Calvin Coolidge Frontpage

American President Frontpage

Although the public liked and admired Calvin Coolidge during his tenure, the Great Depression that began in 1929, less than a year after he left office, seriously eroded his reputation and changed public opinion about his policies. Many linked the nation's economic collapse to Coolidge's poor policy decisions. His refusal to aid the depressed agricultural sector seems shortsighted, as nearly five thousand rural banks in the Midwest and South shut their doors in bankruptcy while many thousands of farmers lost their lands. His policies that favored tax cuts for the rich seriously contributed to an unfair distribution of wealth and the overproduction of goods. By 1929, the nation had over five hundred families with incomes over $1 million, and the top fifth of the population controlled nearly 60 percent of the nation's wealth. On the other hand, 70 percent of American families earned less than $2,500 a year, placing them at or near the poverty line for a family of four. Eighty percent, moreover, had no savings. Most of them were deeply in debt for having purchased consumer goods on easy installment credit terms.

Moreover, Coolidge's support for giant corporations meant that two hundred major corporations controlled more than 50 percent of the nation's wealth. Few of them were willing to lower prices because little competition existed. And with the European market generally saturated and dependent upon American loans, little room existed for shifting surplus production overseas. To make matters worse, many of the very rich and the upper-middle class had invested their surplus, untaxed wealth in speculative stocks rather than into savings or productive enterprises.

In the conservative 1980s, Coolidge regained some of his stature. President Ronald Reagan returned his portrait to the Oval Office. Reagan also praised Coolidge's political style and complacent leadership for producing four years of prosperity, peace, and balanced budgets. Nevertheless, scholarly opinion looks upon the Coolidge presidency with skepticism, ranking him among the lowest of American chief executives in terms of his administration's positive impact and legacy.