But the third stage is represented by our formula: every man must render and receive the best possible service, except in the case of inequality, and there the strong must help the weak to help themselves; only on this condition is help…
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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In the end the value of the product will be measured by the amount of effort necessary to secure it.
When industries can be carried on without any struggle, their results will be worthless, and when wages can be secured without any effort they will have no purchasing value.
There has of late been held out the hope that government could by legislation remove from the individual the need of effort.
It cannot maintain itself by the offer of material rewards.
It is an institution, like a university which fails unless the process of education continues.
Government is not an edifice that the founders turn over to posterity all completed.
But we should be deluded if we supposed they can be maintained without more of the same stern sacrifice offered in perpetuity.
The men who founded our government had fought and thought mightily on the relationship of man to his government.
The people who start to elect a man to get what he can for his district will probably find they have elected a man who will get what he can for himself.
A careless, indifferent representative is the result of a careless, indifferent electorate.
We need forever to remember that representative government does represent.
It is not and cannot be cloistered from politics.
The power to think is the most practical thing in the world.
Unless they can and do accomplish this result education is a failure.
Men who have had the advantages of liberal culture ought to be the leaders in maintaining the standards of citizenship.
Government does rest upon the opinions of men.
Here we soon see that office-holding is the incidental, but the standard of citizenship is the essential.
Men submit to a government of force as we are doing now when they believe it is necessary for their security, necessary to protect them from the imposition of force from without.
Where the mind is free it turns not to force but to reason for the source of authority.
The first care of despotism seems to be to control the school and the press.
But in general only the man of broad sympathy and deep understanding of his fellow men can meet with much success.
Of course experience counts here as in any other human activity, and all experience worth the name is the result of application, of time and thought and study and practice.
But I do not feel that there is any more obligation to run for office than there is to become a banker, a merchant, a teacher, or enter any other special occupation.
Is there any especial obligation on the part of college-bred men to be candidates for public office?
Politicians like Calvin Coolidge
