Calvin Coolidge

Have faith in Massachusetts Calvin Coolidge

There are certain fundamental principles of sound community life which cannot be stated too emphatically or too often. Few public men of to-day have shown a finer combination of right feeling and clear thinking about these principles, with a gift for the pithy expression of them, than has Governor Calvin Coolidge. It was an accurate phrase that President Meiklejohn used when, in conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws on him at Amherst College last June, he complimented him on teaching the lesson of "adequate brevity." His speeches and messages abound in evidences of this gift, but in the main the speeches are not easily accessible. It has seemed to some of Governor Coolidge's admirers, as it has to the publishers of this little volume, that a real public service might be rendered by making a careful selection from the best of the speeches and issuing them in an attractive and convenient form. With his permission this has been done, and it is hoped that many readers will welcome the book in this time of special need of inspiring and steadying influences. It is a time when all men should realize that, in the words of Governor Coolidge himself, "Laws must rest on the eternal foundations of righteousness"; that "Industry, thrift, character are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil." It is a time when we must "have faith in Massachusetts. We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people, -a faith that men desire to do right, that the Commonwealth is founded upon a righteousness which will endure."