Oracle

After 16 months back among his fellow citizens, from whom he had been removed for eight years by the exaltation of highest public office, Citizen Calvin Coolidge last week began to compose for his fellow citizens a daily message on subjects of current public interest. For this the McClure newspaper syndicate contracted to pay him $200,000. For the privilege of printing "CALVIN COOLIDGE SAYS:" without the syndicate credit line, the arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune was willing to pay McClure $150 per day. No ex-President had ever before afforded such a front-page feature.

Millions of people to whom Calvin Coolidge had been and was still an oracle of heroic proportions, and more millions to whom he had been no such thing, read with deepest interest what Mr. Coolidge had to say. One of the first things they noticed was the sense of responsibility with which the oracle approached his task. Here was not the informal, drily amusing Calvin Coolidge of Amherst reunions, where he is content to sit on the ground and idly chat with friends, nor was it the taciturn, retiring inhabitant of the little Northampton law office and the shady new Northampton estate. The Beeches. In returning to his public. Citizen Coolidge brought with him most of the dignity and restraint he had exercised with such success in the White House. Again to the fore were the elevated moral inflection and the conservative economic tone which characterized practically all of his presidential speeches.

As the bull market ex-President, the believer that the business of the U. S. is Business, he chose as subject for his first pronouncement the depressed state of trade, viewing it as a psychological phenomenon (see p. 39). Next he surveyed the nation's moral fibre: ". . . its founders . . . sought to live in the things of the spirit. They put first things first, They set small store on the things that are temporal but strove mightily for the things that are eternal. If this nation is to endure, we shall have to continue to walk by their light."

Then he returned to Trade: ". . . people are out of work because the things they could produce are not being bought. . . . It will help somewhat to increase public and private construction. But the principal consuming power is in the people who have work. Unless they buy of the other fellow, he cannot buy of them. If those who have the means would pay all their retail merchandise bills and in addition purchase what they need and can afford, a healthy commerce would quickly be created. . . . No one who has money now can afford to defer settling h's accounts."

"We all live in the same world. The path to glory . . . lies toward the Golden Rule."

The Press generally accorded Oracle Coolidge and his article great acclaim. There was much comment on "sound judgment," "good sense," "sage counsel." Editorial writers heartily welcomed Mr. Coolidge into their profession, but urged him to relax, to reveal some of his proverbial wit.

Slily observed the New York Times: "Many will be inclined to clip his daily articles and write on the margin, as they too often do in books borrowed from the public library: 'How true!' "

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