Coolidge (60 page)

Others, however, were blunter. “I am not one of those who believe in rushing to Congress with every problem that arises,” Franklin Roosevelt of New York said. But this flood was the kind of occasion “in which immediate action by Congress is imperative.” Roosevelt and other Democrats began to pressure him for an extraordinary session of Congress to plan flood spending. Even outside the parties, the pressure was greater. The sculptor Gutzon Borglum was hawking a grand but impractical theory that water might be diverted to Texas. “Boulder Dam Bill to Pass,”
The Washington Post
pronounced on May 7. It was becoming a foregone conclusion that flood management would be the biggest peacetime project; over a few years, the water experts were predicting, as much as $2 billion ought to be spent. General Edward Jadwin, the chief army engineer, was already sketching out what seemed to be a colossal infrastructure project. Some observers viewed the waterways question now as a test not of Coolidge’s federalism but of his modernity: if Coolidge were to be a modern president, he would have to be part of the new waterways drive. After all, Hoover had upstaged Coolidge just as Coolidge had once upstaged Woodrow Wilson. Still, Coolidge refused to call the special session.

There were additional frustrations. That spring Coolidge had issued a call for the five parties to the Five-Power agreements arising from the Washington Naval Conference in 1921–1922 to meet in Geneva to seal a new treaty. The United States wanted to extend the old cruiser limitation to cover other craft. The conference was set to open in Geneva in June, with Great Britain and Japan present, both furiously disagreeing with the terms put forward by the United States. The hostility of Japan that Coolidge had anticipated during the debate over the immigration law had indeed materialized. France was, so far, declining to come. Italy was also not committing itself, allowing only that it would attend “in some manner.” French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand was proposing a pact to outlaw war between France and the United States. Kellogg disliked the idea; he thought the Americans who led the peace treaty movement, such as Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia, were “god damned fools.” To ask a nation to agree to give up war as a means of policy was to limit its power in the most direct of ways. The idea seemed so off to Coolidge that at first he did not even want to think of it or consider rumors that his own secretary of state, Kellogg, was sympathetic to it. “I never heard of any such thing,” Coolidge would tell his press conference of the prospect of consideration of such a pact by him and Kellogg when it came up.

By May, several pilots were ready to take Orteig’s challenge: they included Charles Nungesser, the French ace, and Bert Acosta. Acosta had already warmed up by circling New York City for fifty-one hours and eleven minutes in his Wright-Bellanca WB-2 monoplane,
Columbia
, in the process covering more than the distance to Paris, 3,600 miles. “Acosta and Nungesser are the likeliest wave jumpers,” wrote one columnist. The airports at Roosevelt and Curtis Field now thrummed with the vibrations of Orteig Prize competitors. Yet more calamities ensued, and Harry Guggenheim, the president of the large Daniel Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics, pledged $100,000 in prize money for fliers who managed safe flights of long distances. On May 8, after a disconcerting hangar fire and storms at sea had delayed him, Nungesser and his partner, Captain François Coli, departed Le Bourget outside Paris in their plane,
White Bird
, with a scheduled arrival in New York two days hence, or less. A crowd, many in evening dress, waved them off. Observers at Le Havre, and then observers on the Irish coast, told of seeing the plane, but on May 9, there was an ominous silence; the watchers on Newfoundland saw nothing; St. John’s reported nothing but a brisk northeast wind.

Coolidge monitored the situation and instructed Mellon at Treasury to put “every available facility of the coast guard to work patrolling,”
The Washington Post
reported. On May 10, fearing the gasoline might run out, the U.S. Navy sent out the naval tug
Wandank
to troll Nova Scotia for the plane. There was a report that the plane had been spotted at Maine, where the
Kronprinzessin
had found refuge, and the Boston Navy Yard wired hopefully, “Nungesser plane passed Portland, Me., headed south, flying very fast.” But the Maine sighting could not be confirmed. Coolidge signaled to the French that eighteen warships were ready to hunt for the
White Bird
should they request; Raymond Orteig offered a $5,000 prize for anyone who sighted Nungesser, but even after five destroyers patrolled the steamship lanes, nothing was found. All Coolidge could do then was wire his sympathies to French President Gaston Doumergue.

Yet days later, while the country was still in the haze of the Nungesser news, another flier was taking off: Lindbergh, from the American side. It was hard to imagine that he would dare to do so after so many deaths, and of such skilled pilots; at the airstrip on Long Island, they nicknamed the young pilot “the flying fool.” Coolidge wired his best wishes. From his post at the temporary White House, and busy with steel strike troubles, Coolidge nonetheless followed this new flight too. In the silence, while the world awaited the Lindbergh news, more details of the pilot and his endeavor came out. The twenty-five-year-old mail pilot was the son of the late lawmaker Charles August Lindbergh, the isolationist who had represented Minnesota’s Sixth District years before. He was a mailman who had found backers among private companies. He had supervised the construction of the monoplane, which represented the sum of all the knowledge that had been acquired in the past thirty years about flight. Its cowling and propeller spinners were made of soft aluminum. The blades were duralumin, an alloy. But there was also a bit of the familiar in the monoplane: the spars were made of spruce.

On May 21, a signal came from Paris. Lindbergh had indeed landed. Here, finally, was the flash of news Coolidge had hoped for. One could only begin to consider the results a feat like Lindbergh’s would yield. If Harding, Coolidge, and Mellon had worked to bring back normalcy, they had sometimes wondered why they were doing so. “The more we learn of his accomplishment, in going from New York to Paris, the greater it seems to have been,” the president wonderingly told his press conference. “That is something that grows on us the more we contemplate it.” To pick Lindbergh up, Coolidge sent a battleship.

Queen Marie of Romania had visited, King George V of England had visited, Will Rogers had called; but now, at the temporary home on Dupont Circle, the first couple prepared for the most important guest of Coolidge’s presidency, Colonel Lindbergh, and his mother, Evangeline Lindbergh, starting June 10. To join them in hosting, Coolidge summoned his old friend, Dwight Morrow. Coolidge also began preparing a speech, to deliver at the Washington Monument.

The Lindbergh landing in Washington still proved bumpy. Mrs. Lindbergh did not materialize the day she was expected, June 10; it turned out that the hero’s mother was in Baltimore. The White House sent a car to retrieve her. Once she was settled in her bedroom on Dupont Circle, she could watch the crowds that waited outside the white mansion. Lindbergh himself was not yet there, though that day he arrived in America; a convoy of two blimps, four destroyers, and planes accompanied Lindbergh up the Chesapeake. Mrs. Lindbergh dined with the Morrows and the Coolidges. Afterward, Morrow was left to entertain Mrs. Lindbergh. It was time for Coolidge’s and Lord’s own acrobatics, the semiannual budget meeting.

Inspired by the events of the past year, Lord had labored over his speech and developed an enormous, awkward metaphor involving water, ships, flight, and taxation. “Waves of new expenditure as a result of new legislation and continued legitimate growth and development of federal business have swept over the economy boat,” he told the government departments. Treasury had cut the federal debt by $68 million in May alone, which meant the government was on track to eliminate the debt sooner than even Mellon had imagined. The surplus for the eleven months up to June 1, the real test, was larger than it had been the year before, when the new tax rates had become law. Indeed, Coolidge predicted that in the fiscal year that would close on June 30, there would be a $599 million surplus, compared with $378 million the preceding year. Mellon and Coolidge took pains to make the case that such revenues might not flow forever. Coolidge warned that tax cuts might not be made every year. Still, it was a glorious surplus, one they could use to pay down the debt. The virtuous circle could continue.

Back in their offices in the coming days, the Treasury men also discovered something else. Critics like James Couzens had always said Mellon’s tax cuts were for the rich, and continued to depict Mellon himself as a tax cheat. Others had supported Couzens, including the humorist Will Rogers, suspecting Couzens was onto something: “He knew illuminum was light but he knew it wasent as light as its taxes,” Rogers wrote in his trademark dialect spelling. But the new revenues undermined the argument that Mellon’s laws benefited the rich. For a good share of the new revenue was coming from higher earners. By lowering rates on the wealthy, the Treasury had actually collected more from them. A greater portion of the income tax came from top earners than had at the beginning of the decade. In 1927, those earning over $50,000—a tremendous sum—would pay about 80 percent of the income taxes, whereas in 1920 those top earners had paid about half. “The income tax in this country,” as Mellon wrote triumphantly to one of the Treasury’s correspondents, “has become a class rather than a national tax.” The municipal bond prices still reflected a premium, the difference between their value and the value of a bond that was taxed. But as Mellon’s charts had predicted, the premium was smaller. The spread between yield of tax-advantaged municipal bonds and Liberty Bonds on the one hand and federal Treasury bonds on the other was narrower now that the income tax rate had come down. The era of “tax tuberculosis,” as one lawmaker had called it, seemed to be ending. That meant money was flowing into companies as well as state or local governments. The Lindbergh superstar status might lighten the costs of the flood in a direct way: the post office broke its rule against putting living men on stamps and proposed Lindbergh Flood stamps, two cents each, reading “Hail Lindbergh,” so that the aviator’s fame might pay for relief.

It was all proving so close to what Mellon had hypothesized years before in
Taxation: The People’s Business
. That the budget had not been cut to $3 billion did not matter because commerce had expanded so much. Mellon’s experiment might not survive forever, but it had survived long enough to prove itself a success. People understood now that lowering taxes might often be the better move. Scientific taxation could not offset great spending splurges, but it could relieve some spending, bring down the debt, and foster prosperity. The administration’s signal that the general direction of tax rates would be downward had helped for years, even before he and Mellon had perfected their law. Perhaps direction mattered as much as rate. In any case, the results were powerful. The commerce helped the country endure whatever events challenged it. As horrific as the flood had been, the South would surmount it.
The Wall Street Journal
, surveying the South, reminded readers that despite the losses in places such as Greenville, there were many areas where the effect could “scarcely be felt.” The region seemed to be recovering.

Along with three hundred thousand others, a record, the Coolidges and the cabinet waited in the Saturday sun at the Washington Monument. Mellon stood beside Grace; Commander Byrd, who had nearly beaten Lindbergh to the Orteig Prize, was present, and so was Secretary of State Kellogg, who had dueled with Lindbergh’s father in his day. Alice Longworth and Attorney General Sargent could be seen nearby. Coolidge introduced Mrs. Lindbergh, who remained seated, but the crowd began to call “stand up,” and Grace, laughing, took her hand and pulled Mrs. Lindbergh up. She bowed, and the applause was deafening.

Lindbergh finally arrived, even at his height scarcely visible among the loud stripes and garish flower arrangements around the podium. It fell to the president to convey the meaning of this event, different from the others. Coolidge praised Lindbergh’s daring, to be sure, but also the fact that Lindbergh was a man of service: “modest, congenial, a man of good moral habits and regular in his business transactions.” For the large crowd and the millions more listening by radio, Coolidge traced the arc of Lindbergh’s life, crediting his mother, “who dowered her son with her own modesty and charm.” Coolidge also took care to emphasize the construction of the plane, “that over 100 separate companies furnished materials, parts or service” in the making of the
Spirit of St. Louis
. The flight was also an international event, an indirect way for all the nations involved to get past the failures of the still stalled Geneva Conference, and the French intransigence over French debts to the United States. “France had the opportunity to show clearly her good will for America,” as Coolidge said. Lindbergh then joked for the crowd and told of the warmth with which the French people and government greeted him. Commerce and a monoplane had succeeded where a thousand diplomats were failing.

After that, everything felt easy; the Coolidges brought Lindbergh home again as if he were their own. On Sunday they even took him and his mother with them to church, fussing over them like family. When Lindbergh appeared ready to go in a white suit, Coolidge was surprised; a darker suit would be more appropriate; Lindbergh should change. Lindbergh “did not readily see the necessity for it,” Ike Hoover, the usher, noted. But Coolidge insisted, and Lindbergh acquiesced. The Coolidges, for this short time, felt as though they had two sons. They even asked Lindbergh to inscribe a picture for John.

The Congregational Church was undergoing renovation, so the service was in a metropolitan theater. Reverend Pierce sermonized on the topic of speech, and how a person’s character might be judged by his words. New parishioners flooded the theater to catch a glimpse of the aviator. Following church, the Coolidge and the Lindberghs found themselves alone again, on Dupont Circle. Coolidge invited only two people to join them and the Lindberghs for lunch: the young journalist Henry Cabot Lodge, the grandson of Henry Cabot Lodge, and his wife. Lodge, the junior man in the room, did not speak, but neither did Lindbergh or Coolidge, perhaps under the influence of the sermon. There was suddenly a duel of the silent. Coolidge finally asked Lindbergh how it was flying for Robertson as a contract mailman. The work was interesting, Lindbergh replied, but it got “tiresome, flying over the same mountains, the same rivers,” all the time. Coolidge told Lindbergh that he ought to think of Coolidge on the
Mayflower
. “Same
Mayflower
, same Potomac, same bank, same everything, except the changes of the season.” Days like this, however, made it the dreariness worth it. And later other little details of the Lindbergh visit came back to the Coolidges. Grace had queried Mrs. Lindbergh about whether she ever warned her son against danger. Mrs. Lindbergh told Grace that she did not, that to share her fear with him out of her own fear might scare him.