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 CALVIN COOLIDGE 
 
 A MAN WITH VISION— 
 BUT NOT A VISIONARY 
 
From 
 Coolidge's Public Speeches 
 
 THE people cannot look to legisla- 
 tion generally for success. Indus- 
 try, thrift, character, are not conferred 
 by act or resolve. 
 
 EACH man is entitled to his rights 
 and the rewards of his service, be 
 they never so large or never so small. 
 
 THE measure of success is not 
 merchandise, but character. 
 
 THE man who builds a factory, 
 builds a temple; the man who works 
 there, worships there; and to each is 
 due, not scorn and blame, but rever- 
 ence and praise. 
 
 EXPECT to be called a standpatter, 
 but don't be a standpatter. Expect to 
 be called a demagogue, but don't be a 
 demagogue. Don't hesitate to be as 
 revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate 
 to be as reactionary as the multiplica- 
 tion table. 
 
 WE NEED more of the Office Desk 
 and less of the Show Window in 
 politics. 
 
 THERE is no right to strike against 
 the public safety by anybody, anywhere, 
 any time. 
 
 
f^X From Woman's Home Companion, March, 1920. 
 
 f The Silent Man on 
 Beacon Hill 
 
 i An Appreciation of Calvin 
 f Coolidge 
 
 By BRUCE BARTON 
 
 WE LIKE novelties, we Americans; espec- 
 ially do we like them in our public life — and 
 nowhere else are we offered so pathetically few 
 of them. Year after year the same familiar types 
 crop up in politics to go through the same thread- 
 bare campaign gymnastics. The same stuffed- 
 shirt oratory; the same "pointing with pride" and 
 "viewing with alarm;" the same old exaggeration 
 and distortion — no wonder political meetings are 
 unattended and political news gets tucked back 
 into the center of the paper. We have heard it all 
 before; we know it is merely part of a game 
 played by rule, with all too little of sincerity or 
 conviction; we suffer it in silence, and sigh with 
 relief when it is through. Only at rare intervals 
 does something fresh and new and different break 
 across the dull horizon; and when that unexpected 
 does occur we draw a deep breath, and thank God 
 and take courage. 
 
 Roosevelt was such a blessed phenomenon; 
 Wilson, when he emerged from the sheltered con- 
 fines of the university to run for governor afford- 
 ed us a new sensation — a college professor run- 
 ning for governor; it was worth watching, worth 
 reading about. And now, to stir our jaded in- 
 terest, another new thing under the sun has ap- 
 peared — a politician who apparently conforms to 
 
none of the established rules; who operates alter 
 his own peculiar fashion, and yet somehow suc- 
 ceeds in getting his fellow citizens to vote for 
 him in numbers that have made all political ob- 
 servers stop, look, and listen. 
 
 Whether Calvin Coolidge has any chance for 
 the Presidency I do not know; this story is not 
 written about Coolidge the Presidential possi- 
 bility. It is written about Coolidge the human 
 being, the silent, half mysterious individual who 
 sits there on Beacon Hill, running the State of 
 Massachusetts and causing even old-time political 
 reporters who visit him to feel a little thrill of 
 wonder and of questioning, 
 
 I have said that he is something new under the 
 sun; in another sense everything about him is 
 reminiscent. He seems somehow vaguely to recall 
 another long-passed period in our national life; 
 the period when Jefferson rode to his inaugura- 
 tion astride a white horse; when Lincoln ran the 
 White House as the unconventional headquarters 
 of a real democracy; when it was quite the thing 
 to have a moving faith in representative govern- 
 ment; and when we were accustomed to say in 
 public speeches that America had been chosen by 
 Almighty God for a special mission in the world 
 demanding a more than ordinary degree of devo- 
 tion and self-sacrifice. The day when Govern- 
 ment governed, and the individual still had the 
 habit of looking to himself for his success and 
 economic salvation, not to Congress or the Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 Coolidge is a Yankee; he has spent his whole 
 life amid the traditions of the forefathers, and is 
 himself a kind of an embodiment of those tradi- 
 tions, a kind of contemporary forefather. 
 
 There are three places where one may go to find 
 out about Calvin Coolidge. To Plymouth, Ver- 
 mont, twelve miles from a railroad, where he was 
 born and brought up; to Northampton, Massa- 
 chusetts, where he held about every office that his 
 
neighbors could elect him to — and where Mrs. 
 Coolidge and the two boys still live in half of a 
 little frame house not nearly as pretentious as 
 the house Lincoln occupied when he was earning 
 three thousand dollars a year by the practice of 
 law in Springfield — and to Boston, where he 
 camps in two rooms in the Adams House, and 
 walks to and from his job morning and night like 
 any other workingman. 
 
 There is a popular misconception about his 
 ancestry. It is asumed that he is connected with 
 a family of the same name which occupies a posi- 
 tion of considerable wealth and social influence 
 in Boston. I had that notion in the beginning. 
 Later I learned that his grandfather was a farmer 
 in Vermont, his father, John Calvin Coolidge, a 
 farmer and country merchant who enjoys the title 
 of colonel by reason of service on the staff of a 
 governor of Vermont, while Calvin himself 
 reached Massachusetts by way of Amherst Col- 
 lege and the class of 1895. 
 
 He was a raw country boy, his pants tucked into 
 his boot tops, and the marks of rural Vermont 
 plain upon hjm. To the majority of the college 
 he remained unknown throughout the four years; 
 and with the exception of certain scholastic 
 honors attained no prominence. Only a very few 
 of the more thoughtful men saw in him anything 
 unusual. 
 
 To those few there was the same peculiar fasci- 
 nation that has both lured and baffled men in his 
 later career. He made no effort whatever to be 
 popular; often hardly a word would pass his lips 
 for days at a time, except such as were absolutely 
 necessary to keep him supplied with food and to 
 report his presence in the classroom. So much 
 silence, such concentrated silence, might well 
 savor of a pose; but Coolidge comes by it natur- 
 ally enough. His grandfather was a notorious 
 hoarder of words, and his father, whose common 
 sense and straight thinking have made his neigh- 
 
bors turn to him as a sort of unofficial magistrate 
 in matters of neighborhood policy or dispute, 
 manages life with a mere fraction of the ordinary 
 allotment of conversation. If silence were really 
 golden, the income tax of the Coolidge family 
 would be something immense.- 
 
 After graduation Calvin Coolidge moved across 
 the river and settled four miles from Amherst, in 
 Northampton. "Never could see much advan- 
 tage in roaming around," he explained. There for 
 two years he studied law in the office of Ham- 
 mond and Field. After he. had been in the office 
 about three months Mr. Field noticed an item in 
 the Springfield "Republican" to this effect: 
 
 "John Calvin Coolidge, a student at law in the 
 office of Hammond and Field, Northampton, has 
 been awarded the hundred-and-fifty-dollar gold 
 medal offered to the member of the Senior Class 
 of any American college for the best essay on a 
 historical subject. 
 
 Mr. Field showed the item to Coolidge and 
 asked him if he had received the medal. He said 
 he had. Mr. Field asked him where it was, and 
 he produced it from his desk. 
 
 "How long have you had it?" Field demanded. 
 
 "About six weeks." 
 
 "Why didn't you tell us you had received it." 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Have you told your father?" 
 
 "No," said Coolidge. "Would you?" 
 
 He passed the medal over to Field, asking that 
 it be kept in the safe, and for a good many years 
 he never showed it to anybody. In the same 
 noiseless fashion he conducted his domestic and 
 professional affairs in Northampton, establishing 
 a modest home, and living always very quietly, 
 but with an unusual degree of serious attention 
 to his job. Presently his fellow townsmen elected 
 him to the city council; then city solicitor; then 
 mayor; then senator. So in time he became presi- 
 
dent cf the Senate; lieutenant governor, and 
 finally governor. 
 
 Thus his whole active life has been spent in 
 public service; and few men can bring to high 
 position a more consistent or varied experience in 
 administrative affairs. Viewed as a whole, his 
 career seems a perfectly logical development, one 
 election following naturally and almost inevitably 
 upon the preceding one. Yet each fresh honor 
 has been a kind of mystery to the political wise- 
 acres of the State, and — one is tempted to think — 
 even to himself. He had no intention of remain- 
 ing in public life, and he has consistently neglect- 
 ed all of the little precautions which are consid- 
 ered elementary by professionals in the game. 
 
 For example, he has never joined any lodge. It 
 is an axiom of politics that the public man should 
 be a "joiner." The opportunities for acquaintance 
 and support which the lodges provide are too ob- 
 vious to be disregarded, and nearly every public 
 man will be found on the membership rolls of a 
 number of them. Coolidge is not even a member 
 of the Grange. He respects the lodge, and un- 
 derstands fully its service and appeal, but he is 
 not naturally gregarious; he has been busy at the 
 job all his life, and he has too much downright 
 sincerity to seek membership merely for what it 
 might mean to him in the way of support. 
 
 Similarly, he has apparently made no effort to 
 cultivate friendships, even when they were certain 
 to prove influential. The man who has been his 
 chief supporter in Massachusetts was deeply 
 offended by him in their first encounter. That 
 man, a prominent merchant in Boston, was a 
 member of the Board of Trustees of Amherst 
 College, The trustees desired the legislature to 
 pass a law allowing the college to connect its 
 sewer system, with the sewer system of the town, 
 and he, with his attorney, went to talk with 
 Coolidge about it. 
 
 They laid the matter before him, and when they 
 
had finished Coolidge said nothing. He made 
 neither promise nor suggestion. He was himself 
 an Amherst man; he was the senator from the 
 Amherst district, charged with responsibiHty in 
 such matters; yet they left his office utterly at sea 
 as to his attitude toward their appeal. Later, it 
 appeared that the session of the legislature was so 
 far along that nothing could be done then. 
 Coolidge understood this, and probably assumed 
 that they understood it, too. At the next session 
 he attended to the matter promptly. But the 
 chance to put those two men under obligation to 
 him, to impress them with his efficiency and good 
 will, to line them up as possible supporters for the 
 future — all this he totally disregarded. They left 
 his office feeling as though they had been re- 
 buffed — because they did not understand the man. 
 
 There are dozens of anecdotes to the same 
 effect. One cannot hear them without marveling. 
 It takes an immense amount of faith in the trust- 
 worthiness of the voters, in their ability to recog- 
 nize faithful work and reward it, for any public 
 official to conduct his career as Coolidge has done. 
 He has stuck to his various jobs, doing them 
 without self-advertisement, with an old-fashioned 
 thoroughness dictated by an old-fashioned con- 
 science, willing to let the record speak for itself, 
 and equally willing, apparently, to step down at 
 any time when the voters should find the record 
 insufficient. 
 
 That sort of quiet, undeviating work and study 
 develop a self-reliance and a degree of solid 
 knowledge of the job that are bound sooner or 
 later to make themselves felt. Coolidge's oppor- 
 tunity to show what the years had given him 
 came, of course, with the police strike in Boston. 
 His whole action there was characteristic. He 
 showed no nervous eagerness to leap into the 
 limelight. It was the duty of the mayor of 
 Boston, under the law, to handle the situation 
 so long as the forces at his command were 
 
 8 
 
adequate. Only when the thing was distinctly up 
 to him did Coolidge act, and there was no hesi- 
 tation then. 
 
 The attorney general of the State and one of 
 the leading constitutional lawyers had been work- 
 ing together for a day or more to examine the 
 law and determine exactly what the governor 
 might and ought to do. They met with him at 
 luncheon to present the results of their research, 
 but before they could lay their plan before him, 
 he startled them with a question: 
 
 "Would it not be possible for me, under such 
 and such statutes, and such and such decisions, 
 to take this course of action?" he asked. And 
 thereupon outlined to them exactly the plan 
 which they had devised, quoting the very authori- 
 ties they had gathered. In his own quiet way he 
 had made sure of the law, and was ready for the 
 emergency. 
 
 What happened in Boston during the strike, 
 and thereafter, everyone knows. The voters of 
 Massachusetts registered their verdict upon the 
 incident by giving him a majority of over one 
 hundred and twenty-five thousand votes in the 
 elections following — a greater majority than had 
 been rolled up by any governor of Massachusetts 
 for many years. 
 
 I said at the beginning of this article that there 
 are certain old-fashioned characteristics of 
 Coolidge that are exceedingly refreshing in these 
 ultra-modern days. Most obvious among them 
 is the simplicity of his living. He has managed 
 to stay in public Hfe for twenty years only by 
 living a 1920 life on the basis of 1820's expendi- 
 tures. His house in Northampton is unpreten- 
 tious. He has always been well dressed, and so 
 are his two boys, John and Calvin. But beyond 
 this his living is conducted on the plane of the 
 most ordinary private citizen. 
 
 As lieutenant governor he lived in a room at 
 the Adams House in Boston that cost him one 
 
dollar a day. After his election as governor his 
 friends waited upon him with a suggestion. 
 
 "You ought to take a furnished house on 
 Beacon Hill," they said, "where you can enter- 
 tain influential men, and live like a governor." 
 
 He listened without comment, but the only 
 change he has made in his mode of living is to 
 take one more room at the Adams House. He 
 now has two instead of one; and his ten-thousand- 
 dollar salary is doubtless enough to keep him and 
 his family and leave a margin over. 
 
 In all his previous offices he had time to carry 
 on some private practice, but it never amounted 
 to more than a very few thousand dollars a year. 
 
 There are two ways to be independent in life: 
 One is to make money enough to cover all your 
 wants; the other is to limit your wants so strictly 
 that you don't need much money to cover them. 
 Coolidge has adopted the second expedient. 
 Money, apparently, is no larger factor in his 
 thoughts than it was in Lincoln's. But, unlike 
 Lincoln — who never could understand figures and 
 took no interest in the financial department of the 
 Government — Coolidge has a keen Yankee appre- 
 ciation of finance. He is never worried about 
 money, as Lincoln was for so many years. He 
 is solvent always; he pays his bills punctually on 
 the first of the month, buys himself a couple of 
 boxes of stogies, and is relieved of all money 
 cares for another thirty days. No day laborer in 
 the commonwealth works longer hours, or with 
 more consistent application to the job than he. 
 And few are so poor that they do not live fully 
 as lavishly as their governor. 
 
 The second thing that heartens one in these 
 days of social panaceas is his whole-hearted recog- 
 nition of economic fundamentals. It has for 
 years been the fashion of politicians to ride into 
 office by abusing wealth and promising a millen- 
 nium of comfort to labor through legislation. 
 
 10 
 
Against that sort of demogogy Coolidge has stood 
 like a rock, 
 
 "The people cannot look to legislation gener- 
 ally for success," he said in his speech on assum- 
 ing the presidency of the Senate. "Industry, 
 thrift, character, are not conferred by act or 
 resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. 
 It can provide no substitute for the rewards of 
 service. It can, of course, care for the defective, 
 and recognize distinguished merit. The normal 
 must take care for themselves. Self-government 
 means self-support. 
 
 "Man is born into the universe with a person- 
 ality that is his own. He has a right that is 
 founded upon the constitution of the universe, to 
 have property that is his own. Ultimately, prop- 
 erty rights and personal rights are the same thing. 
 The one cannot be preserved if the other be 
 violated. Each man is entitled to his rights and 
 the rewards of his service, be they never so large 
 or never so small." 
 
 And again, in his speech to the Amherst alumni: 
 
 "As a result of criticizing these conditions (the 
 distribution of wealth) there has grown up a too- 
 well-developed public opinion along two lines; 
 one, that the men engaged in great affairs are 
 selfish and greedy and not to be trusted, that busi- 
 ness activity is not moral and the whole system 
 is to be condemned, and the other, that work is 
 a curse to man, and that working hours ought to 
 be as short as possible, or in some way abol- 
 ished. * * * 
 
 "I agree that the measure of success is not 
 merchandise, but character. But I do criticize 
 those sentiments, held in all too respectable 
 quarters, that our economic system is fundamen- 
 tally wrong, that commerce is only selfishness, 
 and that our citizens, holding the hope of all that 
 America means, are living in industrial slavery. 
 
 * * * The man who builds a factory builds 
 a temple; the man who works there worships 
 
there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, 
 but reverence and praise." 
 
 If anyone has uttered sounder doctrine for these 
 troubled days, in more effective language than 
 that, I have not seen the utterance. 
 
 The clarity of his thought and the beauty of 
 the expression is another element of attraction in 
 Coolidge. There are passages in his speeches 
 that rise to the best heights of American elo- 
 quence, and few men have the power of con- 
 densing a big thought into more trenchant lan- 
 guage. Take these bits as typical: 
 
 "Do the day's work," he said to the Senate. 
 "If it be to protect the rights of the weak, who- 
 ever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful 
 corporation better to serve the people, whatever 
 the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a 
 standpatter, but don't be a standpatter. Expect 
 to be called a demagogue, but don't be a dema- 
 gogue. Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as 
 science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as 
 the multiplication table." 
 
 Or again: 
 
 "When you substitute patronage for patriotism, 
 administration breaks down. We need more of 
 the Office Desk and less of the Show Window 
 in politics. Let men in office substitute the mid- 
 night oil for the limelight." 
 
 Or this, at the time of the police strike: 
 
 "There is no right to strike against the public 
 safety by anybody, anywhere, any time." 
 
 In days like these, when it seems as if so many 
 public men were reading nothing beyond the 
 newspapers, when every problem seems to come 
 to them wholly new, as though nothing of the 
 sort had ever occurred in human history before, 
 it is heartening indeed to find a man who has 
 read much of history, who brings some mental 
 background to the discussion of the day's work, 
 and who can carry on that discussion in lan- 
 
 12 
 
guage that lifts rather than lowers the average of 
 the day's news. 
 
 Finally, one cannot fail to be impressed with 
 Coolidge's steadfast faith in the soundness of our 
 institutions. And by an even larger faith, also — 
 a vision of the spiritual foundations that underlie 
 all political and economic problems. It is their 
 failure to discover any spiritual element in our 
 economic life that is so disappointing in most 
 of the utterances of capitalists and labor leaders 
 alike. Too many labor leaders talk as if, by add- 
 ing another dollar to the day's wage and cutting 
 another hour off the day's work, we might 
 straightaway bring in the millennium. Those of 
 us who have seen that process carried to its final 
 fruitage in the lives of the idle rich know that 
 there is no one more miserable than the man who 
 has had many dollars added to his day's income 
 and all the hour^ of work abolished. 
 
 Man does not live by bread alone. He is a 
 spirit, not a physical machine. And no man is 
 fit for large leadership in America who fails to 
 recognize that great truth. 
 
 "Statutes must appeal to more than material 
 welfare," Coolidge has said. "Wages won't 
 satisfy, be they never so large. Nor houses; nor 
 lands; nor coupons, though they fall thick as the 
 leaves of autumn. Man has a spiritual nature. 
 Touch it, and it must respond as the magnet 
 responds to the pole. To that, not to selfishness, 
 le the laws of the Commonwealth appeal. Recog- 
 nize the immortal worth and dignity of man. Let 
 the laws of Massachusetts proclaim to her hum- 
 blest citizen, performing the most menial task, 
 the recognition of his manhood, the recognition 
 that all men are peers, the humblest with the most 
 exalted, the recognition thai all work is glorified. 
 Such is the path of equality before the law. Such 
 is the foundation of liberty under the law. Such 
 is the sublime revelation of man's relation to man 
 — Democracy." 
 
 13 
 
The greatest leaders we have had have been 
 spiritual leaders. In Washington, in Lincoln and 
 Roosevelt, in every man who has stirred America, 
 there has been always an appeal that reached 
 down beneath the material to something large, 
 and unselfish, and eternal in men. And Calvin 
 Coolidge, also, is a leader of that sort. 
 
 14