better. God bless him for that. But this book is very sneaky mean to Calvin Coolidge and it’s the number one bio of the 30th President that is cited in general histories.
Puritan is a ‘2-fer’; two books for the price of one. It’s a book about Calvin Coolidge and a book about William Allen White. In trashing his subject he trashes himself. White once ran as a Republican for governor of Kansas, so obviously he believed his political opinions to be superior. I wonder how much of his Coolidge-bashing is based on jealousy. Coolidge had all the station in life that White desired. It burned William Allen up to think he had came up short while an inferior had made it. So he won the lost election in Kansas by hurling endless darts at the name of Coolidge in his big fat 'definitive' biography.
I also think Puritan is a dreadfully dull pompous read. Only a famous editor could get away with writing that bad because anyone else would have to get past the critical crayon of an objective editor. An author/editor doesn’t have to run the gauntlet of his own profession anymore than the President of the United States ever has to take a drug test.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty, c) 1966 – Revised edition 1974 – I'm almost done with these 521 pages. Garrity is readable but unusually nasty at times. His pro-South attitude towards blacks in the Civil War and reconstruction era are about 60 years behind the times, even for the first edition date of 1966.
This Was Normalcy, by Karl Scriftgeisser, c) 1948 – This is a short and useful history of the three administrations of Harding Coolidge and Hoover. Normalcy is a partisan attack on all Republicans by an agitated man. Its highly recommended. He is more one-sided than a cliff.
The United States: The History of a Republic, by Richard Hofstadter of liberal Columbia University, William Miller coauthor of The Age of Enterprise, and Daniel Aaron of Smith College – c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
I realize that these historians are liberal biased and anti-Republican party, but there was no need for them to refer to Coolidge as a “useless squid.”
The United States of America, A History, by Henry Bamford Parkes, -c) 1967 – Bam Bam is very readable and even though he was born and raised in England, his writing feels like that of a native American (if you'll pardon the phrase that is supposed to belong only to what were once called 'the Indians'.) Parkes was born in 1904 and died in 1972. His last book was an unfinished, History of the Chicago White Sox, so he apparently assimilated pretty well.
The United States of America, A History, Volume II 1865 To The Present by Dexter Perkins, and Glyndon G. Van Deusen – c) 1962 – Yes, the exact same title as the book above. Dex and Glynn both teach at the University of Rochester – Perkins is a famous historian in the foreign policy field. I'm even a little surprised to see his name on such a general history.
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