A quiet and somber man whose sour expression masked a dry wit, Calvin Coolidge was known as "Silent Cal." After learning of his ascendancy to President on the death of Warren Harding in 1923, Coolidge was sworn in by his father, a justice of the peace, and promptly went back to bed.

Calvin Coolidge was born on Independence Day, 1872, and raised in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. His father was a pillar of the community, holding a variety of local offices from tax collector to constable. From him, Coolidge inherited his taciturn nature, his frugality, and his commitment to public service. The early death of his mother and sister also contributed to his somber public image.


Climbing the Political Ladder

While practicing law in Northhampton, Massachusetts, Coolidge began to climb the ladder of state politics from a spot on the City Council in 1900, to chairman of the Northhampton Republican Committee in 1904, to the state legislature in 1907. His term as governor of Massachusetts placed him in the national arena just in time to benefit from the return to power of the Republicans at the end of World War I. As governor, he called in the state guard to break a strike by city police in Boston, claiming that "there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime." This bold action, which contrasted with Coolidge's nonconfrontational reputation, won him public acclaim and swept him onto the Republican ticket as vice presidential nominee under Warren Harding. As vice president, Coolidge kept a low profile, sitting silently during cabinet meetings and seldom speaking in his constitutional position as presiding officer of the Senate.

After Harding's death in 1923, Coolidge became President, serving a year before deciding to run for reelection in 1924. Coolidge had emerged unscathed from the scandals that plagued the Harding administration, earning a reputation for being honest, direct, and hardworking. The Democrats were split in 1924, finally settling on a compromise candidate, John Davis of West Virginia, whom Coolidge beat with the slogan "Keep Cool With Coolidge."


A Visible Yet Passive Presidency

In contrast to his disdain for small talk, Coolidge was a highly visible leader, holding press conferences, speaking on the radio, and posing for portraits dressed in farmer overalls, cowboy hats and chaps, and full Indian headdresses. Philosophically, he believed that human action was of little consequence because Providence had its own plan, a conviction that made for a passive style of leadership. His motto was most often "let well enough alone."

In domestic affairs, he went along with the Immigration Act of 1924, which curbed the number of eastern and southern Europeans allowed into America and excluded the Japanese altogether. He also supported the Revenue Acts of 1924 and 1926, initiated by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, the wealthy Pittsburgh banker who favored tax cuts for the rich. These acts freed up private funds that fueled the speculation behind the stock market crash of 1929. To make matters worse, Coolidge fought farm relief legislation that might have shored up the depressed farm economy.

Like Harding, Coolidge allowed his cabinet a free hand in foreign affairs, delegating authority to Treasury Secretary Mellon, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover (all holdovers from Harding's cabinet). He believed that America should seek out foreign markets and refrain from entangling alliances and participation in the League of Nations. He supported the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as a means of settling international differences, but the pact had no means of enforcement and was little more than an empty gesture. In Latin America, Coolidge's administration supported economic imperialism. In 1928 Latin American countries were eager to denounce U.S. business practices, and Secretary Hughes was barely able to dissuade them from passing a strong anti-U.S. resolution.

Coolidge never explained why he chose not to run for a second term, but those closest to him suggested it was out of concern for his health. Others speculate that he wanted out before the coming economic crash, which he had predicted to his wife. The first lady, Grace Coolidge, was as sunny and sociable as her husband was taciturn and sardonic. The press photographed her at every opportunity and she once joked that she was the "national hugger." Having been trained as an instructor for the deaf, Grace Coolidge brought national attention to the plight of the nation's hearing-impaired and became a close personal friend of Helen Keller.

Although the public had admired Coolidge during his time in office, the Great Depression turned public opinion against him. Many linked the nation's economic collapse to Coolidge's poor policy decisions. He refused to aid the depressed agricultural sector while thousands of rural banks in the Midwest and South were shutting their doors and farmers were losing their land. His tax cuts for the rich caused the maldistribution of wealth and overproduction of goods, which destabilized the economy while putting two hundred corporations in control of more than 50 percent of the nation's wealth. Although he regained some of his stature in the conservative 1980s, most historians look upon the Coolidge presidency with skepticism, ranking him among the lowest of American chief executives in terms of positive impact and legacy, however high he might stand in personal integrity.



He was born John Calvin Coolidge on Independence Day, July 4, 1872, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. He grew up helping his storekeeper father tend accounts, selling apples, and doing other chores around the store and at home on the family farm. As a boy, Coolidge had little ambition in life beyond hoping to follow his father as a good, honest small-town merchant.

A fair to average student in the Plymouth elementary school, he eventually managed to obtain entry to the prestigious Amherst College in nearby Amherst, Massachusetts, where he advanced from a mediocre student to a young man of promise. He graduated with honors and a 79 percent cumulative grade point average in 1895 -- racking up good to excellent grades in his last two years. Only practicing his wit on friends and foes and the campus Republican Club attracted Coolidge's attention until his senior year when he joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. For the rest of his life, Coolidge was a "fraternity man" -- loyal and committed to his "chums." His senior essay, entitled "The Principles Fought for in the American Revolution," took first prize (much to his astonishment) in a national contest sponsored by the Sons of the American Revolution.

After college, he read law in a Northampton, Massachusetts law firm, passing the bar in the summer of 1897. He then opened a law office in Northampton and began participating in local Republican politics. Calvin's family had lived in Plymouth Notch for five generations, and everyone was surprised when he moved one hundred miles away to Northhampton.


Political Legacy and Involvement

Both Coolidge's mother, Victoria Josephine Moor Coolidge, a mystical and poetic woman, and younger sister, Abigail Gratia Coolidge, died while he was a teenager. Both of these tragedies caused him great sadness and contributed to his taciturn public image. His father, John Calvin Coolidge Sr., then married a local schoolteacher in 1891 -- a woman who grew very close to Calvin over the years. The senior Coolidge, a man of stern appearance and a pillar of the community, served six years in the Vermont House of Representatives, a term in the Vermont Senate, and in a variety of local offices from tax collector to peace officer. Known in the county and state as a prosperous but thrifty farmer and storekeeper, it is said that the elder Calvin's quiet nature and commitment to public service influenced younger Calvin greatly. So too did his prudence with money.

Beginning around 1900, Coolidge's work in the local Republican Club in Northhampton won him a spot on the City Council, appointment as city solicitor in 1900, election as county clerk in 1903, and the chairmanship of the local Republican party organization in 1904. He ran for and lost a bid for a seat on the Northampton School Board in 1905 -- the only loss he ever experienced at the polls. Two years later, he was elected to the state legislature. In 1910, the citizens of Northampton selected him as their mayor, and then he won a statewide race for the Massachusetts Senate in 1912 -- serving as senate president in 1914. Next, moving up the ladder of state politics, Coolidge became the lieutenant governor of the state, serving from 1916 to 1918.


Governor Coolidge

His narrow victory for Massachusetts Governor over Democrat Richard H. Long placed Coolidge in the national arena just in time to benefit from the Republican ascendancy, or return to national power, at the end of World War I. As governor, he won national attention when he called out the state's national guard to break a strike by Boston city police, exclaiming to the American Federation of Labor union leader Samuel Gompers, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime." His blunt words and bold action contrasted with his fairly progressive agenda and overall avoidance of confrontation when possible. As governor, he supported a cost of living pay for public employees, limited the workweek for women and children to forty-eight hours, placed limits on outdoor advertising, and set up a state budgetary process -- all typical progressive measures.

While advancing in local politics, Calvin, aged thirty-three, had married Grace Anna Goodhue, aged twenty-six, on October 4, 1905. The two were wed at her parent's home in Burlington, Vermont. After graduating from the University of Vermont, she attended the Clarke Institute for the Deaf in Northampton, obtaining certification as an instructor for hearing-impaired students. Calvin first caught her eye one morning when she saw him through the open window of his boardinghouse in Northampton, standing in his underwear and wearing a hat while shaving. She thought that he looked ridiculous, laughed loud enough for him to notice her, and then turned away. He later said that he was wearing the hat to keep his uncombed hair out of his eyes while shaving. His marriage proposal in the summer of 1905 came in the form of a precise ultimatum: "I am going to be married to you." Despite her mother's objections, Grace loved the silent but blunt young lawyer and immediately consented.


Ascending to the White House

Calvin came to Chicago as his state's favorite-son candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920, but he received only thirty-four votes on the first ballot at the convention. In the backroom deal that gave Warren G. Harding the presidential nod of party leaders, Coolidge was not among the names discussed for the second spot, and party leaders hoped to nominate Senator Irving Lenroot of Wisconsin. When Coolidge's name was entered into nomination, however, a stampede of support by rebellious delegates swept him onto the ticket. In the ensuing campaign, neither Harding nor Coolidge actively traveled the nation, in contrast to the Democratic Party candidate, James M. Cox, who traveled 22,000 miles while speaking to 2 million people. The election, a referendum on the Wilson administration, the Treaty of Versailles, and the League of Nations, gave the Republicans 61 percent of the vote. As vice president, Coolidge kept a low profile. He sat silently during cabinet meetings and seldom spoke in his role as president of the Senate.

Coolidge's father woke his vacationing son and daughter-in-law at the family home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, on August 2, 1923, to tell them of Harding's death from a stroke. With no telephone in the house, Coolidge walked across town to a local store to phone Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, who urged Coolidge to take the oath of office immediately. He took a drink at the store, then walked back to his family home. There his father, a justice of the peace, administered the oath, and then Calvin Coolidge went back to bed as the thirtieth President of the United States.



The Campaign and Election of 1924

After a year in the office he inherited from Harding, the tall and lean man from Vermont was ready to assume the presidency in his own right. The Republican delegates at the convention in Cleveland saw little reason to change horses. Calvin Coolidge had emerged unharmed from the charges of corruption in the Teapot Dome Scandal that had tarnished Harding's name and sent several of his lieutenants to jail.

"Silent Cal," as Coolidge was becoming known because of his disdain for making small talk at social affairs, was honest, nonmanipulative, direct, and hardworking. The Republicans gave him the nomination on the first ballot, with only a handful voting for his chief rivals, Robert M. LaFollette and Hiram Johnson, progressive senators from Wisconsin and California, respectively. Coolidge hoped to balance the ticket with Senator William E. Borah as his running mate from Ohio. Borah was midwestern, a firm isolationist, and a strong progressive on the domestic front. When Borah declined the offer, the party turned to Charles G. Dawes of Illinois -- director of the Bureau of the Budget under Harding, the U.S. purchasing agent for American forces during World War I, and the author of the Dawes Plan. Their Republican platform emphasized tax reduction, collection of foreign debts, the protective tariff, nonparticipation in the League of Nations, opposition to farm subsidies for crop prices, the eight-hour workday, a ban on child labor, and a federal antilynching law.

In New York, the Democrats engaged in a suicidal struggle for control of the party, pitting the forces of former Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo of California -- President Wilson's son-in-law -- against Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York. McAdoo represented the interests of the West, the rural South, and "Drys"-meaning those who supported the prohibition of alcohol. He also was favored by the Ku Klux Klan, which had become a national organization following the screening of the racist but popular film Birth of A Nation. The film glorified the Klan's role during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. The still politically powerful but aging William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, supported McAdoo and almost single-handedly defeated a move to put an anti-Klan plank in the Democratic platform with his convention-delivered speech. On the other side, Tammany Hall (the New York political machine), representatives from eastern cities, and the "Wets" -- those opposed to prohibition -- cheered with great enthusiasm when the young Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was attempting a political comeback after being stricken with polio, electrified the convention in a lively nomination speech depicting Smith as the "Happy Warrior."

For the next one hundred ballots, the longest deadlock at any major party convention in U.S. history, neither McAdoo nor Smith could gain the necessary two-thirds majority. Finally, on the one-hundred-and-first ballot, the convention nominated a compromise candidate, Wall Street lawyer John W. Davis of West Virginia. Davis had served as solicitor general and as ambassador to Great Britain under twenty-eighth President Woodrow Wilson. In a nod to Bryan, the Democrats selected his brother, Governor Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska, for their vice presidential candidate. The Democratic platform favored a reduction in the tariff, a graduated income tax, farm relief with easier credit and farm subsidies for crop prices, independence for the Philippines, a national referendum on the League of Nations, strict enforcement of antitrust laws, and public works projects to reduce unemployment.

The Progressive Party, which represented independents unhappy with both major parties, met in Cleveland to nominate Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin and Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana to head their third-party ticket. In the best traditions of Wilsonian reformism, the Progressive platform read like a laundry list of reform measures promoted by various liberal organizations since the Civil War. It included legislation using the powers of the federal government to crush privately owned industrial monopolies, public ownership of water resources and the national railroads, a substantial increase in the inheritance tax, an excess-profits tax, debt relief for farmers and government subsidies to support crop prices, abolition of court-ordered or government-decreed (labor injunctions) bans on strikes, election of all federal judges, laws and constitutional amendments ending child labor and supporting the equality of the sexes at work and in wages, multinational agreements to outlaw war, disarmament, and a federally constructed deep waterway channel from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.

In the election campaign, the Republicans urged the nation to "Keep Cool With Coolidge," a popular slogan that reflected the public's sense of optimism. President Coolidge delivered only one major speech in the race, while Davis waged an aggressive campaign attacking the Republicans as the party of corruption. Davis hurt his chances with his rural constituency, however, when he denounced the Ku Klux Klan. LaFollette, understanding that he had little chance for victory, campaigned moderately. In the end, Coolidge won 54 percent of the vote compared to 28.8 percent for Davis and a surprising 16.6 percent for LaFollette. LaFollette's strong showing for a third-party candidate was helped by the endorsement of the Socialist Party and the American Federation of Labor, but his support was so widely scattered that he won only the thirteen electoral college votes of his home state, Wisconsin. Davis won the electoral votes of twelve states (136 votes), all within the so-called "Solid South." Coolidge, on the other hand, compiled 382 electoral votes in thirty-five states.



More than anything else, Calvin Coolidge brought a unique style to the White House. Although known for his public discomfort with chitchat and for his philosophical dislike of excessive leadership, Coolidge was a highly visible leader. For example, during his sixty-seven months as President, he held 520 press conferences, or an average of nearly eight each month. He spoke on the radio at least monthly to national audiences. Coolidge enjoyed having himself photographed in full Indian headdress, cowboy chaps and hat, farmer overalls, and other outlandish dress. He liked to make people laugh, and he used his dry, lean wit to punctuate his silence with pithy slogans. In formal addresses, he changed tactics -- delivering carefully crafted sermons and staging them as serious and dignified events.


A Providential Presidency

His daily routine consisted of hard work and long afternoon naps. Coolidge had a somber resignation towards life that is best summarized as a go-along-and-avoid-trouble type of management style. He believed that he was in the "clutch of forces" far greater than himself despite being "the most powerful man in the world." He believed that human action was of little consequence in the long run because Providence had its own plan for everyone. This was a kind of passive-negative belief in predestination (that all events have been willed by God), a reflection of his New England Congregationalist religious roots. "Let well enough alone," was his motto for action. This sense of inevitability found him willing to delegate authority, to step back from confrontation, and to avoid taking much advice. He once complained of his secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover -- the "wonder boy" who would succeed him as President: "That man has offered me unsolicited advice every day for six years, all of it bad." Hoover wanted the government to be active and progressive but Coolidge's approach was to wait for situations to resolve themselves and only act when absolutely necessary.

In line with his "let's avoid trouble" style of presidential leadership, Coolidge kept all of Harding's cabinet, including scandal-plagued Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty -- although Coolidge finally fired him when Daugherty refused to open Justice Department files to congressional investigators. On the legislative front, Coolidge went along with the Immigration Act of 1924, which reduced the number of eastern and southern Europeans allowed into America and excluded the Japanese altogether. He also supported the Revenue Acts of 1924 and 1926, initiated by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, the wealthy Pittsburgh banker who favored tax cuts for the rich. These acts sharply reduced income and inheritance taxes, as well as the gift and excise taxes imposed during World War I. Historians critical of Coolidge contend that these laws freed up private funds that fueled the wild speculation that led to the stock market crash of 1929.

On two issues, Coolidge's sense of strict economy found him dead-set against two important Republican constituencies: (1) the Veterans Bonus Act of 1924, which awarded World War I veterans paid-up insurance policies that were redeemable in twenty years, and (2) various farm relief laws that were passed by Congress in 1927 and 1928. The Bonus bill was passed over the President's veto, but he managed to kill farm relief. Again, historians critical of Coolidge suggest that the farm relief bills, which would have established a government corporation to buy surplus crops at artificially set prices (to be held or sold abroad when market prices rose), would have shored up the depressed farm economy and possibly prevented the Great Depression that engulfed the nation in the 1930s.



Not very interested in world affairs, Calvin Coolidge looked to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes to manage international relations, all holdovers from the Harding cabinet. He subscribed to the idea that America should seek out world markets, collect its World War I loans, and refrain from entangling alliances and participation in the League of Nations.

In 1928, Coolidge supported the Kellogg-Briand Pact an agreement that was initiated by France and signed by all but five nations in the world. Named for the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand and American Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg (who had replaced Hughes in 1925), the pact renounced war as a means of settling international differences. This proclamation carried with it no means of enforcement and was little more than a novel statement of little consequence. Indeed, although the Coolidge administration called for a new disarmament conference to expand the limits on naval ships agreed to in the Washington Conference of 1922, no agreement had been reached by 1928 on the maximum size of cruisers and battleships.

During Coolidge's term in office, America continued to maintain a strong presence and assert influence in Latin America. Direct investments, which rose from $1.26 billion in 1920 to $3.52 billion in 1928, inextricably tied the economies of those countries to America. For example, the United Fruit and Standard Fruit companies controlled most of the revenue of Honduras, and U.S. firms dominated Venezuelan oil production. Control of the Panama Canal, and a policy of using of troops, when necessary, to safeguard U.S. interests also worked to give America the upper hand in the region. In a direct show of influence, U.S. troops trained and maintained a pro-American National Guard in the Dominican Republic and occupied Nicaragua and Haiti with a peacekeeping force of U.S. soldiers throughout the decade. Americans also controlled Cuban politics and the Cuban economy, and the U.S. nearly came to blows with Mexico over the ownership of Mexican oil fields by American companies.

So embittered were most Latin American countries over America's imperialistic policies that the republics of the Western Hemisphere assembled for their triennial conference in Havana in 1928 eager to denounce and confront the United States. Coolidge personally traveled to Havana to address the conference, hoping to lessen the rage. It took all the eloquence of former Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, now a justice of the United States, to persuade the gathered delegates from passing a strong anti-United States resolution. Even so, the bitterness toward American policy would not be assuaged until Franklin Roosevelt announced a "Good Neighbor Policy" of nonintervention in 1933



To his personal amusement and the surprise of the nation, Coolidge announced his decision not to seek reelection in a sharp and typically playful statement: "I do not choose to run for President in 1928." He never explained why. Those closest to him suggested that he turned down almost certain reelection out of concern for his health. Others have speculated that he was perceptive enough to want to get out of the White House before the coming economic crash, which he had predicted to his wife.

In his retirement, Coolidge returned to Northhampton, Massachusetts, where he spent the next four years writing his autobiography and articles for national magazines. His nationally syndicated column for the McClure Newspaper chain, Thinking Things over with Calvin Coolidge, ran for a year in 1931. On January 5, 1933, Coolidge collapsed in his bedroom just after lunch-where he had gone to take his usual two-hour nap. His wife found him dead from a coronary thrombosis (heart failure). Characteristically, Coolidge's last will was brief and to the point: "Not unmindful of my son John, I give all my estate, both real and personal, to my wife, Grace Coolidge, in fee simple." It amounted to about $700,000.



When Coolidge moved into the White House, he installed a rocking chair on the front porch, in which he enjoyed siting in the early evening and smoking his cigars, usually expensive gifts from his constituents. Alice Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, liked to remark that Coolidge looked as if he had been "weaned on a pickle." When he smiled, someone once said, it was "like ice breaking up in a New England river." But much of his reputation for silence was also a stage-managed display of his famous wit. During the 1924 campaign, for example, reporters asked him for a statement on the campaign, to which he responded, "No." Another asked if he could comment on the world scene. Coolidge answered, "No." Yet another asked: "Any information about Prohibition?'' "No," was the President's answer. As the disappointed reporters turned to leave, Coolidge said with a twinkle in his eye: "Now, remember -- don't quote me."

He had problems socializing in small circles and was a dreadful dinner companion. At White House dinners, usually seated next to women, he said little and always looked bored. Perhaps the most famous story about Coolidge's gloomy behavior concerns the enthusiastic female dinner companion who said to him; "You must talk to me, Mr. Coolidge. I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you." Coolidge replied: "You lose." Yet for all of his reported quietness, Coolidge loved company and never dined alone or seldom spent an evening alone with his wife. He and Grace
Coolidge entertained more than any previous family in the White House.

The President's typical day followed a set routine: breakfasting early, working until noon, having lunch followed by a walk and a two or three hour nap, some more business, evening social affairs, a little reading before bed, and then to sleep for at least seven or eight hours. For recreation, he enjoyed the presidential yacht, vacationing in the mountains or at home in Plymouth Notch, horseback riding, golf, and long walks. The stationary mechanical horse that President Coolidge had installed in the White House amused his wife and others who observed him riding the machine. But nothing could take the place of his devotion to cigars, especially the fine Havanas which he almost never shared with guests.

Only one of Coolidge's sons was alive during his presidency; the youngest, Calvin Coolidge Jr., died during the 1924 presidential campaign from an infected toe which he had blistered while playing tennis. His death, at age sixteen, devastated Coolidge. Upon his death, Coolidge said, "the power and the glory of the presidency went with him." The oldest son, John Coolidge, aged seventeen, was a trainee at a citizen's military camp at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, when Coolidge became President. He spent the presidential years as a student at Amherst College, staying away from the Washington limelight as much as possible.



In the election of 1924, a new high was reached in the number of Americans voting. Nearly 29 million citizens cast ballots. Compare this number to the 18,466,821 people voting in 1918. The additional 10 million voters were principally women, enfranchised by the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Yet, when observed carefully, these 29 million voters represented only 48.9 percent of the electorate a decline from the 61.6 percent of the electorate -- who had voted in 1916. Calvin Coolidge was the second President to have been elected in an election in which the majority of those eligible did not even vote. His predecessor, Warren G. Harding, had been the first -- with only 49.2 percent of the electorate voting in 1920. This means that Coolidge had been elected by winning the support of less than 30 percent of the eligible electorate.


Female Vote

To the astonishment of most political observers, the newly enfranchised women voted in the same small proportion of the electorate as men in 1924, and most of them voted for the antireform, pro-business candidates who had expressed little enthusiasm on suffrage for women. The general consensus seemed to suggest women voters differed little from male voters, and that most of them probably followed their husband's or father's lead in casting their ballots.

Politically active women tended to avoid party politics even after obtaining suffrage during the Coolidge years. The progressives among them favored voluntary organization and pressure groups to lobby legislatures on issues of birth control, peace, education, Indian Affairs, and opposition to lynching. The National Woman's Party continued to advocate female solidarity in support of equal rights, but the newly formed League of Women Voters, which grew out of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, rejected the tactic of a female voting bloc. Instead, the League believed in lobbying for women's issues -- and other issues -- in unison with men. The vast majority of voting women, however, voted along class and ethnic grounds rather than according to gender.


Women at Work

Not only could women finally vote, but also more of them held jobs in the 1920s than ever before. By 1930, nearly 11 million women worked in sex-segregated wage earning jobs, an increase of 2 million since the war. This meant that women were restricted to certain types of jobs, and, typically, they were paid far lower wages in comparison to men. Thus, one million women were teachers and nurses; another 2.2 million worked as typists, bookkeepers, and office clerks; 736,000 clerked in stores and worked as hairdressers and waitresses. Factory-working women, in sex-segregated jobs, numbered 2 million by 1928. Moreover, nearly 30 percent of the women in the work force were married. Although the vast majority of white married women (88 percent) worked exclusively in the home as housewives and mothers, twice as many African American wives and mothers worked outside the home -- a reflection of the far greater impoverishment of the black household.

Although the Coolidge years seemed to mark the end of reform and Wilsonian type progressivism, many progressive issues were sustained in the 1920s, especially at the state and local levels. Thirty-four states instituted or expanded laws for workers compensation. Many states established employee-funded old age pensions and welfare programs for the indigent. Most importantly, the nation's universities began graduating a new generation of social scientists, reformers committed to the idea that progress could be obtained by the wise use of government power.


Status of Native Americans

The plight of Native Americans received renewed attention in the 1920s in the face of the obvious failure of ill-conceived and poorly implemented policies of allotting land to individual Native Americans rather than to tribes. This policy failed to make Native Americans self-supporting or so-called "productive" citizens as defined by dominant white culture. Reform groups like the Indian Rights Association, the Indian Defense Association, and the General Federation of Women's Clubs struggled to obtain better education, citizenship, and social services for Indians, as well as their return to the tribal lands owned and operated by the Native Americans in tribal units. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 had granted citizenship only to Native Americans who had left the tribal reservations to live on their individual farms and homesteads. Also, the federal government denied basic civil liberties to Native Americans regardless of their citizenship status, such as prohibiting the sale of liquor (prior to the Eighteenth Amendment) to any Native Americans. Although Congress granted full citizenship to all Native Americans in 1924, the Bureau of Indian Affairs continued to exert a strict, overly protective power over the tribes much as had been the case in the late 1800s.


Status of African Americans

More than 6 million Americans moved from the country to urban places in the 1920s. Southerners -- especially southern blacks -- moved to the thriving industrial cities of the South or took the trains to cities all over the nation. The African American populations of New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Houston doubled. They congregated in the seedy, older neighborhoods that had served white immigrants who moved to better neighborhoods. For blacks, these urban ghettos became permanent slum residences as the surrounding white communities adopted restrictive covenants in which white homeowners pledged not to sell their property to blacks.

In response to the race riots of the early 1920s, discrimination, and racial threats, thousands of blacks in northern cities joined black pride (nationalist) movements. Marcus Garvey, a prophet-like Jamaican immigrant who lived in the black urban district of Harlem in New York City, headed the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey advocated black separatism and cultivated racial pride by organizing parades, mass meetings, newspapers, and a scheme to help blacks emigrate to Africa. Membership in the UNIA numbered several million at its peak. Other black leaders like W. E. B. DuBois (the Marxist leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and A. Philip Randolph (the socialist head of the Pullman Car Porter's Union) opposed the movement. Eventually, the UNIA collapsed when Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and deported.


Rise of Ethnic Enclaves

While the immigrant restriction laws passed during the Coolidge years limited emigrants from eastern and southern Europe, thousands of people from Mexico and Puerto Rico flocked to the cities in the Southwest (Denver, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Tucson) and New York. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans created barrio communities that differed little from the black ghettos in their poverty, limited education, poor, health services, and discriminatory police surveillance practices. Even more than the earlier European ghettos, the barrios of New York and Los Angeles kept alive the customs and values of the homeland; maintaining these cultural heritages was facilitated by the communities' nearness to Mexico and Puerto Rico. Like earlier immigrants who arrived before them, the blacks and Puerto Ricans joined political machines that provided them with economic assistance and generated group political power, especially in New York.

As the blacks and Hispanics moved into the inner cities, the whites fled to the suburbs -- a pattern of growth made possible by the automobile, which rendered the urban fringe accessible to white businesses and white homeowners. Between 1920 and 1930, the middle and upper class bedroom suburbs of most major cities grew five to ten times as fast as the core neighborhoods. Many of these suburban tracts, boomed by quick-sale housing contractors, sought to separate themselves from the problems of the inner cities by political opposition to annexation. Here, the voter apathy in national elections was markedly strong, although local political organizations and volunteer associations thrived.


Concerns of the Elderly

Among the new voters in the 1920s, besides women and the voting blacks in the eastern cities, were those thousands of Americans who were living longer lives. Many white Americans lived into their early sixties by 1925. White women lived even longer. At the same time, the new industrial system valued youth and agility, pushing most Americans over age fifty into forced retirement. As a result, most of the inmates in state poorhouses were older people, and one-third of those Americans aged sixty-five and older depended financially on someone else. No pension plans existed for private or federal employees. The drive for pension plans, and a growing identification of many older Americans as a separate class of people with special political interests, began to pick up steam during the Coolidge years. By 1930, almost every state had responded to the political clout of this newly energized part of the electorate by providing at least minimal welfare assistance to elderly people.



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.