Coolidge (83 page)

241   I have heard from: Douglas Wilson,
Passages of Time: Narratives in the History of Amherst College
(Amherst, Mass: Amherst College Press, 2007), 148.

241   “He does not understand”: Quoted in Douglas C. Wilson, “The Story in the Meiklejohn Files II: Finals Showdown,” ibid.,122.

241   Meiklejohn was establishing: The details of the classes were laid out a year later in “Crisis at Amherst,”
Springfield Republican,
June 14, 1923.

241   the strike was taking: “Strikes Halt Trend of Business Upward,”
The New York Times
, July 17, 1922.

241   On September 1: “Daugherty Obtains Order,”
The New York Times
, September 2, 1922.

241   “pet”: “Judge Is Daugherty ‘Pet,’ Says Gompers,”
The New York Times,
September 12, 1922.

242   But Harding vetoed: A good guide to all presidential vetoes can be found in “Summary of Bills Vetoed, 1789–Present,” www.senate.gov/reference/Legislation/Vetoes/vetoCounts.htm.

242   Lodge bitterly tore: Karl Schriftgiesser,
The Gentleman from Massachusetts: Henry Cabot Lodge
(Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little, Brown and Company, 1944), 357.

242   “I wish they would”: Ibid., 359.

243   Grace, who had become: “Dance Giving Is Popular in Society in Washington,”
The Oregonian
, December 17, 1922.

243   As Harding thought over: Mrs. Harding’s illness is described at length in Carl Sferrazza Anthony,
Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America’s Most Scandalous President
(New York: William Morrow, 1998).

243   “The commissioner of pensions”: Harding’s veto statement, which included the mention of the billions, is reprinted in “Harding Veto Halts Big Pension Outlay Under Bursum Bill,”
The New York Times
,
January 4, 1923.

244   “The simple fact”: James E. Watson,
As I Knew Them: Memoirs of James E. Watson, Former United States Senator from Indiana
(Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1936), 226.

245   “From the present viewpoint”: Quoted in New England Historical Society’s spring conference talk by Cynthia D. Bittinger, the author of
Grace Coolidge: Sudden Star
.

246   “It was William Harding”: This quotation and analysis of the Federal Reserve under Harding are in “Men in Wall Street’s Eye: Introducing Mr. Daniel Richard Crissinger,”
Barron’s
, February 5, 1923.

246   Daniel Crissinger: In 1923, W. P. G. Harding assumed the post of president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Crissinger was appointed and confirmed over the winter of 1922–1923. The editors of
Barron’s
tried to imagine what Harding would say if he were explaining the Crissinger appointment to the top job at the Federal Reserve, concluding, “The financiers want W.P.G. Harding renamed, while the agricultural bloc in the Senate promise no end of trouble for me in the event I reappoint him.” “Men in Wall Street’s Eye: Introducing Mr. Daniel Richard Crissinger,”
Barron’s
, February 5, 1923.

246   Mellon was not pleased: David Cannadine,
Mellon: An American Life
(New York: Knopf, 2006), 282.

247   “Not in rewards”: “Mrs. Calvin Coolidge,”
Rockford Morning Star
, July 29, 1923.

247   “by thinking, they meant”: This quotation comes from Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, August 12, 1924, in
The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer
, ed. Louis Untermeyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 170.

248   The event took place: Harold Nicolson,
Dwight Morrow
(London: Constable & Co., 1935), 267.

248   Meiklejohn indeed did not go quietly: “Meiklejohn Resigns Amherst Headship,”
The New York Times
, June 20, 1923. The trustees offered Meiklejohn a chair after a year of leave.

248   Three out of twenty-nine: Details of the fight are laid out in Nicolson,
Dwight
Morrow
.

249   Coolidge counseled postponement: “It is interesting to note that in the multiplicity of his vacation engagements to deliver addresses, he has found time to attend a meeting of the People’s Institute, to deliver an address at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of a little village savings bank, to be interviewed as to the advisability of the city’s erecting a new city hall—Mr. Coolidge advised waiting. . . .” “Personalities,”
Barron’s
, May 28, 1923.

250   The reporters visited: “Coolidge Sure of Harding’s Recovery,”
Springfield Daily Republican
, August 1, 1923.

251   “Harding Gains”: “Harding Gains,”
The New York Times
, August 2, 1923.

Chapter 10: The Budget

254   The meetings took place: The dates and times of Coolidge’s meetings with General Lord and other officials are in his appointment books, Calvin Coolidge Papers, series 4, box 4, 289–291, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

254   “necessary”: “Necessary” appears beside General Lord’s name in the presidential appointment book of August 13, 1923. Calvin Coolidge Papers, series 4, box 4:, 289–91, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. According to that book, Coolidge’s first four White House meetings with Lord took place on August 13 (“necessary”) and September 14, 21, and 28.

255   “I am going to try”: Calvin Coolidge to Frank Stearns, quoted in Robert Ferrell,
The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 24.

255   “practical affairs of his day”: Carl Schurz,
Abraham Lincoln: An Essay, with an Introduction by Calvin Coolidge
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920), iv.

256   “I don’t know what I would do without her”: Calvin Coolidge to John C. Coolidge, June 6, 1921, in
Your Son, Calvin Coolidge: A Selection of Letters from Calvin Coolidge to His Father
, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (Montpelier, Vt.: Vermont Historical Society, 1968), 181.

256   “close the ranks”: Quoted in Claude Fuess,
Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1940), 321.

256   Coolidge received Samuel Gompers: Samuel Gompers, memorandum, August 6, 1923, in
The Samuel Gompers Papers
, ed. Peter J. Albert and Grace Palladino, vol. 12,
The Last Years, 1922–1924
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 296–299.

256   “a good talk”: S. Parker Gilbert to Andrew Mellon, August 4, 1923, box 27, cables 1923, Central Files of the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury, National Archives and Record Administration II, College Park, Md.

257   “She is very nice”: Quoted in Ishbel Ross,
Grace Coolidge and Her Era: The Story of a President’s Wife
(Plymouth, Vt.: Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, 1988), 84.

258   “Forget it”: Mellon told Senator George W. Pepper that Coolidge said this. George W. Pepper,
In the Senate
(New York: Ayer, 1974), 93.

258   “I would like”: Quoted in Cynthia D. Bittinger,
Grace Coolidge: Sudden Star
, Presidential Wives Series (New York: Nova History Publications, 2005), 58.

258   “Good Morning, Colonel Starling”: Quoted in Edmund W. Starling with Thomas Sugrue,
Starling of the White House: The Story of the Man Whose Secret Service Detail Guarded Five Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), 204.

258   “I want you yourself”: Quoted in William Allen White,
A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge
(New York: Macmillan Company, 1938), 247.

259   “We are going”: President Calvin Coolidge’s Unpublished Press Conferences, August 21, 1923, vol. 1, p. 00002, Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum, Forbes Library, Northampton, Mass.

259   In the morning light: Richard C. Garvey, “The Night the President Met the Burglar,”
Los Angeles Times
, August 6, 1983. Later the burglar did pay back Coolidge’s $32 loan.

259   “Just now it occurred”: Quoted in Bittinger,
Grace Coolidge
, 54.

260   The Coolidges took: Elizabeth Jaffray,
Secrets of the White House
(New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1927), 100–101.

260   Coolidge walked around quietly: Starling,
Starling of the White House
, 207.

261   Coolidge, more relaxed: George Wharton Pepper,
Philadelphia Lawyer: An Autobiography
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1944), 196.

261   You sit right here: The remarkable Fox News motion picture footage of Coolidge’s first cabinet meeting, including Coolidge’s gesture to Mellon, is in the National Archives, 88843. National Archives and Records Administration—ARC Identifier 88843/Local Identifier AAS-AAS–112.

262   on September 15: “Reductions of $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 Are Agreed To; Cut in Veterans Bureau,”
The New York Times
, September 16, 1923.

263   Allen Treadway: “Seeks Legislation on Hard Coal Costs: Massachusetts Representative Asks Coolidge to Call Session,”
The New York Times
, September 21, 1923.

263   “get rid of Daugherty”: Claudius O. Johnson,
Borah of Idaho
(New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1936), 288.

263   “if he makes good”: “Borah Sees Coolidge as Logical Nominee,”
The New York Times
, August 12, 1923.

263   Middlebury College: “Middlebury Sends Tree to Coolidge,”
The New York Times
, December 13, 1923.

263   with electric lights: The National Park Service has documented the history of White House trees, from this tree at the Ellipse to its successor at Sherman Square, at www.nps.gov/whho/historyculture/history-of-the-national-christmas-trees.htm.

265   “what the traffic will bear”: Andrew Mellon,
Taxation: The People’s Business
, (New York: Macmillan, 1924), 16.

266   “fruitfulness”: Coolidge’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1923, University of California/Santa Barbara Presidential Project.

266   Bursum, the great: “Lawmakers Express Views on Tax Cuts,”
The New York Times
, November 17, 1923.

267   the Italian ambassador: These appointments, along with many others with foreign dignitaries, are listed in the president’s appointment book.

267   David Lloyd George: “Coolidge Very Glad Lloyd George Came,”
The New York Times
, October 28, 1923.

268   Ashurst noted: Henry Fountain Ashurst,
A Many-Colored Toga
, ed. George F. Sparks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962), 205.

270   “The president of the United States”: Jaffray,
Secrets of the White House
, 98.

270   Mrs. Coolidge sent: Ibid., 100.

271   “It really was”: James E. Watson,
As I Knew Them: Memoirs of James E. Watson, Former United States Senator from Indiana
(Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1936), 236.

271   A packed House of Representatives: “House Applauds Message,”
The New York Times
, December 7, 1923.

272   Coolidge had taken the time to write out: “Coolidge’s Views on Taxation in His Own Handwriting,”
The Springfield Republican
, December 7, 1923.

272   League of Nations—topic closed: The full text of the president’s remarkable First Annual Message of December 6, 1923, is at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29564.

275   “In no sense”: Quoted in Bittinger,
Grace Coolidge
, 110.

276   “I have to furnish”: Starling,
Starling of the White House
, 212.

276   “I told ’em to scrap it”: Edward G. Lowry,
Washington Close-ups: Intimate Views of Some Public Figures
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), 159.

277   “abnormally high”: Mellon,
Taxation: The People’s Business
, 178.

278   “a new kind of meeting”:
Addresses of the President of the United States and the Director of the Bureau of the Budget at the Sixth Regular Meeting of the Business Organization of the Government at Memorial Continental Hall, January 21, 1924
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1924), 1.

278   “We have you beaten”: “Longworth Defies Backers of Bonus to Delay Tax Vote: ‘We Have You Beaten’ He Tells Soldiers Who Demand Priority; GOP Leaders Sure of Program as Set,”
The Washington Post
, January 9, 1924.

279   Joseph Robinson: “Democrats Draft Own Plan to Slash Small Taxes More,”
The New York Times
. January 6, 1924.

279   but Woodrow Wilson: “Robinson for Tax Cut: Says Father of Reduction Is Not Mellon, but Wilson,”
The New York Times
, January 6, 1924.

280   “No, don’t do that”: Merlo J. Pusey,
Charles Evans Hughes
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 2: 565.

280   “He greatly delayed”: Herbert Hoover,
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920–1933
(New York: Macmillan, 1952), 54.

283   “Well, Doctor,” he said: Milton F. Heller,
The Presidents’ Doctor: An Insider’s View of Three First Families
(New York: Vantage Press, 2000), 87.

283   “She was his queen”: “She was his queen and he wanted to give her everything and do anything for her,” Lillian Rogers Parks,
My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House
(New York: Fleet Publishing Corp., 1961), 183.

283   Coolidge loved the cap: The story is told by Wilson Brown, a navy aide, in
Meet Calvin Coolidge: The Man Behind the Myth
,
ed. Edward Connery Lathem (Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Greene Press, 1960), 107.

283   “Aye, aye, sir.”: Typescript of Joel T. Boone’s unpublished memoir, XXI–101, Container 46, Joel T. Boone Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

284   “You tell ol’ man Davis”: Starling,
Starling of the White House
, 209.