President Calvin Coolidge: The Roaring 20s' Quiet Leader
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What was the significance of the Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924?
The year is 1924, and it's quite the holiday season here at the newly renovated Macy's Department Store in New York City. After completing a vast expansion of more than 1.5 million square feet, Macy's is now officially the largest store in the world, with some 20 wooden escalators carrying customers to 148 departments, selling nearly everything a retailer can possibly offer. To usher in the season and to celebrate the transformation, Macy's staged the first of its famous Thanksgiving Day parades, complete with Santa Claus ushering in the season. From fine watches to vacuum cleaners, newfangled washing machines and refrigerators to women's apparel, beauty goods and travel needs, never mind hardware and children's toys.
Macy's
It is American History Hit, and I am Don Wildman. And it's time for another in our ever-lengthening series on the American presidents. We've even elected a new one since we recorded our last. Today, the story behind our 30th chief executive, Silent Cal, Calvin Coolidge. Born in the Green Mountains of Vermont on July 4th, 1872. Talk about destiny. He's the only U.S. president hatched on Independence Day. Automatic annual birthday parade. Not bad. John Calvin Coolidge, Calvin being his middle name, served two terms in the White House from 1923 to 1929. As Warren G. Harding's vice president when that poor man perished from a heart attack, he was next in line. Have a listen to episode 228 for extra credit.
Coolidge's entire presidency rode on the wave of the economic prosperity we know today as the Roaring Twenties. Rode it right into the year 1929 when it crashed onto the rocks of the Great Depression. For many conservatives, even today, Coolidge is a model president. Ronald Reagan considered him a hero, hung his portrait in the Oval Office. Coolidge pursued a small government, low-tax, pro-business agenda. Straightforward stuff there. But it's his personal leadership style that needs an update. He gets a bad rap as a dour and dry guy, even that he was directly responsible for teeing up the Depression. But read a few things on the man, and that seems to ring less true. So let's find out about who the real Calvin Coolidge was and what he did leading the nation with Amity Shlaes, a former reporter and editor with The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, now chair of the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation. an author of a Coolidge biography and other bestselling history books, including The Forgotten Man, A New History of the Great Depression.
Hello, Amity. Nice to meet you.
Glad to be here.
Amity, let's start in the middle of the story and then we'll back up. We'll start with his assumption to the presidency and then go back to his origins before drilling down to his years in D.C. Where was Calvin Coolidge on August 2nd, 1923, and how did he learn that he was suddenly president?
Calvin Coolidge was sleeping in his bed in his little hamlet home of Plymouth Notch, Vermont. It's remote now. It was even remoter then. While he slept, he suddenly heard his father, John, call up the stairs and said, Calvin? The president has passed away. So this is always a dire moment for the country when there's no president. The new president must be sworn in right away. So Vice President Coolidge was sworn in in the middle of the night, right there in Plymouth Notch with the Bible on the table, without electricity, by kerosene, by his father, by virtue of his father being a town notary. And that is also remarkable and became the 30th president.
And then he famously went right back to bed, didn't he?
Soon after, he was an economic man. He understood the importance of sleep. The next morning, he got up, visited his mother's grave and took the train to Washington. He said, I think I can swing it, which is a wonderful line. I thought I could swing it. I can do this.
Yes. This is an unfortunate aspect of the presidency sometimes where the vice president must step into someone who is deceased. It always opens up the chapter of how will this person behave once they become the president? Are they going to carry forth the agenda or become their own sort of leader? How did the nation view Coolidge taking over from Harding?
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