Comments (8)

• Steven Smith

  Not having read this lady's book & absent any intent to do so I yet state the essay of the same title by William Graham Sumner must be better.

  Published: September 3, 2009 8:36 AM

• doug

  After reading this book, Calvin Coolidge is the focus of my next investigations. My initial reaction is that we could use more people like this in government.

  Published: September 3, 2009 10:28 AM

• E. Harding

  People like THIS in the government! Sounds frightening.

  "Coolidge has been misleadingly described as a colorless
  small-town Massachusetts attorney. Actually, the new president
  was a member of a prominent Boston financial family, who
  were board members of leading Boston banks. One, T. Jefferson
  Coolidge, became prominent in the Morgan-affiliated United
  Fruit Company of Boston. Throughout his political career,
  moreover, Calvin Coolidge had two important mentors, both
  neglected by historians. One was Massachusetts Republican
  Party Chairman W. Murray Crane, who served as a director of
  three powerful Morgan-dominated institutions: the New
  Haven and Hartford Railroad, the Guaranty Trust Company of
  New York, and AT&T, on which he was also a member of the
  board’s executive committee. The other was Amherst classmate
  and prominent Morgan partner Dwight Morrow. Morrow
  began to agitate for Coolidge for president as early as 1919, and
  continued his pressure at the Chicago Republican convention of
  1920. Dwight Morrow and fellow Morgan partner Thomas
  Cochran lobbied strenuously for Coolidge at Chicago. Cochran,
  who was not an Amherst graduate, did not have the Amherst
  excuse for working for Coolidge, and so he kept in the background.
  Cochran and Morrow were happy, as prominent Morgan
  men, to confine their work to the background and to push
  forward as their front man for Coolidge the large, doughty
  Boston merchant Frank Stearns, who did have the virtue of
  being an Amherst graduate.
  Secretary of the Treasury throughout all three Republican
  administrations of the 1920s was the powerful multimillionaire
  tycoon Andrew Mellon, head of the Mellon interests, whose
  empire spread from the Mellon National Bank of Pittsburgh to
  encompass Gulf Oil, Koppers Company, and Aluminum Corporation
  of America. Mellon was generally allied to the Morgan
  interests. Furthermore, when Charles Evans Hughes
  returned to private law practice in the spring of 1925, Coolidge
  offered his crucial State Department post to longtime Wall
  Street attorney and former secretary of state and of war, Elihu
  Root, who might be called the veteran head of the “Morgan
  bar.” At one critical time in Morgan’s affairs, Root had served as
  Morgan’s personal attorney. After Root refused the State
  Department post, Coolidge was forced to settle for a lesser Morgan
  light, Minnesota attorney Frank B. Kellogg. Undersecretary
  to Kellogg was Joseph C. Grew, who had family connections
  with the Morgans (J.P. Morgan, Jr., had married a Grew), while,
  in 1927, two highly placed Morgan men were asked to take over
  relations with troubled Mexico and Nicaragua.
  The year 1924 indeed saw the House of Morgan at the pinnacle
  of political power in the United States. President Calvin
  Coolidge, friend and protégé of Morgan partner Dwight Morrow,
  was deeply admired by J.P. “Jack” Morgan, Jr. Jack Morgan
  saw the president, perhaps uniquely, as a rare blend of
  deep thinker and moralist. Morgan wrote a friend: “I have
  never seen any president who gives me just the feeling of confidence
  in the country and its institutions, and the working out
  of our problems, that Mr. Coolidge does.”
  On the other hand, the House of Morgan faced the happy
  dilemma in the 1924 presidential election that the Democratic
  candidate was none other than John W. Davis, senior partner of
  the Wall Street firm of Davis, Polk and Wardwell, and chief
  attorney for J.P. Morgan and Company. Davis, a protégé of the
  legendary Morgan partner Harry Davison, was also a personal
  friend and a backgammon and cribbage partner of Jack Morgan’s.
  It was an embarrassment of riches. Whoever won the
  1924 election, the Morgans could not lose, although they
  decided to opt for Coolidge.
  Morgan partner Dwight Morrow became ambassador to Mexico in
  1927, while Nicaraguan affairs came under the direction of Henry L.
  Stimson, Wall Street lawyer and longtime leading disciple of Elihu Root,
  and a partner in Root’s law firm. As for Frank Kellogg, in addition to
  being a director of the Merchants National Bank of St. Paul, he had been
  general counsel for the Morgan-dominated United States Steel Company
  for the Minnesota region, and most importantly, the top lawyer for railroad
  magnate James J. Hill, long closely allied with the Morgan interests.

  However, 1928, saw inevitable changes in Morgan domination
  of monetary policy. Benjamin Strong, sickly all year, died in
  October, and was replaced by George L. Harrison, his handpicked
  successor. While Harrison was a devoted “Morgan loyalist,”
  he did not quite carry the clout of Benjamin Strong.
  The Coolidge administration, too, was coming to an end.
  The Morgans, again facing an embarrassment of riches, were
  torn three ways. Their prime goal was to induce their beloved
  president to break precedent and run for a third term. Not
  being able to persuade Coolidge, the Morgans next turned to
  Vice President Charles G. Dawes, who had been connected
  with various Morgan railroads in Chicago. When Dawes
  dropped out of the race, the Morgans turned at last to Herbert
  Clark Hoover, who had been a powerful secretary of commerce
  during the two Republican administrations of the
  1920s. While Hoover had not been as intimately connected
  with the Morgans as had Calvin Coolidge, he had long been
  close to the Morgan interests. Particularly influential over
  Hoover during his administration were two unofficial but
  powerful advisers—both Morgan partners: Thomas W. Lamont,
  and Dwight Morrow, whom Hoover consulted regularly
  three times a week."- Murray N. Rothbard, From Hoover to Roosevelt: The Federal Reserve and the Financial Elites.

  From the same crowd who brought you the Depression, meet Calvin Coolidge!
  

  Published: September 3, 2009 2:17 PM

• Lester Hunt

  In addition to this book's very considerable value as a work of history, it is a real page-turner. I recommend it highly.

  Published: September 3, 2009 2:35 PM

• S Andrews

  Fantastic review - It is on my shelf, and once I am through with the Bastiat Collection, I intend to pick this up for reading.

  Published: September 3, 2009 3:40 PM

• Ron Moore

  If you happen to live near Manhattan you can hear CJ Maloney in person on Sep 14 at the monthly meeting of the Manhattan Libertarian Party. You don't need to be a Libertarian (isn't everybody yet?) - everyone is welcome and it's free. For details go to

  www.libertarian.meetup.com/324

  Published: September 3, 2009 5:35 PM

• mikey

  "Suffice to say that during the 1920s and 1930s, the chatterers at Ivy League cocktail parties — and around FDR's dinner table — were decidedly smitten with Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini."

  This is true for a lot of people in the 1920s especially
  re Mussolini. A friend had scads of American magazines from that time. I was suprised to read the fawning tone used by article writers as they praised Italian fascism.
  

  Published: September 3, 2009 6:14 PM

• Nick

  Any explanation for the paradox that Amity Shlaes wrote this book, yet works for the CFR?

  Published: September 3, 2009 7:26 PM