THE PRESIDENCY: The Coolidge Week: May 7, 1928

¶ Pending bills (see THE CONGRESS), and what he would do about them if passed in such-and-such forms, kept President Coolidge busily occupied, conferring, suggesting, protesting, making himself felt, making himself clear. The Senate’s latest program of tax reduction had his approval; the McNary-Haugen farm marketing bill was probably riding to a veto; the Senate’s flood-control bill was dubious and when it passed the House and went to conference, President Coolidge received its proponents again & again. He yielded stubbornly to their insistences and insisted on points of his own. The new week began with no one, not even President Coolidge, knowing whether Flood Control would be vetoed. Almost like a portent, there went from the White House to Congress the first veto message* this session. In it, President Coolidge disapproved a House bill to create a part-civilian board to supervise national rifle matches. The President said he was advised the bill was unconstitutional since it took from the War Department a matter pertaining to national defense and established a nonFederal agency “to perform Federal functions at Federal expense.”

¶ Upon the centre of the rainsoaked grave of Flier Floyd Bennett in Arlington National Cemetery was laid a wreath of ferns and calla lilies sent by President Coolidge. Two days later President Coolidge went to the chamber of the House of Representatives and gazed, during a state funeral service, at the catafalque and bier of his dead friend and Flood Control spokesman, Representative Martin Barnaby Madden of Illinois.

¶ President Coolidge issued two proclamations. One was by radio, proclaiming the opening of American Forest Week, designed to decrease forest fires. “. . . We must all gain such respect for the forest that its destruction through indifference or carelessness shall be unthinkable,” he said. Proclaiming Child Health Day in print, he said: “. . . A grave responsibility . . . fundamental necessities . . . future progress and welfare of the nation.”

¶ President Coolidge received the first “buddy poppy,” inaugurating the pre-Memorial Day drive of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. . . . President Coolidge pressed a button and lit the new Lindbergh airway beacon across the continent in Los Angeles. . . . One of President Coolidge’s ceremonial assistants (doubtless, James Clement Dunn of the State Department) phrased and sent a cablegram to Reza Khan Pahlevi, Shah of Persia, in which President Coolidge wished peace & prosperity to Persia on the second anniversary of Reza Khan Pahlevi’s coronation. . . . Flowers from President & Mrs. Coolidge went to Mrs. Lemira Goodhue, first mother-in-law of the land, on her y8th birthday. Mrs. Goodhue was still in Dickinson Hospital, Northampton, Mass., as for four months past.

¶ To succeed Frank White, resigned, President Coolidge nominated Mr. White’s assistant, H. Theodore Tate, to be Treasurer of the United States (see THE CABINET).

¶ Robert Tyre Jones Jr., Jesse Holman Jones, Ambassador von Prittwitz of Germany, John Philip Sousa, President Simmons of the New York Stock Exchange, President Sloan of General Motors, President Coolidge of the U. S. A. and many another personage attended the spring dinner and prank-night of the Gridiron Club (Washington news-gatherers). Politics past, present and future were “horsed” as usual. President Coolidge stayed to the end and made a speech which, under the Gridiron Club’s huddle system, might not be repeated or reported.

¶ By appointing a mediation board, President Coolidge averted a trainmen’s strike on the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient R. R. at Wichita, Kan.

¶ From Boston to newspapers elsewhere went the following quotations: “It was a very sociable luncheon party. President Coolidge joked and laughed. I never found Mr. Coolidge a particularly quiet man. I have always found him a real, honest-to-goodness fellow. The luncheon on Tuesday was a very pleasant affair. The conversation was largely about mutual friends. He talked with me as with an old friend. The President did not talk politics at all. The President appeared to be very well. Mrs. Coolidge looked first rate. She was a charming woman, as she always was. The fact is that neither of them have changed, in my opinion.”

Persons who skimmed through the Boston despatch containing these words and decided that any man who uttered them must be a living image of Author Sinclair Lewis’ fictional creature, The Man Who Knew Coolidge (TIME, April 23), were both unfair and inattentive. The Lewis creature’s name was Lowell Schmaltz. The real Boston man to whom the above remarks were credited was Edward F. Horrigan, a Massachusetts fire investigator.

Lowell Schmaltz was supposed to have known Calvin Coolidge only during the half-year that he (Mr. Schmaltz) was a freshman classmate of Mr. Coolidge’s at Amherst. Edward F. Horrigan knew Calvin Coolidge when he (Mr. Coolidge) was Governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Horrigan was one of Governor Coolidge’s aides.

Lowell Schmaltz had not seen Calvin Coolidge since leaving Amherst when he ”dropped in” at the White House with his wife, Mamie, and his daughter, Delmerine.

Mr. Horrigan invited last fortnight to the White House, with Mrs. Horrigan and their daughter Eleanor, for luncheon, had also seen Calvin Coolidge three years ago.

* A veto message is not to be confused with a veto. President Coolidge has, of course, vetoed other bills this session without explaining his reasons to Congress at formal length. For example, he vetoed a bill to increase Civil War pensions. As a result, the Pennsylvania Northeastern Association of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic assembled and proclaimed “that the said Calvin Coolidge wears A CORONET OF SHAME”