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John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. (July 4, 1872 –
January 5, 1933) was the twenty-ninth Vice
President of the United States|Vice President
(1921-1923) and the thirtieth President of the
United States (1923-1929), succeeding to that
office upon the death of Warren G. Harding.

==Biography==
He was born in Plymouth, Vermont|Plymouth, Windsor
County, Vermont|Windsor County, Vermont on July 4,
1872 to John Calvin Coolidge, Sr. and Victoria
Moor. Coolidge was the only president to be born
on the 4th of July (Independence Day). He dropped
John from his name upon graduating from college. 
He attended Amherst College, in Massachusetts,
graduating in 1895. He practiced law in
Northampton, Massachusetts, and was a member of
the city council in 1899, city solicitor from
1900-1902, clerk of courts in 1904, and
representative from 1907-1908. In 1905, Coolidge
married Grace Anna Goodhue. They were complete
opposites personality-wise. She was talkative and
fun-loving and Coolidge was quiet and serious. Not
long after their marriage Coolidge handed her a
bag with 52 pairs of holey socks. Grace's reply
was "Did you marry me to darn your socks?" Without
cracking a smile and with his usual seriousness,
Calvin answered, "No, but I find it mighty
handy."http://www.drafthorsejournal.com/daysbefore
yesterday/autumn01/75yearsago/75yearsago.htm

Coolidge was elected mayor of Northampton in 1910
and 1911, was a member of the State senate
1912-1915, serving as president of that body in
1914 and 1915. He was lieutenant governor of the
state from 1916-1918, and List of Governors of
Massachusetts|Governor from 1919-1920. In 1919,
Coolidge gained national attention when he ordered
the Massachusetts National Guard to forcefully end
the Boston Police Department strike. he later
wrote to labor leader Samuel Gompers, "there is no
right to strike against the public safety by
anybody, anywhere, anytime."
http://www.americanpresident.org/history/calvincoo
lidge/http://ap.grolier.com/article?assetid=007156
0-0&templatename=/article/article.html

==Presidency==
Coolidge made a half-hearted effort to secure the
United States Republican Party|Republican United
States President|presidential nomination in 1920,
losing to  Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio.
Party leaders wanted to nominate Wisconsin Senator
Irvine Lenroot for United States Vice
President|vice president. However, convention
delegates stampeded and nominated Coolidge. The
Harding-Coolidge ticket won handily against
Governor of Ohio|Ohio Governor James M. Cox and
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D.
Roosevelt in a Landslide victory|landslide, 60.36
to 34.19 percent (404 to 127 in the United States
Electoral College|electoral college).


Harding was inaugurated on March 4, 1921, and
served until August 2, 1923. Upon Harding's death,
Coolidge became President on August 2, 1923.
Coolidge was visiting at the family home, still
without electricity or telephone, when he got word
of Harding's death. His father, a notary public,
administered the oath of office in the family's
parlor by the light of a kerosene lamp; Coolidge
was resworn by a federal official upon his return
to Washington, D.C.
*Note: Warren G. Harding died in California,
August 2nd (PST),
Calvin Coolidge was in Vermont, the morning of
August 3rd (EST).

Before his election in 1924, Coolidge's younger
son, Calvin, Jr., contracted a blister from
playing tennis on the White House courts. The
blister became infected, and Calvin, Jr. died.
After that, Coolidge, a man of few words, who had
already earned the nickname "Silent Cal," became
more withdrawn. 



It is said that a White House dinner guest once
made a bet with her friends that she could get the
president to say at least three words during the
course of the meal. Upon telling Coolidge of her
wager, he replied simply with the words "You
lose."http://www.midtermpapers.com/18832.htm
However another one of Coolidge's dinner guests
had this to say "I cannot help feeling that
persons who complained about his silence as a
dinner partner never really tried to get beyond
trivialities to which he did not think it worth
while to respond."

Even though Coolidge was said to be somewhat
tight-lipped, he delivered more speeches than any
other president up to that time. Making use of the
new medium of radio, he delivered an address about
once a month. He also managed to hold 520 press
conferences, averaging 7.8 per month, somewhat
higher than Franklin D. Roosevelt who averaged
about 6.9.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/coolidge_morrissey.html
Coolidge's press conferences, however, reflected
his reticent personality with a vengeance. Louis
Lyons, a Washington newsman in the 1920s and later
an official of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for
Journalism, recalled that Coolidge required all
questions to be submitted in advance, written on
slips of paper. When reporters were admitted to
his office, he would go through the slips,
discarding any he had no desire to address.
Occasionally, he would flip through the entire
stack and announce, "I have no questions today."
The reporters were not allowed to quote him
directly, or even to attribute his remarks to "a
White House spokesman." It was nothing like
today's open, sometimes disputatious press
conferences.
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/99-4_00-1NR/
Lyons_Calvin.html 

He was easily elected President of the United
States in his own right in 1924. Coolidge made use
of the new medium of radio and made radio history
several times while president: his inauguration
was the first presidential inauguration broadcast
on radio; on February 12, 1924 he became the first
President of the United States to deliver a
political speech on radio and on February 22 he
also became the first to deliver such a speech
from the White House.   



Coolidge was the last President of the United
States who did not attempt to intervene in free
markets, letting business cycles run their course.
During his Presidency, the United States
experienced a wildly successful period of economic
growth: the  so-called "Roaring Twenties."
Coolidge not only lowered taxes, but also reduced
the national debt.

Although some later commentators have dismissed
Coolidge as a doctrinaire, laissez-faire
ideologue, historian Robert Sobel offers some
context based on Coolidge's sense of federalism:
"As Governor of Massachusetts, Coolidge supported
wages and hours legislation, opposed child labor,
imposed economic controls during World War I,
favored safety measures in factories, and even
worker representation on corporate boards. Did he
support these measures while president? No,
because in the 1920s, such matters were considered
the responsibilities of state and local
governments."
http://www.jfklibrary.org/coolidge_sobel.html



A notable foreign-affairs initiative of the
Coolidge administration was the Kellogg-Briand
Pact of 1928, named for Coolidge's Secretary of
State, Frank Kellogg, and for France|French
foreign minister Aristide Briand. The treaty,
ratified in 1929, committed signatories including
the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and
Japan to "renounce war, as an instrument of
national policy in their relations with one
another."
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/kbpact/kbpact.ht
m 

Coolidge did not seek renomination; he announced
his decision with typical terseness: "I do not
choose to run for President in 1928." After
leaving office, he and wife Grace returned to
Northampton, Mass., where his political career had
begun.

==Retirement and Death==

In his post-White House years, Coolidge served as
chairman of the non-partisan Railroad Commission,
as honorary president of the Foundation of the
Blind, as director of New York Life Insurance
Company, as president of the American Antiquarian
Society, and as trustee of Amherst College.
http://www.vermonthistory.org/arccat/findaid/cooli
dge.htm

Coolidge published an autobiography in 1929 and
wrote a syndicated newspaper column, "Calvin
Coolidge Says," from 1930-1931. He died suddenly
of coronary thrombosis at his home, "The Beeches,"
at 12:45 p.m. in Northampton, Massachusetts on
January 5, 1933 at the age of 60.  Prior to his
death, Coolidge felt disappointed about Hoover's
re-election defeat, after which his health began
to decline very rapidly. Shortly before his death,
Coolidge confided to an old friend: "I feel I no
longer fit in these times."

Coolidge is buried beneath a simple headstone in
Notch Cemetery, Plymouth Notch, Vermont, where the
family homestead is maintained as a museum. The
State of Vermont dedicated a new historic-site
visitors' center nearby to mark Coolidge's 100th
birthday on July 4, 1972.
http://www.historicvermont.org/html/coolidge.html

An academic conference on Coolidge was held July
30-31, 1998, at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Library to mark the 75th anniversary of his
lantern-light homestead inaugural.
http://www.calvin-coolidge.org/pages/history/resea
rch/jfk.html

== Cabinet ==

{| cellpadding="1" cellspacing="4"
style="margin:3px; border:3px solid #000000;"
align="left"
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|OFFICE||align="left"|NAME||align="le
ft"|TERM
|-
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="middle"|President of the United
States|President||align="left" |Calvin
Coolidge||align="left"|1923–1929
|-
|align="middle"|Vice President of the United
States|Vice
President||align="left"|None||align="left"|1923&nd
ash;1925
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Charles G.
Dawes||align="left"|1925–1929
|-
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="middle"|United States Secretary of
State|Secretary of State||align="left"|Charles
Evans Hughes||align="left"|1923–1925
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Frank B.
Kellogg||align="left"|1925–1929
|-
|align="middle"|United States Secretary of the
Treasury|Secretary of the
Treasury||align="left"|Andrew
Mellon||align="left"|1923–1929
|-
|align="middle"|United States Secretary of
War|Secretary of War||align="left"|John W.
Weeks||align="left"|1923–1925
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Dwight F.
Davis||align="left"|1925–1929
|-
|align="middle"|Attorney General of the United
States|Attorney General||align="left"|Harry M.
Daugherty||align="left"|1923–1924
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Harlan F.
Stone||align="left"|1924–1925
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|John G.
Sargent||align="left"|1925–1929
|-
|align="middle"|Postmaster General of the United
States|Postmaster General||align="left"|Harry S.
New||align="left"|1923–1929
|-
|align="middle"|United States Secretary of the
Navy|Secretary of the Navy||align="left"|Edwin
Denby||align="left"|1923–1924
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Curtis D.
Wilbur||align="left"|1924–1929
|-
|align="middle"|United States Secretary of the
Interior|Secretary of the
Interior||align="left"|Hubert
Work||align="left"|1923–1928
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Roy O.
West||align="left"|1928–1929
|-
|align="middle"|United States Secretary of
Agriculture|Secretary of
Agriculture||align="left"|Henry C.
Wallace||align="left"|1923–1924
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Howard M.
Gore||align="left"|1924–1925
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|William M.
Jardine||align="left"|1925–1929
|-
|align="middle"|United States Secretary of
Commerce|Secretary of
Commerce||align="left"|Herbert
Hoover||align="left"|1923–1928
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|William F.
Whiting||align="left"|1928–1929
|-
|align="middle"|United States Secretary of
Labor|Secretary of Labor||align="left"|James J.
Davis||align="left"|1923–1929
|}



==Supreme Court appointments==
Coolidge appointed the following Justices to the
Supreme Court of the United States:

* Harlan Fiske Stone - 1925

== Major presidential acts ==
*Signed Immigration Act of 1924
*Signed Revenue Act of 1924
*Signed Revenue Act of 1926
*Signed Radio Act of 1927
*Signed Revenue Act of 1928

== Noted Quotes ==
*"Collecting more taxes than absolutely necessary
is legalized robbery."
*"I have noticed that nothing I never said ever
did me any harm."
*"Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It
means looking out for yourself by looking out for
your country."
*"Nothing in the world can take the place of
persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more
common than unsuccessful people with talent. 
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a
proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of
educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination
alone are omnipotent.  The slogan "press on" has
solved and always will solve the problems of the
human race."
*"The nation which forgets its defenders will be
itself forgotten."
*"We do not need more intellectual power, we need
more moral power. We do not need more knowledge,
we need more character. We do not need more
government, we need more culture. We do not need
more law, we need more religion. We do not need
more of the things that are seen, we need more of
the things that are unseen. If the foundation be
firm, the foundation will stand."
*"You lose."  (His wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge,
recounted that a young woman sitting next to
Coolidge at a dinner party confided to him she had
bet she could get at least three words of
conversation from him. Without looking at her he
quietly retorted, "You lose.")
*"I do not choose to run for President in 1928."
*"The chief business of the American people is
business."*
*"There is no right to strike against the public
safety of anybody, anywhere, any time."*

==Media==
multi-video start
multi-video item |
  filename      =  Calvin Coolidge video
montage.ogg|
  title         =  Calvin Coolidge video montage|
  description   =Collection of video clips of the
president.  (4.0 Megabyte|MB, ogg/Theora format).
|
  format        = Theora

multi-video end

== Related articles ==
* U.S. presidential election, 1920
* U.S. presidential election, 1924
* Coolidge effect
*http://www.davidpietrusza.com/coolidge-pets.html
Wombats and Such: Calvin and Grace Coolidge and
Their Pets
* Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum

== External links ==
wikisource author

*
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/cc30.
html Official White House biography
*
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/c
oolidge.htm Inaugural Address
*
http://vvl.lib.msu.edu/showfindingaid.cfm?findaidi
d=CoolidgeC Audio clips of Coolidge's speeches
* http://www.usa-presidents.info/coolidge.htm
Calvin Coolidge Biography
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/coolidge-1.ht
ml 1st State of the Union Address of Calvin
Coolidge
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/coolidge-2.ht
ml 2nd State of the Union Address of Calvin
Coolidge
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/coolidge-3.ht
ml 3rd State of the Union Address of Calvin
Coolidge
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/coolidge-4.ht
ml 4th State of the Union Address of Calvin
Coolidge
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/coolidge-5.ht
ml 5th State of the Union Address of Calvin
Coolidge
*
http://www.usa-presidents.info/union/coolidge-6.ht
ml 6th State of the Union Address of Calvin
Coolidge
* http://www.calvin-coolidge.org/ Calvin Coolige
Memorial Foundation
*
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era at the
Library of Congress 
*
http://www.davidpietrusza.com/coolidge-links.html
Calvin Coolidge Links

start box
succession box|title=List of Governors of
Massachusetts|Governor of
Massachusetts|before=Samuel W.
McCall|after=Channing H. Cox|years=1919 –
1921
succession box|title=United States Republican
Party|Republican Party Vice President of the
United States|Vice Presidential :