“People are given to thinking and speaking of the national Government as “the Government.” They demand more from it than it was ever intended to provide; and yet in the same breath they complain that federal authority is stretching itself over areas which do not concern it. On one side, there are demands for more amendments to the Constitution. On the other, there is too much opposition to those that already exist.

“Without doubt, the reason for increasing demands on the federal Government is that the states have not discharged their full duties. Some have done better and some have done worse, but as a whole they have not done all they should. So demand has grown up for a greater concentration of powers in the federal government. If we will fairly consider it, we must conclude that the remedy would be worse than the disease. What we need is not more federal government, but better local government. Yet many people who would agree to this have large responsibility for the lapses of local authority.

“From every position of consistency with our system, more centralization ought to be avoided. The states would protest, promptly enough, anything savoring of federal usurpation. Their protection will lie in discharging the full obligations that have been imposed on them. Once the evasion of local responsibilities becomes a habit there is no knowing how far the consequences may reach. Every step in such a progression will be unfortunate alike for states and nation. The country needs, in grappling with the manifold problems of these times, all the courage, intelligence, training, and skill that can be enlisted…” — Calvin Coolidge, Arlington Amphitheater, May 30, 1925

“One insidious practice which sugar-coats the dose of federal intrusion is the division of expense for public improvements or services between state and national treasuries. The ardent states-rights advocate sees in this practice a vicious weakening of the state system. The extreme federalist is apt to look upon it in cynical fashion as bribing the states into subordination.

“The average American, believing in our dual-sovereignty system, must feel that the policy of national doles to the states is bad and may become disastrous. We may go on yet for a time with the easy assumption that, ‘if the states will not, the nation must.’ But that way lies trouble...Whenever by that plan we take something from one group of states and give it to another group, there is grave danger that we do an economic injustice on one side and a political injury on the other. We impose unfairly on the strength of the strong, and we encourage the weak to indulge in their weakness.” — Calvin Coolidge, Arlington Amphitheater, May 30, 1925

“The Government ought always to be alert on the side of the humanities. It ought to encourage provisions for economic justice for the defenseless. It ought to extend its relief through its national and local agencies, as may be appropriate in each case, to the suffering and the needy. It ought to be charitable. Although more than forty of our states have enacted measures in aid of motherhood, the District of Columbia is still without such a law. A carefully considered bill will be presented, which ought to have most thoughtful consideration in order that the Congress may adopt a measure which will be hereafter a model for all parts of the Union…

“In all your deliberations you should remember that the purpose of legislation is to translate principles into action. It is an effort to have our country be better by doing better. Because the thoughts and ways of people are firmly fixed and not easily changed, the field within which immediate improvement can be secured is very narrow. Legislation can provide opportunity. Whether it is taken advantage of or not depends upon the people themselves. The Government of the United States has been created by the people. It is solely responsible to them. It will be most successful if it is conducted solely for their benefit. All its efforts would be of little avail unless they brought more justice, more enlightenment, more happiness and prosperity into the home.

“This means an opportunity to observe religion, secure education, and earn a living under a reign of law and order. It is the growth and improvement of the material and spiritual life of the nation. We shall not be able to gain these ends merely by our own action. If they come at all, it will be because we have been willing to work in harmony with the abiding purpose of a Divine Providence.“

— President Calvin Coolidge, Third Annual Message, December 8, 1925

The District of Columbia, exclusively overseen by Congress under the U. S. Constitution, had not generated this movement. Instead, following the lead of legislation in 43 of the then-48 states (excluding Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, and South Carolina, but including the handful of counties in Louisiana, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina which administered aid for underage children), Congress had been exceedingly behind in recognizing this local initiative. Such is the way it should be, however, if efforts are truly to succeed: they start with the people themselves. At the same time, neither should the Congress act in sluggish insensibility to those they must represent. They either keep in step with the people or fall out of touch, at their own peril, with the country’s sentiments. Through the former, they understand the pulse of America and retain the confidence and trust of those they serve. Through the latter, they fail to justify their continuance as agents or officers delegated certain powers for a time by the electorate. In less than a decade most of the states had passed some form of this locally-administered support for motherhood. The states, since 1911, had clearly championed the push while the fed played catchup for which the President corrects them here. Congress would finally act on President Coolidge’s proposal in 1926 but it remained the leadership at the county and city level (courts, commissions, and municipal executives) which furnished the primary force that locally directed support not go to indigent or absentee parents but to help widowed and single mothers with the financial needs of raising dependent children into nothing less than responsible adults.