Coolidge (53 page)

Toward the very end of the campaign, death and illness intruded again. Henry Wallace, the agriculture secretary, underwent a routine operation to remove his gallbladder; instead of recovering, he developed an infection, and he was gone in a week, like Calvin. Coolidge opened the East Room for Wallace’s memorial; secretaries Mellon, Weeks, and Wilbur, as well as Attorney General Stone, were honorary pallbearers. That October illness struck Henry Cabot Lodge too. Coolidge wrote him a note of sympathy. From Charlesgate Hospital, two days after the Wallace funeral, Lodge wrote back, “I cannot for a moment believe there is any doubt of your election,” adding, “That you should have me in your in mind in the midst of the campaign and send me a word of sympathy and hope means more to me than perhaps you realize.” From an old adversary, the message was touching. It also boded well. Few politicians could forecast elections as well as the senator from Nahant.

Coolidge remained quiet, but the party itself grew cheerier as the election approached. Staffers noticed that radio and film truly were working to Coolidge’s advantage in the end. The big speakers, William Jennings Bryan and Robert La Follette, had built-in microphones, but that no longer benefited them; indeed, on the radio, the orators merely came off as overwrought. In late October, twenty-three stations all over the country carried Coolidge’s voice when he delivered the final big speech of the campaign. In this speech, Coolidge once again sketched the burdens of past taxation as “despotic exactions.” His policy, Harding’s and Mellon’s, by contrast, was to pay down the national debt. The most important thing now was to free the individual, for, as Coolidge said, “It is our theory that the people own the government, not that the government should own the people.”

A
Literary Digest
poll of more than 2 million voters, taken at the end of October, put Coolidge well ahead of both Davis and La Follette. As they closed the campaign, Republican leaders simply underscored the same points again and again: the bottom line was that prosperity, budget economy, and tax revision benefited all. The prosperity and the budgeting were there; the tax revision was half done. The day before the polls opened, Northampton town fathers arranged a parade complete with a GOP elephant and summoned John Coolidge down from Amherst: he and Mrs. Goodhue, Grace’s mother, sat in vehicles at the front, and other friends—John’s roommate Stephen Brown, Grace’s friend Mrs. Hills, Judge Field, and Judge Shaw, who had been Coolidge’s fellow apprentice at Hammond and Field—also lined up.

On November 4, election day, the Coolidge-Dawes Caravan reached its destination of Bellingham, Washington, after traversing seventeen states. In Plymouth, Coolidge’s father rode in a horse-drawn buggy to Plymouth Union to cast his vote. Coolidge closeted himself in the afternoon with General Lord, who emerged from the executive offices as surprised as Starling had been; Coolidge had insisted on spending their time together on fiscal affairs. In the evening, the Stearnses arrived, along with Chief Justice Taft and Senator Smoot; Coolidge told reporters he had stayed up to 12:45
A.M.
because of the visitors and otherwise would have retired earlier.

As the president slept, the vote counters began to understand that the Republicans had won a powerful victory. La Follette polled 4.8 million votes, 16.6 percent of the electorate, an election-breaking share. But as it turned out, his Progressive Party took not so much from Coolidge as from Davis and the Democrats, who received only 8.39 million, or 28.8 percent. Coolidge received 15.72 million, or 54 percent, of the vote, less than Harding but still shockingly high given the rise of the progressives and the farm bloc. That was the absolute majority that had eluded Wilson, Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. Coolidge won in thirty-five states, only two fewer than Harding had in 1920; he even claimed Montana, the state of La Follette’s vice presidential candidate, Senator Burton Wheeler. Harding had taken the West for the GOP. Thanks to Coolidge, the party still owned it, California and all. In electoral votes, the victory was even clearer: La Follette took only his native Wisconsin, and Davis carried only twelve states.

Taking Rob Roy, the Coolidges went out on the White House lawn to greet visitors and pose. The photographers saw some of the first real smiles from the couple since summer. The Stearnses toasted them; they prepared for a visit from the Morrows, who would stay the next week. Reporters eager to catch more of the White House noticed that on Thursday, the White House staff was cleaning the giant crystal chandeliers from the East Room and hanging out heavy winter curtains. The staff was also busy with trees again, removing from the exposed terrace roofs boxwoods planted by the Roosevelts and replacing them with evergreen trees for the winter.

Elsewhere the Republican reaction to victory was even more energetic. Northampton staged a second parade, with Mrs. Goodhue again riding in a car. Changes in the Senate and House, Republicans noted, would make Coolidge’s tax campaign easier: four seats had been gained, though in practice the number was smaller, owing to a contested seat. Nick Longworth was slated for promotion to House speaker and this time promised to be more aggressive with Republican lawmakers who diverged from the party line. Coolidge could now add more cabinet members with views closer to his own. He had his eye on William Jardine, the president of Kansas State Agricultural College, who also opposed direct subsidies to farmers, to be secretary of agriculture. Two figures who had dominated their days passed away. The first to go was Senator Lodge; Lodge, who had been ill all fall, suffered a stroke and then died on November 9. Next came word from Marion, in late November, of Mrs. Harding’s death. William Jennings Bryan had also died that year. It was strange to move forward without those old ghosts.

The stock market for its part responded to the election by bolting upward; by December 1, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 110, or 10 percent above where it had been in mid-October. The rises were so dramatic that some found them disconcerting. “What makes these things worth so much more on November 5th than they were on November the third?” asked Will Rogers of stocks. “I was old fashioned enough to think that supply and demand regulated the price of everything. Now I find November the Fourth regulates it.” Rogers noted that “Coca Cola took a jump right out of the glass.” Rogers wondered what it all meant. “I thought we elected Mr. Coolidge to lower our taxes and keep us at peace with the world. I didn’t know that we had to drink Coca Cola.”

Even while Coolidge and Mellon were still taking in the election results, new tax data strengthened their resolve. Even with its imperfections, the tax rate cut had done what Mellon had predicted: the tax rates had dropped 25 percent, yet the decrease in the amount received was less than 5 percent. It was wondrous: there might be a federal budget surplus despite the bonus costs imposed by the new bonus law, just as Senator Bursum, just defeated, had predicted long before. The stock market increase was the market’s way of telling the administration that it already counted on the tax cut and counted on the economy thriving in coming years.

Yet Coolidge and Mellon had cleared only their first hurdle. Four more votes in the Senate were not enough to halt a filibuster: that would require two-thirds of the Senate. George Norris of Nebraska, Couzens of Michigan, and the defeated La Follette were more than ready to mount one. The idiosyncrasies of the congressional calendar worked against him. Congress adjourned in March, just as Coolidge was inaugurated. He could call a special session, but that would once again give lawmakers a chance to pass legislation he opposed. If he waited, more mysterious cash might flow in, and the case for a tax cut would be stronger. The success of his campaign, whether that year or in 1926, depended on meticulous work by the cabinet and in the Senate, by lawmakers and vice president Dawes; the House was likewise not so easy a partner as the triumphalist headlines suggested. That his administration be perceived as unified was also essential. One of his first thoughts was to foster unity by replicating Harding’s generosity. He would invite Dawes, the new vice president, to sit in on the cabinet meetings, a gesture of hospitality Coolidge had been grateful for from Harding. He wanted a close relationship with Dawes.

Unexpectedly, Dawes refused Coolidge’s invitation. Beyond the slight of such a public refusal at the beginning of their partnership, Dawes’s decision to stay away hurt another way. The big question in the Veterans Bureau and Teapot Dome scandals was how much information Coolidge himself had picked up in the cabinet meetings. When Dawes made a show of avoiding the meetings, he raised the question of whether Coolidge had been compromised by attending. The alternative was that Coolidge had been ignorant of what had gone on among men he saw at the White House, which was what William Randolph Hearst’s executives believed. “Coolidge knew nothing of this,” Hearst’s general manager, Frederic C. Dumaine, had told Clarence Barron that year. That surmise kept Coolidge’s name clear but also suggested that he was a simpleton.

It fell to Mellon to relaunch the tax reform. The secretary laid new groundwork in the annual report of the Treasury, which he transmitted on December 3, 1924. The old frozen loans were finally liquid again; railroads were back. The country could expect, Mellon said, “prosperous and healthy conditions such as succeeded the election of 1896”—but only if Americans did not think of taxation as a “socialistic experiment, or as a club to punish success.” Mellon sought his cuts in the surtax rates, but also, again, an end to the special status of municipal bonds. He doubted the constitutionality of the gift tax. If estate tax rates came down, people would have an incentive to work harder and to save. Some taxes could come up: not only those on municipal bonds, but also corporate taxes. Nuisance taxes should end. A gleeful
Wall Street Journal
backed Mellon up with a quote from Samuel Gompers: “Only out of production can we grow prosperous.”

As if to underscore Mellon’s point and demonstrate that his theory was already working, the Treasury shipped out $137 million in refunds on 192,252 tax returns, some to firms that had won a judgment in tax adjudication, others simply rebates allowable under the tax law. Many of the court judgments related to war profits taxes; the Treasury was still cleaning up the war mess. Coolidge added focus by transmitting a legislative agenda to Congress that emphasized tax reform when it came to changes; when it came to other legislation, such as farm subsidies, Coolidge’s main work would be defensive.

The principal challenge that winter and coming spring would be staying clear of the Harding administration scandals. The Supreme Court was deciding whether Mal Daugherty, the brother of the attorney general, could be compelled to testify. It all might still go wrong, just as it had last year. At the White House, especially now, modesty must remain the watchword. There was nothing the Coolidges could do but be amused by the gossip when it involved those outside the administration: it was an open secret that Alice Longworth’s baby was Senator Borah’s, and that kind of topic mattered because Borah and Longworth were both key to passage of the tax legislation.

But the White House was another zone, which Coolidge guarded rigorously. When divorce or some other shadow came over a White House staffer, Coolidge saw to it that the staffer was transferred out. Waste continued to preoccupy him. Coolidge’s caution was antagonizing several of the White House staff, who missed the more forgiving style of life under the Hardings or the Roosevelts. Not only Mrs. Jaffray, the housekeeper, but also Ike Hoover, the usher, was taking a particular dislike to Coolidge. Others understood that Coolidge’s emphasis on propriety was not weakness but wisdom, given the intensity of the progressives’ scrutiny.

“The Harding administration scandals were so vivid in his mind,” the veteran mail room chief, Ira Smith, noticed. The tension between the president and Mrs. Jaffray grated on even the normally tolerant Grace. Grace wanted a housekeeper who did not war with the president, who fixed his food as he liked and she prescribed. Instead, Coolidge and Mrs. Jaffray clashed over household minutiae. That coming spring, at one of the state dinners, Mrs. Jaffray would encounter President Coolidge coming up from the dinner room. “Didn’t you think it was beautiful?” she asked of the set tables. “Yes, it’s all right,” he replied. “Did you step downstairs into the kitchens?” she asked. That was all Coolidge needed. “Yes, and I don’t see we have to have six hams for dinner.” There were a number of people coming, Mrs. Jaffray allowed. Well, it still seemed a lot of ham to him, the president said.

The living Christmas tree was to be a Norway spruce from New York State. Men were planting the tree in Sherman Square, behind the Treasury Building, one street over from the White House. On it workers hung a thousand lights, which Coolidge lit by a switch at dusk. For her own family, Grace got three little trees. She agreed to work at the Central Union Mission distributing clothing for the poor on Christmas Eve.

In the New Year, the first move Coolidge made—tiny but significant—was to change his calendar. Lord’s permanent appointment was moved up to 9:15
A.M.
instead of 9:30. That gave Coolidge more time to cut the budget, a task that became harder each year that passed; they were near $3 billion, but not there yet. Lord, creatively, would in coming weeks find three more cuts: the Weather Bureau would cease sending out postcards carrying forecasts, a tradition for nearly half a century; the newspapers nowadays carried such material free. Post office bags could be made of plain gray canvas, not the traditional white with blue stripes: savings, $50,000 a year. The government favored a distinct red tape for wrapping federal documents. Henceforth, it would dispense with red tape. Literally. The white string would do. The extra minutes also gave the president time to prepare with Lord for the cabinet meeting or to meet with lawmakers who might affect legislation, such as James Watson of Indiana, who came in on January 16, the day before a meeting scheduled with the new speaker of the House, Nicholas Longworth.