Seeing now more clearly than before the true interests of wage-earner, investor, and the public, which is the consumer, we shall hereafter be willing to pay the price and secure the benefits of justice to all these coördinate interests.
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
Justice and the general welfare go hand in hand.
Taxes must be measured by the ability to meet them out of surplus income.
The great aim of our Government is to protect the weak--to aid them to become strong.
There is a relationship of interdependence which makes their interests the same in the long run.
We are reaching and maintaining the position in this Commonwealth where the property class and the employed class are not separate, but identical.
With these examples in mind it would appear that our problem of economic justice in Massachusetts, where we live and for which alone we can legislate, is not quite so simple as assuming that we can take from one class and give to another…
The stockholders of the great corporations run into the hundreds of thousands, the small tradesmen, the thrifty householders, the tillers of the soil, the depositors in savings banks, and the now owners of government bonds, make a number…
The great outstanding fact in the economic life of America is that the wealth of the Nation is owned by the people of the Nation.
This supposition, probably never true, is growing more and more to be contrary to the facts.
We have generally supposed that economic power was not with the people, because they did not own the property.
We have known that political power was with the people, because they have the votes.
The duty of citizenship in this hour is to strive to maintain and extend that ideal at home.
The American ideal has prevailed on European battle-fields through the loyalty, devotion, and sacrifice of American labor.
For the first time in five years it comes at a time when the issue of world events makes it no longer doubtful whether the American conception of work as the crowning glory of men free and equal is to prevail over the age-old European…
It is truly an American day, for it was here that for the first time in history a government was founded on a recognition of the sovereignty of the citizen which has irresistibly led to a realization of the dignity of his occupation.
We of our day need to recognize with the same vision that when these fail, America has failed.
It recognizes with the clear conviction of men not thinking of themselves that the cause of America is the cause of education, but of education with a soul, a trained intellect but guided ever by an enlightened conscience.
Massachusetts established Harvard College to be a defender of righteous convictions, of reverence for truth and for the heralds of truth.
No nation can reject these convictions and remain a republic.
Their success lay entirely in the convictions they had.
The men of that day almost alone in history brought a Revolution to its objective.
They established a nation that has endured until its flag is the ancient among the banners of the earth.
The men of the day of John Adams and James Bowdoin had a vision that looked into the heart of things.
We must turn our eyes from what is to what ought to be.
Politicians like Calvin Coolidge
