Governor Coolidge, standing at the State House in Boston with high school cadet Francis Jenkins,  who served at the time on the staff of Colonel Benyon, June 1920. Photo credit: Leslie Jones Collection. 

We gain our progress in civilization not altogether from an assumed equality but to a great extent from variety. I said a moment ago that you had your profession, and others have their professions. Civilization and learning and science are so broad now that no one undertakes to comprehend them all, and it is an age of specialists, — it is an age of division of labor, and it is only as we work along lines of that kind that we are able to make any progress; and that has laid upon us a new burden that did not exist in generations that have gone before when each individual was self-sustaining and could take care of himself, and if he didn’t, it mattered very little to those who were about him.

It matters a great deal now, and that has put a new duty upon citizenship and one that must be realized and met and fulfilled, and we have not the privilege that we had then to refrain from carrying that occupation like your Society should day, ‘We will do not more work until something has been done in government or in economic relations that is to our satisfaction?’ 

You see what happens now when those who have cast their lot in transportation say, ‘We will refrain from doing the work that we are engaged to do.’ You can imagine what would happen if those who are engaged in agriculture would say, ‘There, we will stop our production until we have accomplished something by an exertion of a pressure of that kind, that we desire to accomplish either in a governmental way or in an economic way.’

That is not government — that is what they refer to as mass action. And unless we can carry our affairs orderly, peacefully, according to the laws of the land and under the Constitution, and each bearing the burden that the duty he has assumed puts on him to bear, we can’t sustain the kind of a civilization that we have chosen to make our own, it will break down and we shall find ourselves in a condition of anarchy on the one hand or of despotism on the other…

— Calvin Coolidge, excerpt of address to the Massachusetts Medical Society, June 9, 1920

Coolidge at home, Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Photo credit: Leslie Jones collection.

I am not unaware that there is a certain discontent that pervades all sorts and conditions of society. There is a kind of discontent that ought to be encouraged because it is the foundation of all progress and all advance in human development.

There are those that are not contented with the amount of education that they have, and they are therefore applying themselves in our schools and institutions of learning; and that is to the public advantage. 

There are those that are discontented with their general condition, think that they are not living the lives that they ought to live, and they are changing their methods of life, joining the church perhaps, and determining to live better in the future; that is for the advantage of the public. 

There are those that think they are not accomplishing enough from their efforts and they are determining that they will work a little harder in the future and do a little more and produce a little more and be more industrious than they have been in the past; that is a discontent that is for the public welfare. 

These sources of discontent are discontent with ourselves and wherever you find that as a condition, you have a foundation laid for the betterment of mankind. There is another kind of discontent that doesn’t look so encouraging; it is the discontent of those who want to profit without any effort; it is the discontent of those who want to control without any ownership, and to rule without legal authority and responsibility, and in this Nation of ours which we boast is made up of kings, they want to rule without being subjects; these are the people that are discontented with others, and that kind of discontent isn’t one on which you can base any progress or one on which we can expect the world to go forward…

— Calvin Coolidge, excerpt from an address before the Massachusetts Medical Society, June 9, 1920

Decoration Day is our best solemn national holiday which ought to be observed with impressive ceremony. No lapse or diminution should be permitted in the yearly devotion which the people pay to the memory of those who have served in our armed forces. 

As the ranks of the Grand Army of the Republic who established Memorial Day fade away, there is danger that the observance will be obscured in other more recent events. The principle involved must not be obscured. The day is sacred to the memory of all the dead who wore our uniform, from the earliest Indian wars to the present hour. In honoring their memory we are not glorifying war. We are a peaceful nation; our efforts led in securing the world treaty renouncing war as a national policy. But we honor their memory that we may glorify citizenship. 

They were the antithesis of selfish individualism, merging freedom and even chance of life in the common welfare of country. In danger, choosing the course that really counts, they preserved their rights by discharging their duties. No nation can live which cannot command that kind of service. No people worthy of such service will fail to do it in reverence. 

— Calvin Coolidge, May 29, 1931