On Entrepreneurs

February 17, 2013February 17, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Randall Stross, in his book “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” recounts a story widely circulated at the time about the drive of Edison, Ford, Firestone and Coolidge to the local factory during their visit in 1924 to Plymouth Notch:

Something went wrong with the car and they stopped near a farmhouse. The farmer came over to the party and offered his help and at the same time started to lift the hood when Mr. Ford stopped him and said: ‘There’s nothing the matter with that engine: I’m Henry Ford and I know all about engines.’ The farmer then suggested the trouble might be in the battery and Mr. Edison spoke up and said: ‘No, I’m Thomas A. Edison and I know all about batteries. That one is all right.’ The farmer began to look incredulous but tried again by suggesting the tires needed air and offered to pump them up, but Mr. Firestone put in with, ‘No, I’m Harvey Firestone and I made those tires; they’re just right.’ The farmer exploded at this with, ‘Well, Ford, Edison, and Firestone, eh? I reckon that little runt in the back seat’s Calvin Coolidge?’ (pp.256-7).

While hardly flattering of Coolidge, who was taller than Ford and the same height as Edison, it does carry a humorous element of truth. It prompts the question regarding these inventive entrepreneurs, “where would we be today without these men?” Edison alone would produce 1,093 patentable inventions during his lifetime, twenty-one of which were completed during the Coolidge years alone. These included not only batteries and phonograph cabinets but also the development of his unique process for extracting rubber from plants. These men were not politicians. They had not the temperament for careers on the government payroll, holding secure office jobs with ample benefits packages. It was the freedom to create, experiment and innovate — to fail and to succeed — that made their contributions possible. They worked endless hours, invested their own money and demanded excellence in their results. They owed nothing to government grants or federal patronage for who they were or what they accomplished. They remained free men, inspirations of the rewards of hard work, perseverance and ingenuity. As Coolidge would reflect on them in May 1931, just five months before Edison’s death, “The experience, skill and wisdom necessary to guide business cannot be elected or appointed. It has to grow up naturally from the people. The process is long and fraught with human sacrifice, but it is the only one that can work. Edison and Ford are not government creations.” A higher compliment to an individual’s creativity and self-reliance could not be offered.

Edison in front of his banyan trees, across the way from his winter home; Ford bust in the Edison-Ford Estates Museum and Edison’s awesome laboratory, all in Fort Myers, Florida.

Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1924

February 14, 2013August 11, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 3 Comments

President Coolidge’s first Annual Message to Congress delivered the previous year, December 6, 1923

President Coolidge would open his second Annual Message to Congress by assessing the pervasive destruction of unsound economics, declaring,

The fallacy of the claim that the costs of government are borne by the rich and those who make a direct contribution to the National Treasury can not be too often exposed. No system has been devised, I do not think any system could be devised, under which any person living in this country could escape being affected by the cost of our government. It has a direct effect both upon the rate and the purchasing power of wages. It is felt in the price of those prime necessities of existence, food, clothing, fuel and shelter. It would appear to be elementary that the more the Government expends the more it must require every producer to contribute out of his production to the Public Treasury, and the less he will have for his own benefit. The continuing costs of public administration can be met in only one way — by the work of the people. The higher they become, the more the people must work for the Government. The less they are, the more the people can work for themselves.

To restore the proper ownership of what people earn was what drove Coolidge and Mellon to insist upon Congress cutting rates across the board, fighting to eliminate penalties like the estate tax and genuinely reducing expenditures (remember this was before baseline budgeting). While the Revenue Act of 1924 retained the tax on estates (to Coolidge’s disappointment), it would continue the decrease of rates from 58 to 46% at the top and down to 1.125% at the bottom. For Coolidge, tax and expenditure reduction was a moral obligation. Higher and higher rates bore inescapable costs on everyone. Though the Federal minimum wage would not arrive until 1933 ($0.25/hr), it (like all taxes on what is earned) only harm everyone, employer and employee, rich and poor alike, shackling the future to government spending habits. Higher rates, as they had become in Coolidge’s lifetime, were an avoidable source of division for what should be a United States. As President Coolidge knew all too well, feeding class warfare as the basis for tax policy would only spread suffering and prevent the return of economic health.

On Race

February 12, 2013February 15, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 4 Comments

When it comes to Coolidge’s views on race, it is both deliberately misleading and outright prejudicial to claim he timidly condoned animus. On the contrary, he asserted a decisive moral courage to address the progress as well as the struggles of these Americans. They were not “African-Americans” or “colored” people to him. They were Americans. He once corrected Colonel Starling for referring to a “colored gentleman.” “No,” Coolidge said, “he is a gentleman.” President Coolidge made these matters a central component in all six of his State of the Union Addresses, his Inaugural and numerous speeches and letters. Decades before Martin Luther King, it was character and every American’s determination for self-improvement that mattered. Not one’s skin tone. He despised the condescension of treating people as groups instead of as individuals. That is why he was so relentless when it came to reducing government expenditures and the tax burden, because it helped everyone have the maximum opportunity to succeed as individuals. He also knew that without working hard to better one’s self, character would erode and by shirking the responsibilities of freedom would forfeit the rewards they produce. It is best to let him speak in his own words. Here are two excerpts from letters he wrote, the first one is to Charles F. Gardner on August 9, 1924 (in response to Mr. Gardner’s statement from a newspaper clipping about a “coloured man” running for Congress, saying: “It is of some concern whether a Negro is allowed to run for Congress, anywhere, at any time, in any party, in this, a white man’s country. Repeated ignoring of the growing race problem does not excuse us for allowing encroachments. Temporizing with the Negro whether he will or will not vote either a Democratic or a Republican ticket, as evidenced by the recent turnover in Oklahoma, is contemptible.” To which Coolidge wrote:

Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or colour. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I propose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race. A coloured man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else. You have suggested that in some fashion I should bring influence to bear to prevent the possibility of a coloured man being nominated for Congress. In reply, I quote my great predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt:

‘…I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope–the door of opportunity–is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or colour.’

Yours very truly,

Calvin Coolidge

It is noteworthy that President Coolidge keys in on the “door of opportunity” — for that is the goal of what America is — the creation of opportunity not the guarantee of material results.

The second excerpt is from a letter written August 14 that same year to Dr. Robert R. Moton, President of The National Negro Business League, Chicago, Illinois. Keep in mind these letters were written during an election year. Offering his steady optimism for the future’s potential, Coolidge wrote:

I wish particularly to pay tribute to the League’s founder and your distinguished predecessor, the late Booker T. Washington. His vision of the problems of the coloured people was indeed that of a seer, and your League is one of the monuments of his life work…I wish to tell you of the deep impression that was made upon me by my studies of the Negro race’s achievements. In the accumulation of wealth, establishment of material independence, and the assumption of a full and honourable part in the economic life of the nation, it may fairly be said that the coloured people themselves have already substantially solved these phases of their problem. If they will but go forward along the lines of their progress in recent decades, and under such leadership as your own and many others among their excellent organizations are affording, their future will be well cared for…They will continue their efforts for educational progress and spiritual betterment; and just as they demonstrate their eagerness for such improvement, they will find themselves enjoying a constantly greater and greater support and sympathy at the hands of the whole community…

Very truly yours,

Calvin Coolidge