Will Rogers on Calvin Coolidge
Donald Day, ed., The Autobiography of Will Rogers
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), pp.307-308. Copyright 1949 by Rogers Company;
renewed 1977 by Donald Day and Beth Day. Reprinted without
permission of the publisher.
Beverly
Hills, January 5:
Mr.
Coolidge, you didn't have to die for me to throw flowers on your grave. I have
told a million jokes about you but everyone was based on some of your splendid
qualities. You had a hold on the American people regardless of politics. They
knew you were honest, economical and had a native common sense. History
generally records a place for a man that is ahead of his time. But we that
lived with you will always remember you because you was ''with" your
times. By golly, you little red-headed New Englander, I liked you. You put
horse sense into statesmanship and Mrs. Coolidge's admiration for you is an
American trait.
January
7:
Did
Coolidge Know the Bust was Coming? Well we just can’t hardly
get over the shock of the death of Mr. Coolidge.
I
have had many Republican politicians tell me, "Will, you are one of Mr.
Coolidge's best boosters." Well I did like him. I could get a laugh out of
almost all the little things he said, but at the same time they were wise. He
could put more in a line than any public man could in a whole speech.
Here
is a thing do you reckon Mr. Coolidge worried over in late years? Now he could
see further than any of these politicians. Things were going so fast and
everybody was so cuckoo during his term in office, that lots of them just couldn’t
possibly see how it could ever do otherwise than go up. Now Mr. Coolidge didn’t
think that. He knew that it couldn't. He knew that we couldn't just keep
running stocks and everything else up and up and them paying no dividends in
comparison to the price. His whole fundamental training was against all that
inflation. Now there was times when he casually in a speech did give some
warning but he really never did come right out and say, ''Hold on there, this
thing can’t go on! You people are crazy. This thing has got to bust.''
But
how could he have said or done that? What would have been the effect? Everybody
would have said, "Ha, what’s the idea of butting into our prosperity? Here
we are going good, and you our President try to crab
it. Let us alone. We know our business."
There
is a thousand things they would have said to him or
about him. He would have come in for a raft of criticism. The Republican Party,
the party of big business, would have done their best to have stopped him, for
they couldn't see it like he did, and they never could have understood until a
year later.
Later
in his own heart did Calvin Coolidge ever wish that he had preached it from the
housetops regardless of what big business, his party, or what anybody would
have said?
Now
here is another thing too in Mr. Coolidge's favor in not doing it. He no doubt
ever dreamed of the magnitude of this depression. That is he knew the thing had
to bust, but he didn’t think it would bust so big, or be such a permanent bust.
Had he known of the tremendous extent of it, I'll bet he would have defied hell
and damnation and told and warned the people about it. Now in these after years
as he saw the thing overwhelm everybody, he naturally thought back to those
hectic days when as President the country was paying a dollar down on
everything on earth.
But
all this is what they call in baseball a ''Second Guess.'' It’s easy to see now
what might have helped lighten or prolong the shock, but put yourself
in his place and I guess 99 out of a 100 would have done as he did.
Now
on the other hand in saying he saw the thing coming,
might be doing him an injustice. He might not. He may not have known any more
about it than all our other prominent men. But we always felt he was two jumps
ahead of any of them on thinking ahead.