THE PRESIDENCY: The Coolidge Week: Nov. 28, 1927

Except for a tornado, Washington was quiet last week and so were the President’s days & nights.

¶ President Coolidge had prepared himself for a trip to Philadelphia. But he paused on the White House threshold, retreated, waited. From a window he watched a tornado which had come whooping up the Potomac from Alexandria, Va., at 92 m.p.h., to lay waste a strip of Washington. A crashing rainstorm followed the wind. When at last the elements permitted, the President set out for Union Station. The streets clanged with ambulances, fire trucks, police wagons. President Coolidge learned in due course that Washington’s total damage exceeded a million; that Mrs. Jane Carter, Negress, had been killed; that scores had been badly injured; that the Presidential yacht Mayflower had been blown from her moorings and banged against the dock, but was not injured so badly as the U. S. destroyer Allen, lying near, which lost a funnel; that the Naval Air Station at Anacostia had lost a hangar, suffered damage to eight planes and seen its men blown about and rolled across the flying field.

¶ Tax Assessor William P. Richards of the District of Columbia announced that the White House and its grounds are now worth some 22 millions. No other Washington residence rates so high. The tax on it would be $374,000 per annum—if the U. S. had to pay property taxes to the District of Columbia. A controversy has been bubbling on this question oftax-exempt U. S. properties. Tax Assessor Richards’ figures showed that if all taxable U. S. property in the District paid the present rate of $1.70 per $100, the total would be $7,990,000. The U. S. at present pays the District a lump sum of nine millions, less than a quarter of the District’s running expenses. District commissioners think the U. S. should bear 40% of the District’s running expenses.

¶ At Broad Street Station, Philadelphia, throngs milled. The face that President Coolidge looked for was that of William Cameron Sproul (Sprole), onetime (1919-23) Governor of Pennsylvania. Mr. Sproul is president of Philadelphia’s Union League Club. This evening he was the President’s host.

President Coolidge and Mr. Sproul stepped into one motor, Frank W. Stearns of Boston and Major General William Gray Price of the Pennsylvania National Guard into the next motor. It was a stag affair. Mrs. Coolidge was not present. Within the heavy portals of the Union League Club, some of the faces the President saw, the hands he shook, belonged to Governor John S. Fisher (see p. 11), Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick of Philadelphia, Senator-Elect William S. Vare and onetime (1922-27) Senator George Wharton Pepper, Chief Justice Robert von Moschzisker of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Railroad Presidents William Wallace Atterbury (Pennsylvania), Daniel Willard (Baltimore & Ohio), Patrick Edward Crowley (New York Central), Edward Loomis (Lehigh Valley) ; also Samuel Rea, onetime (1913-25) President of the Pennsylvania R. R., Lawyer Owen J. Roberts of the Government’s special Fall-Sinclair prosecution counsel, and those inevitable patrons of all that is important in Philadelphia, Publisher Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmer Curtis and his editor-son-in-law, Edward William Bok.

The Union League chefs had outdone themselves. Dinner was sumptuous. Afterwards, the diners removed to the Club’s auditorium, Lincoln Hall, where some 3,000 persons and personages were packed in a space designed for 1,200. President Sproul brought all to their feet when he said to President Coolidge:

“I wanted you to see what these worthwhile people think of you, how they trust you, how they approve of you and your works, how they ratify your judgment and believe in things you believe, how they respect yourprudence, admire your courage, and how they stand by you as a national leader in whatever course you may choose to outline for your future course.”

Mr. Sproul presented President Coolidge with the Union League Club’s medal for distinguished public service. Only three other presidents (Lincoln, Johnson, Taft) had been thus honored before.

President Coolidge thanked Mr. Sproul, praised the Union League Club* and reviewed recent U. S. history.

The U. S. President Coolidge told how much more the U. S. meant to him than a geographical location. “. . . At present our land is the abiding place of peace, universal freedom and undoubted loyalty, holding the regard of all the world as a mighty power, stable, secure, respected. The people are prosperous, the standards of social justice were never so high, the rights of the individual never so extensively protected. . . . No one would claim that our country is perfect. . . . Yet . . . a nation, which has raised itself from a struggling dependency to a leading power in the world, without oppressing its own people and without injustice to its neighbors, in the short space of 150 years, needs little in the way of extenuation or excuse.”

Economic Welfare. The U. S. population, said the President, has been swelled by immigrants “almost always without money and too often without learning. . . . To form all these people into an organization where they might not merely secure a livelihood, but by industry and thrift, have the opportunity to accumulate a competency, such as has been done in this country, is one of the most marvelous feats ever accomplished by human society.

“The object of this economic endeavor has not been the making of money for its own sake. It certainly has not been for the purpose of endowing an aristocracy with wealth. It has been fostered and encouraged by the Government in order to provide the people at largewith sufficient incomes to raise their standards of living to a positionworthy of a free and enlightened nation.”

Government Regulation of business has protected individual rights, ousted privilege. “It is the very antithesis of Communism.” Let it be continued.

Prosperity, a Test. “The test which now confronts the nation is prosperity. There is nothing more likely to reveal the soul of a people. History is littered with stories of nations destroyed by their own wealth. It is true that we have accumulated a small but a blatant fringe of extravagance and waste, nourished in idleness, and another undesirable class who seek to live without work.

“. . . But . . . the great mass of our people, . . . know that the doctrine of ease is the doctrine of decay. . . . The heart of the nation is sound.

Since the War. “In the reaction from wartime exaltation the moral power of the nation suffered little diminution.” Heavy taxes were borne courageously. Three times taxes have been reduced, “saving the nation between $6,000,000 and $7,000,000 each day.” The national debt will have been reduced by one-third next June. “The saving in interest alone is about $1,000,000 for each day.”

Still in Debt. But the U. S. debt remains 18 billions big.^ “It is a, menace to our credit. It is the greatest weakness in our line of national defense.” It should be paid by “reasonable” taxation. Government economy must continue.

“Not Commonplace.” “These results have not been easy to accomplish. They have been extremely hard. They have been anything but commonplace. They mark a new epoch and set a new record in successful Government financing.”

Future Program. A moderate tax reduction is possible. “But let it be remembered that tax reduction is possible solely on account of economy. Anybody can spend the money somebody else has saved.” Flood control, Lakes-to-Gulf and St. Lawrence waterways, the Colorado River water & power project, the Columbia Basin, the Navy, and aviation and highways to make more intimate “our relationship with the vast territory between the Rio Grande and Cape Horn in a commercial way . . . will be some of the rewards of a judicious management of the national finances.”

Domestic Affairs. .”The web of our affairs is extremely delicate, extremely intricate. Producing, transporting, marketing, financing, all require a higher skill, a more intelligent organization, than under a less developed, less prosperous people. . The entire life of the nation, all its economic activities, have become so interrelated that maladjustment in any one of them is sufficient to cause serious disarrangement in all the rest.

“We have become one nation, we can only survive through the most elaborate system of concerted action. Any part which fails to function is chargeable with disloyalty to the whole people.”

Foreign Loans. “We are more concerned than ever with our foreign affairs. The wealth of our people is going out in a constant stream of record dimensions for restoration and development in all parts of the world. We want our moral, influence to be on the side of liberty, of education, of fair elections and of honest constitutional government.”

“Sensational Story.” “This, I believe, is a fair representation of what has been taking place in the immediate past, and what we may hope for in the immediate future.

“Rightly understood, there is no more sensational story of humanexperience. Society is made up of constants and variables. The variables attract us by their contrasts and are always appearing in the headlines. But the constants always predominate, always push ahead in the march of progress.”

¶ Immediately after finishing his speech. President Coolidge boarded his train for Washington. Some days before, he had let it be known that he would not give as much time as he used to social functions. He will leave them as soon as he has done his part, not wait to hear other speakers. A notice to this effect was printed in last fortnight’s program of the National Geographic Society. After the President had presented the Hubbard Medal to Col. Lindbergh, he promptly left. Another example was the annual convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution (TIME, May 2). An address by the President had been an annual D.A.R. feature. President Coolidge declined this year. Nor will he attend more than one of the semiannual dinners of the Gridiron (Washington newsgatherers’) Club.

¶ White House callers of the week included:

Senator Reed Smoot of Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who after his call said he was won over to the Administration’s figure of $225,000,000 for tax reduction. He had previously favored a $300,000,000 cut.

Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, to introduce Col. W. E. Easterwood Jr. of Dallas, who is offering $50,000 for a non-stop airplane flight from Dallas to Hong Kong.

President William Wallace Atterbury of the Pennsylvania R. R. to pay respects and also, doubtless, to touch on the Pennsylvania coal strike situation (see p. 11).

President William Cooper Proctor of Proctor & Gamble (soap), ofCincinnati, to discuss community chests.

President Charles E. Mitchell of the National City Bank of New York, to pay respects. Mr. Mitchell was in Washington with Thomas William Lamont of J. P. Morgan & Co. to discuss foreign loans with Secretary of State Kellogg.

President William Green of the American Federation of Labor and colleagues, to set forth grievances of Pennsylvania coal miners.

Fisticuffer James J. Tunney, to be presented by Commandant John Archer Lejeune of the Marine Corps. President Coolidge told Mr. Tunney that he had not attended a prizefight in 15 years. Mr. Tunney later pronounced President Coolidge “a keen man.”

¶ President & Mrs. Coolidge watched a football game between picked elevens of the Army and the Marine corps. The Marines won, 14-0.President Coolidge handed Richard (“Bozo”) Duncan, captain of the Marines, the President’s Cup. “The game was well played and you deserved to win. I enjoyed it very much,” he said.

*Founded in 1862. Said President Coolidge: “Everybody is ready to come to the support of Abraham Lincoln now. Everybody is for the Union now. But in the autumn of 1862 . . . the most patriotic efforts were required to fill the ranks of the army, carry the weight of taxation, finance the cost of equipment, and bear all the other burdens of fraternal strife. . . . They (the founders of the Union League Club) became an example to be followed in many other sections.”