Coolidge, Calvin (1872–1933), thirtieth president of the United States.Born in Plymouth, Vermont, John Calvin Coolidge graduated from Amherst College and worked as an attorney before entering politics as a Republican. After holding various local and state offices, he was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1918. He won national attention in 1919 by using state troops against striking
Boston police. Elected vice president in 1920, he became president upon Warren
Harding's death in 1923. He won election in his own right in 1924, easily defeating the Democrat John W. Davis and the Progressive Robert
La Follette. Choosing not to seek an additional term, he left the White House in 1929, assuring the nation that continued prosperity lay ahead. As his successor Herbert
Hoover coped with the Great Depression, Coolidge confined himself to writing articles extolling conservative principles.
When he was in office, Coolidge's dour Yankee taciturnity became the target of humorists. In contrast to the scandal‐ridden Harding administration, Coolidge symbolized the older virtues of honesty and sober practicality. In domestic affairs, Coolidge embraced the complementary ideologies of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (1855–1937) and Commerce Secretary Hoover. Combining Mellon's belief in unrestricted
capitalism with Hoover's philosophy of corporate cooperation and voluntaristic effort for humane purposes, Coolidge presided over the most conservative administration in modern American history—an administration committed to freeing business from governmental restraints, raising
tariffs to benefit industry, lowering taxes for the wealthy, and suppressing labor unions. He twice vetoed the
McNary‐Haugen Bill designed to raise agricultural prices to help economically depressed farmers.
In foreign policy, the
Washington Naval Arms Conference of 1922, an early arms‐control effort negotiated by Secretary of State Charles Evans
Hughes, temporarily slowed an arms race among the world's naval powers. In general, however, Coolidge continued the nation's post–
World War I retreat from world affairs. Accepting a plan devised by Vice President Charles G. Dawes (1865–1951), the Coolidge administration somewhat scaled back the disastrous reparation payments that the 1919 Versailles treaty had imposed on defeated Germany, but the effect was neutralized by high U.S. tariffs and Germany's worsening economy. In Latin America, the government under Coolidge somewhat modified the aggressive interventionism of previous years, while encouraging the expanding economic penetration of U.S. corporations. Although the
Kellogg‐Briand Pact of 1928, signed by the United States and France along with many other nations, renounced war as an instrument of national policy, its benign optimism and lack of enforcement provisions marked an appropriate end to an administration based on the premise that government functioned best when it functioned least.
See also
Conservatism;
Depressions, Economic;
Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America;
Isolationism;
Republican Party;
Twenties, The.
Bibliography
Robert Ferrell , The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge, 1994.
David Burner
