These principles, which I have but lightly sketched, are the foundation of American institutions, the source of American freedom and the faith of any party entitled to call itself American.
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.
gutenberg.org
They are the will of the people, the settled conviction derived from orderly deliberation, that take on the sanctity ascribed to the people's voice.
There are among us a great mass of people who have been reared for generations under a government of tyranny and oppression.
It is only of the real and true that men seek to pass spurious imitations.
There has been bred in the blood through generations a great sympathy for all peoples struggling to be free.
Governments are not founded upon an association for public plunder but on the coöperation of men wherein each is seeking to do his duty.
Responsible office does not go to the crafty.
When this campaign is over it will be a rash man who will again attempt to further his selfish interests by dragging a great party name in the mire and seeking to gain the honor of office by trafficking with disorder.
They cannot be intimidated, they cannot be coerced, they cannot be deceived, and their sovereignty is not for sale.
The people of Massachusetts are patriotic before they are partisan, they are not for men but for measures, not for selfishness but for duty, and they will support their Government.
The election will be a welcome demonstration to the Nation and to people everywhere who believe that liberty can only be secured by obedience to law.
The patriotism of some alleged leaders was not the cause but the effect of the patriotism of the wage-earners.
It begins to look as if those who attempt to lead the wage-earners must first show that they themselves are patriotic if they are to have any following.
Some of those who have posed as their leaders and argued that the wage-earners were patriotic because those leaders told them to be may well now inquire whether the case did not stand the other way about.
They have shown by their votes that they resent trying to use them for private interests, or to employ them to resist the operation of the Government.
The men of Massachusetts are not labor men, or policemen, or union men, or poor men, or rich men, or any other class of men first; they are Americans first.
The attempt to appeal to class prejudice has failed.
They have turned away from those who sought to play upon their selfishness.
They have listened to the truth and followed it.
There is now no pains too great, no cost too high, to prevent or diminish the duty enjoined by the Constitution of the Commonwealth that wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, be generally diffused among the body of the people.
Unless they are well trained, well informed, and well instructed, unless a proper value is put on knowledge and wisdom, the value of all material things will be lost.
What they think determines every question of civilization.
But in the twentieth century the people are sovereign.
It will either become a trade for those little fitted for it or be abandoned altogether, instead of remaining the noblest profession, which it has been and ought to be.
But unless a change is made and a new policy adopted, the cause of education will break down.
Politicians like Calvin Coolidge
