Coolidge, page 42
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.
Coolidge laid out his thoughts at the annual convention of the American Association of Newspaper Editors. Whatever La Follette or Couzens might say, Coolidge wanted to make clear that he did not represent the interest groups on which the editors spilled so much ink; rather he, Coolidge, represented everyone—the whole country. He represented the potential in business for everyone. If business was to thrive, its importance needed to be recognized. “The chief business of the American people is business,” he added. But there was always a counterweight to business—the integrity and idealism of the country that would not allow any interest group to prevail. “The chief ideal of the American people is idealism,” he said. In fact, on balance, Coolidge would go with the newspaperman over the man of finance: “I could not truly criticize the vast importance of the counting room, but my ultimate faith I would place in the high idealism of the editorial room of the American newspaper.” Public service was the business they were all in: newspaperman, businessman, or politician, Republican or Democrat.
If policy were to improve, not only words but also cabinet members, judges, and commissioners were also key. The Congress was in its lame-duck session until inauguration, and Coolidge knew some of his nominees would meet resistance if he put them forward in this period. But by the same token he could build comity if the Senate approved major appointments even in this early period. For an empty Supreme Court slot, Coolidge put forward Harlan Stone, who would move from the attorney general position. Coolidge had already prepped the Senate the month before with a dinner for Stone and senators on the Mayflower. Coolidge might have picked a more conservative man than Stone as his nominee, but Stone, his old Amherst peer, was likelier to win confirmation. The attorney general understood how the Senate worked. He had also helped quiet the Daugherty scandal, so the shift was also a reward. Stone boasted impeccable credentials; it would be hard for the Senate to turn down as unqualified a man who had served as the dean of Columbia University’s law school for more than ten years. The unpredictability of senators such as Borah had always plagued Coolidge. “There goes Senator Borah,” Coolidge once was heard to say. “And he and his horse are going in the same direction.” But this time, with Stone, he felt confident. The Senate, still in session, did something provocative upon learning of Stone’s nomination; the senators asked the nominee to testify at a hearing. There they interrogated him not on his qualifications for the job of justice so much as on whether he had in his capacity as attorney general been justified in investigating their colleague Burton Wheeler of Montana. The Washington Post’s editorialists were outraged at both the newfangled demand for testimony and the line of questioning: “A Senator, acting in the equivocal capacity of counsel for another Senator under judicial investigation, is virtually saying to the Attorney General: I have the power to prevent you from becoming a member of the Supreme Court.” But the senators duly confirmed Stone on February 5 in a 71–6 vote.
In mid-February, Coolidge gingerly, carefully sneaked a few more names in: William Jardine to succeed Henry Wallace at Agriculture and Frank Kellogg, the ambassador to Great Britain, for the job of secretary of state, since Hughes was departing. Jardine opposed price fixing, specifically the McNary-Haugen plan to drive up prices at home by government management of surplus product. Both Jardine and Kellogg were approved; Coolidge’s homework and strategizing were paying off. Congress generally seemed to be in a good mood. Alice Roosevelt Longworth gave birth to her baby, Paulina Longworth; the House cheered Nick Longworth, who was also the new speaker.
As the inauguration date approached, Coolidge, still apprehensive, intensified his preparations. Dawes was in charge of soothing the Senate, and he certainly seemed to be thinking about the inauguration day. Indeed, the vice president–elect was complaining that the eighteen tickets allotted him for the inauguration would not suffice. In mid-February, Coolidge wrote to Dawes, who was still in Chicago, to ask him to be sure to stop by the White House so that they could review the details of the all-important day. “Whatever is decided on will suit me all right,” Dawes reassured him on February 14. The vice president–elect assured Coolidge that his calendar was clear for the coming work; he had no special dates except one far ahead, to honor the midnight ride of Paul Revere and his ancestor, William Dawes, at the Old North Church tower on April 18.
Coolidge, mollified, decided to overlook Dawes’s decision to stay out of cabinet meetings. Dawes’s cooperation in presenting a modest, unified appearance at the inauguration mattered more. Coolidge was highly conscious of the dignity of the event, and where it might fit in history and, in the short term, fit in with his own plans for legislation that spring. In order to set an example of inaugural economy, the president ordered that much of the $60,000 sent in by private citizens be sent back. That winter, Coolidge sat in Wilson’s pew at the Central Presbyterian Church to honor Wilson, who had been an elder in the church; the next day Coolidge and Mrs. Wilson dedicated a bronze memorial stone and new cornerstone at the church in Wilson’s name. Starling, his Secret Service man, was beginning to see a resemblance between Wilson and Coolidge that others missed: “For both of them, life was largely a mental experience.” But, Starling added, whereas in Wilson “this was obvious, in Coolidge it was not.” Wilson looked like a professor and talked like a professor; Coolidge often brought his talk down to the commonplace as they walked, say, past a store: “If you ever get married, don’t let your wife buy anything in there. My wife goes in there and it costs me a lot of money.” But in Coolidge the simple talk was guile; Coolidge was making complex decisions in his head, just as Wilson had.
A second resemblance to other presidents troubled Starling: Coolidge was running down his health, as Wilson and Harding had. The obsessed chief executive needed a sport. Starling thought the president, who had never fished, might find angling relaxing; hunting also seemed possible. Dwight Morrow and Andrew Mellon had both tried a novel form of exercise: the electric horse. Like a merry-go-round steed, it moved up and down, with buttons to change the pace, supplying exercise when true riding was not possible. Now, with Starling’s encouragement, Morrow and other friends sent Coolidge a steed of his own, 475 pounds and made of mahogany. The horse, called Thunderbolt, arrived and was moved into the presidential dressing room without the president’s knowledge. Coolidge himself discovered the horse when he entered the dressing room and found Starling trotting along. The president was curious about the horse but not eager for the news of its existence to get out in that delicate time. To Coolidge’s chagrin, someone, mostly likely the electricians from the Navy Yard, leaked the news of Thunderbolt’s arrival. This was exactly the kind of story that hurt presidential dignity. “Coolidge Rides an Electric Hobby-Horse,” read The New York Times’ headline.
March neared. Coolidge’s father agreed to come after Coolidge carefully ensured that Governor Billings of Vermont was traveling: “The main thing I want is that you should do what you like best.” The Coolidges’ son John too would come down for a single day from Amherst. Mrs. Goodhue was also coming and would stay for a longer period. On March 3, a day before the inauguration, Coolidge met with Dawes at 9:30 A.M. to confirm final details. First Dawes was to set the stage with a speech to the Senate, as Coolidge himself had done. Coolidge would then give the great inaugural address, the first to be carried nationally by radio. The president planned a measured speech, like Harding’s but milder and more spiritual—fitting given the achievements of budget cutting that were behind them and his desire for conciliation with Congress. More economy, Coolidge wrote, was necessary. Coolidge decided to update Harding’s “no new experiments” with a line of caution: “If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.”
The Coolidges had never been as comfortable as other first families in their role, but they were warming up to it. On the train down to the inauguration, John encountered John Trumbull, the new governor of Connecticut, and rode with the Trumbulls. Trumbull was an energetic, friendly man, with his own manufacturing company. Trumbull Electric Manufacturing made switches, appliances, and other electrical supplies, demand for all of which was growing. The Trumbulls’ daughter, Florence, attended Mount Holyoke. In his high hat, with Grace by his side, Coolidge rode in an open car to the inauguration. Grace had worn white in summer; now she set the tone with gray, “a shade deeper and warmer than pearl,” as the press described it. It became known as “Coolidge gray.” The important day was proceeding well.
Until Dawes wrecked it. Instead of rising to give the friendly pro forma address to the Senate which he had led Coolidge to expect, Dawes could not resist the opportunity to deliver a 1,300-word rant against the Senate, three times as long as the 434 words Coolidge had delivered four years before. Senators were selfish, he suggested, in their decision to sustain the practice of the filibuster. Senate rules, written by senators, placed “power in the hands of individuals to an extent, at times, subversive of the fundamental principles of free representative government.” Because the Senate had not changed its ways, “the rights of the Nation and of the American people have been overlooked.”
A storm of commentary and anger welled back from the senators. “Dawes showed as little knowledge of the Senate’s rules as he did good taste,” pronounced Democratic Minority Leader Joseph T. Robinson. “It was exactly what should not have been said,” concluded Thaddeus Caraway, a senator from Arkansas. Some senators put their analysis simply and analytically: “There are some features of the rules, no doubt, that should be changed but he defeated any change by the brutal and clownish way in which he went about it.” Senator Ashurst remarked that “it was the most acrobatic, gymnastic speech I have ever heard in the Senate.” “I have an opinion of the spectacle but do not care to express it,” said Senator Norris. The effect was to render the presidential address subordinate; Dawes had stolen the show.
