THE PRESIDENCY: Mr. Coolidge’s Week: Dec. 22, 1924

Mr. Coolidge’s Week

¶ One Howard Thurston played a trick on Calvin Coolidge. A stage was erected in the East Room of the White House; and the Coolidges (who are not attending public theatricals) assembled with a score of guests. Howard Thurston arrived with a moving van full of paraphenalia. With ducks, geese, pigeons, rabbits he prestidigitated. Then he took the President’s watch, a gift from the Massachusetts Legislature, smashed it with a hammer, called for a loaf of bread from the kitchen. It was brought. Mrs. Coolidge cut it; and who would believe it?—the watch appeared within, quite whole.

¶ With a stroke of his pen, the President created five new National Monuments, making 35 in all. The penstroke took place some time ago, but publicity was just achieved. The five new monuments are: 1) Fort Wood on Bechloe’s Island in New York Harbor, the base on which stands the Statue of Liberty; 2) Castle Pinckney on Shutes’ Folly Island, a mile from Charleston, S.C., close to Fort Sumter and close to the spot where the first vessel was ever sunk by a submarine (in the Civil War) ; 3) Fort Pulaski, Ga., at the entrance of the Savannah River, taken during the Civil War by Union troops after being pounded to pieces by some of the first rifled cannon ever made. It is on the site of Fort Greene (of the Revolution) ; 4) Fort Marion at St. Augustine, Fla., “the only intact example of a medieval fort in America.” Built by the Spanish, it withstood a French siege; and, under its walls, the first oranges, lemons, limes, citrons and African slaves were introduced to the U. S.; 5) Fort Matanzas, 15 miles south of Fort Marion, the scene of a massacre in 1565 when the Spanish Governor of Florida, Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, received the surrender of 200 Huguenots and then lined them up before a firing squad.

¶ President Coolidge granted a second year’s leave of absence to Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, Public Safety Police Commissioner in Philadelphia. What with bootleggers and politicians General Butler has been having a “hot time,” and Mr. Coolidge, after consideration, although not in general approving of such special leaves, decided to give Philadelphia the privilege of hiring the General for just one year more. He took occasion to point out that the Federal Government is not responsible for General Butler’s acts as a city official while on leave.

¶ President Coolidge attended a dinner of the Gridiron Club, an Association of Washington newspaper correspondents. As usual at such affairs, the President spoke, but there is a rule that his remarks may not be published.

¶ By a later executive order, the President also established as a national monument two tracts of land 30 miles northeast of Flagstaff, Ariz. They contain ruins of buildings constructed by the Snake family of the Hopi Indians during prehistoric times. They are to be known as Wupatki (Great Rain Cloud House) National Monument.

¶ Mr. Coolidge, with a company of executive and judicial notables, attended the funeral ceremonies for Mahlon Pitney, onetime Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. (See MILESTONES).

¶ Mrs. Coolidge traveled to Boston accompanied by Mrs. Frank W. Stearns and guarded by Captain Adolphus Andrews,, presidential naval aid. She attended a luncheon given by Lemuel H. Murlin, President of Boston University, and later, in the new Old South Church*, was invested with the purple hood with red and white facings of a Doctor of Laws and “all the rights and privileges thereto appertaining.”

¶ A letter was received at the White House with a dime inclosed:

Dear Cal:

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. You do not know me; but, one day before you was elected I was walking in back of you. You dropped a dime, but you did not notice it. I picked it up and kept it because I was hungry. It got me a hot cup of coffee and two rolls. Well, I have plenty of dimes now, so I am returning one in the place of yours.

Yours truly,

(Signed) A FRIEND.

¶ Mr. Coolidge wrote to Mrs. Samuel Gompers, saying:

My Dear Mrs. Gompers:

It is with great regret that I have heard of your bereavement; and I want to express to you my deep sympathy in your sorrow. Mr. Gompers’ whole life was devoted to the interests of organized labor, until his name had become almost synonymous with the cause which he represented. . . .

Very truly yours,

(Signed) CALVIN COOLIDGE.

¶ A delegation from the U. S. Chamber of Commerce called upon the President, urged him to call a conference of representatives of states to devise means of securing more local economy and reducing taxation of farm lands.

¶ Charalambous Simopoulos, first Greek Minister to the U. S. since 1920, presented his credentials at the White House.

¶ A woman forester of Amawalk, N. Y., dug up a 35-ft. spruce from her nurseries and shipped it by special car to the White House—thereby furnishing the President with a living Christmas tree “as an example to the country that it is better to keep potted living trees than slaughter 5,000,000 young pines every year for Christmas.”

* The Old South Church of historical associations, built in 1730, meeting place of Boston patriots during Revolutionary times, is in the old market district, near Faneuil Hall. New Old South, built in 1877, at a cost of $800,000, is in Copley Square.