Inaugural Address (Calvin Coolidge)

Summary

Calvin Coolidge, who had become President when Harding died in August 1923, was sworn in for his own term on 4 March 1925 by Chief Justice William Howard Taft, the only former President to administer the oath. The address from the East Portico was the first inaugural carried nationally by radio. It is long, over four thousand words, and its plain style suits its subject: a government that should do less and spend less. The first half concerns the world. Coolidge reviews American history from 1775 to the Great War, after which the country "withdrew to our own shores unrecompensed save in the consciousness of duty done." He warns against being "narrowed and dwarfed by slogans" of isolation or entanglement, defends naval limitation by treaty, urges the Senate to join the Permanent Court of International Justice, and finally insists that treaties and courts cannot keep peace by themselves: "Parchment will fail, the sword will fail, it is only the spiritual nature of man that can be triumphant." The second half turns to the 1924 election, which Coolidge reads as a verdict against public ownership of railroads and against curbing the courts. The policy it endorsed, he says, was economy and tax reduction, and here comes the speech's best-known line: "I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people." Wasted dollars make the worker's life "more meager"; taxes beyond public necessity are "a species of legalized larceny"; "Economy is idealism in its most practical form." Property rights, he argues, are finally rights of persons with "a divine sanction." The close calls obedience to law "the first rule" of a citizen, rejects any religious test for office, and ends with an America whose "legions" go out "armed, not with the sword, but with the cross." Readers should note the period's language on immigration and race in the closing pages alongside its defense of toleration.

Top Lessons

• Saving money to save people

  Coolidge's central claim is that public thrift is a form of care. Every dollar wasted makes the worker's life "more meager," and every dollar saved makes it "more abundant." He even argues that steep rates on the rich end up harming the poor most. The lesson asks whether economy in government is a moral duty or only a policy preference.

• Parchment, sword, and spirit

  Coolidge supports treaties, arbitration, and the World Court, but he denies that any of them can secure peace alone. Economic hardship breeds war, and peace finally rests on the cultivation of brotherly love in the human heart. His conclusion is that "it is only the spiritual nature of man that can be triumphant."

• Obedience to law in a self-governing republic

  In a republic, Coolidge argues, citizens make their own laws, so lawbreaking is not freedom but a return toward servitude. The passage was spoken during Prohibition, when evasion of federal law was widespread. He pairs it with toleration: no inquisition and no religious test for office.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Presidential inaugurals concern constitutional politics and national crisis; they have no medical content for this library's lens.