Calvin Coolidge on Work

"Workmen's compensation, hours and conditions of labor are cold consolations, if there be no employment."

"It is not industry, but idleness, that is degrading."

"Another matter before the Congress is legislation affecting the labor sections of the transportation act. Much criticism has been directed at the workings of this section and experience has shown that some useful amendment could be made to these provisions."

"Generally, and under normal conditions, people turn to America when there is something that attracts them, when they can find here an opportunity. If such an opportunity no longer exists, they do not come. Should this country experience a period of economic depression, the natural working of this law would be that many classes of unskilled labor—especially those who come here temporarily, expecting to return once they have accumulated sufficient money—would, of their own accord, leave the country."

"This principle can not be too definitely or emphatically proclaimed. American citizenship is a high estate. He who holds it is the peer of kings. It has been secured only by untold toil and effort. It will be maintained by no other method. It demands the best that men and women have to give. But it likewise awards to its partakers the best that there is on earth. To attempt to turn it into a thing of ease and inaction would be only to debase it. To cease to struggle and toil and sacrifice for it is not only to cease to be worthy of it but is to start a retreat toward barbarism. No matter what others may say, no matter what others may do, this is the stand that those must maintain who are worthy to be called Americans."

"District of Columbia welfare. The welfare work of the District of Columbia is administered by several different boards dealing with charities and various correctional efforts. It would be an improvement if this work were consolidated and placed under the direction of a single commission."

"There is ample work for all in this country provided all will work. The problem of unemployment is aggravated, not wholly by the alien knocking at our gate, but by the laborer at home slamming the door of production behind him and walking out. Stopping industry will not right the matter. And in the last analysis it is the earnings of industry, which on the average are only fair, that provide alike for wages and the increase of investment on which is the sole dependence of the advance of civilization."

"For, primarily, the immigrant comes here for economic reasons. If he is a dependent, there is no room for him. If he believes that in America one need not work, there is no room for him. If he has been taught that his labor is a commodity for sale, he must learn that labor is no more a commodity than management. It is the product of labor, the product of management, that is put up for sale. In the last analysis, it is man's intelligence that is purchased. Only in undeveloped countries can man be regarded as a beast of burden."

"You who represent the more recent accretions to our population, know how generously you have been received. You know how free and unquestioned has been your access to the opportunities of this land. You have been expected to do your honest share of the day's work in a community which ranked productive toil as a distinction rather than a degradation. We have all taken our chance on that condition. Because we have been willing to do so, we have been prospered in material things and, what is ever more worth while, in the things of the spirit. Generation after generation, from the beginnings of permanent settlement here, the country has been able to receive and absorb a great number of newcomers from the older countries. That was possible so long as there was cheap land for settlement, and the assurance that industry could put value into it."

"It is a false doctrine that labor must assume all management. Those best suited for management must manage, whatever may lie their source. Every industry is searching eagerly for brains. My observation convinces me that most business firms pledged to welfare work are interested in their employed; they often remain open in order to protect those who serve them, even though it might be more profitable for them to close down. People need to stop to think, when the laborer clamors against the unorganized labor market, whether the menace is from the immigrant or from some other source. For no business enterprise wishes its help to leave that it may employ others; the turnover is one of the most expensive things industry has to face. The expense of breaking in new help is appalling."

"The armies in the field could not have done their part in the war if they had not been sustained and supported by the far greater civilian forces at home, which through unremitting toil made it possible to sustain our war effort. No part of the community responded more willingly, more generously, more unqualifiedly, to the demand for special extraordinary exertion, than did the members of the Negro race. Whether in the military service, or in the vast mobilization of industrial resources which the war required, the Negro did his part precisely as did the white man. He drew no color line when patriotism made its call upon him. He gave precisely as his white fellow citizens gave, to the limit of resources and abilities, to help the general cause. Thus the American Negro established his right to the gratitude and appreciation which the Nation has been glad to accord."

"Duty is collective as well as personal. Law must rest on the eternal foundations of righteousness. Industry, thrift, character, cannot be conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak — whoever objects — do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand patter, but don't be a stand patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people, a faith that men desire to do right, that the government is founded upon a righteousness which will endure."

"Waterways. Meantime our internal development should go on. Provision should be made for flood control of such rivers as the Mississippi and the Colorado, and for the opening up of our inland waterways to commerce. Consideration is due to the project of better navigation from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. Every effort is being made to promote an agreement with Canada to build the, St. Lawrence waterway. There are pending before the Congress bills for further development of the Mississippi Basin, for the taking over of the Cape Cod Canal in accordance with a moral obligation which seems to have been incurred during the war, and for the improvement of harbors on both the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts. While this last should be divested of some of its projects and we must proceed slowly, these bills in general have my approval. Such works are productive of wealth and in the long run tend to a reduction of the tax burden."

"Intelligence is given every wise opportunity to develop. Unfortunate if it is overclouded by class consciousness. If labor's fear of immigration is only a way of asserting, in an organized plea, labor's right to monopoly, it must be remembered that such an attitude has never been successful, and will not be successful in this case. There are those who leach the laborer that the fewer hours he works, the better off he is. In order to maintain that belief, they have attempted, through organization, to dictate to government. This attitude is against public conscience, against the working of economic law. There was a time, in our country's history, when we believed that leisure meant opportunity. But educated people soon found that opportunity lay not in leisure but in effort; so they went to work. The ideal for rich and poor alike is that any one, through honest effort, may assume and secure any position for which he is fitted."

"I shall not quarrel with anybody who chooses to give these three factors a different order of importance. That is a matter for individual judgment. But I do believe that these three factors largely represent the advantages which our people have enjoyed, and which have made it possible for them to build here a great, harmonious, liberal, community of free people. Starting anew in a land of almost unlimited natural opportunity, the early settlers found that the success of their nation-building experiments must depend upon their working harmoniously together, sinking non-essential differences, cooperating frankly and sincerely in the general interest, and, above all else, forgetting the ancient antagonisms. It has been our good fortune that we have been able to shake off the old traditions, to strike hands with our neighbor in the common effort to preserve our new-found liberties. And along with this, through our system of universal education, we have been able to guard against the revival of old, or the creation of new regional or group hostilities."

"A decrease in the world supply of wheat has resulted in a very large increase in the price of that commodity. The position of all agricultural products indicates a better balanced supply, but we can not yet conclude that agriculture is recovered from the effects of the war period or that it is permanently on a prosperous basis. The cattle industry has not yet recovered and in some sections has been suffering from dry weather. Every effort must be made both by Government activity and by private agencies to restore and maintain agriculture to a complete normal relationship with other industries."