The advance of our own land has been due to our trade, and the comfort and happiness of our people are dependent on our general business conditions.
Calvin Coolidge
The Public Record
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. A member of the Republican Party, he was known for his quiet demeanor and strong support for business and limited government. Coolidge's presidency is often associated with the economic prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, and he famously advocated for a hands-off approach to the economy, believing that government should interfere as little as possible in the lives of citizens and businesses.
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To-day it is not the battle fleet, but the mercantile marine which in the end will determine the destiny of nations.
Where commerce has flourished there civilization has increased.
Before we decide upon a wholesale condemnation of the most noteworthy spirit of modern times it would be well to examine carefully what that spirit has done to advance the welfare of mankind.
The faults of commercialism, like many other faults, lie in the use we make of it.
Set the course aright and time must bring mankind to the ultimate goal.
It may be of little importance to determine at any time just where we are, but it is of the utmost importance to determine whither we are going.
I appeal to Amherst men to reiterate and sustain the Amherst doctrine, that the man who builds a factory builds a temple, that the man who works there worships there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise.
But I do criticise those sentiments, held in all too respectable quarters, that our economic system is fundamentally wrong, that commerce is only selfishness, and that our citizens, holding the hope of all that America means, are living in…
I agree that the measure of success is not merchandise but character.
I, too, rejoice that an awakened conscience has outlawed commercial standards that were false or low and that an awakened humanity has decreed that the working and living condition of our citizens must be worthy of true manhood and true…
The growth of a sentiment that despises work is an appeal from civilization to barbarism.
Work is not a curse, it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.
There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.
The only road to a more progressive age lies in perfecting the instrumentalities of this age.
The prospect of advance lies in maintaining those conditions which have stimulated invention and industry and commerce.
The hope of to-morrow lies in the development of the instruments of to-day.
The seed of democracy lay in a perfected despotism.
The hope of a Watt or an Edison lay in the men who chipped flint to perfection.
Our economic system has been attacked from above and from below.
Each advance has been made only when a previous stage was approaching perfection, even to conditions which are now sometimes lost arts.
Where we can trace history, no race ever stepped directly from the stone age to the iron age and no nation ever passed directly from depotism to democracy.
So will our business relations emerge, purified but justified.
After criticism, our religious faith emerged clearer and stronger and freed from doubt.
Such is the sublime revelation of man's relation to man--Democracy.
Politicians like Calvin Coolidge
