The Sivampscott Week
The Swampscott Week
(P: The President took a five-mile walk one morning.
(P: He appointed Floyd R. Harrison to be a director of the War Finance Corporation, succeeding Frank W. Mondell, resigned. Mr. Harrison has been Assistant to Eugene Meyer Jr., Chairman of the Corporation, had previously served as secretary to David F. Houston and the late Henry C. Wallace, Secretaries of Agriculture.
(P: He went on a cruise aboard the Mayflower with many-lensed news photographers as his guests--and Melville E. Stone, onetime (1893-1921) General Manager, now Counsellor of the Associated Press, as guest of honor. The cruise extended up the Fore River to the Fore River Shipyards of the Bethlehem Ship Building Corporation. There he looked up at the giant unfinished hulk of the Lexington, the Navy's giant, speedy airplane carrier-to-be. There he was saluted by Captain Felipe Fleiss of the Argentine Navy, Commander of the battleship Rivadavia which (with the Moreno) is being converted from a coal to an oil burner at Fore River.
Landing he spent an hour at Quincy, visiting the homes of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, second and sixth U. S. Presidents.
It was pointed out (not by the President) that, besides these two Presidents and Mr. Coolidge, there has been only one other New England President* -- Franklin Pierce. Of the four, Mr. Coolidge had least, in the way of early advantages and least in the way of fame when he went into office, but he is the only one who (if he lives to fill out his term) will have served more than four years in the White House.
(P: Diligent newsgatherers observed among the papers on the President's desk at White Court a copy of the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier.
P: The President gave a luncheon in honor of Count Alexander Skrzynski (pronounced Sh-trin-ski), Polish Foreign Minister. The other guests included Mr. John Hays Hammond, Chairman (1922-3) of the onetime U. S. Coal Commission; J. Butler Wright, Assistant Secretary of State; James C. White.
(P: He received Mahmud Samy Pasha, the new Minister from Egypt, who came to present credentials.
(P: He made ready to have his portrait painted by E. C. Tarbel --commissioned by the Massachusetts Legislature to make the portrait for the gallery of state Governors.
(P: He accepted the resignation as second assistant Postmaster General of Paul Henderson, son-in-law of Congressman Martin B. Madden of Illinois, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Col. Henderson is to become head of the National Airway Corporation.
(P:He had a 45-minute interview with Charles D. Hilles, onetime (1912-16) Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and a power in New York politics-- prefigured in some quarters as the next Secretary of War.
(P: Mr. Coolidge discovered an uninvited guest in the White Court grounds who had escaped the vigilance of the triple guard--policemen, secret service men, Marines. The President called his Secret Service men; they called the local fire department, which removed the trespasser from a high tree, squealing. He was identified by his collar as a monkey belonging to a retired shoe manufacturer dwelling nearby.
(P: James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor, arrived at Swampscott before 7:30 one morning and found the President waiting for him. They discussed the possibilities of an anthracite mine strike (see COAL), for over three hours and at the end of the conference Secretary Davis, departing to sail for Europe, said only that their plans were made, that the Government had no power to intervene unless invited and could not well do so unless there was an open break between the miners and operators.
(P: After lunch Mr. Coolidge motored to Camp Devens and reviewed the Massachusetts National Guard (Yankee Division). Senators Gillett and Butler were also in the reviewing stand, but General Clarence R. Edwards, who commanded the division overseas, although present, was not invited into the stand, perhaps through oversight. Veterans were angry. Later the President motored back to White Court by way of Concord and Lexington, taking Senator Butler with him.
(P: Mr. Coolidge motored to Cole's Island, 28 miles from Swampscott, spent three-quarters of an hour chatting with Secretary of War Weeks, who is recovering from a serious illness (the exact nature of which has not been made public.)
(P: Correspondents at White Court were very insistent in their repetition that the President would summon anthracite coal miners and operators to Swampscott as soon as their negotiations became deadlocked, in the hope of averting a coal strike.
(P: Peter Augustus Jay, U. S. Ambassador to Argentina, called at White Court to discuss the Republic of Argentina.
(P:As time wore on and report got abroad that the President was bored at White Court, politicians came --David W. Mulvane, National Committeeman from Kansas; Matthew Hale, Chairman of the late Bull Moose party; Joseph W. Simpson and Senator Frederick E. Hale of Maine; and most magnificent of all, Senator Curtis of Kansas, Republican leader in the Senate, primed for a three-day visit, reporting volubly to reporters that farming was better in Kansas, that the Senate rules would not be revised, that sentiment had not changed on the World Court, that the tax cut next winter would be luscious, might even reach half a billion dollars.
* Chester A. Arthur, 21st U. S. President, was born in Vermont, but was a citizen of New York State during his incumbency.